When the theatrical arts teacher wants to cast Danny for a role in Shakespeare’s most popular play, how will he manage the thespian challenge?

So what morons write the curricula for high school students, anyway? For example, teaching Shakespeare to teenagers is probably a bad idea. Consider Romeo and Juliet. What’s in this story? Teens engaged in gang warfare and murder, teen lovers sneaking off for sex in an illicit marriage, a teen malingering to avoid a commitment, teens rebelling against their parents and the civil authorities, and teens taking drugs. Then the interaction of these star-crossed lovers culminates in a double suicide. All things that you really want teenagers to emulate, huh? The iconic scene of the drama is the renowned image of Romeo wooing Juliet on her balcony from the ground below. That’s what romantics remember and how the production is sold. But the greater scope is tragic and depressing, which is the point of the drama. It’s a waste of life and love that need not to have happened.

So we read this in our ninth grade English class, as high school freshmen, at a time when so many of us were already afraid of our own shadows. Of course, it wasn’t enough that we read this in class. Our English teacher got together with the school’s theatrical arts teacher to produce Romeo and Juliet on stage.

* * * * * * * * *

“Class, I’d like you all to meet Miss Trouvere,” our English teacher, Mrs. Johnson, addressed us. “For those of you who don’t already know her, she teaches theater here and will be directing the school play. She wants to sit in on our class as we read Romeo and Juliet. Would you like to explain why, Miss Trouvere?”

“Yes, thank you, Mis’ess Johnson. Romeo and Juliet will be the school play this year and I’m sitting in on all the freshmen English classes as they read it. I’m going to listen to how you read and I may suggest things to help with your reading style and expression. Also, I may ask those of you who might read especially well to come to open auditions. I could even cast you for a part right away if I think you’re really good.”

“The next thing to do is to assign the parts for reading,” said Mrs. Johnson. “Please pay attention and be ready to read your part when it comes up. It will likely take us most or all of the week for this, since we’ll have discussion about it as well as reading.”

Mrs. Johnson had already chosen whom she wanted to read which roles in class. Jeff, the most popular boy in the ninth grade class, was assigned the part of Romeo, while Caitlin would read as Juliet. My best friend, Clem, got the role of Count Paris and I was asked to read as Friar Laurence.

I rather liked the role of Friar Laurence and happily read it. His first scene opens with an interesting monologue discussing how things from nature are neutral in themselves and how the intent of their user decides whether they be used for good or evil. That was the first time that I remember thinking seriously about the responsible use of knowledge. (Hmm? Maybe that’s why Romeo and Juliet was in the curriculum?) Then near the end of the play he explains everything in a proper dénouement, somewhat like the sleuth unveiling the villain in the final scene of a mystery. Indeed, I would have preferred that role to what eventually I was asked to play for the stage production.

* * * * * * * * *

During those years, the federal government subsidized a free breakfast daily for all students. Anyone who wanted breakfast only had to show up in the school cafeteria and get in line. Sometimes my friends and I would skip breakfast at home, and then meet for it at school. We didn’t especially need the free breakfast, but we enjoyed the opportunity to meet and chat before the school day began. Besides, unlike most high schools, our own cooks would make really good, tasty meals, instead of the usual cafeteria fare.

Whenever Clem and I got together, we would do some girl-watching until Tanya came along, when it would become, more generally, people-watching. And that still included watching girls, although Tanya did so usually with a somewhat different purpose than Clem and myself.

Usually.

On this morning, I was sitting at our accustomed table in the cafeteria. Clem had not arrived so early as I had, and Tanya, who had begun joining us for breakfast only recently, would not be here until he had. But I was not exactly alone.

Jenny looks so nice in that dress, observed Danielle from within my mind. We’re the same size and build, you know. We should try to find it for you, Danny.

Danielle was constantly pushing me, pulling me, teasing me to try out feminine fashions, hoping that someday she might get me to dress as a girl. She’d been doing this since the fifth grade. And somehow, sometime, I felt that I’d like to oblige her. But really, I could never take such a risk and she knew it.

Danielle, stop teasing me, I implored her. You know that I can’t. It’s too dangerous.

I felt her despair. That we had to share the same body just wasn’t fair, yet it was what Providence had dealt us. But I had been given the driver’s seat for our joint existence. The world perceived us as a boy and already I had learned a few painful lessons about nonconformity to social norms. For example, I played violin. This was apparently the wrong choice of musical instrument for a boy, despite the fact that grown men often play it. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, playing violin had helped to earn me the highly unwanted monikers of “sissy” and “queer.” Besides that, there was also the fact that my long, curly hair and soft features made me look kind of like a girl, too. Such was life in Rednecksville, USA.

Poor Danielle, I feared, needed to express herself somehow, but I couldn’t allow her, or us, to don feminine apparel, since that would risk my becoming a crossdresser. And that was too bad, not only for her sake, but even for mine, as I had sometimes wondered how I might look in a pretty dress, skirt and blouse, or a formal gown, how I would feel wearing pantyhose or a pair of nylon stockings, and how different the world could appear to me teetering atop a pair of four-inch (10 cm) heels. Already, a few girls that I knew had tried to trick (or to intimidate) me into wearing selections from their own wardrobes. They thought that doing this would help establish their own social clique’s dominance above others. Girls seemed to play by a strange set of rules sometimes.

Carla’s skirt is cute today. Don’t you just love those pleats? Danielle remarked. It’s quite daring, don’t you think?

Indeed, risqué would be more accurate, I mused to the rider in my mental sidecar. Why does she wear a skirt that short?

She likes the attention.

Another girl tapped Carla on the shoulder and quickly she spun around and the pleats of her skirt flew out and up. Of course, her underwear was clearly, if only briefly, visible.

Omigosh! She’s wearing rhumba panties! squealed Danielle from the corner of my mind.

What are rhumba panties?

Well, you know what they are.

I do?

Yes you do. For me to know about them, somehow, somewhere, sometime you had to have encountered them, too.

Although I hated to admit it, Danielle was right. Since we shared a single physical existence, we shared the same perceptions. However, we did not always interpret our jointly perceived stimuli the same way. Yes, I had seen panties like Carla’s before, likely on a mannequin in a store, or maybe in our laundry at home, or perhaps shown in a catalogue. But I didn’t know what all those different garments were called, at least not consciously.

I need a definition, here, I thought. What qualifies her underwear as rhumba panties?

The three rows of lace across the butt, responded my psychic passenger. Those are normally worn by girls much younger than high school. Carla obviously wants them to be seen!—Oh, Danny! That’s so sweet!—You’re blushing!

Indeed, I could feel my face turning red. Carla glanced to me over her shoulder and giggled. She knew that I had seen her. That’s why I had blushed. She had intended for everyone to see them. That she had embarrassed me by doing it, had to be even better as far as she were concerned.

I can really do without her antics.

Of course you can! That’s all the more reason for her to do it! I could hear Danielle giggling in the back of my mind.

About that time, Clem and Tanya came and sat down with their trays of breakfast. I had to concede that our cooks could work something akin to magic with powdered eggs. They added some citrus to the eggs, giving a slightly tart taste, just a little zing for us to appreciate. And they added a touch of curry to the breakfast potatoes, often diced instead of always hash browns, although their hash browns weren’t so run-of-the-mill either. Neither in college nor in graduate school did breakfast in any other cafeteria attain such delectability again. And I have since learned that the delights served by our high school kitchen staff were the exception to prove the rule. But it was good, so to spoil breakfast among us required our hearing exceptionally adverse news.

“G’morning, guys,” I greeted them. “You’re missing a good show!”

“What show?” Tanya inquired and then began scanning the cafeteria for whatever might be happening.

“Carla pirouetted to display her fine choice of underwear this morning,” I answered. “Rows of lace across her backside—”

“Rhumba panties?” asked Tanya, wide-eyed and gasping incredulously.

“I’m not really the expert on girls’ fashion here,” I conceded. “So don’t ask me.”

“If she’s wearin’ rhumba panties under that skirt, she quite clearly means to put on a show,” concluded Tanya, giggling. Clem’s face reddened at the thought and I felt myself blushing as well.

“You boys are so easy to embarrass!” Tanya teased with a giggle. “You two would so never make it as girls!”

“Not a priority for us, sweetheart,” said Clem, stuffing some scrambled eggs into his mouth with a fork.

“Why would we want to?” I added as I speared some curried potatoes with my own fork. “Make it as girls, that is?”

Danny! You can really irk me sometimes! Danielle complained from within. Just for once I’d think you’d like to experience the other side of things!

Danielle, cool it already!

“Oh, I dunno!—I jus’ think you two would both look really cute in drag!” Tanya disclosed. “Especially you, Danny—with your curly hair and those long eyelashes—you’d be adorable!”

“Tanya!” Clem whined at his girlfriend. “He’s my friend! An’ I done been teased over lookin’ too girly, myself!”

“But that’s my point, Clemmie,” she continued. “’Tween the two o’ you, absolutely ev’ry girl in this school is jealous over at least one o’ your features—’specially Danny’s curls!”

“I know,” I admitted. “Girls keep asking me who does my hair. I feel humiliated every time.”

“O’ course, they’d ask you that,” conceded Tanya. “For mos’ girls here, the alternative’s too unbearable t’ accept.”

“And that is…?” I asked.

“The truth. That your curly hair’s natural,” she explained. “I’ve heard more than one complain it’s unfair for you t’ have hair like yours.”

“It is,” I concurred with my classmates’ collective complaint. “If I could trade with one of them for simple, straight hair, I’d be a lot happier.”

“Guess you jus’ never appreciate whatcha got,” Tanya reproved me. “Us girls gotta pay good money to git hair like yours.”

Yes, they do, Danny! concurred my princesse-aux-pensées, more assertively than I felt warranted. We’re lucky to have natural, curly hair.

“Tanya, I don’t thaynk y’ quite git what Danny’s tryin’ t’ say,” rallied Clem in support of my argument. “That curly hair thatcha like so much ain’t too good for us guys. It can git a guy in trouble, ’specially if other guys thaynk it’s too girly-lookin’. Can git a guy hurt.”

“And they’d pretty much decided that about mine a long time ago,” I added. “So I’m not at all especially proud of it. If anything, I’ve been wondering, if I should just visit my barber again.”

“Danny, no! whined Tanya, objecting desperately to the very thought of forgoing my long locks for something more masculine.

Danny, no! Danielle seconded her motion. Not the barber! You know that’ll disappoint Mom—and me!

And you also know that Dad’s on my case to get it cut.

“With you on this, buddy,” Clem assured me. He turned to his girlfriend. “You dunno what we’ve gone through ’cause too many other guys already thaynk we look too much like girls.”

“So what?” Tanya dismissed Clem’s explanation. “I like a boy who’s a little on the girly side.”

“Still, I don’t think Clem and myself look like anything other than guys,” I objected.

“O’ course you don’t,” Tanya dismissed my remark. “But girls don’t see you the same way as you see yourselves, or as other boys do for that matter.”

“Whatcha mean?” Clem queried his girlfriend.

“Boys don’t really bother with appearance too much, ’cept their own an’ on rare occasions at that,” she explained. “But when us girls look at another girl, we imagine how she’d look in a differ’nt color or style. We might imagine her wearin’ a longer or shorter skirt, or a differ’nt style o’ skirt. What neckline would look best on her for a top or a sweater? How’d she look with her face made up differ’nt or with a new hairdo?”

“Not followin’ you, sweetheart,” Clem stopped her.

“I try to picture how you an’ Danny’d look wearin’ differ’nt clothes,” she continued. “You boys don’t wear many differ’nt things at all. It’s really mostly the same clothes all the time. But I see you an’ can imagine you wearin’ pretty dresses an’ how’d you need to do your face an’ hair to pull off a new look.”

“But why?” I asked her. “I don’t wanna give anyone any impression of looking any girlier than they already think.”

“Me neither,” added Clem. “There’s guys out there already who thaynk nothin’ o’ beatin’ us up over how we look.”

“Well, I can take you both out for Hallowe’en as girls and you’ll look great. You’ll win awards for havin’ the best costumes.”

“So you’ll come and visit us in the hospital, then?” I retorted. “Because that’s where you’ll find us after the Future Rednecks of America decide we’re queers for dressing up.”

“What is it with you boys anyway?” mused Tanya. “You’re always gittin’ bent outta shape ’bout the least little thing not macho. Must be tough bein’ a boy.”

“Well, yeah! ’Tis. But we don’t make the rules,” Clem reminded her. Then he leaned over and whispered. “If I wanna wear a dress or a skirt to school, why shouldn’ I? But if I did, ever’ guy ’round here but Danny’d beat the shit outta me an’ they’d wait ’til ever’one else had a chance to take a shot at me before finishin’.”

Back in seventh grade, Clem had tried on a girl’s cheerleading uniform that had been left in his locker. Then he confessed to me that he had liked wearing it. (Had he ever told Tanya?) One had been left in mine at the same time as well, but I’d never had the courage to try it on, because I knew that if I ever did, I could never stop crossdressing. Yet I had so wanted to give it a try.

That’s red, Danny, ain’t it? Danielle consoled me.

Yeah, it is, I conceded to my female spirit. I’m sorry that you’ve never had the chance to wear a pair of ballet slippers, maryjanes or high heels. Sometimes I feel selfish that I’ve never let you outside to play.

That’s okay, affirmed my inner voice. I know how it is for you—for us—and I understand. I really do.

That was the most difficult aspect of this relationship with Danielle—she was too understanding about it, always kind. If she could just act like a prima donna once in a while, maybe threaten me with major embarrassment or something, then I wouldn’t feel so guilty about keeping her locked up inside me.

“But I jus’ cain’t understand why they’d beat you up over how you’d dress,” Tanya objected. “I mean we’re jus’ talkin’ clothes here.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said. “Don’t you girls have your own rules about who’s allowed to do what?”

“Yes, but not like that—not to the point we’d beat anyone up ’cause o’ their clothes.”

“No, you’d just laugh them into humiliation,” I asserted. “And that’s not much better.”

“No we wouldn’t!” Tanya whined. “How could you think so?”

“Because I’ve come too close to such misadventures, myself,” I told her.

“So’ve I,” added Clem.

“You, sweetie?” Tanya asked in surprise.

Clem looked at me as if to ask permission. I knew what he wanted to tell his girlfriend, so I nodded. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everyone else in the school knows about it anyway.”

“D’you remember in seventh grade when someone signed our names to the list of girls for cheerleadin’ tryouts?” my buddy asked to remind her. “They got Danny first, then me the next week.”

“Uh-huh, I remember that,” she answered.

“The next mornin’ after they got Danny, we both found girls’ cheerleadin’ uniforms done been stashed in our lockers. That was a week before they even signed my name to the list.”

“We told the cheerleading coach what had happened and she was nice to us,” I followed up. “Immediately, Miss Cartier put a stop to any more pranks like that. She tried to find out where the uniforms had come from, too, but all of the cheerleaders could account for theirs. So we were never able to find out for certain who stashed them in our lockers, although we think that Caitlin and her older sister might have been involved. Maybe Melanie and Chelsea were, too.”

“That was mean,” agreed Tanya. “What else happened.”

“Th’other guys, they all kept on harrassin’ an’ teasin’ us ’bout it,” answered Clem. “They still do.”

“So, you never found out just who was responsible?” queried Tanya, sustaining her incredulity of the circumstance.

“We’ve only got the suspicions I told you about,” I affirmed. “No proof of anything. But at least I still can hope that Chelsea didn’t really do it.”

“Why? Are you crushin’ on her?” Tanya teased.

“Uh—no, Tanya,” I said, giving her a serious look. “The reason’s something I don’t wanna talk about.”

“He’s right, sweetheart!” Clem assured her. “’Twasn’t exactly pleasant for Danny. Let’s jus’ leave it for now.”

“Excuse me a moment,” Tanya said as she stood up, grabbed her purse, and rather suddenly pursued Carla, I presumed, on her way to the ladies’ room. She caught up with her and they both giggled on their way out the door.

Clem and I proceeded to finish breakfast, chatting about our homework assignments and sports.

My friend’s eyes furtively swept the room. Then Clem leaned across the table toward me and whispered, “By the way, you still got them cheerleadin’ duds?”

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “But I shoved ’em in the back o’ the closet in that gym bag they came with. Do you still—uh—I mean—uh—wear yours?”

He grinned bashfully and nodded very slightly. “Yeah,” he continued to whisper. “Still like to put mine on.”

“Ever tell Tanya?”

“No—but I’m thaynkin’ about it now.”

“She did say earlier that she likes a boy to be a little girly.”

“Yeah, she did, so now might be a good time to bring it up with her,” my buddy looked off pensively. “An’ I’m thaynkin’ we might even have fun together with it, her an’ me that is. So, didj’ever try yours on?”

“No,” I admitted. “And I’m scared one day Mom’s gonna take a look in the back o’ my closet and find out what’s in that gym bag. Then I’m gonna have a lot of explaining to do.”

“Y’know, I could keep it for ya,” he offered.

“Hmm? That never occurred to me. Not a bad idea… Maybe I should take it over to your house?”

“Sure. It’ll be there, an’ if y’ever wanna use it, you can try it on when y’come over. An’ if y’ever want to, I can help y’out with it.”

“Well, thanks.”

Clem and I looked over to the main door and saw Tanya and Carla returning from the restroom, giggling and chattering away.

“Gotta get to homeroom,” I said. “See you guys in English!”

* * * * * * * * *

Today we were reading that most popular of all Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet.

Mrs. Johnson had assigned Melanie and Tanya the roles of the Nurse and Lady Capulet, respectively, and they were reading from Act I, Scene iii.

“Faith, I can tell her age unto an hour,” read Melanie.

“She’s not fourteen,” Tanya continued the dialogue.

“I’ll lay fourteen of my teeth,—And yet, to my teeth be it spoken, I have but four—She is not fourteen. How long is it now to Lammas-tide?”

“A fortnight and odd days.”

Mrs. Johnson looked up at us from her book. “What’s this dialogue between the Nurse and Lady Capulet telling us?”

No one said anything, so I answered, “Juliet’s only thirteen years old. She’s just a little more than two weeks shy of her fourteenth birthday. By the way, her birthday’s on August first, so everything in the story happens in mid-July.”

“And how did you know that, Danny?”

“Lammas falls on August first and a fortnight is two weeks. So a fortnight and odd days would be about mid-July.”

“What does that tell you about Juliet, then?”

For a very brief moment, I just relaxed and closed my eyes, imagining, for some reason, a girl holding a red rose and inhaling its scent. Quietly, I sighed. I felt, I wasn’t sure, giddy?

“She’s about the same age as us, maybe even a year or so younger,” I observed.

She’s never been in love before, Danielle’s voice told me from where she dwelt in the back of my mind.

Yes, I kinda thought that. Or did you just absolutely have to remind me that a girl would see that?

But Danny, you interpreted that just like a girl would!

Of course, Danielle had to interrupt my enjoyment of Shakespeare just to point out that I had arrived at the same conclusion that my female classmates had. She really thought that I were a girl. Or maybe she was the girl that I thought I would have been? Or could have been? Or even should have been?

It’s merely a logical conclusion extrapolated from the story, I thought back to her. I don’t have to be a girl to know that.

But you do have to be a girl to feel it, like you just did.

“Then this might be the first time she’s ever had any feelin’ for a boy, too,” Melanie followed up. Mentally, I noted that I agreed with her.

“So it might be a new experience for her,” added Tanya. That was absolutely correct, I had to concur.

“Those are good observations, girls,” said Mrs. Johnson. “This is another example of what you can understand when you read the text carefully. Danny was able to give us a very close estimate of when the story’s happening, while Melanie and Tanya are able to interpret that additional information about how Juliet might feel and that she might not have any experience dealing with it.”

“But why’d the time o’ year matter so much?” Melanie objected, somewhat miffed that Mrs. Johnson had praised my contribution in the same breath as hers.

“Because it’s summertime,” I injected with a grin. “Don’t all you girls have more fun in the summer?”

Tanya giggled. Every other girl in class but Melanie giggled back in chorus.

“Tanya must have,” my friend Clem remarked.

Tanya’s face turned a slightly bright shade of crimson. She put her face down on her desk and covered her head with her hands—still giggling. She was the very first girl that my buddy had ever made out with. It had been during the summer—in a very public session. Clem, you sly devil, you!

“Seriously, though,” I raised my voice, wresting the floor away from the momentary chaos, “would she have reacted quite so readily to Romeo in colder weather?”

“That’s an interesting question, Danny,” Mrs. Johnson replied, also raising her voice, settling down the remaining giggles. “Class, what about it? Does the time of year really matter in the story? How might this have been different in the winter?”

Caitlin spoke up, “The balcony scene! Juliet might not’ve gone out on ’er balcony in the winter.”

“That’s one of the most iconic scenes in all literature,” I added. “Would we even still have the play without the balcony scene?”

“Those are excellent points, class!” Mrs. Johnson acknowledged. “That scene is such an important one. If it’s mid-July, then the balcony is open to the breeze to keep Juliet’s room cool. It might not even be open otherwise.”

“Since ’tis his most pop’lar play,” commented Clem, “would we even remember Shakespeare today ’t all without that there balcony scene?”

“So then, class, is the time of year important for the setting of the play?”

This was the kind of thing that made reading this in class interesting for me. Juliet was a teenager, like us. And I was sure that Mrs. Johnson wanted us all to understand that. That way, Shakespeare might seem a little closer to us and not so remote from our own experience. Apparently, such universality of experience was one of the main reasons for Shakespeare’s appeal.

Well, Danny! You hijacked the discussion from the romance of a girl’s first love to the mundane topic of the weather! How could you?

I didn’t hijack it, I thought to myself—and to Danielle. Besides, the weather is a part of the romance. I mean, I’d like to cuddle with a girl in front of a fireplace in the winter. That’d be romantic for me.

Aw! Why did you have to mention that? whined Danielle. Now I gotta have some hot cocoa!

* * * * * * * * *

I found my favorite little wooded area on the hill and sat down, my back against my favorite tree. I set my violin case down on the ground beside me. The weather was clear, mostly sunny with just a few broken clouds passing overhead. Flocks of migratory birds flew their instinctive paths towards their winter homes.

Danny, would you play the Dvořák for me? Danielle asked me by thought.

“Well, it is a nice day for music outdoors,” I said in response. “And Humoresque would be a nice little piece for here and now.”

So I opened my case, took out my violin, attached the shoulder rest, tightened the bow, applied a few strokes of rosin to it, and tuned up. Then I began to play the short, light, whimsical opening notes of Dvořák’s little character piece. It was one of Danielle’s favorites. In my mind’s eye, I could see her dancing to it.

Danny, I’d love to see you dance while playing this, she dreamed to me. And you’d be wearing a cute frilly, lacy blouse with a Dirndl, and a short, sassy skirt with an apron. Yes, a Dirndl! It simply must be a Dirndl! We’d look so cute!

Yet I put Danielle’s thoughts aside and continued to play, letting the music fulfill her wishes of the moment, taming her desire for control. Yeah! Turnabout being fair play and all!

“Danielle, how is it that you can dance inside my head but I’m still a klutz on my feet?”

Aren’t you ever gonna forget that dream? she upbraided me. No, you aren’t, are you?

I guess not, I replied mentally to my inner girl. But you still don’t appreciate how frightening that was for me. It was the dream that started all this, that I was in a ballet class with my female classmates in elementary school, myself attired in the same leotard, tights, and ballet slippers as they were. And hair ribbons.

We’ve just gotta get you into a dress already, Danny, my alter-egomaniac decreed. Then you won’t need to fear it again.

“And still, you just don’t get, either!” I retorted aloud. Then I thought to her, I’m not afraid of wearing a dress—not at all! That would be the fun of it! You’re forgetting the real danger.

Which is…?

I raised the violin to my chin and struck the opening theme of Arcangelo Corelli’s La Folia.

Just like the violin, once I start, I won’t be able to stop.

After the theme, I played on to the next variation…

With continued crossdressing would come the growing risk of getting caught…

… and then the next…

… with the consequent embarrassment…

… and yet another…

… followed by outright humiliation.

By this time, my fear, my disappointment, and my anger, all were driving my musical expression, with each of Corelli’s variations taking on the distinct flavor of some nuance of emotion. I dug the bow into the strings, grinding, tearing, ripping away the raw sound, the frustration of unrequited passions. The sound was so intense as the vibrations shook through my instrument, that I clenched my jaw so that my teeth not chatter and clamped my chin tighter on my violin proclaiming its intention to leap from my shoulder.

Teasing, ridicule, public humiliation, endless epithets, villification, thrashing, assault, rape…, I thought back at Danielle, enumerating the possible, even probable, consequences of so simple, so bold an act as a boy choosing to satisfy his curiosity by donning a girl’s dress, a garment sweet, soft, and pretty.

Danny, stop! her voice pled. You’ve made your point. I’m sorry. I sometimes forget that you have to live as a boy in this world. It’s not fair but that’s how it is. I get that. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t dream.

Certain of Corelli’s variations of La Folia are very anxious, even violent, I thought to Danielle. Then aloud, “That wasn’t what I wanted to feel.” Attaching the mute to my violin, I began to play Claude Debussy’s « La Fille aux cheveux de lin », a musical image of a pretty girl and a favorite of Danielle’s and mine.

I love that, Danny, filled my awareness. I know you really mean it. You play that like you wanna be her, don’t you?

Honestly, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Any possible answer to Danielle’s question seemed wrong. But definitely, Debussy’s quiet little work calmed me—and Danielle, too.

Unsure whether they were her tears or mine that streamed down my cheeks, I began to cry, hugging my violin and bow close to my chest. I felt warm arms wrapping around me from behind, someone huddled with me in compassion, in love. It could only be Danielle hugging me like that.

I looked around.

No one was there.

* * * * * * * * *

“Well, class, I see that we have a couple of absences today,” Mrs. Johnson observed. “We’ll need substitutes to read for their parts.”

Miss Trouvere was there again and she and Mrs. Johnson were conferring with one another in whispers behind her desk.

“Danny,” Mrs. Johnson addressed me, “Since Caitlin’s not here, I’ve got a request. We don’t need you to read as Friar Laurence today, so would you read as Juliet?”

“What?” I asked in anxious surprise. Jeff laughed at me as did most of the other guys. Chelsea, Melanie, and Tanya began giggling. Clem looked at me with a tight-lipped, non-committal expression and just gently shook his head.

“Yes. Miss Trouvere and I would like you to read for Juliet,” she reiterated. “You read really well. We’d like to hear how you would handle it.”

My classmates’ snickering continued.

“Class, quit laughing at him,” ordered Mrs. Johnson. “I have to ask him to read the part because the rest of you don’t know how.” She turned to me again. “So, how ’bout it?”

I was not at all comfortable with my teacher’s request, but could I even refuse? Complying with it would once again make me an object of ridicule before the class; they’d confirmed that just as soon as Mrs. Johnson had mentioned it.

“All right, then. I’ll read it,” I agreed. “But just this once, under protest, and against my better judgement.”

“Understood,” Mrs. Johnson acknowledged smiling, as I stared down Jeff, Melanie, and a few other classmates. Then, acting on my concern, she admonished the class.

“I don’t want to hear that Danny’s been teased or harassed by any of you,” warned Mrs. Johnson. “He’s reading Juliet’s role because I’ve assigned it to him.”

Somewhere in my mind, I could feel Danielle dancing en pointe and giggling. Well, I was glad that someone was happy about it.

Remember, Danny, she said, if you run into any difficulties reading it, just let go and I can take over.

Yeah! You’d like that, I mused back at her.

I heard Pffthh’t! sounding as a “raspberry” in my aural perception center as Danielle expelled breath, as if trilling our tongue between our lips.

Danielle! That was uncalled for!

She giggled anew in my mind. I was slightly angry with her, since I could no longer keep a straight face but still had to read as Juliet.

* * * * * * * * *

Tanya took her seat at the lunch table across from me. We both had grilled cheese with French fries and chickpeas in Marsala sauce. It wasn’t just any grilled cheese, though, but pepper-jack grilled on whole-grained Texas toast with jalapeño and red chili peppers. I had been afraid that it might be too picante, but the peppers were milder than expected, more flavorful than spicy.

“Danny, you read Juliet really well in class today.”

“Thanks!” I think.

“I’d never’ve believed a boy could understand how a girl’d feel about an arranged marriage, but I guess you do.”

“Why not, though? I mean, it’s clear in the dialogue. Yeah, it’s flowered up quite a bit, but it should be clear to anyone reading it, shouldn’t it?”

Sure, if you have a girl inside, that is, I heard in my subconscious. But was it my own thought or Danielle’s? More and more, I was becoming uncertain who was running my mind, thinking my thoughts. In short, I thought that I was on the verge of losing my mind.

“But a girl can tell you really felt it. You weren’t jus’ readin’ it,” Tanya commented. Then she explained further, “It’s like you really put yourself in a girl’s mind while you were readin’.”

“Or maybe I just had a girl in mine,” I retorted.

“Oh?” said Tanya, dipping a French fry in ketchup before flicking it up to her mouth. Smiling at me, she inquired, “Who is she?”

Of course, she had to ask. And now I had to answer carefully. After all, I did not care to reveal to her that I had a girl living inside of my own mind.

“Don’t wanna tell just yet,” I said.

“Afraid you might jinx it, huh?” Tanya asked, grinning as she popped another French fry into her mouth.

“You could say that.”

Mentally, I exhaled a deep sigh. The situation had been diffused, at least for today. And I liked the grilled cheese, too.

“What I don’t understand is why you and Chelsea haven’t hooked up,” Tanya probed. “You two got along really well until seventh grade. What happened?”

Why did she have to ask me that? I hated the memory of what had happened that day over two years earlier.

“Seriously?” I said. “You haven’t figured it out yet?”

“Seriously!” Tanya insisted. “What went wrong?”

“She became very a different person when she started hanging out with Caitlin and Melanie,” I told her. “The more she’s become like them, the more disappointed I’ve been with her.”

Tanya looked down at the table, nodding that she concurred with my assessment. What she didn’t know was that when Chelsea invited me to her house for breakfast that Saturday morning two years ago, Caitlin and Melanie were also there with their scheme to dress me as a girl and take me out with them.

“Too bad,” remarked Tanya. “We all kinda thought you an’ she belonged together.”

“We all?” I asked.

“Me an’ my girlfriends,” she clarified and bit into her grilled cheese. “We always talk about boys when we get together. You know—who’s datin’ who an’ that sorta thing? We had you an’ Chelsea paired up a long time ago. Shame it didn’t work out for you two.”

“Yes, it was,” I concurred, picking up a few more of the spicy chickpeas with my spoon.

“But what happened?” Tanya tried pressing the issue again.

“Let’s just say that Caitlin and Melanie interfered with our chances to get anything going. Chelsea and I haven’t spoken with one another since. But that’s history now.”

“If you want, I could talk to her for you,” offered Tanya. “You know—maybe help smooth things over?”

“No, I’d rather you not,” I objected. What had happened between Chelsea and me was embarrassing enough that I didn’t want Tanya to know about it. Since I didn’t know her as well or as long as Clem did, trust was still an issue with me. “After all, she still buddies up with Caitlin and Melanie. Really, I don’t want anything to do with Chelsea anymore.”

Tanya sipped her cola. “Sure you don’t wanna tell me who else is on your mind?”

“Again, I don’t wanna jinx anything,” I reiterated. But Tanya wanted to play matchmaker for me and I was thinking about it. “I would like to meet Carla sometime, though, if you could arrange that.”

“You and Carla? Well, that’s a surprise! You’re not jus’ messin’ with me are ya?”

“No, not at all! She’s a free spirit for sure and maybe things’d work out better with someone like her.”

Tanya glanced at Carla sitting on the far side of the cafeteria.

“Y’know, I think she would be good t’ git you outta your shell,” my friend remarked. “But I dunno if you’d be good for her. I think she might see you as—well—as too uptight.”

I suddenly heard Ffh’ss…! in my aural perception center, as if air were escaping a balloon, followed by a giggle. That was the sound of an ego deflating, thought Danielle to me.

You really mean my ego deflating, don’t you?

Wow! I just knew you’d figure it out, you bright boy, you!

Girl! I wish I were wearing rhumba panties right now just so I could spank you in them!

Right here? In front of everyone? That’d be so cool!

Shut up, O mind o’ mine!

“Geeze, Tanya! If you knew what I’m going through right now, you’d be uptight, too!” I defended myself.

“I know it’s tough for you, Danny,” she conceded. “I’m jus’ sayin’ you gotta be you.”

“But then what isn’t me?” I challenged her.

Tanya flashed a quick grin at me and leaned across the table.

“First, guess what Clemmie did yesterday?”

“What?”

“Well, I wen’ over to his house an’ he put on that cheerleadin’ uniform,” she whispered. “He was jus’ so cute wearin’ it. He got hisself all dressed up in it an’ his mom an’ sis helped him git made up an’ did his hair up in pigtails. He was adorable!”

“Sounds like you enjoyed it,” I observed, keeping my voice low.

“Oh! Did I ever!” Tanya beamed. Then she stopped as her voice had become loud, so she whispered again. “Anyway, his mom an’ sis both have cheer uniforms an’ I have one, too, so we’re all gonna go out together as cheerleaders for Hallowe’en.”

“Clem, too?”

“Uh-huh!” confirmed my buddy’s girlfriend. “And I’m bettin’ that you still have the uniform they left in your locker as well.”

“So, what if I do?”

“We’d like you to go out for Hallowe’en with us.”

“No way, José!” I told her. “Too crazy for me—”

“But if you’re serious about meetin’ Carla, it’s exactly the kinda thing that’d make ’er take notice of you.”

“Tanya!”

“What?”

“I’m not dressing up like a girl.”

* * * * * * * * *

The bell rang to end the period. “Danny, I need to see you for just a moment after class,” Mrs. Johnson said, raising her voice above the din. I stopped at her desk.

“What’s up?” I asked. “You need to see me, Mis’ess Johnson?”

“Yes, Danny,” answered my teacher. “Do you remember Miss Trouvere sitting in while we read Romeo and Juliet?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she wants to talk to you about an audition for a role in our stage production of it.”

“She wants me to read for Friar Laurence?”

“She does want you to read for an audition, although she didn’t tell me if it were for Friar Laurence or another role. She may or may not already have a role in mind for you.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about an audition. No—I was sure—I didn’t feel at all comfortable about performing on stage. A few of my classmates had thespian aspirations, but not myself.

“Mis’ess Johnson, can I be honest with you?”

“Of course you can, Danny,” she said, her tone of voice putting me at ease. “Always!”

“Well, I wasn’t planning to try out for the play.”

“Oh? Is there something in Romeo and Juliet that bothers you?”

“Oh no! It’s nothing like that. Nothing about the play itself. I’m just not interested in acting, not in Romeo and Juliet nor in any other play.”

“Hmm? She prob’ly didn’t even consider that possibility,” noted Mrs. Johnson, her face bearing a slightly amused expression.

“So, when does Miss Trouvere wanna see me?”

“As soon as you can. Her preparation period is right after lunch.”

Well, just talking to Miss Trouvere couldn’t hurt. At least I could get out of study hall.

* * * * * * * * *

Miss Trouvere used the backstage area behind the main auditorium as her classroom. She had her desk there, but there were also armchairs, sofas, tables, and other pieces of furniture used both by her students in class and as props for the stage.

I knocked on the backstage door and it opened.

“Hi, Danny,” Miss Trouvere greeted me. “Thanks for coming. Please, take a seat over here.” She indicated a sofa with a low coffee table in front of it. On the table was a tray of assorted large cookies and the biggest chocolate brownies that I’d ever seen, along with three thermal carafes of hot beverages and an icy cooler containing an assortment of sodas on the floor beside it. That was quite a spread just to talk to me.

There were three large storerooms behind her desk and an adjacent rolling blackboard. Signs on their doors designated them respectively for wardrobe, dressing rooms, and props and equipment.

“What would you like?” she offered.

“Hmm? I don’t quite know.”

I didn’t drink coffee yet. (I would be in graduate school in northern Minnesota before eventually acquiring a taste for the broth brewed of the bitter bean.) I already had a cola earlier at lunch. I heard steam escape and smelled chocolate as Miss Trouvere thumbed open the lid of the carafe of hot cocoa. She picked up a ceramic mug, proclaiming I ♡ TEACHING on one side and emblazoned with the logo of the National Teachers’ Association on the other. I eyed another mug that bore the slogan HOT FOR TEACHER and on the counterclockwise side of the slogan, a picture of three wavy vertical lines rising over a cup, suggesting hot coffee, and to its clockwise side, a cartoon of a boy lovestruck at his desk by a cute young woman, teaching the conjugation of the French verb aimer, to love, on a blackboard. She handed me that mug.

“Have you ever acted before?” inquired Miss Trouvere.

“Yeah. Mom sent me to acting classes when I was in the third grade.”

“Oh? Why was that?”

“Well, I had a stuttering problem when I was younger. My second grade teacher had recommended to my mom this acting teacher who had overcome her own speech impediment.”

“That’s interesting. I can’t ever imagine you stuttering!”

“It was really bad.”

“And acting classes got you over it?”

“I’m not sure what helped most,” I began to recount. “The school board office also sent a speech therapist for me every Thursday. So between that and the acting classes, I got over my stuttering problem fast, more or less.”

“How long did you take acting lessons?”

“About six months.”

“That’s all?”

“I showed improvement quick enough that Dad didn’t think another six months were necessary. The lessons were kind of expensive. Besides, my folks don’t approve of acting.”

“Why?”

I sighed. “They believe actors live sinful lifestyles and are never happy.”

“Where do they get that?”

“It’s a religious thing,” I lamented. “My dad’s a preacher.”

“What kind of church is it?”

“The Brethren Assembled,” I said looking downcast.

“Never heard of it before,” she said with a somewhat quizzical look on her face.

“The denomination holds essentially to Baptist doctrine, but worships in a Church of Christ style, while it’s governed like a Presbyterian church,” I offered as an explanation. “And it has very Fundamentalist views on everything.”

“I’m so sorry!”

I didn’t comment on her response because I didn’t really know how I felt. Suffice it to say that I had always felt uncomfortable in my parents’ church and would leave their denomination in college. But her “apology,” although well-intentioned to be sure and expressing her concern for my well-being, was very insulting. She had passed judgment on my faith, my church, and, indirectly, my parents, too, since they had raised me in it. And, at least then, I identified with the same religious belief so strongly that I had taken personal offense as well.

Of course, my parents’ view of acting was just as likely to be offensive to Miss Trouvere.

Nonetheless, I felt like I should leave immediately. But I looked at the treats on the table and thought better of her and that perhaps I needed to be gracious. So I sipped a bit of hot cocoa and set down my mug and helped myself to an oversized brownie.

“Thanks, Miss Trouvere,” I acknowledged her “apology” for my religious circumstances. “But you didn’t ask me here to discuss my church.”

“No, I didn’t. I asked you here because I want you for a role in Romeo and Juliet.”

I wondered if it were Friar Laurence, since I had read the role when she sat in on the class. Because I had read it rather well, or so I thought, I was sure that I could handle it. But then I heard her voice again, Danielle’s voice, in my head.

Danny, you know Miss Trouvere didn’t ask you here to say she’s casting you for Friar Laurence. If that were so, then she’d just post your name on the bulletin board along with the rest of the cast. She asked you here because she needs to discuss it with you. It may be a role you didn’t read for. Maybe a role she thinks you won’t want. Why do you think that she put that spread out?

It’s a bribe? I asked my mental stowaway.

Bingo! her answer filled my thoughts. And the reason for the huge brownie is so that you’ll have to listen while you chew it and she’s betting you won’t leave until you’ve finished eating it.

You mean she needs something to keep me here? That can only be because she expects that otherwise.

“I did think I read the part for Friar Laurence well,” I said, renewing the focus on the conversation, hoping indeed that we would go along that path.

“You did that read that very nicely,” remarked Miss Trouvere. “But that’s not quite what I had in mind.”

“Too bad. I really liked the role.”

“I could tell. But you just don’t look the part. I have someone else in mind for Friar Laurence.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Another role I heard you read,” she said. “And this may be a real challenge for you, because I think that you’re the only one who can pull it off.

“What other role?” I asked nervously, remembering that there was only one other role that she had heard me read. No! It couldn’t be! Miss Trouvere wouldn’t! But Danielle seemed to have been right about this so far.

“In theater we can show as well as tell,” she said. “Stephanie! Dalita! Come out here.”

Two girls dressed in blue jeans, tee-shirts and sweaters emerged from the storerooms behind the teacher’s desk.

“Danny, do you know Stephanie and Dalita?” Miss Trouvere asked me.

“I know who they are, but I’ve never met them before.”

“Then let me introduce you,” she said, turning towards a statuesquely tall, thin, blue-eyed girl with her strawberry-blond hair done in a pageboy style. “This is Stephanie. She’s a senior and does theatrical makeup and hairstyles. Stephanie, this is Danny Witton. He’s only a freshman, but he did some theater when he was younger and you should hear him read!”

“Nice to meet you, Danny!” Stephanie greeted me, smiling and extending her hand as she stood next to the coffee table. “Ooh! I love your big brown eyes! They look so warm and cheerful!”

“Thanks, Stephanie!” I replied, accepting her hand. “I like yours, too!”

“Would you take off your glasses for just a moment, please?”

I complied with her request and she took a step closer and, gently cradling my chin with her thumb and two fingers, urged me to tilt my head back to look up into her crystal blue eyes, so beautiful that I didn’t even think to resist.

“Oh, you’re so right!” she gasped as she turned to look at Miss Trouvere. Stephanie looked back in my eyes again. “It’s so unfair! Your eyelashes are so long and—do you curl them?”

“What?” I wondered.

“Do you curl your eyelashes?”

“Uh—no?” I answered, perplexed more by the concept than by why she’d think that. “Why? Can eyelashes be curled?”

She, the other girl, and Miss Trouvere all giggled. Evidently, my answer had betrayed ignorance about Stephanie’s craft. But more than that, I did not know that my answer had made her even more curious about my appearance. She reached out with her hand behind my ear and ran her hand through my dark, tightly curled ringlets.

“Who does your hair?”

“Huh? I just go to a barber when I need a haircut.”

“You mean that’s not a perm?” Stephanie tried to clarify. “Or do you set it yourself at home?”

“No?” I responded, unsure whether her questions were some kind of test. “Why?”

“Is your hair always like this?”

“Since I was born,” I said, still not aware what she was thinking.

“You mean this is your natural hair?” Stephanie pressed her inquiry with a look of astonishment on her face.

“Well, yeah!” I affirmed. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Mouth agape, she turned toward Miss Trouvere again, who simply nodded and smiled. Then her teacher said, “I told you.”

Then immediately Miss Trouvere regained my attention, commanding it with a mere glance. “Danny, this is Dalita Haroutunian. Even though she’s just a sophomore, she’s already distinguished herself as a costume and fashion designer.”

Dalita sat down next to me on the sofa, juxtaposing her exotic Armenian beauty close enough for me to feel her left hip securely against my right, her touch sending an unexpected little tingle through my whole body. She took my right hand in hers and leaned into me, planting a soft, quick kiss on my cheek. My mind searched my overgrown vocabulary yet I couldn’t find a word to describe how I felt at that moment.

“Hi, Danny!” She said, her mystically deep and dark brown eyes peering into mine. “I hope I can find you a costume you’ll enjoy wearin’.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” I said, mesmerized by the gaze of her dilated pupils, engulfing my awareness in the midnight of their own dark expanse. Her long, thick black curls cascaded across her shoulders and down her back as well as to her bosom.

Earth to Danny! Danielle’s voice spoke from the back of my mind. Earth to Danny! Are you there?

Stand by, Danielle…

“I already have somethin’ in mind for you, if you’d like to see it,” Dalita told me.

“You already have something in mind,” I repeated.

You’re lovestruck, Danny! Danielle’s voice told me, expressing at once both happiness and concern. You’ve got it bad! Real bad!

I know, I admitted to my alter-ego. Or was it just to myself? So is this what being in love feels like? It’s a new experience for me, like what Melanie and Tanya said about Juliet. Or was I still in love with Chelsea, too?

“And we’d like you to come back with us an’ look at a costume we have for you in wardrobe. It’s a beautiful dress an’ I think it’d fit you.”

I wanted to bolt for the door. But I couldn’t. I stayed catatonic in my seat, wide-eyed and mouth agape. I hadn’t been this frightened in a while. It took very little effort, though, for Miss Trouvere to take me by an arm and pull me out of my chair. She led me into a room behind backstage where there were rows upon rows of vintage and period clothing hanging in wardrobes.

“This is a beautiful ball gown in the Italian Renaissance style. An’ I think it’s jus’ your size,” continued Dalita. “O’ course, we can alter it to fit you. An’ we even have period undergarments to wear with it. We’d like you to try it on, if you would?”

I looked at it displayed on a dress form. It was a black and gold motif with a glistening sheen, like silk or satin, but I really didn’t know the fabric. I touched it, felt it between my fingers. It was trimmed in very elegant black lace around the hemline and cuffs and also along the bustline.

Danny, that’s such a gorgeous dress! You have to let us wear it! Oh, please! Oh, please! Oh, please!

Danielle was right. I would have loved to try that dress on, not only to be crossdressed for the first time, but in the grandest of style as well. As the German Protestant Reformer Martin Luther had said, when you sin, sin boldly!

I’m sorry, Danielle, but you know I can’t. You know what can happen if I do. It’s far too risky, too dangerous. I must keep us both safe.

I was getting worried about this sort of thing. Danielle never seemed to relent, always drawing my attention to the feminine. She had been hiding away in an obscure corner of my mind since the fifth grade, enticing me with the idea of being a girl. For some reason, I was never really proud of being a boy. I wasn’t very good at it. And Danielle always seemed to push me toward wearing women’s clothing. She really wanted me en femme.

Next, Dalita showed me the more intimate part of the costume, an Italian Renaissance lady’s underwear. I felt flushed, light-headed and dizzy, breaking out in cold sweat.

“The day that I heard you read for Juliet, I knew you’d be right for the part,” Miss Trouvere explained. “You understand how she’s different from a modern teenager. I really think you’re a natural for the role.”

Go for it, Danny! Danielle’s voice exhorted me. Of course she would want this. Just imagine! You’re an actress!

“No, Miss Trouvere,” I said. “There’s no way I can play Juliet. You don’t understand what can happen to me if I do. I’m sorry, but it just won’t work.”

Please, Danny! Oh, please!…

“But Danny,” she replied, “in Shakespeare’s time boys always played women’s and girls’ roles on stage.”

“I know that, Miss Trouvere. But this isn’t Shakespeare’s time. Did boys in Shakespeare’s day get called “queer” and “sissy” and get beaten up for being gay? Because that’s what’s gonna happen if I play Juliet. I mean, I got razzed bad enough just for reading it in class.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Danny,” said Miss Trouvere. “But is it really all so bad?”

“Yes, it is,” I confirmed. “And I’d appreciate it if you and Mis’ess Johnson didn’t tell anyone that you even considered me for it. Just that alone is likely to give the rednecks around here yet another excuse to come after me. You have no clue what it’s like to be a guy.”

No, Danny, it’s not so bad. We can avoid them. We can get away from the bullies.

Oh, yes it is that bad, Danielle, and you know it! And you also know how it feels when they come down on us. When they get to me, you won’t be spared the pain, either. As good as I might be getting away from them, they’ve gotten to me—to us—before. We can’t always avoid them.

I started feeling flushed and faint again. So I turned to leave the way I came and dashed through the backstage area and into the hallway, which began spinning around me. I felt myself falling against the wall and rolling onto the floor.

* * * * * * * * *

I looked down and I was wearing the Renaissance ball gown. Underneath it I could feel the silky lingerie and stockings with soft dancing shoes on my feet. Danielle smiled demurely at me through her mask and I know that I smiled back at her through mine. She wore the same style and color of gown that I did, as if we were twins.

We danced together. Then kissed. But when I stepped back, I saw instead of Danielle, Dalita stood there garbed in the tights and doublet of a Renaissance nobleman. Glancing across the room to a mirror, I saw myself as Danielle.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this,” Dalita quoted from the play: “My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,” I recited Juliet’s line. “Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

“Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.”

“O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.”

“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.”

“Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.”

“Then have my lips the sin that they have took.”

“O Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again.”

You kiss by the book, Danielle said intercepting Juliet’s line.

My inner sister stood before me once more as my twin, wearing that same gown, identical in style and color to mine.

* * * * * * * * *

I awakened gasping and shuddering in a cold sweat to see Mrs. Anderson, the school nurse, leaning over me with Miss Trouvere, Dalita, Stephanie, and a few other students looking on.

“Are you all right, Danny?” Nurse Anderson asked me.

“Obviously not,” I answered with undertones of both anxiety and sarcasm, as my respiration and pulse began to settle down to normal.

“Can you sit up?” she continued asking. I rolled onto my side and pushed myself up, but I was still feeling dizzy.

“I’m not feeling so great,” I said. “I’m still kinda dizzy and light-headed.”

“Are you able to stand?”

“Maybe, if I do it slow.”

“Okay, then take it easy. Don’t rush.”

I went to both my knees first, next to one knee, then leaned against the wall as Nurse Anderson helped me to stand ever so slowly. About that time a student came pushing a wheelchair around the corner.

“Here, let’s have you sit in this and go to my office now,” the nurse ordered me. “Thank you for bringin’ the chair, Cynthia. The rest of you get back to class—now!”

As the students dispersed, I looked daggers at Miss Trouvere. She, Dalita, and Stephanie all glanced at one another and then at me. That’s right! I projected in my mind to them. Don’t you breathe a word of this! Surely, I thought (and felt) it loud enough for them to hear me thinking.

Nurse Anderson pushed me down the hall and around to the school infirmary next to her office. There were a couple of cots there. She helped me from the wheelchair to one of the beds where I sat up.

“Danny, I think you ought to lie down while I do some paperwork here,” she said. “Then maybe we can figure out what’s happened to you.” She waited for a moment and then cocked her head to one side, as if to say nothing more was going to be done until I complied with her instructions. So I stretched out on the cot and she pulled up a chair to sit down. Then crossing her leg over one knee, she propped a form-stacked clipboard upon the other.

“Thank you, Danny. Now, as best as you can remember it, please tell me what happened?”

“I got a note before lunch that I was to meet Miss Trouvere backstage of the auditorium instead of going to my afternoon study hall. When I got there, she said they want me for a part in the school play.”

“Well, that sounds like it should be excitin’ news. What’s the play?”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“And what role does she want you to do?”

I looked up at the ceiling. The tiles were square, like graph paper. So that was how René Descartes did it! The story was that while lying in bed one morning, he had conceived the Fundamental Theorem of Analytical Geometry by noticing that he could specify the location of a fly on the ceiling by its distance from the back wall and a side wall. Indeed, I watched a fly moving across the ceiling.

“Danny, are you there? What role?” Nurse Anderson asked me again. I was really too embarrassed to answer. So, was there also a fly on the wall that would hear and tell?

“I’d rather no one else hear about it,” I prefaced my answer, “but she wants me to play Juliet.”

Mrs. Anderson stopped writing on her clipboard for a moment. She continued looking at me with a tight-lipped, neutral expression and then nodded.

“Y’know, Danny, I can see how, but I can also understand why you don’t want to. Were you frightened when she asked you?”

“I felt more like I was confused at first, almost stunned. But then Miss Trouvere took me back to wardrobe and showed me this costume she wants me to wear. It was an elaborate dress. That’s when I really got scared and ran. But I got dizzy and light-headed on the way out. Then the next thing I know, you’re there, bending over me.”

“So you were actually frightened when she showed you the costume, then?”

“Yeah. She asked me to try it on. But I wouldn’t. That’s when I ran. I can’t ever dress up like a girl. Not ever.”

“Why not? Boys sometimes dress up as girls for Hallowe’en and costume parties as well as plays. You wouldn’t be the first.”

“Most of the guys already think I’m a queer or a sissy,” I complained. “It would be an excuse for them to beat me up again.”

“I know you’ve had trouble with bullies here,” she said lowering her voice. “But I’m guessin’ that there’s somethin’ else you haven’t told me.”

I thought about the violin, chess, and chocolate. So far, these were my addictions, things that I couldn’t stop doing. Then I recalled that morning at Chelsea’s house and thought about playing Corelli’s La Folia out in the woods and about Danielle living inside my head. I knew what my real fear was.

“I’m—I’m afraid—,” I stammered, afraid first of all of saying the words, of telling her how I really felt. “I’m afraid that—that I might like it! And if I did like it, I—I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop. I’m afraid to cross that line, Nurse Anderson.”

“So, you’re afraid that if you were to dress up as Juliet for the play, you’d keep feelin’ compelled to dress up as a girl afterwards?”

“Yeah.”

“So what keeps you from dressin’ up like a girl now?”

“Well, mostly I’m afraid of getting caught. That would be too embarassing.”

“Then it’s not because you don’t want to?”

“No! I do want to, but I—I—oh no!” I concurred with her, but a little too quickly. “I can’t believe I just said that!”

“Don’t worry, Danny!” she assured me. “Anything said in this room stays in this room unless you take it outside.”

Danny! I’m so proud of you! Danielle interrupted me before I could say anything else.

Proud of me? Why’s that?

Because finally you’ve admitted it to someone else—someone who might be able to help. She’s the first person you’ve told since telling Clem.

Mrs. Anderson paused a long moment. I could tell she was thinking carefully about what she might ask or say next. Then she put her clipboard down on her lap and leaned a little closer to me.

“Jus’ between you and me, Danny, I think that Romeo and Juliet is maybe a little too ambitious for a high school theater troupe. Anyway, I’m goin’ down the hall to ask Miss Trouvere a few questions. But while I’m out, I want you to relax a little. Jus’ close your eyes and I’ll put some sof’ music on.”

Nurse Anderson picked up a phonograph album and put it on a turntable. I heard music begin playing softly in speakers above the cot and on either side of my head. It was a work for piano Trois Gymnopédies by Érik Satie. How did she know that it helps me sleep when I get stressed out? The lights in the infirmary dimmed and before I knew it she was out the door and I dozed off.

* * * * * * * * *

The album was a collection of quiet classical works for relaxing and when I woke up, I could hear Debussy’s « La Fille aux cheveux de lin », but in its original version for piano. After it ended, the tone arm raised up and swung out to repeat the side. So I had been napping for around thirty minutes. Most LP albums played about half an hour on each side.

Lying on the bed in the infirmary, again I watched, just like Descartes had, that fly crawling across the ceiling tiles. The pesky insect was for me a welcome distraction from thinking about Romeo and Juliet and the ball gown backstage of the auditorium.

Why does this issue play over and over again in my mind? Why do I feel this way? They’re just clothes. Various textiles cut into arbitrary shapes, sewn together, and decorated. Why should it matter what kind of clothes anyone wears, anyway?

Good question, isn’t it, Danny?

This is all your fault, Danielle!

You know better than that. I wouldn’t even be here except that you want to be a girl, at least a little. I’m your Girl-Self. I’m here because even back in grade school you knew that you’re more suited to a feminine way of life. And I’ve been with you ever since.

Yet I’m a boy.

Yes, you’re constantly choosing to show your masculine self. You must, because when you react without thinking about it, you betray that you’re more girl than boy. You must expend effort to maintain the illusion that you’re masculine. You’re so high-maintenance for a boy, because you’re not secure in your masculinity. You need constant external validation as a boy.

But I am a boy, so I like girls and I wanna be with a girl and make love to a girl. Yet, it’s like I’m so in love with girls that, sometimes, I wanna be one, too.

That’s the irony of it, my dear. Is that why you’re really afraid to try a girl’s lifestyle?

Not at all. If anything, that’s my best justification for doing so.

No, Danny, she corrected me. I mean, like, you’re really afraid to try being a girl because you might really like it. Is that what disturbs you so?

For her to phrase the problem so succinctly was what I needed to hear. Danielle was right. That’s why playing La Folia out in the woods that day was so anxiety-ridden for me. One simple theme with more than a dozen variations twisted and turned, weaving to and fro through my consciousness, seeking some way beyond the impass between myself and fulfillment.

Girl, your unselfishness amazes me, I mused. It really does. You want so much for me to dress up for you and with you, yet you always stop me because you know the risks that I’d take if I did.

Well, I’m not so unselfish as you may think, she challenged me. It’s self-preservation, too. As you so eloquently reminded me during your woodland performance, whatever happens to you also happens to me. I won’t let us, or you, take any foolish, ill-considered risks, neither on my account nor on yours.

* * * * * * * * *

The bell rang for the end of the period just as Nurse Anderson came back into the infirmary.

“Danny, I talked to Miss Trouvere and she told me that she had discussed the role with you. She also said that she and two of her student assistants were showin’ you a costume when you seemed to look dazed and ran out.”

“That sounds close to what happened.”

“I think you may have had a panic attack. Have you ever heard of that before?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“The symptoms you described are often associated with one. When I asked Miss Trouvere, she said you suddenly appeared flushed and started sweatin’ after she took you into wardrobe to see the costume. The girls with her said the same thing.”

“Well, I have had it happen before.”

“Oh? When?”

“The first time I remember was in grade school. My teacher thought I looked sick.”

“Has it happened again before now?”

“Yeah. A few times.”

Nurse Anderson wrote on her clipboard.

“Danny, you have no business going back to class today,” she told me. “I’m writing you a permission slip and sending you home.”

“No!” I objected. “You can’t!”

“What? Why can’t I send you home?”

“Because I’d have to explain it to Mom and Dad,” I warned her. “And if Dad finds out that Mis’ess Johnson had me read for Juliet in class and that Miss Trouvere was ready to cast me in that role for the school play, I’m afraid of what he might do to them as well as to me.”

“Do I need to be concerned for your safety, Danny?”

“Only if anyone else finds out about any of this,” I maintained. “Please, don’t send me home now.”

“But you’re in no condition to attend class right now.”

“Then I’m in even less of a condition to go home.”

“So what am I to do with you?”

“Let me stay here through next period,” I suggested. “I should be okay by time for Algebra.”

Nurse Anderson looked at me and sighed in exasperation.

“This whole thing is silly!” she lamented. “You’re just a boy an’ it oughtta be okay for you to play any role you want, even as a girl. You oughtta be able to do that without worryin’ about gittin’ beat up by either bullies or your father.”

“I’m sorry,” was all I knew to say.

“Danny, it’s not your fault, so don’t you dare apologize!” Nurse Anderson commanded me. “Hear that? It’s not your fault!”

Now that was a surprise. Everyone always blamed me for everything. Well, maybe not everyone… Not all the time, anyway… And not for everything, not really… But sometimes it sure did seem that way.

“That’s different!” I responded with just a little surprise.

“What’s different?”

“Anyone telling me something’s not my fault.”

“So you git blamed a lot?”

“Seems all the time,” I lamented. “Especially by Dad. Nothing I ever do can be right enough for him.”

“He finds fault with what you do?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “He likes to criticize me by quoting Bible verses, or one-liners from Greek or Roman philosophers.”

“You understand these, don’t you?”

“Yeah, mostly. He knows I’m smart enough to get his point.

“I won’t send you home today,” Nurse Anderson conceded. “You’re right that it might make circumstances worse. Just rest until the bell rings to end sixth period. Then go to algebra for next period if you’re up to it. But stay here otherwise.”

“That sounds okay to me,” I said. I laid back on the bed and relaxed. Nurse Anderson stepped into her office and closed the door behind her.

Danielle, I wouldn’t be so high-maintenance for a guy if you weren’t along for the ride.

Oh, yes you would! she contradicted me. You just wouldn’t know about it then. Every guy has a feminine side. At least Jung thought so. You just know that I’m here.

Do you hafta be right about everything?

Of course! she replied. That’s a girl’s prerogative.

Sigh!

* * * * * * * * *

“Danny, I’d like to talk with you for just a moment after class?” Mrs. Johnson said with a smile as the bell for lunch rang.

“What’s up?” I asked. My teacher stood up from her desk and went over to the door, looked out in the hall, and then closed it. “Have a seat, Danny.”

She was still smiling, but seemed to roll her eyes like some of the girls in my class would do as she lowered her voice. “Miss Trouvere said that you ran when she offered you the role of Juliet in the school play. Is that true?”

“Uh—yeah!” I answered. “I passed out in the hall, too. Nurse Anderson said I had a panic attack.”

“Ooh! Was it all that bad?”

“Bad enough,” I said. “I was both scared and humiliated at the same time.”

“Really?”

“Look, I’m not exactly the most…,” I searched for the right word, “virile guy in the school to begin with. If word gets out that I was even considered for a girl’s role, it’s enough to get me beaten up around here.”

Mrs. Johnson leaned her hips back against the front of her desk, crossing her arms, and smiling grimly, nodded to me.

“I know, and no one else will hear anything about it from me,” she assured me. “Besides, I do understand what risks you’d be taking if you went along with it. And I’m also fairly certain that Miss Trouvere does not.”

“Why not?”

“Miss Trouvere’s not from around here. She has no idea what a kid like you has to deal with in the local culture here. She’s from New York and grew up in a prominent, well-established theatrical family. For her, to ask a boy to play a girl’s role is maybe the highest honor she could offer you.”

“An honor?” I replied, dumbfounded by the idea. “To me, it seemed like the most vicious thing she could do!”

“Danny, to ask a boy to play a girl’s role on stage or on screen is to acknowledge a kind of talent that’s very hard to find,” explained Mrs. Johnson. “Miss Trouvere, I think, assumed, or maybe hoped, that you’d understand that.”

“I’m sorry, Mis’ess Johnson.”

“I do want you to think about something, though, Danny. If you could get away with it, would you want to play the role? Say, if no one could find out or harass you for it, would you be interested in doing it then?”

So you would do it, then? Danielle wondered. I could feel her smiling in the corner of my consciousness.

You know that it’s never been about not wanting to, but about being afraid of—of—

My teacher took a couple steps over and sat down in a chair next to me, grinned, and placed her gentle hand on my shoulder. “It’s really too bad,” she continued. “I think you’d be an inspired choice to play Juliet. Not only would it be fairly easy for you to look like a girl, but I know you’ve got the talent to pull off the role as well.”

“You really think so?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind,” she confirmed smiling. “And you’d very likely have had some fun doing it. It’s just so unfair that the local culture around here won’t give you the chance to decide freely.”

“I think I could try if I didn’t have to worry about bullies and endless teasing for doing it—or Dad making a federal case out of it,” I admitted, although blushing. “Except that I don’t—I don’t think that—that I could ever really kiss a boy. But if you got a girl to play Romeo—well, then maybe I could consider it.”

Still, though, I felt myself blushing at the idea of playing a girl, wearing a dress, appearing on stage before hundreds of people. But I also knew that if it were really safe, then…

“No, Mis’ess Johnson, that’s not the whole truth, either,” I confessed. “I think I mentioned to you once before that I’m not really interested in acting. Just because I can read a script and even read it well doesn’t mean I can act or even want to.”

“Why not?” My teacher frowned a little. “You seem to me like you’d be a natural actor.”

“Maybe to you, but I’d feel like a fraud. I can’t be someone I’m not,” I explained. “And to me, that’s what acting is. Miss Trouvere wants me to be a girl when I’m not. But I couldn’t play Romeo any more than I could play Juliet. I don’t belong in theater. Does that make sense to you?”

Danny! You’ve never shared that with me—that you don’t want to be an actor, thought Danielle, somewhat disappointed.

I don’t think I’d ever resolved the question in my mind until now, I contemplated my answer to her. Maybe I haven’t even thought about it very much, but that’s how I feel. We can discuss it more—

“Well, no! Not to me, really,” retorted Mrs. Johnson. “But it’s your decision and I must respect it. And since you’re not enrolled in a theater course, for you this is simply another extra-curricular activity for you to choose or not. I’m okay with that, although I have to say it’s a loss of talent for you not to.”

“Music is my art, Mis’ess Johnson,” I told her. “That was clear to me, my parents, and my music teacher a long time ago.”

“I know, Danny,” said Mrs. Johnson renewing her smile at me. “Danny, when you were reading Juliet that day, what really surprised me, and prob’ly Miss Trouvere as well, was how deeply you empathized with how the character might really feel. I mean, yes, you have the knowledge and intellect to figure it out, but for you to feel it the way you clearly did—that’s sensitivity not often found in a boy. Please, try not to lose that as you grow into a young man.”

My teacher got up from her seat and went to the door. She opened it and somewhat theatrically waved her arm in a quasi-comic gesture that I should exit the classroom, still smiling broadly. “I should let you go to lunch, now,” she told me. So, I obeyed her implied command.

Although Mrs. Johnson had been on my case more often than not since school had begun, now I understood why. She expected more of me than I had been doing. I mean, I had achieved an “A” on every assignment and test, but I hadn’t yet even put forth my best efforts for her. I was just coasting in her class, though be it at high speed. Yet she wanted me to do my best, but I had barely shown her what that might be. However, I knew now that she was clearly an ally.

Moreover, I also remembered another ally along for the ride.

Danielle, thank you! I thought.

You’re most welcome! she thought back, warming me inside.

* * * * * * * * *

I retreated to my favorite little wooded area on the hill and sat down, my back against my favorite tree. It had been a bright spring day, although the breezes made it just a little nippier than usual.

You really wanted to try that dress on for us, didn’t you? prodded Danielle’s voice from deep within my mind.

I nodded as I began to shed my tears. “Yes,” I answered aloud, then admitted mentally to her and myself, More than that, I’d love us to portray Juliet. It’s a safe bet that a boy doesn’t get asked to play that role too often nowadays.

I continued crying, lamenting not so much my fear, but of what the fear had deprived me. Could putting on a dress just once be so bad?

But remember, you know you can’t wear a dress just once, she reminded me. You knew that when Chelsea and her friends tried to get you to do it.

I didn’t understand Danielle at times. She had so wanted us to try on that costume, yet was honest and careful to remind me why I couldn’t. At once both cruel and kind, in the same thought, in the same action.

Nonetheless, she was right. If ever I were to don female garments, even just as a costume for Hallowe’en or the stage, that would change everything. I wouldn’t be able to stop. The compulsion to crossdress could overwhelm me all too easily.

You’d like me—us to play Juliet, wouldn’t you? I asked her.

Of course I would, answered Danielle. And we both wanna wear that dress, don’t we?

I smiled, leaning back against my tree, looking through the treetops at a clear blue sky. “Yes,” I answered aloud, smiling. “Yes, I do. We both do.”

But I thought you don’t wanna be an actor? Danielle recalled in bewilderment my conversation with Mrs. Johnson.

I don’t, I mused back to her. But that still doesn’t mean I don’t want to be in the school play.

But you told—

I know what I told Mis’ess Johnson, I reminded Danielle. And she can make of it whatever she will. Nor was I lying, not really. I don’t have any desire to be an actor long-term, neither amateur nor professional. I—we are musicians. You know that. Indeed, you’ve advocated that future for us even more than I have!

So again, this really is about dressing up, isn’t?

I think so, I thought, giggling quite girlishly. I didn’t understand this longing within me to dress as a girl. Indeed, quite clearly the intellectual component was curiosity, and the emotional surely must have included some naughtiness, but it was mostly an unknown passion that I did not understand, neither then nor now.

I just feel happy knowing that you wanna do something like that with me, Danny, my alter-ego assured me. I felt like Danielle and I were holding hands, girlishly swinging them back and forth, skipping merrily along.

* * * * * * * * *

“Danny, could we talk again for a few minutes?” Miss Trouvere asked.

“What about?”

“Caitlin just isn’t working out as Juliet,” she told me. “She can’t remember her lines and she skips rehearsals. But even worse, she doesn’t have the right ‘feel’ as Juliet. You’ve got it and she doesn’t. When I heard you read, you struck the right balance between naíveté and maturity, Juliet’s imagination and her reality. Caitlin simply doesn’t get that modern teen girls don’t think quite the same way as a teen girl would in the fourteenth century. You understand that and I can hear it when you read.”

“I’m sorry Caitlin’s not up to it, Miss Trouvere,” I tried to commiserate with her, “but my answer’s still the same. There’s no way I’m playing Juliet!”

“Please, Danny!” she implored me, nearly whining. “We really need you.”

“No,” I said. “I can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can!”

“No!” I contradicted her. “I can’t. Can you stop the teasing? Can you keep the other guys from calling me a ‘fag’? Are you able to protect me when they wanna beat me up? And how do I deal with Caitlin?”

Miss Trouvere did not know about the previous run-ins that I had with Caitlin. She had it in for me ever since that Saturday morning in the seventh grade when her clique tried to get me to crossdress at Chelsea’s house. I refused and left, sprinting up a hill as fast as I could. And it had wrecked any chance of Chelsea and myself having a relationship. A single mention of this to the school gossips would be all that I needed.

“She’s for me to deal with,” asserted Miss Trouvere. “A director has to change casting sometimes.”

“No, you don’t understand. Me and Caitlin have past issues you don’t know anything about. She could easily wreck my life with a single rumor if she wanted to. And I know she’d do it if you replace her with me.”

“What could possibly be so embarrassing that she could do that?”

“I’m not comfortable telling you about it,” I admitted. “Besides, you’re also forgetting that my folks would be furious if I played Juliet—especially Dad!”

“Danny, there are even ways around that.”

“So there are! Well, guess what? I’m not trying to get around my parents on this.”

“I can understand your reluctance—”

“No, you can’t! I’m not reluctant, Miss Trouvere—I’m refusing! I’m not doing it!”

“But Danny—”

“No!” I nearly screamed, projecting my voice right at Miss Trouvere. With that, I turned my back to her and strode away partly in fear and anger, but no less in satisfaction that I had asserted my own choice. That, for me, was no small triumph.

Oh! The nerve of that woman!

* * * * * * * * *

At breakfast, Clem and Tanya came over to join me, setting their trays down on the table across from mine. I noticed that Tanya was wearing a simple green dress and wedge-heeled sandals instead of her usual jeans and sneakers.

We’d look nice wearing that, observed Danielle.

I’m sure we would, I mused back to her.

“Hi Tanya, Clem! How ya guys doing?” I asked my buddy and his now generally acknowledged girlfriend.

“Okay!” answered Clem.

“Me too!” Tanya followed up before launching right into the day’s gossip. “Didja see the review in the mornin’ paper?”

“What?” I asked.

“The Clarion reviewed Romeo and Juliet this mornin’. They so panned Caitlin and Trent!”

So that twerp at the Clarion is writing reviews of high school productions now? Danielle’s indignant question arose in my mind.

And this surprises you how? I thought back to her. That’s what reviewers do—they review.

“Of course they did!” Clem concurred. “They sucked! They were awful. Especially Trent. He’s better than that. I never seen him do so bad at anything before.”

“It couldn’t ’ve been that bad, could it?” I asked somewhat incredulously. Trent Douglas was the Golden Boy at school: top athlete, “straight-A” student, budding thespian. He’d done lead roles before and had shown real promise as an actor according to the same reviewer a year before. But anyone could have a bad night, especially an exhausted senior who’s just begun coasting along until graduation. Danielle was right, though. The Clarion’s reviewer picking on a high school play seemed somehow over the top to me. I’d have to read it when I had a chance.

“Danny, Trent never looked so wrong doin’ anything in his life as he did playin’ Romeo,” confirmed Tanya. “But I think it was a whole lot more Caitlin not bein’ any good at playin’ Juliet. Y’know, I heard a rumor that Miss Trouvere and Mis’ess Johnson tried to replace ’er with someone else, but couldn’t talk ’er into takin’ the part.”

Danielle, cool it! I warned my alter-ego.

Smiling, I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “I can confirm that it’s true according to a very reliable source,” I whispered. “In fact, the role had been declined by their first choice of performer whom they both asked again. Trouvere and Johnson both knew that Caitlin would blow it from the beginning, but they could’t find anyone else.”

“And who might that be?” Tanya probed, pressing the issue. “Inquirin’ minds wanna know!”

It’s all your fault, Danny! my Jungian anima blamed me. You’d ’ve been so much better as Juliet than Caitlin was!

And suck Trent’s face? I objected. No way in hell was I doing that, girl!

But it’s just a role on stage, argued Danielle. It’s not like you were gay!

“At last you get my point, girl!” I yelled aloud.

“Danny? What point was that?” Tanya asked, startled by my apparent outburst if not outright frightened.

“Oh!—I was just thinking. No, I could get in deep trouble if I tell you,” I told her, quite truthfully. “Sorry!”

Since Tanya was on the staff of the school newspaper, I could imagine the headline: Boy Declines Juliet Role, Wrecks School Play. No, I couldn’t even tell my buddy’s girlfriend. I thought that I might trust her someday, but still, I hadn’t known her long enough to be sure.

“Come on, Danny! You can trust me,” she whined.

“No, I really have to keep a lid on this one,” I said. “And you do write for the school paper. Nothing personal, but this one’s just way too sensitive.”

Tanya pouted, first to me, then to Clem. But he just nodded in support of me.

“Sorry, sweetheart, but he’s not even told me,” my buddy reassured her. Truth be told, though, Tanya looked adorably cute when she pouted and Clem would do whatever he might to get her to hold that facial expression as long as she could.

Just don’t let Tanya get you into a game of ‘Truth or Dare’! warned Danielle. Her eyes sparkle as a champion’s would at that game.

I’ll stay with chess, thank you.

“You guys up for a round or two of ‘Truth or Dare’?” Tanya proposed.

Good call, Danielle. How’d you know?

I’m your girl-in-residence, consulting on all matters girlish. It’s what I do. I knew that she had thought that one smiling.

“We’re at school, not a sleepover!” Clem objected.

“It’s a girls’ game, anyway!” I added in protest.

“Scaredy-cats!” declared Tanya in not-so-mock triumph.

“Meow!” I growled, making a cat’s clawing motion with my hand. Tanya giggled and then purred to Clem who pulled her into a hug and a kiss.

Whew! Situation diffused…, I thought to myself, but apparently loud enough for Danielle to hear.

Maybe Tanya could invite you and Clem to a sleepover sometime? she teased. It would be great fun—for me, anyway!

Having a backseat driver riding along in my own mind really could be trying at times. Was she teasing me, or was I teasing myself? Was she conscious of my every thought, or could I sequester things from her awareness? Could she keep her thoughts away from me? Did we share one single, common subconscious between us, or did we each have even our own personal dark corners unknown to either of us?

Girl, try singing another tune for a change! I told Danielle. Don’t you get it? I’ve gotta be the only boy in America whose own subconscious mind teases him daily!

But you know I only do it ’cause I love you! Danielle projected, giggling to me again.

“Guys, I gotta hit the girls’ room,” Tanya told us as she got up and made a beeline for the door.

I glanced around the cafeteria and, satisfied no one was within earshot, I leaned across the table and whispered to Clem, “You can’t tell Tanya this. She’s on the school paper and I can’t risk her knowing, so keep it quiet. We can tell her someday, like, maybe when the school year is over. But anyway, Miss Trouvere asked me to play Juliet.”

“You?” Clem mused with a quiet chuckle as he looked around. “Why does this not surprise me? That had to’ve been awkward.”

“If you only knew! Remember the panic attack I had a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that was the trigger.”

“Again, this don’t surprise me, none. So didj’even consider it?”

“Around here? You know how it is!”

“No way ’t all, then?” Clem asked again.

“No way, José!” I confirmed, still sotto voce. “But Miss Trouvere still would not let up. She kept on arguing with me about it, trying to get me to play Juliet ever since that day when Mis’ess Johnson asked me to read Caitlin’s part because she skipped class.”

“Sounds like Miss Trouvere’s been ever’ bit as bad a bully to you as the hillbilly rednecks ’round here.”

“Well—yeah!” I agreed with my buddy. “Know why I didn’t go to the play, myself?”

“Why?”

“Because I was afraid that Miss Trouvere might even try to draft me out of the audience. I couldn’t trust her to take no for an answer, so I stayed home.”

“Geeze, Danny! Still might,” he reminded me. “Next show’s tonight, closin’ performance tomorrow night. Maybe Trent an’ Caitlin’ll get better?”

“Well, Trent might. It’s still hard for me to believe he could’ve been that bad, anyway.”

“But he did have help screwin’ up, y’know!” Clem said grinning.

“The thought that he did it alone does strain credulity,” I conceded as my friend sputtered into a fit of giggles. So I had to ask with my voice lower than usual, “Clem, that’s a girlier giggle than most of the girls in the school do.”

“I know, but I cain’t help it,” he replied. “With Trent Douglas a-strainin’ credulity an’ all!” Despite his heavy hillbilly accent, Clem had a huge vocabulary, just like mine, if not even larger.

“But still, you—Omigosh! You’re still dressing up with Tanya, aren’t you?” I had thought they had only continued doing it until Hallowe’en.

My buddy just grinned at me and nodded. “Tanya an’ Sis git a lotta fun out of doin’ it. Mom still helps out, too, sometimes. An’ you’re still welcome to join in anytime you want.”

Damn! I was so jealous.

There’s gotta be a way to work this out, Danny, my girl-in-residence mused.

Any new suggestions? I wondered. Clem doesn’t seem to worry about the risks of dressing up.

Maybe the fun is strong enough for him to override the worry? speculated Danielle. Or maybe something else outweighs the risks for him?

“Sorry, Clem, but I don’t think it’ll happen,” I said inwardly lamenting my confusion and self-perceived cowardice. “You know how I feel and what I’m afraid of.”

My buddy just nodded to me. “Maybe someday,” he said.

“Maybe,” I weakly tried to agree.

* * * * * * * * *

Sitting with my back to the tree, I attached the mute to the bridge of my violin and played Debussy’s Maid with the Flaxen Hair again.

So long as you play like that, Danny, your feminine side will stay strong, my inner girl’s voice spoke.

So then, is playing violin too girly for a boy? I asked her.

Most professional violinists are men, Danielle reminded me. That may be changing, though. Until Clem came along, you were the only boy playing violin in the school orchestra. From what we’ve read, boys are taking the violin up less often than girls nowadays. But it’s what you love doing. You ought not consider how “manly” or popular it may or may not be.

It just seems a magnet for bullies, I thought. Is there anyway to get away from the stigma of playing a “girly” instrument?

Danny, we won’t always be teens.

But we are now,

Yes. Yes, we are, concurred Danielle. And I agree that adolescence was not such a brilliant concept for educators and psychologists to dream up—five long years of extended awkwardness and uncertainty wedged in between childhood and adulthood.

But we still hafta go through it.

I know.

Danielle considered something pensively for a long moment before inserting her musings into my own thoughts.

You really should’ve played Juliet, she assessed. Mis’ess Johnson was right—you’d’ve had a lotta fun.

Oh! Would I have ever! And I so wanted to do it! I imagined for a moment. But Mis’ess Johnson was also right about something else.

What?

This local culture, in this time and place, doesn’t offer the freedom of choice that I might have elsewhere, I regretted. Recall that she was as aware of my risks if I played the role as you and I were. Only Miss Trouvere seemed to think that I should have taken such risks.

Miss Trouvere may be of the Romantic school which holds that an artist must suffer for his art, speculated Danielle.

I might need to suffer for my own art someday, but I was not about to suffer for hers! I resolved. She can do that on her own.

Well, the exercise was not a complete failure for you, Danny, she thought to broach a new topic. You hadn’t asserted yourself so firmly against any authority for a long time.

You’re referring to Miss Trouvere again?

Yes, I am, affirmed my psychic-on-board. You stuck with your decision despite her attempts to force you to go along with her. Now you need to learn to stand up to bullies and your father.

Please, Danielle! Discretion is the better part of valor. Allow me that for now.

“Hi, Danny! Hey there!” I recognized my friends’ voices. Clem and Tanya walked over and sat down with their backs to a tree of large diameter. “Whatcha doin’?” Tanya asked.

“I’m just practicing out here a little,” I said. “Nature seldom complains when I do.

My friends giggled at that. So did Danielle in a corner of my mind, now illuminated as if by a rosy sunset.

I began playing the Debussy again. Tanya and Clem smiled as they recognized it and pressed their lips together. Then I felt a kiss on my own right cheek. I glanced beside me.

No one was there.