“There you go. He doesn’t care about you as a person; he just wants you because you’re pretty.”

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Twisted Throwback

part 15 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

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Friday morning during breakfast, Mom and Dad and Mildred wanted to hear about our day in Atlanta. Dad had heard some of it from Uncle Jack, but they wanted to hear from me about what Dr. Underwood and Dr. Yarrow had said.

“If I understand correctly, then, this drug he recommended you start using will prevent your male glands from causing any further masculine development?” Dad asked.

“Yeah, that’s right. And then later they can start me on female hormones. I don’t know how much later; probably three months, but hopefully sooner. He said he wanted to meet you or Mom or both first.”

“That is sensible of him. We would have gone with you yesterday, if it were possible.”

“He said he could meet you on a Saturday or Sunday.”

“Then I think we will try to meet with him next Saturday.”

The weather had warmed up a bit and Mildred was feeling perkier, but when I asked her how school had gone yesterday, she scowled and said: “Some girls put a new lock on my locker while I was in the shower after gym, and they hid my towel... I had to stand there naked and wet and beg people to tell the coach, and she got some stuff from the lost and found for me to wear while the maintenance guys were breaking the lock off.”

“I’m going to meet with the principal again after work today,” Mom said. “This is too much. It’s dangerous for her to not be able to dry off quickly... she loses heat from evaporation and can’t replace it like we can.”

“By the time the coach got me a towel and some clothes I’d already cooled way down... I didn’t feel cold, but I was sluggish and stupid all through my next class.”

I squeezed Mildred’s hand. “I’m sorry. Do you know who put the lock on?”

She shook her head. “Somebody must have seen them do it, but nobody’s talking.”

Soon after that we were off to school. In homeroom, I told Lionel some about my trip to Atlanta Thursday; but I could tell he was uncomfortable hearing about my visit with Dr. Underwood and the referral to the endocrinologist. (I wasn’t even going into much detail!) So I changed the subject, and told him about the trick testing, glossing over the clothes tests and telling him about Dr. Yarrow looking at me with a telescope from a mile away.

“And they gave me some exercises to work on to get conscious control of the image I’m projecting, so maybe eventually...”

“You could look like anybody you want to? Cool!”

“Maybe. Right now I’d settle for being able to make people see the real me in the mirror.”

He looked puzzled for a moment at my reference to the “real me,” and then boggled when he figured it out. “Oh. Yeah, I guess that would be nice.”

After Physics, Vic walked with me to Calculus, and asked me if I knew yet whether we could hang out after school.

“...Maybe,” I said. “See... Rob Dyer asked me out, and I kind of told him maybe so, if my parents said it was okay and we didn’t have something going on, and I should have made sure he knew I only had a mental Twist, but I was too flustered to think of it and we didn’t have long to talk just then. So —”

“Wait, what? Rob Dyer?”

“Yeah — yesterday, I mean Wednesday, right after Mandarin.”

“And you’re seriously thinking about going out with him?”

“Sure,” I said defensively. “Maybe. It depends on how he reacts when I tell him more about my Twist. I think he already knows, but I want to make sure.”

“But he — you — He never had anything to say to you before your Twist, did he?”

“No... I guess not.”

“There you go. He doesn’t care about you as a person; he just wants you because you’re pretty.”

I flushed; Vic wasn’t the first person to tell me I was pretty, but it was always nice to hear it.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that,” I said. “I mean — it’s different when you’re dating. I didn’t have anywhere near as much in common with Laura as I do with you and Lionel, but we still had fun.”

He looked at me. “Are you ready for that kind of fun?”

I blushed brighter. “No... not really. Not until I get my body fixed. But — it doesn’t have to go that far. It’s just one date, so far anyway.”

“Don’t,” he urged. “Even if he’s still interested when he finds out... he’s not good enough for you.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. I went in to Calculus, and Vic went on down the hall toward his next class.

After Calculus, I talked briefly with Morgan. Sarah had told her about Rob asking me out, and she wanted to know if I’d decided or told him my decision yet — I said I hadn’t quite made up my mind. “What do you think? Do you know him?”

“Not really. Olive thinks he’s nice but not her type. He’s not mine either; you’re welcome to him if you want him.”

“Thanks... I guess.”

After Modern History I pumped Olive for information about Rob on the way to lunch.

“He’s a nice enough guy,” she said. “He listens, and he’s got good taste in movies, and he really gives you his full attention when you’re on a date...”

“But?” I could tell there was something she was hesitant to say.

“He’s a little pushy. No, not about sex — at least he wasn’t with me; I went out with him four or five times, and we didn’t go very far, and he didn’t push me to go farther than I wanted. But... well, after our first date he told me what movie we were going to see next time, and he assigned me a couple of old movies to watch at home first so I’d understand it.”

“It was a sequel to something and he recommended you see the others first?”

“No. It was like, this one was riffing off motifs in the others or homaging them or something, and he didn’t think I’d fully appreciate the one we were seeing if I hadn’t seen the others. And he prodded me a couple of times, asking if I’d seen those other movies yet, and telling me where I could download them. And then the day before our next date, he told me he liked the skirt I’d been wearing a couple of days earlier, and he wanted me to wear that on our date... Things like that. He’d tell me the blouse I was wearing didn’t suit my coloring, and recommend I wear something else specific.”

“He does know how to dress well.” Better than Olive, I thought, though it was hard to compare a guy with a girl in that way; their range of options and the principles for deciding among them were so different.

“Yeah, he’s sharp. And I like dressing up on special occasions as much as any girl, but I got tired of him insisting I always wear my nicest things on ordinary school days. If he’s okay with you being, well, not quite all girl yet, I don’t see why you shouldn’t go out with him once or twice and see for yourself.”

“Maybe. I’m — I want to. But I’m a little nervous about it.”

“What about we make it a double date? You and Rob, and me and Karl. I’ll talk with Karl and I’m pretty sure he won’t mind.”

“That’s good. I’ll let you know after I talk to Rob.”

I’d been planning to eat lunch with Lionel and Vic, but after the way Vic had acted when I told him about Rob asking me out, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sit with him just then. I went through the lunch line with Olive and sat with her, Sarah and Morgan. Olive took out her tablet and worked on it while she started eating; Sarah and Morgan asked me about my day in Atlanta, and I told them more than I’d told Lionel, including about getting my hair done and meeting Ingrid.

Then I saw Rob coming toward our table, and my heart pounded. He looked sharper than ever today; he’d had a haircut since I saw him Wednesday, and he was wearing black dress pants with a long-sleeved dark blue shirt and a tie with red and black fractal patterns.

“Good afternoon, ladies. I hope I’m not interrupting anything; if it suits, I’d like to talk to Emily for a moment?”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no, you’re not interrupting. I want to talk.”

“Have you had a chance to check with your parents about tonight?”

“They said it’s okay,” I said, which was more or less true. They hadn’t forbidden me to go out with him, though they’d advised against it. “But there’s something else I need to tell you first... Um, you want to sit down?”

Olive scooted over and Rob took an empty chair and pushed it in between me and Olive. “Go ahead.”

“I, um — you should know more about my Twist, I think, before you go out with me. It’s not quite what it looks like — it’s a mental Twist, I have a girl brain but I haven’t changed physically yet. And my trick makes me look good in girl’s clothes, but it’s going to be months before I start looking like a girl without my trick, and maybe a year or more before I get my body fixed all the way.”

“I’d heard some of that — I wasn’t sure how much was true, I’d also heard other contradictory rumors. But that’s cool with me. So, do you want to see The Left Hand of Darkness tonight at the Magnifico? It’s the 2058 version filmed in Greenland, starring Ferdinand Ishiguro and Jocasta Flynn. Seven o’clock. We can eat at the Tower of Hanoi beforehand, say five-thirty, or somewhere else if you’d prefer.”

“Tower of Hanoi is fine,” I said. “Did you bid on that movie?”

“Yes — cost me two weeks' earnings but it was worth it if you’re willing to see it with me.”

The Magnifico was an auction-style theater. You could bid on a time-slot, asking them to show a particular movie; once the auction for a time-slot was ended, they’d announce the movie and sell other tickets to anybody else that wanted to see it. If Rob had placed the winning bid for a movie about aliens who change sex with a Twisted lead actress, he was pretty serious about making me happy — even if he didn’t know me well enough to do it particularly well. I was pretty sure that, even if the 2058 version was a lot better than the remake I’d seen a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much now because of my Twist making me less interested in fiction. But I wasn’t going to tell him that, not now when he’d paid two weeks' earnings to screen it for me.

“That sounds great,” I said. “But, um, Olive had an idea —” I looked past him at her and gave her a pleading look. She looked up from her tablet and said:

“Karl says it suits him... What about a double date, me and Karl and you and Emily?”

“Sure,” Rob said after a brief pause. “That’s cool. Since I was the high bidder, I can get up to five friends in with me. Does Tower of Hanoi suit you and Karl?”

“He’s coming over now,” Olive said, and a moment later Karl approached our table. He bent over and kissed Olive on the cheek, then said:

“So what’s the plan?”

“Dinner at Tower of Hanoi at five-thirty, The Left Hand of Darkness at seven at the Magnifico,” Rob said.

“Never heard of the movie, but I trust your judgment. I’ll pick you up at five-ten?” Karl said to Olive.

“That’s good. See you then.”

“I’ll pick you up about then as well,” Rob said to me. “You live in the big white house on the corner of Lafayette and Stephens, right?”

“No, that’s the old Harper home place — my Aunt Karen lives there now. I live at 61 Honeysuckle Lane.”

“All right,” he said, making a note on his tablet. “I’ll pick you up at five-ten, and we’ll meet Karl and Olive at the restaurant.”

“Sure.”

“I look forward to a lovely evening, Emily. See you in Mandarin.” He stood up, and he and Karl walked away, talking.

Morgan looked at me and shook her head. “You’re jumping in with both feet, aren’t you?”

“I guess so. I’m glad Olive’s going to be there, though — I’m excited about it but really nervous too.”

“I imagine so.”

Sarah reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You’ll do fine, I’m sure. Watch Olive and do what she does — well, more or less; this is her third date with Karl and your first date with Rob, so you shouldn’t let him do more than do anything more than hold your hand and kiss you — and he shouldn’t kiss you until near the end.”

“I don’t think I want to do any more than that on the tenth date, until I get my body fixed.”

“You’ll probably be okay with Rob,” Olive said, “but he won’t be the last guy you go out with, and some of the others probably won’t be as well-mannered. You need to be prepared to rebuff them gently at first and be ready to call for help if they won’t take no for an answer...”

After they’d given me some more advice of that kind, I sent Mom and Dad a message about my impending date, stressing that it was a double date and I wouldn’t be alone with him.

When I got to Mandarin, Rob was already in his seat; but he rose and bowed to me as I approached mine. I blushed and attempted a curtsy in return; I heard people talking about us until Mr. Bao brought the class to order and drafted Tracy Esmond to read a passage from the textbook. Thanks to my Twist I was able to concentrate pretty thoroughly on the lesson, for a while; until Mr. Bao asked Rob to read another passage, and I became so focused on the sound of his voice that I wasn’t thinking about the content at all... fortunately I’d read it a couple of times in preparation for class, and when Mr. Bao asked me a question about it I was able, after a few moments' thought, to answer more or less correctly.

During gym, Coach Guardini had us playing basketball again, and Rob was playing in the other game at the other end of the court. I wasn’t quite as overwhelmed by the sight of the hot guys around me as I’d been a few days earlier, and that thing tucked between my legs remained pretty manageable.

I checked my messages just after I got on the bus, before starting to do homework, and saw one from Mom:

Your father and I will try to be home before five, but if we’re not home by the time Rob comes to pick you up, don’t leave yet. We want to meet him.

I belatedly remembered to message Vic and tell him I couldn’t meet him that afternoon, but we could probably hang out Saturday or Sunday.

When Mildred got home, I told her about the change in plans, and asked her help picking out what I should wear for my date. She enthusiastically went through my whole wardrobe — which wasn’t very extensive yet — commenting on every possible permutation, it seemed, and why they would be good for some situations but not ideal for this one, before recommending that I wear the other dress I’d bought the previous Saturday, the one I hadn’t worn to church: an ankle-length sleeveless dress in solid dark green.

“You should wear this other dress on your second date, unless you have a chance to buy something better by then.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can you help me with my makeup too?”

Mom found us working on it, in front of the vanity in Mildred’s bedroom, when she came home a little early. “You look really nice, honey.”

“Thanks to Mildred,” I said. “She’s helping me get ready.”

Mom gave me a strange look. “I hope this works out... You told this Rob about your Twist? How you’re still physically male?”

“Yeah, and he’s okay with it.”

Mom shook her head. “I’m glad you made it a double date. I’m a little worried... I know you’re seventeen, but this is your first time dating as a girl, and I feel like I haven’t prepared you well enough...”

“Morgan and Sarah and Olive had a lot of advice for me,” I said, “but I’d like to hear what you have to say too.” She smiled and sat down on Mildred’s bed, and started telling us stories about the guys she’d dated in high school, before she went off to college and met Dad.

Some time later, when Mildred and I had finished my makeup, and we were still listening to Mom’s stories, we were startled by the doorbell. I jumped up. “That’s Rob!”

“Wait here,” Mom said, “or in your room... I’ll go meet him, and call you and tell you he’s here, but give me a minute or two to talk to him before you come downstairs.”

“Okay,” I said, and forced myself to sit back down. Mildred gave me an encouraging smile.

A few seconds later Mom’s voice came: “Emily, Rob is here.”

“I’m almost ready,” I lied, and then set a stopwatch timer on my tablet. When two minutes had gone by I got up.

“Wish me luck,” I said to Mildred.

“You’ve got it.”

I went downstairs. Rob was standing near the front door, talking with Mom and Uncle Jack.

“Good evening, Emily,” he said.

“Rob says the movie should be over within a few minutes of nine,” Mom said. “Be back by nine-thirty.”

“Okay,” I said. That was earlier than they used to require me to get home after my dates with Laura — earlier than they’d asked me to get home after hanging out with the girls last week — but now wasn’t the time to argue about it. I hugged her, and then Rob extended his hand and I took it, and started to follow him out the door —

But just then Dad got home, and of course he wanted to meet Rob and talk to him. It was nearer five-twenty than five-ten when Rob and I got into his car and drove off. It was newer and nicer than Morgan’s car or Vic’s, though not new.

“Your parents are pretty cool,” he said. “And your uncle. Does he live with you?”

“Not permanently — he’s just staying with us until Thanksgiving.” I told him a little about Uncle Jack’s Twist, and my dad’s, and he asked me a couple of other questions about my family, and told me a little about his.

We found Karl and Olive already seated at a nice table near the west window; the sun was just setting, turning the sparse clouds red and purple. “Hi,” Olive said. “We ordered spring rolls already.”

“So tell us about this movie,” Karl said.

Rob proceeded to do so, telling us about the book (which I hadn’t read, though we’d read one of Le Guin’s short stories in Literature) and the previous attempts at a movie, including a half-hour fanvid from the twenty-twenties and a project that got as far as casting and filming a few scenes just before the Antarctic Flu broke out.

“Then Antarctica was closed off, and they couldn’t do the location filming they’d planned on, and several of the cast were down with the flu and that was the end of it.

“Then in 2057 when Jocasta Flynn made it big with John Dough and the Cherub, and was talking to a couple of directors she knew about producing a project especially for her, Radhika Martinez suggested The Left Hand of Darkness. She thought Jocasta would be perfect for Estraven, with the way her Twist made her androgynous and her trick to temporarily become male or female.”

“I’ve heard about her and seen one or two of her movies,” I said, “but never this one.”

“It’s her best,” Rob said. “Ten times better than that remake a few years ago...”

The waiter brought the spring rolls Karl and Olive had ordered and took our entrée orders about then, and the conversation turned to other subjects. I asked Rob what he was planning to do after he graduated, and he said he wanted to go to the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles. “But if I don’t get in there, I’m also applying to several other film schools.”

I told him about my own tentative plans to major in political science at UGA or GSU, or even Emory if I could get a good enough scholarship. “But since my Twist, I’m thinking I might do history instead... and if we end up moving to Spiral, I might go to school in California somewhere.”

“Why are your parents thinking of moving to Spiral?” Rob asked, and I told him about Mildred. She hadn’t come downstairs while he was around, so he hadn’t seen her. Karl’s eyebrows raised.

“My little brother said something about a girl at his school who went through a Twist and looked like a snake. I figured she was probably one of your cousins; I didn’t know she was your sister.”

“I hope he’s not one of the kids who’s been picking on her,” I muttered darkly. “She’s having a really hard time.”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past him. I’ll give him a talking to about it.”

“Thanks.”

Karl and Olive were touching a lot; nothing indecent, but they were holding hands whenever they didn’t need both hands free for eating, and a couple of times he put his arm around her shoulders. I glanced at Rob frequently, wondering when he might start to do the same. We’d held hands on the way to the car, but he hadn’t touched me since then.

He took my hand when we stood up to leave the restaurant. “It’s a nice evening; why don’t we walk to the theater?”

“Sure,” I said, and Karl and Olive agreed. The Magnifico was only a couple of blocks from Tower of Hanoi; Rob and I walked in front, holding hands pretty much the whole way, until we got to the box office and he took out the pass showing he’d won the auction for the seven o’clock timeslot. That got all four of us in.

“I need to visit the little girls' room before the show,” Olive said, and I followed her.

“What do you think?” Olive asked me when we were in the ladies' room. I stood with my back to the mirror and thought.

“He’s pretty much like I expected, from what you told me... Polite, but opinionated about movies.”

She nodded. “He’ll probably kiss you during the movie, but not till near the end, if it’s like the first time I went out with him.”

My heart pounded. “I do need to go,” I said, and went into one of the stalls as another woman came out of it.

A few minutes later we found Karl standing near the entrance to theater number three holding a tray of drink cups and a tub of popcorn.

“Rob’s inside saving seats for us,” he said, and we followed him in, Olive putting her arm around his waist since his hands were full. Rob had gotten seats on the third row. I slid in next to him, and Olive next to me. There were only a few other people in the theater, and none were sitting in front of us. The theater was showing a series of still advertisements for local businesses, mildly annoying but less obnoxious than the advertisements disguised as pre-show entertainment you get in big-city theaters.

Rob took my hand. “I’m glad you came,” he said quietly. “I was a little worried you might not want to date yet, having just been a girl for a few days. But you’re so confident, so... so joyful. You look like you’re having fun being a girl.”

“...Thanks,” I said. “I’m... glad to know I look more confident than I feel.”

The last of the advertisements disappeared and the screen went black for several seconds before the MGM lion roared. Then a spaceship descended from orbit into an icy landscape, to land in a muddy field surrounded by glaciers and snow-capped mountains...

I confess my mind wandered a lot during the movie. Even my pre-Twist self would probably have considered it too slow-paced, and now, with my greatly diminished taste for fiction, it just couldn’t hold my interest despite its seeming relevance to my situation. I found my mind wandering to what Rob had told me about his plans to go to film school and work in movies, eventually becoming a director, and to what I’d heard about the Twisted lead actress, Jocasta Flynn, and then, inevitably, back to my term papers and other projects due in the last few weeks of the semester. My hand and Rob’s, fingers entwined, grew sweaty after a while, and I discreetly disengaged mine for a moment and wiped it off on my dress before putting it on the arm of my seat, where Rob could take it again or not. He did, a few minutes later.

I was aware of Olive and Karl making out on my right; she was leaning into him and had her face turned toward him more often than to the screen. I wanted to lean over against Rob, to feel him against me — but I didn’t want it to go any farther than that, and I wasn’t sure how he would react, whether he might take that as an invitation to go further than I was ready for. I sat back in my seat, holding his hand, and thought about everything except the movie.

Then something in the movie caught my attention. It was the big romantic scene near the end, where Jocasta Flynn’s character goes into heat, and because she’s trapped in this snowed-in cabin with an Earth-human who’s always male, Ferdinand Ishiguro’s character, of course she becomes female, and she’s begging him to have sex with her and he’s chivalrously refusing to take advantage of her when she’s not in her right mind, which Karl commented afterward showed that he wasn’t paying any attention when the Gethenians explained about their biology. Anyway, I’m not sure what happened after that, because right about then Rob leaned over toward me and gently cupped my chin in his left hand. I turned toward him, but he didn’t lean any closer, and I understood: he was going to let me take the next step, if there was going to be a next step.

I leaned toward him, and we kissed. It was a little awkward; our noses bumped and I was distracted with worry that he’d feel something wrong, that my nose and chin weren’t shaped the way they looked. But we tried again a few moments later and it was better, though not great. Then he leaned back and smiled at me for a long moment before returning his attention to the screen. I kept looking at him for the rest of the movie.

When it was over, Rob wanted to sit through all of the credits. I sat with him while Karl and Olive went to the restrooms; we kissed a couple more times, and it was a little better than before. He didn’t put his hands anywhere too scary, or too exciting. When the credits ended, we walked out, still holding hands, and found Karl and Olive talking in the lobby.

“Want to stop at Ormond’s for milkshakes?” Karl asked us.

I checked the time; it was already fifteen after nine. “I’ve got to get home right away,” I said. “Sorry.” Karl didn’t look sorry to have some time alone with Olive after parting from us.

“We can walk back to the cars together,” Rob said, “that’s on your way to Ormond’s.”

Rob and Karl talked about the movie as we walked, four abreast with me and Olive on the outside of the boys. When we got to Tower of Hanoi, Rob and I turned aside into their parking lot and Karl and Olive kept walking.

“See you Monday,” Olive said. “Are you coming to Sarah’s house after school?”

“Probably,” I said.

Rob unlocked and opened the passenger door for me, and kissed me once more before I got in. When he got in and started the engine, he said: “I had a wonderful time tonight. I’d always — well, I hope you won’t take this wrong...”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you were pretty cute even before your Twist. But I knew you were straight, and there was no point in asking you. When you Twisted, and looked even better, I wondered if you might be interested in guys now, and I did some research and couldn’t find out anything definite... but it seemed like some people change orientation when they Twist, even if it’s not very many, and I thought I should take a chance. I’m glad I did.”

I had mixed feelings about that. I’d known he was bi, but knowing that he’d already been attracted to me before — that he liked this body I hated — well, I wasn’t sure what to think or feel about it.

“I had a good time too,” I said, exaggerating slightly. Should I tell him now how little I’d enjoyed the movie? Not just yet, I decided. I had something else to tell him that he might not want to hear, that might mean he wouldn’t want to go out with me again — and in that case he didn’t need to know how the Twist had changed my tastes in entertainment. “But — I’m really not comfortable with my body. I don’t know how long it will take to get it fixed — maybe months, maybe years. And until I get it at least partly fixed, I’m not comfortable going any further than we went tonight — holding hands, and kissing, but nothing else. Is that okay?”

“That’s fine,” he said. “I enjoy being with you. To be honest, I haven’t gone a lot further than this with anybody, even Charles.”

He was almost to my house before I worked up the nerve to ask, “What happened with Charles?”

“After his family moved away, we wrote back and forth for a while; but it didn’t really work as a long-distance thing.”

“Yeah... it was the same with me and Laura.” He hadn’t exactly answered my question the way I’d meant it, but I didn’t want to ask more bluntly.

When we got to my house, Rob walked with me up the porch steps. Through the living room window I saw Mildred sitting with Mom, Dad, and Uncle Jack, apparently watching something on TV. But when she saw us coming up the steps, she got up and went upstairs before I got the door open.

Mom got up and came to the door. “Good evening. Did you kids have a good time?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It was an honor to enjoy the company of your daughter tonight,” Rob said. “I hope I may have the privilege again sometime.”

“That would be great,” I said. “Um, sometime next week?” I glanced at Mom and Dad.

“Let’s figure out what our schedule is,” Mom said. “We’ll let you know and you can arrange a suitable time with Rob.”

“Good night, then.” Rob pressed my hand, but didn’t kiss me again in front of my parents.

After he left, Mom wanted to know more. I told her how far we’d gone, though I may not have told her the exact number of times he kissed me, and that I’d said that was as much as I wanted to do, and how Rob said he was okay with that. Dad listened but didn’t say much.

Before I went to my room, I knocked on Mildred’s door.

“Come in,” she said.

“Hi,” I said, opening the door. She was curled up in bed reading. “I, um, noticed you left the room when you saw us coming... are you okay?”

“I just didn’t feel like dealing with your boyfriend right now,” she said. “He’d probably be okay with me if he’s okay with you, but if he was weird about me... I didn’t want to deal with that right before going to bed. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No... and, he’s not really my boyfriend. I mean, maybe he will be, but we’ve only gone on one date.” I sat down in the chair at her vanity, after carefully swiveling it so my back was to the mirror.

“What’s he like?”

I told her about what he’d said and done during supper and the movie, and the ride home. She sighed. “I wonder if I’ll ever get to do that.”

“Sure you will!”

“Don’t hold your breath. I’m not. There might be a few guys who think I’m pretty, like Bobby... but how likely is it they’d want to actually kiss me, not just look at me? You might think a tiger or a deer is pretty, but you don’t want to kiss it. And they’re at least mammals.”

I got out of the chair and sat on the bed beside her, and hugged her. As toasty as it was in her room, she still felt slightly cool to the touch. “Don’t give up on yourself that easy! There’ll be somebody for you. Maybe not in Trittsville, but somewhere.”

“Somewhere,” she repeated dully. I held her for a while longer before I went to my room, where I changed into my nightgown and studied for a while before going to bed.

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon