Stephanie’s Deal by Jennifer Brock Twelve-year-old Stephanie Brooks has just started at her new school, a high-tech liberal environment that her dad calls a "crunchy granola" kind of place. Their policy of acceptance is important to her, since up until six and a half weeks ago, Steven Brooks had been living as a boy, since he had a boy's body. But since then, she has been living as a girl, and believes that she might just have a girl's mind. It started out as a punishment, but it hasn't felt like that for a while. Stephanie has started making new friends at the Hutchinson School, but she still doesn't quite fit in yet. As we begin this chapter, it is Tuesday, February 5, 2008.

Episode 24
For her second day of school, Stephanie wore her low-rise hipster jeans (which meant she had to also wear her low-rise hipster panties) and layered a light blue cardigan sweater over her girlish pink t-shirt that had lace trim around the collar. She thought that it made sure people looking at her didn't see a boy, even though she was in pants. To coordinate with her pink shirt and pink sneakers, she put in the pink beaded earrings that her Aunt Jeannie had made for her for Christmas. Stephanie didn't want to go overboard on the pink, so she didn't wear the matching necklace or bracelet. However, when it came time to do her hair, nothing else seemed to work as well with her outfit as her pink headband. So she just accepted that it would be a pink day. She went light on the makeup so Mom wouldn’t complain; just shiny lip gloss and one stroke of brown mascara on each upper set of lashes. She was almost ready to head out when she remembered to attach the green acorn pin that marked her as a new student to her sweater, and clipped her school ID card on the other side.

She had a quick breakfast with her mother and then they got in the car and drove to Hutchinson. Stephanie felt like a spy or something using her fancy ID card to open the door. She took a moment to get her bearings, and then figured she knew her way around somewhat and in fact her first three classes were identical to the day before, so that made things easier. She found the locker with her name on it, hung up her coat, and went to homeroom. Peace, the blonde girl with pigtails and glasses she'd met the day before, greeted Stephanie and reminded her that she'd have the same lunch period and was welcome to sit with Peace and her friends.

In Creative Writing class, Mr. Reilly had each of the students get up and tell about his or her favorite color. When it was Stephanie's turn, she felt very self-conscious about her outfit. "From looking at me today, you'd probably guess that my favorite color is pink, but really that's my mother's favorite color for me to wear, so pink clothes take up a lot of space in my closet. It kind of looks like Barbie's. My favorite color is actually red, so I just tell myself that I'm wearing light red." The teacher then prodded Stephanie to elaborate on why she preferred red to pink, and she said that red was more glamorous and romantic than pink. It was strange; she'd always liked red even back when she thought she was a boy, but the only reasons she could come up with for why she liked red were feminine ideas about lipstick and roses.

Her math class felt easier, now that she was more familiar with how to use her computer tablet. But the weird part was that the class she had after it, her civics lesson from Mr. Myers, had just as much math in it, going over some more election stuff. He said it was "Superduper Tuesday," a rare event when a lot of states were having primary elections on the same day. He was really excited about it, but Stephanie still couldn't get her head around it all. This stuff with parties and primaries seemed more complicated than it needed to be. Why couldn’t everybody just vote on the same day and whoever wins gets to be President? She thought about asking Mr. Myers but didn’t want to feel stupid.

At last the bell rang and it was time for lunch. Peace grabbed Stephanie at the end of class and led her to their lockers to ditch their bags before heading to the cafeteria. The burritos they served at Hutchinson were even better than Taco Day back at Roosevelt. Peace's friends were nice, if a little weird. They all gave their full names so Stephanie could email them through the school computer. Stephanie recognized a girl with curly red hair and a faceful of freckles from her Creative Writing class. She introduced herself as Lu "short for Lucretia with a T like Mott not a Z like Borgia" Chambers.

Nadia Randolph was a pretty girl with a soft brown complexion and a hint of Asia in her eyelids. She was wearing a long patchwork skirt that Stephanie thought looked fun. Nadia thanked her and said that her mother had made it for her and she'd owned it ever since she was three, with material being added at the hem and removed at the waist as she'd grown, and new patches sewn on where it had been torn or stained. She pointed out one little blue triangle that was all that was left of the original. Nadia said she liked the idea that something could be the same and completely different at the same time. Stephanie smiled at that but couldn’t explain the real reason, so she mumbled something about how being in a new school was like that. The subjects were the same but the way they were presented was totally different.

The only boy in the bunch had platinum hair (that was probably bleached based on his dark eyebrows) arranged in a wild, shaggy style. He wore a button-down shirt tucked into black jeans that were almost tight enough to be leggings. He stood up and bowed his head toward Stephanie and made this spirally gesture with his hand as though he were winding a string attached to his forehead, and Stephanie noticed that he had twinkly diamond studs in his ears. "Delighted to meet you, Milady. Bierce McAllister, at your service." Stephanie blushed a little when he kissed her hand.

Peace leaned over and nudged Stephanie. "He's gay," she loudly whispered.

Stephanie tried to put a shocked expression on her face, but she couldn't hold it for long without giggling.

Bierce just rolled his eyes at Peace. She stuck her tongue out at him. He turned back to Stephanie. "What she's trying to do in her clever way is make sure you're okay with me. You are, right?"

Stephanie wanted to say, "Well duh," but she preferred to keep her own status in the closet. Instead she laughed and said, "Of course I'm okay. You're a person. Why did you ask? I didn't think there were any of those uptight fuddy-duddy types here."

Lu joined in the conversation. "No fuddies that I'm aware of, but there are a few duddies, like that jerkface Ty Spencer." To clue in her friends she added, "He's got Reilly's writing class with Steph and me." They acknowledged knowing who Ty Spencer was with a chorus of sympathetic groans.

Peace spoke up again. "So if you're cool with Bierce, you're gonna love Breezy! When's she going to get a chance to meet her?"

Bierce answered her. "I don't know; she doesn't like winter much. She's more into sundresses and miniskirts these days." He turned to Stephanie. "A couple years ago, I spent all school year dressed as a girl. It was a fun persona, but too limiting. Now Breezy only comes out every once in a while, for special occasions, or if I'm just really bored."

Stephanie had a mixed reaction to that. On the one hand, it was nice to know that her new friends didn't have anything against boys who liked to dress as girls. But on the other hand, her new friends had seen a boy who dressed up as a girl, so they might catch things that other people miss. She was especially worried that Bierce would be able to guess her secret. Stephanie just smiled and tried not to let any of that show on her face.

Bierce winked at her. "My shrink says I shouldn't play for attention so much, so I try not to go overboard all the time. But Hutch encourages artistic expression, so it's hard not to. I love it here!" Stephanie thought about mentioning that she’d only found Hutchinson through her own psychotherapist, but didn’t want to have to explain what was wrong with her.

The last member of their clique was Denali Gibbs, a girl who spent most of lunch busily working on her computer tablet. She was dressed in jeans and a striped sweater, and had her long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. She stayed out of the dramatics, but did look up and shake her head every so often, when her friends were being ridiculous. It was a bit of a relief to see that everyone here wasn't so outgoing.

Stephanie seemed to fit in okay with this group. It was a strange experience, since Steven had been so shy and withdrawn and never made any real friendships. But Stephanie was talking and laughing with a bunch of kids she'd just met as if they were old chums. She wasn't sure if it was because she was a girl now and girls were just naturally friendlier, or if it was because she was happier now as a girl than she'd been before and people were friendlier to happy people. Whatever the reason, she liked it.

After lunch, she had her first flute lesson. The music room was interesting. The kids who knew what they were doing could go to little soundproof booths and play their instruments into microphones, and a computer would tell them if they hit the right notes. But beginning students like Stephanie got to sit on stools arranged in a circle in the middle of the room and receive one-on-one instructions from the teacher, Mr. Kaufman. He was pretty cool, tall and skinny with long spidery fingers, but a really friendly smile. He started by having her spread her hands on a table so he could measure her fingers, to pick the right size flute for her. He went into a closet and handed her a fancy-looking black case, something like a little suitcase. Inside the case was a brand new shiny silver flute broken apart in three pieces. To keep track of where things were, he scanned the bar code on Stephanie's ID and she signed an electronic form to show that she'd accepted the flute.

Mr. Kaufman showed her how to put her flute together and take it apart, and had her practice it a few times before he moved on to showing her how to clean her flute inside and out every time she'd be putting it away. And at last he actually got around to teaching her how to play it. Maybe it was from having lunch with Bierce, but Stephanie got the impression that her teacher might be gay. There was just something in the way he dressed, and the tone of voice he used, that seemed kind of "dainty," if that's the right word.

Her suspicions seemed to be confirmed when he pulled out a tube of lipstick to show her how to shape her mouth to play. He showed her the print his lip made on his own flute, and then gave Stephanie her own fresh tube of lipstick and had her try to make the same shape lip print. She had to clean off her flute several times before she got the right shape, but then when she blew across the hole, it made a musical sound! Mr. Kaufman gave her some breathing exercises to practice with for homework. Stephanie considered keeping the lipstick on for the rest of the day, but ended up switching back to her original gloss.

The next new class Stephanie had was called "Digital Media Lab," and she was curious to find out what that meant. It turned out to be about making art with computers. It made her a little uncomfortable that she seemed to be one of the oldest students in the class except for these three boys in the back who looked like they belonged in high school, and of the eleven other kids there were only four girls and she guessed that they all were fourth-graders. But the teacher Mr. Sanchez was like some kind of awesome punk biker dude, with pierced eyebrows and circles stretching out his earlobes, and tattoos on his arms. He seemed to tell what she was thinking and told her not to worry about being a little behind the other kids; the class was an introduction to the technology and all that would be expected of her was that she'd know more about the tools at the end of the semester than she did at the beginning.

He showed her how she could plug her computer in at a workstation with a bigger screen and a special pen-thing for drawing. Then he actually asked her how she wanted to learn to use the software. He said that she could just dive into the program and poke around to find out what it could do, or run a tutorial program that would guide her through the system one step at a time at her own pace, or she could follow along while he gave seminars at the front of the classroom. If she wanted to pop in a pair of earbuds and tune him out, she was welcome. It was weird to think that she'd be the one in control, not the teacher. This school was strange, but it seemed like the right place for Stephanie. She picked the tutorial option, but she though she might do some exploring along the way.

She zipped through the tutorial pretty easily, until she hit this one point where the program wouldn’t do what it was supposed to. She tried over and over again, getting more and more frustrated. The teacher was in the middle of giving a lesson, so she didn’t want to interrupt him to ask for help. She was surprised by a voice behind her. "Hi, I’m Jerry. You look lost. Want help?" It was one of the older boys who’d been sitting in the back of the room. He’d gotten up and come over to her desk.

Stephanie wished herself invisible. She just wanted to disappear so this boy wouldn’t see how stupid she was at this computer program, but it didn’t work. He just stood there, smiling at her. He was taller, probably like fifteen or sixteen, with dark curly hair and little round glasses. He looked like Harry Potter from the latest movie, but a little chubbier. He might even have been kind of cute, if she’d been the kind of girl to notice cute boys, but she totally wasn’t. She took a breath and tried to calm down before speaking. "Um, hi. I’m Stephanie. This computer’s just being stupid! It said I could draw a circle and then click on it to change stuff, but it doesn’t work." She demonstrated what she had tried for him.

Jerry laughed, and she felt humiliated to her very core. But then he looked at her with his eyes wide and said it was cool that she could draw a circle freehand like that, and made a joke she didn’t quite get about it getting her a job with the pope. Then he showed her that it wanted her to use the special circle making tool, not the pen. That did feel like a total rookie move on her part, so she relaxed. Stephanie laughed with him and thanked him for his help. He went back to his desk and she read the rest of the tutorial more closely.

Just before the end of class, her computer chirped that she had a new email. She clicked on the thingy and saw that she’d gotten a message from "Jerry Garcia Schneider" with the subject "Hang in there." It had a thing attached and when she opened it, it was a cute little cartoon. It showed a girl sitting at a computer and it was a pretty good likeness of Stephanie, with the same hairdo and the same outfit and a decent cartoon version of her nose. The only thing that seemed off was that Stephanie didn’t think her boobs were as noticeable as the cartoon girl’s. She got a frowny face and a bubble appeared over her head that said "Stupid computer" and then she pulled out a giant mallet and smashed it up. Then a bunch of calendar pages flew by and Cartoon Stephanie was sitting at a new computer happily typing away. The scene faded to a big sign that said "Don’t worry – it gets easier." It was pretty nice of Jerry to do that for her. She turned around to thank him, but the class had ended and he’d left to go to his next class.

Stephanie’s own next class was Folk Dancing. It was held in Gym B, so she wasn’t sure if it was like her Tai Chi class and she needed to change her clothes first or whether she could just dance in her regular clothes. She went back to her locker to get her gym bag just in case, but that made her like the last one to show up for class. There was a clump of girls in the room all casually chatting and Stephanie wasn’t sure how to interrupt and ask about the class, but then one of the girls noticed her and broke out from the bunch. A closer look revealed her to actually be older than the students, around twenty or something. She also looked familiar – it was the receptionist from the dance studio where Stephanie had been taking ballroom lessons to get ready for her cousin’s wedding.

"Oh hey, it’s the Maestro’s favorite student! He’s gonna be so jealous when I tell him his little princess is in my class." Stephanie blushed and gave a confused smile.

It turned out that Cheri (none of the other students called her "Ms. Middleton") was actually more than just a receptionist at the dance studio. She was a trained instructor, and taught several classes at Hutchinson. She explained to the other students how she knew Stephanie, and had them introduce themselves to her.

There were seven other girls, who ranged in age from nine to seventeen, and two boys. The younger of the two, a thirteen-year-old Latino-looking boy named Ferris, made it clear that he was only taking the class to be with his girlfriend Seattle. The older boy, sixteen-year-old Cerulean, was just really into dancing. He was giddy and wanted to know everything Stephanie knew about the Maestro. Stephanie wondered if there were that many openly gay people at Hutchinson, or if she’d just coincidentally run across three of them in one day.

The way the class worked, they’d learn a new dance every month, and since Stephanie was joining them on the first session in February, they were all on the same page, so she didn’t feel as lost as in some of her other classes. Cheri said that since they now had an even number of students she was able to change her old plan and switch to a dance that needed pairs. She started by showing them a video of authentic Ukrainian folk dancers performing the dance they’d be learning, and then went into a brief presentation about the geography of Ukraine and its culture. She said that traditional dances were a great way to gain insight into how other peoples felt about things. Stephanie wasn’t sure she understood or agreed, but nodded as though the idea made sense.

Cheri had the students line up by height and then split them into pairs, and for the three pairs that had two girls she told the taller one she’d be learning the boy’s part. Stephanie held her breath and only let it out when she got paired with a taller girl. It would have been too weird if she’d have to pretend to be a boy. But the partner picked for her was Seattle, and Ferris was a little upset at that. He complained to Cheri, who told him that he needed to have a more open mind about things but then she asked Stephanie and Mariposa, the girl he’d been paired with, if they were okay with switching partners. The girls nodded, so she switched their partners. Stephanie was now paired with a grouchy Ferris. Cheri said she’d seen Stephanie do amazing work with an uncooperative dance partner before, so she expected good things. Stephanie hoped she wouldn’t let her down.

They ran through the video again, and then Cheri started teaching them the movements. It looked like the finished dance would be kind of fun, but there were a lot of pieces to learn. By the end of class Stephanie understood why folk dancing counted as Phys. Ed. in this school. Cheri said that the girls who were dancing as boys needed to make sure to come to the next session in pants, but the girls who were dancing as girls could wear skirts if they wanted to. She told Stephanie that she didn’t need to be as fancy as for ballroom; this was a more casual dance lesson.

When her Mom came to collect her, Stephanie wanted to tell her everything about how her day went, but she couldn’t decide what to start with and it all came out sort of jumbled together. Her mother just chuckled and smiled, pleased to see that her child was excited about school, in sharp contrast with Steven’s old attitude.

They didn't have time to drive home first and instead went straight to Stephanie's appointment with her therapist. Dr. Howard asked for a few details on how Stephanie was settling into her new school, and Stephanie's response was to give her an unsolicited hug and thank her profusely for helping to get her into Hutchinson. She talked about starting to make new friends and meeting more gays than she ever had before in her life, and Dr. Howard tried to steer her away from labelling people. She asked if she was feeling as bored and disconnected as Steven had at Roosevelt, and Stephanie said that even the classes that were about stuff she didn't care for were still kind of interesting, and everyone made her feel included.

At home, Stephanie plugged her tablet into the workstation at her desk and dove into her homework without needing to be prodded. She noticed that she’d received some emails. One was from a teacher she hadn’t met, a Ms. Benton, who said that since Stephanie was scheduled for an hour of playground time on Wednesday, she might want to bring along a change of clothes in case of bad weather.

She also got an email from Denali, the quiet girl from lunch. She said that Stephanie seemed nice and told her that she shouldn’t feel intimidated by the more outgoing members of the clique, and she was welcome to sit with them even when Peace wasn’t making her. She thanked Stephanie for helping Denali and Nadia to feel less outnumbered by Peace, Lu, and Bierce, who didn’t seem to get that some people prefer to be low-key. Stephanie thought that was a sweet note and sent a quick thank you response. Making new friends was a weird but cool feeling, and wasn’t as hard as she’d expected.

The other email she got ruined Stephanie’s good mood and sent her into a panic attack. It was from Kimberly Stevens, a girl from her old church, a girl who’d been to Stephanie’s birthday party, a girl who’d been in that Christmas pageant that started this whole thing, a girl who knew Stephanie’s secret and could expose her. When she got up enough nerve to open it, it wasn’t quite as scary. The message just said, "Hi! I saw your new student announcement. Welcome to Hutch! So you’re going by Stephanie all the time now? That’s so cool! I checked, but we’re not in any of the same classes, so frowny face. I guess I’ll see you around the halls and stuff. Let me know if you need help getting around campus." Stephanie couldn’t help herself and sent a reply, "Hi Kim! Thanks. Hutchinson does seem like a cool place. I’ll keep an eye out for you. Um, I probably don’t need to ask, but just in case. Please don’t tell anyone about my whole name thing and stuff, you know. To be honest, this me feels more real than that old one. Thanks again."

Stephanie had to take a few minutes to settle herself before joining her parents for dinner, so they wouldn’t think something was wrong and pull her out of her new school already. She held onto the positives and tried to shake off her doubts. Things were going great, and so far she had no reason to think they couldn't continue to be.