One boy is about to learn that he has already passed such an event, and nothing will ever be quite the same…

“You ready for lunch yet, Xee?” asked Marla.

“Omigosh! The time got away from me again,” noted Xenia, speaking more perhaps to herself than to her friend and coworker. “Where does it go?” She got up from her desk and grabbed her purse as she looked Marla in the eye. “Yes,” she replied with a somewhat frantic tremor in her voice, “and I should’ve already been there.”

“Is it about the MacDonald boy who came in today?” Marla asked as they stepped into the hallway.

“Yes, it is,” said Xenia quickening her pace, “and the three girls who came in before him as well.”

“Is there some conflict between them?”

“I’m hoping there won’t be, but that’s why I need to be there, Marla. If he’s not self-confident enough, Brandon may find himself overwhelmed by what those girls have in mind for him.”

“But if he is?”

“If Brandon asserts his own will with those girls, we’ll get that classic conundrum from physics about an irresistible force meeting an immovable object.”

“Now that’s conflict!”

“Oh, you’re tellin’ me!”

The two women turned a corner in the hallway to enter the cafeteria and bookstore annex. Xenia’s gait remained quick, steady, and powerful. Marla said nothing about her pace, but was happy to have worn ballet flats.

“What’s going on, anyway?” Marla inquired.

“Well, I don’t like to betray what students confide in me if I can avoid it,” explained Xenia. “So instead of doing that, I sometimes act on it myself.”

“Like now?”

“Especially now! I’ll just say that we have some unexpected fallout from yesterday’s gender-bending.”

“Someone’s gender was bent too far?”

“Like a pretzel!” exclaimed Xenia as she and Marla stepped up to the cafeteria window reserved for faculty and staff at lunchtime.

“Xee, I don’t think we made it in time,” said Marla, pointing out the group of students at a table across the cafeteria.

Xenia just shook her head. “I do hope he remembers my advice.”

“We hope it’s okay, Brandon, Jenny,” said Debbi. “We wanna talk to you about a friendly proposal.”

Brandon looked at Jenny but she simply shrugged her shoulders. “What’s this about?” he asked.

“Well—it’s kind of about girls’ stuff,” said Valerie. “So the two boys there might wanna go. They might find it—um—embarrassing.”

“I’m a boy,” declared Brandon. “So I should go, too, then.”

“No, we especially need to talk to you,” advised Kelly.

“About girls’ stuff?” Brandon asked skeptically.

“Uh-huh,” affirmed Kelly. “Especially you.”

“So you especially need to talk to me ‘kind of about girls’ stuff’ because…? ” Brandon drew out the conjunction in an ironic tone.

Apparently, neither Valerie nor Kelly (nor any of the other girls in their Circle) were quite expecting such a challenge from Brandon. Meanwhile, he took another bite of lasagna and Jenny popped a few morsels of the Buddha’s Delight into her mouth, as Jeff and Mark continued eating their sandwiches.

Since no one else seemed ready to field his question, Debbi answered. “Because you’re one of us—you just don’t know it yet.”

“What do you mean by ‘one of you’?”

“Deep inside, you’re really a girl,” Kelly told him.

“That’s crazy!”

“No, it’s not,” Valerie defended their position. “You showed us that yesterday.”

“Wait a minute!” Jenny interrupted the discussion. “Brandon comes in costume for one day and now you know who he is inside? Do any of you even know who you yourselves are inside?”

Brandon nodded in agreement with Jenny as he continued eating, knowing that his best move would be to finish lunch and then to leave. Jeff and Mark also glanced back to their buddy, incredulous of what they’d just heard. “I’ve known Brandon since—gosh!—since pre-school,” Jeff vouched for his friend. “And I’ve never known him to be the least bit girly.”

“I haven’t, either, and I’ve known him almost as long,” Mark added his own opinion. “Jenny’s right. What you girls are saying doesn’t make any sense—not to me.”

“Of course it wouldn’t,” conceded Teri, “because you don’t see him as a girl does.”

“But I do!” Jenny injected. “And he was just dressed up like a pretty girl for a day because he was supposed to be. Otherwise, he’s like any other boy.”

“Look, if your friendly proposal involves me wearing dresses again, I’m not gonna do it,” resolved Brandon. “End of discussion.”

“But Brandon,” pled Teri, “you were too pretty, too natural as a girl to ignore.”

“You have no idea how much fun you’re missing,” added Kelly. “I just can’t understand why you wanna be so boring.”

“I’m not boring, Kelly,” Brandon denied, the umbrage audible in his voice. “You’re just irresponsibly wild.”

“I’m with Brandon on this, Kelly,” said Alice, the first of the Circle to support him. “You’ve pushed the boundaries too far and too often.”

About then, another member of the Circle, Holly Thompson, showed up with her lunch. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I needed the full time for the quiz.” She took the empty seat between Mark and Kelly. “So what did I miss?”

“We’re inviting Jenny and Brandi to join our Circle,” Teri updated their newly arrived friend. “But Brandi seems reluctant.”

“No kidding!” retorted Brandon with a strong undertone of sarcasm. “By the way, the name’s Brandon.”

“But that doesn’t sound right for a girl,” asserted Kelly.

“That’s because he’s not one,” Mark reminded them.

“And he doesn’t wanna be one,” Jeff added.

“Nor do I even care to pretend to be a girl,” confirmed Brandon.

“I like Brandon just the way he is,” Jenny told them. “And if you really want him—and me—in your group, you’ll accept him that way, too.”

“But we’d need him to dress up along with the rest of us,” argued Valerie.

“You’d need Brandon to dress like a girl?” Jenny challenged Valerie’s remark, emphasizing its absurdity by her vocal inflection.

“But you oughta see our pictures and video first,” said Debbi. “They show he’s more of a girl than he knows.”

“Even if I were, you’d still have no right to interfere with how I might deal with it,” Brandon told them off as forcefully as he could. “All I did was dress up for one day. It was supposed to be all in fun, a tradition for Homecoming Week. And it was fun—until now. So now I wish I hadn’t done it at all. You’ve really ruined it for me.” He looked to Jenny and spoke sotto voce. “Put your food on my tray. We’ll find another table to finish eating.” He then glanced to Jeff and Mark. “Come on, guys. They had no right to bust up our lunch.”

“Let’s get one of the square tables to keep the uninvited guests away,” Jenny suggested. So Mark went over and staked their claim to a new table before anyone else could. The others followed him and a moment later, they were all seated again, enjoying their lunches.

Xenia and Marla had watched Jenny, Brandon, and their friends leave their table for another. The two administrators had not been close enough to listen to the discussion, but they could hear that it was an animated, an almost heated dialogue.

“That can’t be a good sign, Xee,” Marla remarked.

“Well, maybe it’s better than it looks,” the counselor hoped aloud. “Perhaps Brandon stood up to those girls for himself.”

“But then why give up their table?” wondered Marla. “After all, they were there first.”

“Remember that old adage?” Xenia then quoted, “Discretion is the better part of valor. He really can’t deal with all of them together, so a tactical retreat makes sense for him.”

“Looks like he has at least a few friends with him,” observed Marla.

“Yes. That’s good, too. If he and his friends can figure their own way around the problem, I prefer not to intervene. Any solution they arrive at on their own is likely better than any I could impose.”

“You’re not gonna do anything, then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Xenia cautioned her. “I just need to be careful about what, when, and how. Right now, I need to monitor both sides’ actions. It looks like Brandon moved to de-escalate the situation. I can ask them for details later.” She cut a bite of her veggie lasagna. Even though they weren’t vegetarians, Xenia and Marla most often selected the veggie lasagna because it was one of the few entrees that the school cooks consistently got right.

“Do we have two opposing groups staking out their positions?” Marla wondered.

“It’s not quite so simple as that,” Xenia cautioned. “The girls of that circle see themselves as offering help and friendship to Brandon and Jenny. But that help may be unwanted and that friendship may be too contingent on conformity.”

“So what you’re saying, Xee, is that not everyone wants to be one of the popular girls?”

“Exactly!—and that’s especially so for a boy.”

Marla couldn’t help but giggle at the idea.

“Girls, we really blew it!” complained Alice to her friends. “He’ll be even harder to bring on board now. Did it occur to any of you to try sympathy or sensitivity?”

“He seemed so enthusiastic when he borrowed our stuff Tuesday,” testified Debbi.

“And he looked so into it all day yesterday,” Teri recounted.

“And he seemed really grateful for what he borrowed from us,” Valerie added. “When I looked in the purse he gave back this morning, he’d left a nice thank you note inside.”

“I found one with my dress, too,” Debbi added to the discussion. “But when I asked him if he wanted to try on other dresses or skirts, he seemed upset.”

“I got the same reaction when I talked to him about shoes,” agreed Valerie.

“When I asked if we’d see Brandi again soon, he told me that he wasn’t planning on it,” added Kelly. “I think he may feel embarrassed by it now. He’s always been so easy to embarrass.”

“You’ve always been so ready to embarrass him,” observed Alice. “Like with that little dance this morning.”

“No, I haven’t,” denied Kelly. “Besides no one but you could see it.”

“I saw it, Kelly,” said Teri. “And if I could see it from my seat, everyone in homeroom could see it. And we saw all of the lipstick you girls left on his face, too.”

“It sounds like we need to try a softer approach to encourage him,” Holly interjected. “We need to remember that wearing dresses and skirts and high heels isn’t natural for a boy.”

“But have you seen the video that we got yesterday?” Debbi asked her. “He moves just like a girl. I couldn’t see anything ‘boy’ about him.”

“You should post that online so we all can view it,” suggested Valerie.

“I don’t wanna do that unless it’s alright with Brandon,” objected Debbi. “If we were, like, to post a video or pictures of him from yesterday, we would only make it harder for him to trust us.”

“Is the video that embarrassing?” Teri inquired. “I haven’t seen it, myself.”

“You can’t even tell he’s a boy,” denied Debbi. “Here! Lemme show you!” She took her laptop computer from her shoulder bag, opened it on the lunch table, and powered it up. She plugged a key drive into its port, accessed the folder containing all of the videofiles downloaded from her digital camera, selected one, and clicked on it. The screen filled with a picture appearing to be a girl about the same build as Debbi wearing a blue and green dress and shiny black pumps. She was standing next to a metal-framed chair with a molded blue plastic seat and gray laminated desk folded down at its side.

“That’s Brandon in our third period English class yesterday,” narrated Debbi. She clicked a virtual button in the corner of the screen and the image came to life. “Now, watch! He smooths the back of his dress as he sits…, sets the purse down…, look how he crosses his legs at the knees… smooths the skirt out, and straightens the hem before swinging the desk up…”

The girls gathered more closely around Debbi’s laptop as the video continued to run. “He curls his hair around his pen…, then, his finger…,” Valerie noted as she watched, “and now, he’s swinging his leg from the knee.”

“Wait! Oh, I don’t believe that move! Now, he’s dangling a shoe from his toes,” observed Teri. “I can hardly think of a girlier move than that.”

“And now, he brushes his hair back behind his ear,” continued Debbi.

“He does that so cute,” remarked Holly. “It’s so hard to believe he’s not a girl.”

“Then why’s he so resistant?” Kelly wondered.

“That’s a good question,” mused Alice, glancing around at the others. “Maybe we should ask him?”

Debbi spoke up, “I’m the first to admit that I’m as excited as any of us to get Brandon all ‘girled-up’ again, but maybe Alice does have a point. It’d be much easier with his cooperation,” she reminded them. “And he was so into it yesterday. Can we find out what’s changed since then?”

“Again, I think the best way is to ask him,” Alice reiterated.

“But we’ve run him off,” Kelly pointed out. “None of us will get near him today.”

“I can at least try,” resolved Alice.

“But why would he talk to you and not any of us?” Kelly objected.

“Because unlike you, he invited me to join him for lunch,” Alice refuted her. “Debbi, can I take your key drive? Brandon really needs to see this.”

Debbi shut down the video and unmounted the key drive. “Here,” she said, handing it to Alice. “All my homework’s on there. Let him download the video and bring the drive right back.”

“I’ll bring it back,” affirmed Alice, accepting the key drive from her friend, then carefully placing it inside a small, hidden pocket in her purse. “This shouldn’t take too long.” With that, she started toward the table where Brandon and his friends were sitting.

Xenia and Marla continued their lunch as they also watched the group dynamics of teenagers unfold around them. They watched Brandon and his friends settle down to continue lunch, while the girls at their old table had an animated discussion around a laptop computer.

“Looks like the other boys at Brandon’s table finished lunch and are leaving, Xee,” observed Marla, smiling as she sipped her iced tea. “They’re high-fiving him again.”

Xenia smiled. “I’m hoping that he will be able to enjoy some time with the girl,” she told her coworker. “Personally, I think he and Jenny are a good match, at least so far as maturity and intellect are concerned.”

“Are they going to become a ‘couple’?”

“I don’t know,” Xenia admitted. “Jenny’s parents are traditional Chinese, quite conservative. They seem to keep a tight rein on her.”

“That’s too bad,” opined Marla. “Is that why she dresses in such dark clothes all the time?”

“Likely,” concluded the counselor. “Yet I’ve noticed that all in all, she seems happier than most other girls in her class.”

“Interesting. Why would that be?”

“Good question. My guess is that she mostly shares her parents values.”

“How would they feel about their daughter dating a white American boy?”

“Maybe we’ll find out?” Xenia mused smiling.

Behind the high school and just off the campus, aloof and leaning against a brick wall, an anxious freshman dangled an unlit cigarette from the corner of his mouth. Due to the increasing price of smoking, he didn’t light up unless someone were actually present to see him. He looked at his smartphone. The signal strength was fine. He couldn’t believe, firstly, that he’d been thinking about it as an issue all morning and that he was about to call his big sister for help. But this kind of problem was her forte. So he keyed his sister’s number up on his speed dial. It rang twice.

“Hello! Nancy Danziger speaking…”

“Hey, Sis! It’s me!”

“Why, Billy! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Are you driving back for Homecoming?”

“Yes, I am. I’ll be leaving as soon as my classes are done tomorrow afternoon. I wanna be there in time for the game.”

“I’m hoping we can have some time to talk.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

Billy inhaled deeply and sighed. “I’m losing my coolness,” he confessed. “I can tell it’s slipping away from me. I think I’ve been turning people off and I’m not sure why. The old gang’s not hanging out with me like they did. And I’ve gotten the cold shoulder all morning just because I didn’t do ‘Gender-Bender’ yesterday.”

“Wait a minute! My little brother didn’t do Gender-Bender Day?” she pretended to gasp. “No wonder! You’re not upholding the family legacy—what a scandal!”

“Seriously, you’ve always been good at understanding this kind of thing. I’m hoping you can help me out while you’re here.”

Nancy smiled into the phone. Billy still looked up to his big sister. “Okay, Billy,” she assured him. “We’ll take some time to deal with this over the weekend. I’ve gotta get ready for my next class. I love you, Billy!”

“Love you, too! G’bye!”

“G’bye!”

Some distance away on a California state university campus, a spry college freshman kissed the image of her younger brother displayed on her smartphone.

Billy glanced about again. None of his gang had come around. So he slid his unsmoked cigarette back into its pack and walked back to school.

Alice slowly approached Brandon’s table holding her hands up to shoulder level, palms out, in the universal sign of a truce. “Brandon, Jenny, can I please talk to you for just a moment,” she petitioned. “I promise just to say what I came for and go. If you have questions, I’ll answer them if I can.”

“I wish you girls would just leave me alone,” Brandon complained. “Why is getting me into another dress so important to you, anyway? I don’t get it.”

“Well first, please accept my own apology for all my other friends inviting themselves to join you for lunch. That wasn’t my idea.”

“Alright,” he accepted her apology. “And I did ask you to join me.”

Alice took the key drive from her purse. “Debbi took this video of you yesterday,” she explained. “Watch it with Jenny or your sister or mom—or anyone else whose opinion you trust to know you dressed up. Let them see and judge how you look in it. You move so gracefully and naturally that it seems like Brandi’s the real you.”

“Alice, did anyone consider that maybe—just maybe—I like being a boy?” Brandon rebutted her explanation. “Yesterday was only one day—one day—and it’s like somehow its events should override every other day in my life? That’s unfair!”

“Please, Brandon, just download the video and I’ll go.”

Jenny squeezed Brandon’s hand. “Download it. I’ll watch it with you if you want.” She flashed a demure grin at him.

“Okay,” he conceded and accepted the key drive from Alice. He plugged it into the port of his laptop and mounted it. “Download it, then,” Brandon said, offering her control of his own computer.

With a few point-and-click moves, she completed the download. “There!” Alice confirmed. “I need the drive back.”

“Sure,” acknowledged Brandon. He quickly unmounted the key drive, unplugged it, and returned it to Alice. „Danke!“ he said, grinning at her.

Caching the key drive in her purse’s hidden pocket, Alice smiled back with a finger wave and said: „Tschüß, Brandon, Jenny!“

„Tschüß, Alice!“ replied Brandon, he and Jenny returning the finger wave as Alice made her way back to her own table.

The Ladies’ Room on the main floor of the high school was somewhat more deluxe than others on campus. It was large enough to have a nice lounge area with couches and armchairs apart from the usual bathroom area of sinks and stalls.

Kelly Harrigan passed the sinks and stalls by to go directly into the lounge, where she fell onto a couch rather than sat down on it. From her purse, she withdrew a small, flat 375 ml bottle of a single-malt Scotch whisky. She opened it and drank some down, screwed its cap back on, then put it back in her purse. She curled up on the couch, clutching her purse to her chest, as if it were all that she had in the world.

She just cried.

Since the sixth grade, Kelly had felt a little tingle whenever Brandon came by, butterflies fluttering in her tummy. Yet he had never noticed her attraction to him. Now, though, Kelly’s life had just become very complicated. Brandon had feelings for Jenny, which she apparently reciprocated. And even though Kelly still had feelings for Brandon, she had begun to feel the same tingle, the same fluttering butterflies, anytime that Holly Thompson appeared.

Kelly was upset, very confused, and quite disappointed. Brandon didn’t care that she was in love with him. He never had; somehow, he never even knew. And now, she was getting feelings for a girl? But she couldn’t be a lesbian—just couldn’t! Her family would send her to a Catholic school, or worse, disown her, kick her out into the streets. And was Holly even attracted to girls? She might not even care that Kelly had feelings for her.

Soon, Kelly had cried herself to sleep.