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

Kelly Harrigan. She was the catalyst among these girls. Valerie Schmidt was their apparent leader; Debbi Snyder, their moderating influence; but Kelly provided the motivating force.

Opening the student database, Xenia quickly found that Kelly should be in Consuelo Menéndez’ Spanish 1 just then. Again, she was fortunate that the student sought was scheduled in a language lab, since the teacher’s computer was likely up and running. So the guidance counselor sent an instant message.

Xenia had been worried about what Kelly had said that morning:

“But Brandon MacDonald doesn’t know he’s a girl yet. He needs to become Brandi MacDonald and we’re gonna help him do it.”

That was a very strange goal for a girl to announce.

The bell ending fifth period rang. Brandon smiled to Rhonda Davies, his lab partner for French 1.

« Au revoir, Rhonda! »

« Au revoir, Brandon! »

He was happy with how this class had gone. Hey! Not once had Rhonda mentioned Brandon’s dressing up as a girl the previous day, neither to tease him nor to compliment him. Apparently in Rhonda’s mind, it was old news. And he was okay with that.

Brandon met up with Jenny at the door. They both took French 1, but had been assigned different lab partners. She shared a lab station with David Hamill.

They dashed for the main stairs. Their next class, American History 1, was from Mr. Markham, in Brandon’s homeroom at the far end of the opposite wing of the building on the top floor. He and Jenny started up together, but Holly Thompson hurried along after them.

“Hey there, guys!” Holly greeted them. Can I ask you two a personal question?”

“What?” Brandon exclaimed in surprise.

“You don’t hafta answer, if you’re not comfortable with it,” Holly assured them. “But are you two a couple, now?”

Neither Brandon nor Jenny were expecting such a question. They just looked at one another a moment.

“Uh—we’re working on it,” replied Brandon, blushing. Jenny held her hand over her mouth as she sputtered into a fit of giggles. She nodded in agreement with Brandon.

“We just started—uh—exploring the prospects this morning,” Jenny confessed. “Please don’t go telling everyone, though.”

“Mum’s the word!” Holly promised with the gesture of zipping her lips and ran off to wherever.

Brandon smiled at Jenny and warned her, “Holly’s the biggest gossip at school. Once she tells, we are a couple.”

“Then I guess I’d better tell Mom when I get home,” concluded Jenny. “It was my first kiss, after all. How ’bout you?”

“Mine was with Kelly Harrigan in the sixth grade. She kinda sprung it on me like you did on the roof today. And she did it to me again on the way into homeroom this morning. I’ve never understood why she does that, though.”

“Maybe she likes you,” speculated Jenny. “Do you have feelings for her?”

“No.”

“How ’bout in the sixth grade?”

“Not then, either. Besides, she’s too wild for me.”

“Well, I knew you liked me, but I wasn’t sure if you could tell I felt the same about you.”

“No, I couldn’t. But I hoped so.”

Jenny simply smiled back at Brandon. “That’s why I had to kiss you first.”

“Makes sense to me,” Brandon agreed as they continued to climb the stairs. They reached the top floor and turned directly towards Mr. Markham’s classroom at the extreme end of the south wing.

“Who did you vote for on your ballot for Freshman Homecoming Princess?” Jenny asked.

“What?” Brandon asked, not knowing about the issue.

“In homeroom, we were given ballots to vote for our class’s Homecoming Princess. Didn’t you vote?”

“I was held up going to homeroom this morning,” recalled Brandon. “They must’ve voted before I even got there.”

“So you didn’t vote for anyone at all?

“I didn’t even know,” he apologized. “No one ever tells me about things like that.”

“I wonder why that is?” Jenny mused.

“I guess I’m just as clueless as everyone says I am.”

“You’re not clueless, Brandon,” she tried to reassure him. “You just save your attention for the more important things.” She smiled at the new boyfriend with whom she was rapidly bonding. Actually, she figured that they’d already been bonding since the school year began. Now they were adding more intimacy to that. She thought about her mother’s advice and hoped that Mom would approve not only her choice of partner but also how she had cultivated Brandon’s attraction to her slowly and carefully.

They arrived at Mr. Markham’s classroom together, entered, and took their usual, adjacent seats.

“Mister MacDonald, did you not cast a ballot for Homecoming Princess during homeroom this morning?” Mr. Markham asked Brandon.

“No, you never mentioned it, sir,” he confirmed. “In fact, Jenny had just brought it up on the way to class.”

“I’m sorry about that,” the teacher apologized, handing him a machine-scorable card with a list of names. “Here’s a ballot for you. Please use a number two pencil. Give it to me before you leave.”

Brandon looked down at the list of names:

Ballot for Homecoming Princess
Freshman Class

1. Vote for one candidate
◯ (A) Rhonda DAVIES
◯ (B) Kelly HARRIGAN
◯ (C) Katrina SZASZ
◯ (D) Sarah TAYLOR
◯ (E) Write-in:

Brandon had no idea that his lab partner from his French class was a nominee for Homecoming Princess. On the other hand, Sarah and Kelly were campaigning for it actively. As for Katrina, he wasn’t even sure how to pronounce her family name. But Brandon knew where his heart was. He filled in the circle next to 1. (E) and wrote in:

Jenny Chang

Immediately, Brandon gave his ballot back to Mr. Markham. “Thank you, Mister MacDonald,” the teacher said somewhat sheepishly. “I can’t believe I forgot that this morning, as much as I go on about the importance of voting.”

“It was hardly your fault, Mister Markham,” Brandon absolved him. “I had numerous distractions, both before and after I arrived.”

The teacher chuckled. “Were those perhaps a few of Miss Harrigan’s campaign tactics?”

Brandon laughed, and so did Jenny as she drew a connection between a salvo of kisses and the Homecoming ballot. “So, Kelly was buying your vote?” Jenny asked him.

“I hope that’s why she kissed me,” he answered, perhaps more than just a little perturbed. “How can I tell?”

“You really can’t tell, can you?” Jenny asked, somewhat surprised. He probably didn’t know that she was interested in him. Indeed, he had hoped she might have feelings.

The bell rang and Mr. Markham called the class to order.

The bell signaling the end of fifth period had roused Kelly from her sorrow-induced siesta. Her blouse was thoroughly wrinkled, as was her skirt. She’d need to iron the box pleats outs before wearing the skirt again. Her face felt chapped from the mixture of tears and running makeup having dried while she slept.

A hideous sight greeted Kelly in the mirror over the sink. Very quickly she ran some water and splashed it on her face and grabbed a handful of paper towels to blot her face dry. She was uncertain whether to repair her makeup or just clean it off. The damage was bad enough it needed to be reapplied from the foundation up. She really didn’t have time to do that.

A few girls came into the restroom. Teri Hamilton was the only one she knew. The others were probably seniors. “Hi, Teri!” Kelly addressed her friend.

“Hey there, Kelly!” she replied. “I didn’t see you in Spanish.”

“Didn’t feel like going, so I skipped class.”

“Anything wrong?”

“It’s Brandon,” lamented Kelly. “He doesn’t even know I exist.”

“Kelly, you’ve been crushing on him since middle school,” Teri reminded her. “Let him go. If he can’t see that you like him by now, he never will. And at lunch, I thought it was obvious that Brandon’s with Jenny Chang now.”

“Think so?”

“Mm-hmm,” affirmed Teri as she used a scrunchie to re-secure her ponytail. “He’s been starry-eyed over her since school started.”

Kelly’s heart sank as Teri confirmed what she had already feared. It hurt that Brandon had not responded to her offers of affection, but he hadn’t even read her signals. She had always seen him as cute. Seeing him dressed as a girl yesterday had only underscored how strongly attracted she was to him. But now he was attracted to someone else.

Taking a tiny jar of cold cream from her purse, Kelly decided just to clean off the makeup. Redoing it didn’t make sense, as she might start crying again, so why bother?

“Y’know, Teri, I think I may cut the rest of the day and just go home,” she told her. “I don’t wanna deal with this right now and I certainly don’t wanna run into Brandon MacDonald or Jenny Chang again today.”

“I’m sorry, Kelly,” Teri tried to console her friend. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No. Not right now, anyway. This is something I gotta figure out for myself.”

“Well, I hope you feel better tomorrow. They’ll announce the Homecoming Court during homeroom. I think your chances of winning are really good.”

“Thanks, Teri. Guess I’ll see you in homeroom tomorrow morning, then.”

“G’bye!”

“Bye-bye!”

After Teri stepped out of the Ladies’ Room, Kelly finished cleaning off her face as the bell rang to begin sixth period. She took her cellphone from her purse and called for a taxi. Peeking out the restroom door, she verified that no hall monitor was currently present on the floor and made for the main entrance.

Out the door and down the front steps of the school, Kelly hurried through the school’s plaza to the curb, where she waited with her back to a lamppost. She opened her purse, got the bottle of single-malt out, and drank a swig of it before she saw the taxi coming down the street to meet her. She opened the door and sat down in the backseat.

“Where to?” asked the driver.

“Number Sixteen, Beechwood Terrace, please,” instructed Kelly.

“Are you okay, miss?” the driver asked, noting the smell of alcohol on her breath.

“I’m not feeling too good,” she told him. “The school nurse sent me home.”

The cabby suspected she were lying, but even so, getting her home safely was likely the best thing he could do. The address she named was in a residential neighborhood for this school and her clothing looked typical of a teenager living there, so she was probably telling the truth about her address. So he proceeded to drive his new passenger to her destination.

Xenia heard the bell at the end of fifth period ringing and noted that Señora Menéndez had not responded about Kelly.

Dr. Van de Meer looked at Kelly’s schedule again. Her sixth period class was Earth Science with Robert Danvers. Maybe she could catch her there. Again, Xenia used instant messaging to expedite matters.

The guidance counselor's worries were strengthened. She wondered, what was wrong with Kelly?

“Class dismissed,” announced Mr. Markham as the bell rang. Brandon appreciated that he always did so immediately. Students had but a few minutes to get to their next classes and holding them past the bell cut into into that precious time.

Jenny and Brandon ran out the door and took the small staircase across the hall. It was not crowded too often, so they scampered right down the stairs. At the bottom, they took the choice door that opened outside to get to the new Laboratory Annex. All of the Computer Science courses and the new vocational-technical programs in Electronics and Digital Electronics were taught in that building. Going outside was a shorter path on a nice day, but they worried about making it to class on time once the inclement weather would begin.

“Are you gonna look at it in lab?” Jenny asked as they hurried to the Lab Annex.

“Look at what?” Brandon wondered.

“The video—the one Alice downloaded at lunch,” clarified Jenny. “I thought you might wanna look at it. She did suggest you should look at it with someone.”

“You’ll look at it with me, then?”

“Of course I will.”

They entered through the backdoor of the building. All the Computer Science courses were on the ground floor, so they went into their computer lab and sat down at their shared lab station.

“Now you do know I’m scared of what I might see on this video?” Brandon asked Jenny as he opened his laptop and plugged it into the port on their station server.

“Yes. That’s why Alice suggested you should watch it with someone.”

“Here goes!” announced Brandon as he booted his computer up. Jenny also connected hers to the station server as well.

“There it is,” Jenny pointed the file out on Brandon’s screen. “Are you ready to open it?”

“Not really,” he denied. Yet Brandon clicked on the filename and the screen filled with a still picture of him entering his English class yesterday morning. He clicked a button in the lower left corner of the screen and the image sprang to life.

As he watched, Brandon recalled the tactile sensations of each moment in the dress, the lingerie, the pantyhose, and the shoes. Unconsciously, he copied certain actions, brushing his hair behind his ear as his image did so on screen. But then he felt something that he had not anticipated. A sense of loss overcame him as he understood that the day which he so enjoyed had already receded into the past. He became wistful, hoping that once again, he might clothe himself as a girl.

“Oh, Brandon! I can see why the girls think you belong with them,” admitted Jenny. “You move just so naturally as a girl would. Were you trying to be that feminine?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did your mom or sister coach you in how girls move?”

“No. Not really,” Brandon told her, “although Sheila tried to help me learn to walk in high heels. But I still wasn’t very comfortable in those.”

“Then how did you learn those moves? You move so gracefully, as if you grew up as a girl.”

“I don’t know—unless it was just by observation. Or maybe some of the moves just follow naturally from the situation.”

“Brandon, your girly moves are better than mine.”

He just sat silently for a moment.

“You really enjoyed yesterday, didn’t you?” Jenny asked sotto voce.

Brandon nodded, imperceptively except to Jenny. She looked him in the eye.

“You wanna dress up again, too, don’t you?” she followed up, still speaking as quietly as she could.

“I think I do,” whispered Brandon. “I felt so relaxed yesterday, so—so normal.”

“In a dress?”

“Yeah,” he maintained his whisper. “That’s why I’ve been so upset. I’m a boy. I’m not supposed to wear dresses. And if I have to wear one, I’m not supposed to like it.”

“But you did like it, and I think that’s okay.”

“Really?”

“Really!” Jenny assured him with a smile.

The taxi pulled up to one of the nicer homes in a very nice neighborhood. Without even waiting for him to announce the fare, Kelly tossed the driver a twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” she said, trying but unable to force a smile.

“Thank you, miss!” offered the driver as he finished making the required entry in his log. He was grateful that her gratuity had exceeded the fare. Of course, living in such a neighborhood, she could afford to tip generously. Of that he had no doubt. Yet the girl seemed sad. She had tried to smile at him but couldn’t quite manage it. As he drove off for his next fare, he was bothered by three facts with this girl: that she had left school in the early afternoon, that she had smelled of alcohol, and her failed smile. He said a little prayer for her.

The girls were in the locker room changing into their tights and leotards for their Aerobic & Modern Dance class.

“I’m kinda worried about Kelly,” Teri reported to her friends. “She skipped Spanish today and I saw her after class in the restroom. Her face looked awful, like she’d been crying and I could smell booze, too.”

“Did she say what was wrong?” Valerie inquired.

“She’s been crushing on Brandon since the sixth grade,” Teri informed them, pulling a leotard up over a pair of tights. “Seeing Jenny Chang with him was very upsetting for her.”

“So she’s not over him?” Debbi asked their friend as she pulled a pair of elastic braces up to her knees. She then took a pair of similar braces for her ankles out of her gym bag.

“No, not at all,” confirmed Teri.

“Is she jealous of Jenny?” Valerie asked.

“She didn’t really seem jealous or even angry,” Teri recounted. “She’s more, like, resigned to it. I kinda feel sorry for her. She’s had feelings for him for such a long time, but it’s like he’s never noticed.”

“I wonder if it’s, like, why Brandon didn’t seem to understand what we were trying to tell him at lunch?” Debbi thought aloud.

“I thought he was more in denial,” opined Valerie. “He doesn’t wanna believe he’s transgendered.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know he’s transgendered,” asserted Debbi.

“But how could you not know if you’re transgendered?” Teri objected. “Wouldn’t you have to have some kind of feeling before you could even be in denial?”

“Y’know, he might not even be transgendered,” observed Holly. “We’re hardly experts on it.”

“Maybe Alice knows more about it,” suggested Valerie. “She usually does—know more about things, I mean.”

“What does Kelly think about it?” Holly inquired of the others. “She seemed especially eager to get him to join up with us as a regular girl.”

“Well, I think it’s fair to say that Kelly might not have the most objective views where Brandon’s concerned,” remarked Debbi. “Now, I can’t help but think she might have been pushing this to get him closer to her. Who knows what her ‘ginger gene’ is capable of?”

“Ginger gene?” Holly wondered.

“Red hair and freckles, wild streak, hot Irish temper…,” Debbi described.

Just then, Brenda San-Giacomo, the girls’ coach and their instructor popped into the locker room. “That’s enough chatter, ladies!” she announced. “Let’s get moving! Right now! Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!”

“Right away, Miss San-Giacomo!” Valerie spoke for her friends as she finished securing the laces on her athletic shoes. “We’re coming right away!”

Kelly climbed the stairs to the second floor of her home and trudged sullenly to her bedroom at the other end of the hallway. She opened the door and noted that the housekeeper had straightened her room up and made her bed. Kelly’s favorite stuffed animal, Benny the Bear, sat up against the pillows. Her daddy had won Benny for her a few years ago at an arcade.

She dropped her purse on the vanity and kicked her shoes off going into her bathroom. Seeing the redness of her own eyes in the mirror triggered yet another fit of crying. She went back out to her bedroom and took the bottle of whisky out of her purse and drank from it again. Securing its cap, Kelly kept the bottle with her and crawled onto her bed. Discreetly, she tucked the small bottle of Scotch under a pillow before cuddling up with Benny the Bear in a fetal position and, for the second time that afternoon, sobbing herself asleep.

Xenia heard the chime indicating an incoming instant message. Glancing at the monitor, she noted that it was from Robbie Danvers. She opened up the IM (instant message) window.

Dr. Van de Meer looked up contact information for Kelly. She could call the girl’s parents herself, or refer the matter to the vice-principal. But so far, Kelly had no disciplinary record. Xenia did not like to be the one to send a student down that path. She jotted the Harrigans’ telephone number down.

The Honorable Catherine “Cat” Riley-Harrigan entered her family residence at No. 16 Beechwood Terrace and closed the door behind her. She wasn’t sure why, nor which, but she could feel that one of her children was home early—too early in fact. But then, Catherine had also arrived home a couple of hours earlier than she had expected. A key witness for the plaintiff had suddenly fallen ill in the courtroom, so she had to call a recess until the next morning.

She slowly ascended the stairs, then continued to the end of the hallway. Cat saw that Kelly’s door was open and that her daughter was curled up asleep on her bed, holding on dearly to Benny the Bear. So she went into the room and sat down on the side of Kelly’s bed. Cat looked lovingly at her daughter’s disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes, knowing that the girl had experienced some event and was now enduring one of those hard, but necessary, lessons in life.

“Kelly,” she spoke quietly to her daughter. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Oh, Mom!” Kelly cried embracing her mother. “He doesn’t even know I exist!”

“Are we talking about Brandon again?” Cat asked her, hugging the girl close. Kelly nodded, tears streaming down her face. The mother’s eyes looked kindly into her daughter’s.

“Oh, honey!” Kelly’s mom held her even closer. “You’ve been sweet on that boy for so long.”

“But I really like him, Mom,” the girl cried, the stress in her voice audible. “I’ve liked him since we were little.”

“I know, but you might simply have to face the possibility that he likes someone else,” Cat tried to reason with her. “Why, he’s not even Catholic!”

“I don’t care, Mommy! I want him so bad!”

At the moment, Cat knew her daughter to be inconsolable. The best she could do for Kelly just then would be to continue holding her, hugging her, rocking her, letting her know that she was still wanted, still loved. Lessons and learning would follow, after the tears had passed. But now was the time for passions to play out.

Cat’s concern increased when she thought that she had noticed a trace of alcohol on Kelly’s breath, but she wasn’t certain of it. Given the state her daughter was in, this would not be the best time to raise questions of alcohol use, especially since she was uncertain. But raise it she must. Yet right then, her daughter most needed her reassurance.

Brandon watched the video yet another time in study hall. The teacher in charge of this study hall, Mrs. Bradley, had assigned the students their seats alphabetically according to their last names, so Jenny wasn’t seated close to Brandon. Usually that wasn’t a problem for Brandon, as he would focus entirely on his homework and would complete as much as he could so that he didn’t need to take it home. But today he kept watching the video repeatedly.

Glancing across the room, he noticed that Jenny’s laptop was open. She was working, most likely, on an assignment that Mr. Penske had given them in Computer Science. So Brandon sent her an instant message by the school’s own local area network.

Jenny smiled at the name Brandon had picked for their chatroom. She recalled their first kisses that morning, took a deep breath, and sighed in happiness. She answered him in the chatroom with a new screenname.

Jenny pondered her friend’s situation for a moment, then thought to suggest something.

Brandon thought about it and hoped that it might represent a way to deal with this new problem.

Brandon closed the chatroom down and ran the video again. He really began to wonder why this problem was all that he could think about now?

Then he remembered something else he should do. Exiting the videofile, Brandon opened a search engine. Into the search window, he entered the word androgyny.

Valerie, Debbi, Teri, Holly, and Alice were all waiting outside the main entrance for Brandon. They had noticed Jeff and Mark waiting to walk home with their buddy as they usually did. Today though, the girls thought that they would move to separate Brandon from his friends after school and perhaps get him to go with them.

“I hope he doesn’t take too much longer,” Holly whinged to her friends.

“Personally, I don’t think waiting for Brandon after school is such a good idea,” opined Alice. “We need to back off. If he’s really a girl inside, he’ll seek help on his own. As it is, we’ve been pushing too hard, especially Kelly.”

“By the way, anybody hear from Kelly since Teri talked to her,” inquired Valerie. “She’s not answered any of my text messages since lunch.”

“Me neither,” added Debbi. “She may’ve turned her cell off.”

“I think she may’ve taken the rest of the day off,” Teri suggested.

“Kelly skip class?” Valerie puzzled. “That’s not at all like her.”

“But she was way bummed out about Brandon,” emphasized Teri. “And don’t forget—she’d been drinking, too.”

“I’m worried that she’s gonna lose all perspective over that guy,” said Alice, “if she hasn’t already.”

“Look!” Debbi called their attention. “That’s Mindy Baxter leaving with Brandon’s friends.”

“Then where’s Brandon?” Holly wondered aloud.

“He’s given us the slip,” concluded Alice, secretly relieved and admiring Brandon for doing so. She thought the entire affair ill-considered and felt that her friends needed to relent before it got any further out of hand. “I think we should call it a day and go home.”

“We may as well,” said Debbi with a sigh. “We can try again tomorrow.”

“But tomorrow’s Homecoming,” Valerie reminded them. “We’ll have too much going on.”

“Girling Brandon up can wait until next week,” observed Alice. “He’s been a boy fourteen years already. A few more days won’t make any difference.”

With that, Valerie began walking away from the school and the others followed.

“Anybody know how Kelly’s chances look for Homecoming Princess?” Holly asked.

“I don’t have a clue,” admitted Alice honestly. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“I hear they’re pretty good,” Teri confirmed as the group continued off campus.

Brandon and Jenny discreetly watched from the roof as the girls went on their way.

“That was a good move,” observed Jenny. “Misdirecting the ‘Swarm’ like that.”

“Why, thank you, my dear!” said Brandon. He turned to Jenny and their lips met for the third time on the rooftop that Thursday. “I’m beginning to like hanging out with you up here, China Babe!”

“So am I, Math Dude!”

“Well, it’s time for me to walk you home.”

“It was nice of Mr. Danvers to let us up here again today.”

They embraced with a longer kiss just before entering the spiral staircase to go back down to the classroom. As they reached the landing, Mr. Danvers was waiting there, smiling. “Congratulations, you two!”

Wide-eyed, Jenny slapped a hand over her mouth and turned away in embarrassment.

“It’s okay,” Brandon assured her. “He already knew this morning.”

“Yes,” the teacher acknowledged. “Making out next to the rooftop weather station is sort of a tradition here.” He smiled again at Brandon and Jenny. “Most human beings live as couples or try to. Learning to connect with one another in that way is no less a part of your education than lectures and homework. Brandon, Jenny, you are both intelligent and thoughtful. I’ve watched you two working together since the school year began and you’ve been great lab partners and would probably make for great study partners as well.”

“How ’bout romantic partners?” Jenny asked Mr. Danvers.

“That’s for you to explore,” the science teacher answered. “But do remember always to be kind, honest, and respectful to each other.”

Brandon returned the key for the weather station to Mr. Danvers, then thanking him the still bonding couple left his classroom and scampered down the stairs to the main entrance. Exiting the building with Jenny, Brandon took his cellphone out from his pocket to call his buddies.

Jeffrey’s cellphone rang and he answered it. “What’s up?”

“Thanks guys!” Brandon offered his gratitude. “Good job drawing the ‘Swarm’ away…”

“Oh, it was nothing. Besides, Mark seems happy to have waited for Melinda.”

Both Mark and Melinda turned and gave Jeff a look as if to say, “Keep out of it!”

“Are they a couple, now?” Brandon asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Jeff hedged his answer to maintain a modicum of order. “How ’bout you?”

“Getting there, I think,” affirmed Brandon with a smile to Jenny. “Most definitely…”

“Catch ya later?”

“Ya got it!”

Brandon offered Jenny his hand and she grasped it. He sighed. “Here goes!”

Jenny smiled at him. “Hoping it’s the first of many.”