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

Mrs. Chang leaned against the wall of her daughter Jennifer’s bedroom, arms crossed, yet smiling. “So then, Brandon did like you wearing cheongsam?”

The girl turned away from her vanity mirror to answer her mother. “He said to tell you it worked!” Jenny related with a smile. She turned back to the mirror as a prelude to applying her makeup. “I really like him Mom. And he’s agreed to come to dinner Wednesday evening.”

“Good! He’s accepted the invitation,” observed Mrs. Chang with a slight note of enthusiasm in her voice. “So what are you doing today, then?”

“Brandon has testing at the hospital this morning. We plan to meet for lunch and finish our joint lab report for Earth Sciences due Monday. We also have an assignment together in Computer Science to work on.”

“Will that take all your afternoon?”

“Most of it for me, I think. I may need to finish up at the Carnegie Library if he needs more tests. But he won’t know until after lunch.”

During their conversation, Jenny had continued to apply her makeup. This morning, she wanted a natural look, using the very minimum of cosmetics. But she added some lipgloss to her look, mostly to encourage Brandon to kiss her more.

Mrs. Chang carefully studied her daughter’s appearance as well, noting how Jennifer obtained a full effect from the minimal application of cosmetics. Indeed, she was proud that her daughter had attained this boy’s attention wearing the plainest of fashion and little or no makeup. Discreet inquiries in the neighborhood so far had given very favorable news about him and his family. With each new report about Brandon, Mrs. Chang’s confidence in her daughter’s judgment grew.

“Jennifer, I think you will need to wear prettier, more sophisticated clothes very soon.”

Her mouth open in surprise, Jenny turned again suddenly to her mother. “How soon?”

“When would you like to go?”

“Could you give me some time to plan it?”

“Yes,” affirmed Mrs. Chang. “Let me know when you are ready.”

Brandon put down his pencil after completing the test. It had been a list of words for him to compare. He honestly didn’t understand quite what the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) was, nor why Dr. Windham had wanted him to take it. Besides, it wasn’t like his answers were right or wrong. It wasn’t that kind of a test. He suspected from what she had told him, it might be related to why he had liked dressing as a girl on Wednesday or the androgyny concept that Dr. Van de Meer had raised with him.

“Are you finished with the Bem, now?” Dr. Pettigrew asked him.

“I guess,” sighed Brandon, trying to appear nonchalant rather than bored.

“Take a break, then,” suggested the psychometrician. “Walk around, stretch your legs, get a drink—whatever. I’ll score your Bem and get the Wechsler ready for you.”

“What’s the Bem test for, anyway?” Brandon asked, hoping that Dr. Pettigrew might satisfy his curiosity. “Since it’s called the ‘Bem Sex-Role Inventory,’ what does that mean?”

Anne really didn’t want to be the one to explain the BSRI to him. But since he’d already completed the inventory, an explanation wouldn’t affect his results. “Let me score it first, Brandon,” she said. “It will be easier to explain along with your own results.”

“Fair enough!” Brandon conceded. “That makes sense to me.”

“Gimme about fifteen minutes, then,” Dr. Pettigrew requested. “I’ll score your test and have a moment to think about your results.”

Acknowledging her with a grin, he dashed out of the room toward the alcove of vending machines that he had noticed earlier as his mother wheeled him to the Psychometrics Lab.

Catherine held onto her daughter even as Kelly fought to push her away. She knew that her not-so-little girl was both confused and frightened—especially frightened. But a moment later, Kelly ceased to struggle and yielded to her mother’s love.

“Oh, my honey! I’d hoped to’ve taught you better than that.”

“I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you,” answered Kelly, still sniffling.

Catherine looked Kelly right in the eyes. “You’ve not disappointed me other than to think I’d reject you for being a lesbian, as if that were some ugly, heinous crime.” She took Kelly’s free hand. “You’re my daughter. I love you and I always will. So dismiss any idea of rejection from your thinking right now.” Then she hugged Kelly again, just to drive the point home.

Kelly bowed her forehead to her mother’s shoulder. “Thanks, Mom,” she said. “I think I needed to hear you say that.”

Catherine sighed in relief. Now she knew what had bothered her daughter so. Losing her hoped-for boyfriend, the fear over her sexuality, the worries about her future—it was little wonder that Kelly had been drinking. Considering her daughter’s plight again, she appreciated one very important fact—worrying over sexual orientation and choice of mate, college and career, Kelly was thinking about what really mattered.

“So when are they letting you out of here?” Catherine asked her daughter.

“I don’t know,” replied Kelly. “I’m sure Doctor Singh needs to look at my wrist again. Doctor Windham wants to talk to me again—prob’ly to you as well. She said she’d refer me to an alcohol abuse counselor. And I’ll bet Doctor MacDonald stops by to see me, too.”

Catherine smiled at her daughter. “You did it again.”

“Did what, Mom?”

“Drew a crowd,” replied Catherine. “You always get more people around you no matter what you’re doing.”

“I do that sometimes, don’t I?”

“Ever since you were little,” Catherine reminded Kelly. “The only difference is that today they’ll come one at a time and not all at once.”

“Would you take me down to the gift shop?” Kelly asked. “I need get-well cards for Brandon and Abby. And I wanna get a gift for her, too.”

“We can ask the nurse if she knows when the doctors are coming to see you,” her mother suggested. Catherine relaxed a little knowing that as rough as Kelly’s circumstances were, her daughter was thinking now of her friends’ welfare.

“Melinda, I don’t wanna spend more time doing this just now,” Jeffrey complained. We promised Brandon we’d be there today.”

“But Hallowe’en is only a couple of weeks away,” Melinda reminded Jeffrey. “And I’m close to having Mark ready for this costume.”

“She’s right, Jeff,” said Mark, looking at himself in the full-length mirror. He was wearing a black corset and a lacy black skirt with torn fishnet pantyhose, his face made-up in Goth style. “I’d rather finish this now.”

“I don’t believe you’re doing this,” remarked Jeffrey. “Wasn’t wearing skirts at school Wednesday crazy enough for you?”

“I don’t believe it, either,” Mark agreed. “But it’s just for Hallowe’en.”

“He’s just lucky enough to fit into my clothes,” said Melinda grinning. “Except something’s still not quite right.” She studied Mark carefully. “I know—you need different boots. Those don’t fit the look. You need something with a more daring heel. I’ll see what my girlfriends and I can find.”

“Let me get back into my own clothes so we can go visit Brandon,” requested Mark.

“Aw! I was hoping you’d go with us still wearing that,” whined Melinda.

“Not just now,” answered Mark. “I’m hardly ready for that.”

“Besides, after what’s happened to Brandon, he might not take it in the spirit intended,” Jeffrey cautioned his friends. “I don’t think he wants to be reminded of crossdressing.”

“But I can’t believe he had a panic attack over it,” Melinda told them.

“People have different sensitivities,” argued Mark. “Even if putting me into drag is fun for us, others don’t feel the same about it.

“But I don’t understand that,” she whinged. “After all, it’s just clothing!”

“To you it’s just clothing,” admitted Jeffrey. “But apparently it’s more than that to Brandon.”

Brandon sat again at the desk where he had taken the BSRI in the Psychometrics Lab, setting a bottle of his favorite sports beverage down next to the test form that he had marked. He noticed that it had been scored and the results were given at the bottom of the page. They listed:

Masculine traits............ 116
Feminine traits............. 118
Bem score......................... -2

“And what does all this mean?” Brandon asked Dr. Pettigrew.

“Your Bem score measures how androgynous you are,” she replied.

“And that means…?”

“How comfortably you see yourself in terms of traditional gender roles,” explained Dr. Pettigrew. “Gender stereotypes, really.”

“And what’s a Bem score of minus two mean?”

“That you’re very nearly perfectly androgynous.”

“Then, if I read this right, a Bem score of zero would’ve been perfectly androgynous?”

“That’s right.”

“And the minus sign?”

“In this case, it means you’re very, very slightly to the feminine side of androgynous.”

“Why’m I not surprised?” Brandon muttered to himself sotto voce as he thought back to Wednesday.

“What’s that?” Dr. Pettigrew asked him.

“Oh! Nothing really,” he fibbed, but then admitted, “Just that it figures. Somehow, it all figures.”

The five girls sat around their table at On Firm Grounds, one shy of their usual company since Kelly was in the hospital.

“Does anyone know, like, how long Kelly has to stay?” Valerie inquired.

“She called me from the hospital and we talked briefly,” announced Alice. “They kept her overnight for observation and possible referrals today.”

“What’s that mean?” Holly asked.

“She might need to see a specialist today,” explained Alice. “Kelly broke her wrist, but the emergency room physician was worried she might have, like, other internal injuries not showing up right away.”

“By the way, I heard that Brandon’s dad was the doctor who saw her and Double Abby in E-R,” added Teri. “And Abby’s injuries were really bad: concussion, broken arm and leg, cracked ribs, and ruptured spleen.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?” Valerie asked.

Like, two or three months,” replied Alice. “I think that’s because the spleen heals really slow.”

“That’s gotta suck!” Debbi remarked taking a sip of her lattè.

“I think we should get like gifts for Kelly and Double Abby,” opined Valerie. “At the very least, get-well cards. After all, Kelly’s one of us and Abby’s her friend and teammate.” The girls around the table all nodded in agreement.

“Brandon, too,” Alice added. “He’s in the hospital as well.”

“I heard he had, like, a really bad nervous breakdown,” Teri added the rumor to their discussion. “That’s why they called an ambulance.”

“But I heard it was, like, a severe asthma attack,” Holly contradicted her.

“I never heard of Brandon having asthma,” objected Debbi. “Besides, when he showed me how he’d organized his purse Wednesday, he didn’t have an inhaler. He had, like, two tampons and a spare pad, but no inhaler.”

“That does suggest that he wouldn’t have asthma,” Alice agreed. “But we shouldn’t be guessing at what’s happened. We’ll know, like, soon enough if we need to.”

“Anyway, we should get something for, like, all of them,” declared Holly, seeking to affirm a consensus of the group. “Are we still going to the mall today?”

“We could go shopping downtown instead,” suggested Debbi. “We, like, haven’t gone there in a while.”

“That may be a better plan today,” adjudged Alice. “If we go out to the West Grove Mall, we won’t get to the hospital until much later.”

“That’s a good point,” remarked Valerie. “And Debbi’s right—we’ve not gone shopping downtown for a while.”

“But that’s because downtown’s not as much fun as the mall,” Teri complained. “Nobody much hangs out downtown anymore.”

“We can skip the mall for just one Saturday, Teri,” asserted Holly. “This is for the benefit of friends, after all.”

The others at the table nodded in agreement. Looking around, Valerie knew she had nearly a consensus to which Teri, the lone dissenter, had acquiesced. “I assume we’d prefer taxis to the bus?” Valerie raised as the next issue.

“Unless we can hire a minivan, we’d need two cabs,” Alice noted. “The bus is much cheaper.”

“But I hate the bus,” pouted Teri. “It’s too—too—”

“Too working-class for you?” Debbi rejoined with a hint of umbrage in her voice. “Not all of us were born rich, Teri.”

“Could I, like, offer a compromise?” Valerie suggested. “We hire a minivan if it’s available. Else, we’ll take like the bus downtown. We’ll take, like, taxis or a minivan to the hospital.”

Even Teri nodded her agreement.

“Alright,” Valerie claimed a consensus, then moved on to the next topic. ”Anyone thinking about, like, what we can do for Hallowe’en yet?”

“You’re really quiet, Billy,” Mrs. Danziger teased her son riding on the passenger side in the front seat of the family minivan. He closed his legs together firmly, pulling the hem of the skirt as near as possible to his knees.

“No kidding,” he grumbled to his mother. “I’m afraid that anything I say can be used against me in the demented, scheming mind that is my sister’s.”

“You’ll be okay,” his mother tried to reassure her son as Nancy and Lauren continued giggling behind them. “You’re not the first boy whose big sister dressed him like a girl.”

“But Mom, I don’t really look like a girl,” he objected. “I look like a guy in drag. My face is not a girl’s.”

”True enough, except—,” she began, drawing out the conjunction.

“Except what?” Billy demanded.

“No one’s gonna look at your face!” Nancy piped up from the back seat. “Most girls would kill for legs like yours. They’re prettier than mine.”

The three women in the minivan laughed and laughed hard, while Billy blushed a dark shade of pink, nearly rose. Patricia Danziger pulled the vehicle off the road, parking on the shoulder.

“It’s not funny!” Billy angrily bellowed, crossing his arms tightly across his chest and flicking his braid behind his shoulder.

“Son, you did that just like Nancy when she’s mad,” observed Patricia.

“I do not!” Nancy denied.

“Sorry, honey, but yes, you do,” her mother reiterated. “And Billy seems to have picked it up from you.”

“But I swear, I don’t act like that,” maintained an anxious daughter.

“Uh—Nancy, I’ve seen you do it, too,” said Lauren, jumping into the discussion.

“Hey! You’re s’posed to be on my side!” Nancy retorted.

“Well, I am—on your bitchy side!” Lauren declared as she raised an arm to defend against her friend hitting her with a rolled up sweater.

“Girls, give’m a break,” said Patricia attempting to prevent any further altercation. “It’s his first girlish action, which looked quite real. And there’s little doubt that he picked it up from his big sister.”

“But how can we be certain he didn’t learn it from you instead, Mom?” Nancy quipped back.

Patricia turned to gaze angrily at her daughter, peering into her eyes. Immediately, Nancy searched her own memory, wondering which of her naughtier antics her mom might have discovered. Surely, Lauren would not have told her about—.

“No, I forgot,” confessed Nancy, realizing her mother’s look was not an accusation but a demonstration. “That’s your angry look. I’ve not seen it for awhile.”

“Keep it in mind, girl,” her mom told her. “I don’t have the charming pout you and your new little sister have.”

Her argument prevailing, Patricia took advantage of a lull in traffic to drive the minivan back on the road.

Anne Pettigrew handed the manilla folder to her colleague. “Brandon’s subtests from the Wechsler are consistent with Asperger’s, Teri. He’s incredibly bright, though, with an I-Q of a hundred sixty-one. Also, his Bem-score was minus two.”

“I’ll call Doctor Devereaux, then,” Theresa Windham resolved as she sadly examined the results in the folder. “More than anything I wanted that diagnosis to be wrong,” she said.

“And it still may,” Dr. Pettigrew cautioned her. “The Wechsler subtest scores aren’t conclusive for Asperger’s syndrome. That’s why you’re calling Devereaux in.”

“Thanks for doing the testing, Anne. Brandon’s parents and I have been friends since college. I’d just hate for their son to have Asperger’s. And It can be so difficult for a family to deal with. But do you know what the worst problem is?”

“What?”

“Regardless of their education or other background, the parents tend to blame themselves,” explained Dr. Windham. “Autism disorders can tear a family apart.”