I had spent thirty minutes in the bathroom stalls of the locker room hoping that the boys, group that I definitely wasn’t part of despite of many of my family members wishes, would disappear from the changing space.

Waiting in the bathroom had become some sort of a habit of mine since the start of the school year… Actually, “habit” was the wrong word; “survival protocol” was a better term for what I was doing right now. Being in the bathroom stalls for me on Wednesday afternoons was as much as a necessity for me as access to the internet and social media was for some teenage girls, you see, it was a question of survival, like housing, air and food.

I know what you might think and no, it wasn’t about bodily functions… let’s just say that it was about me and many parts of my body not receiving not so gentle contact from other people’s extremities.

At the start of the school year, I started telling my parents every few P.E classes that I had “fallen down the stairs”, but eventually I realised that the excuse had worked way too many times. My parents were workaholic zombies that weren’t that much around but I realized that even my very disinterested parents would start to put two and two together even if it might take them a few weeks (I was going to say months, but I think that I’m allowed to have a little bit of faith in my genitors, they have yet to serve me brains for dinner after all) and if they didn’t, my aunt would, and she would raise hell for my tormentors and collaterally me.

Ironically, what started saving me from trouble with the bullies was the thing that had caused me trouble in the first place. Being tiny for a male had made me a target, but at the same time, it also allowed me to sneak around school between classes without most people noticing. Sadly for me though that also meant no friends, male or female. Anyway, by the start of the second month the only places where I wasn’t safe were the bathrooms and the locker rooms. Thankfully, I quickly realized that mixing both places was the smart thing to do.

I calmly opened the stall door and tried to hear if there wasn’t anyone dangerous around. A wall blocked the view to the lockers, so I had to take many cautions to not get caught by the not so smart primates that went to school with me.

I heard the noise of someone changing but I also noticed a lack of Neanderthal speech making me think that maybe it was one of the boys that didn’t care actually give a crap about me.

I peeked around the corner just to be sure and… I had quite a bit of a surprise.

Erik, a student that surely had to be in Santa’s naughty list was putting what seemed like girl clothes in his bag; girl clothes that he had seemed to try on moments earlier. I looked around to see if there weren’t any camera crews around. I mean this whole thing was ridiculous; it clearly had to be a prank. Why would a dude that seemed to exude virility, well, as much virility a fifteen year old beardless boy could exude, do that?

He wasn’t that tall and neither did he have an impressive musculature but he had a voice as deep as Mariana’s trench and he was still very strong. I couldn’t understand why he would ever dress up as a girl. Losing a bet or a fight? That would normally be an explanation but we were talking about Erik Fletcher. He would get in a fight every few weeks and I never heard of him losing. Him winning all the time allowed him to have the worst of attitudes at the price of having a friend deficiency (probably the only thing we had in common). Erik was such a stereotypical bad boy that if a casting agent entered the school, he would probably be immediately casted in one those cliché high school movies and he wouldn’t even need any acting talent for people to think he was good in the role. Like I said earlier, I had trouble understanding what could have happened earlier.

I must have made a noise because I heard a sniff or two before I saw Erik heading towards me. I tried to run back to the stall but I very quickly felt a hand on my shoulder.

I turned around and there was the notorious Erik Fletcher.

“Why you runnin’? Seen anything you shouldn’t have?” said Erik staring at me like he wanted me to melt and disappear.

His red eyes made him seem like he had been crying recently and yet they were also filled with a desire to destroy me.

“I…I… I didn’t see anything!”

He pushed me into a wall and then put one of his hands on the wall beside my head while readying his other one to punch me.

“You are sure?”

“Pretty sure!”

I was used to hits, but Erik was somewhat of a local legend and you don’t become ridiculously romanticized by hitting people softly. Well, you could but I was pretty sure that it wasn’t Erik’s case.

He looked at my eyes for a few seconds and then sighed.

“Stay here for five minutes and then you can come out,” said Erik very angrily “You say to anyone and I mean anyone that you saw me in here and will fuse your head to a wall, understood?”

I nodded.

A few moments later, Erik exited the locker room. Five minutes later, I took a deep breath and did the same.

Forget this whole thing being a prank, this definitely wasn’t funny.

I made my way to my aunt’s house still severely stressed by the incident that just happened. My heart was still pumping at a crazy speed because of what had happened. A few seconds of Erik staring at me probably had had the same effect on me has the (unrealistic) diet that some people thought that gamers had.

I entered the house, called for my aunt and my cousins and didn’t hear anything in return…Good. I liked them a lot but I needed a few hours each week where I wasn’t near anyone and also had access to human necessities.

Here there was food that didn’t look post-apocalyptic, there was a computer from this century and I didn’t have to deal with the whole “Silence, we are working!” thing that my parents spouted the rare times they were at home.

I texted my cousin Rebecca to tell her if it was OK to use her PC and as soon as I got her response I started browsing her game library like always did on Wednesdays. Only today, I couldn’t concentrate. I tried different games and I couldn’t spend more than a few minutes playing before I started thinking about Erik and got bored of the game.

I mean, really, why would Erik dress as a girl? Why would any guy that looked like him do it? I could maybe understand myself doing it since I always thought that I would be better off as a girl. See, I had trouble relating to other guys and they had trouble relating to me. Whenever they would be playing football or soccer I was playing hopscotch, when they would draw dragons and cars with an improbable of weapons I was drawing princesses and animal of the cute variety, crap I also had aversion for first person shooters and when I wasn’t playing role playing games I was playing this week’s new casual game. I wasn’t very good at being a guy and but still I had never done what Erik had been doing this afternoon.

Would I have to try on girl clothes to figure out what was missing from the equation? Probably not, but that silly question brought an interesting thought, the idea of girl me. Clémentine as she would probably be called was an interesting idea. I could probably pull it off and clothes being just pieces of fabric, I couldn’t imagine what could go wrong with maybe trying on a few pieces of apparel of the opposite sex to satisfy my curiosity. If no one caught me, what could go wrong?

It took me a few seconds to realize what I was just thinking. I had just managed to convince myself that dressing up was a good idea. What the hell was wrong with me! This whole thing with Erik had really messed up with my head.

I spun on my cousin’s office chair a few times thinking whether or not I should dress up as a girl. As I started to get dizzy, I decided that I had to satisfy my curiosity.

I took a deep breath and then texted my aunt and my two cousins to know around which time they would come in. In the next few minutes, I received confirmation that no one should be here for at least two hour and my heart started beating even harder than before.
The thought of doing what I was about to do made me feel extremely uncomfortable yet something inside of me stopped me from giving up on that silly idea.

I took a breath that seemed to bring all the air of the house towards my lungs and then I started thinking about how to do this.

I took a look my cousins’ clothes and quickly figured that none of the apparel in the house would fit my tiny mouse like body. If I wanted female apparel, I probably would have to buy some.

I wanted to abandon the plan as soon as I realized that, but I decided to be brave. I had to have the balls to try on female clothing otherwise I would probably never do anything manly within my life time.

I remembered that there was a thrift shop not even 5 minutes from the house, I could probably go in, buy some male and female clothes, mix them together and not rouse any suspicion as I walked home with my shameful new acquisitions.

I went downstairs, took my bike and headed towards the store.

The woman behind the counter couldn’t stop looking at me since I entered the shop, me twitching and looking back at her every few seconds probably had something to do with it.

I took two pairs of boy jeans and then silently headed to the forbidden section… you know… the girl’s one. I looked around for a little bit and, surprisingly, I quite liked many of the things I saw. I realized after a few minutes browsing that I didn’t have all the time in the world so I ended up grabbing very few things a light blue floral dress, a pair of skinny jeans, a pair of black leggings and a white sleeveless blouse. I say few things but before I went in I had wanted to take even less stuff, you know because I was only going to wear those clothes one time and because I wanted to mix the clothes from the girl’s section with those of the boy’s section to make the embarrassing stuff less noticeable. Sadly, for me female fashion ended up being more interesting than I thought and one thing led to another and now I was about to die of embarrassment in front of the cash register and the cashier that was manning it. I felt like my legs were sinking to the ground as I advanced towards the counter. Without looking at cashier I put the apparel and 30 dollars on the counter and I started praying for her to not say anything.

There seemed to be somebody up there because she took my money gave me bag without saying a word. The moment the bag touched my hand I was out of there. It probably made me very suspicious but I couldn't care less.

I think that I forgot to take the change. Oh, well she could keep it.

My 16 year old cousin Émilie had a bedroom in the attic with a window that gave on the drive way. I was hoping that being there I would catch anyone coming before they caught me embarrassing myself and all the generations of men in my family that had ever cared about clothing and decency.

I wanted to look at least a little bit like a girl so I searched for a hair tie and then arranged my shoulder length black hair into a high ponytail before putting on my newly acquired floral dress.

I closed my eyes, advanced towards a mirror and once again almost emptied the house from all it’ air. I was going to open my eyes, but then I thought about makeup and moved out of the mirror’s view in hope to find some to alleviate the monstrous sight that would destroy my confidence and my dignity in a few minutes.

My search only yielded red lipstick that seemed to be still unused. I carefully put it on me hoping that doing this somewhat blindly wouldn’t lead me to look like a vampiric clown with taste buds that loved ketchup.

I approached the mirror and then slowly opened my eyes…

I was in shock. I had trouble understanding how some little changes where all I needed to be cute.I said cute but cute didn’t actually cover it and very cute was extremely euphemistic to the way I felt inside. I usually didn’t care much about my appearance but I loved this version of me. There were maybe a few things that could be better, seeing as I screwed up the lipstick a little bit, seeing also as the dress wasn’t a perfect fit and finally seeing as my haircut didn’t scream girl as much as I wanted; it wasn’t perfect but damn if it wasn’t a good start!

I paused: a good start to what? Was I really going to do this again?

The truth was that I probably shouldn’t. Has happy as I was right now this couldn’t actually be healthy, I would maybe try out the other clothes since I had bought them but later I had get rid of them since they were bound to cause me trouble eventually.

I stared at the girl in the mirror whose brown eyes seemed to be more beautifully than mine.

I felt shame standing in front of the mirror looking like someone I wasn’t supposed to look like and at the same time right now, I felt better that I had in years. This felt somewhat great and yet so sad because it was going to be a one-time thing. I got my other clothes out of the bag and started to put on the blouse and a pair of leggings.

Sadly for me, I started hearing the sound of someone pulling into the drive way. I rushed to the bathroom with all my bags and then started changing faster than a teenage boy trying to look decent after getting caught in the middle of “private time”.

I filled the bag from the shop with the incriminating evidence and the buried everything under my school stuff in my bag-pack, afterwards I cleaned the evidence from my body by getting rid of the lipstick on my lips.

“Clément, are you here?”

“Yes, Émilie. Why are you asking? Aren’t you supposed to be back in an hour or so? Did you skip basketball practice?”

“I was supposed to but Mom was wondering if there something was wrong after you texted all of us. She asked me to leave practice early because she said that your behaviour was extremely unusual.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“Um, ok…”

“You know how mom can be. Now, is there anything wrong?” asked Émilie walking up the stairs.

“No, I… I… I was just looking for some Sci-Fi novels in your room; you know to read at school.”

“Oh, did you find some?” She said standing in front of the bathroom.

“No, I didn’t find anything interesting,” I said back.

I flushed the toilet, washed my hands and then opened the bathroom door.

Émilie was waiting in front of the door with her big blue eyes looking at right at me.

“Had some fun?”

Took me a few seconds to realize what she was implying, I blushed.

“No, n…nothing like that!”

She smirked at me.

“Right…” she said making the word last for what seemed to be an eternity, “Want some pizza?”

I nodded, welcoming the change of subject.

We started going downstairs with her in the lead.

Now, I just had to hope that she wouldn’t bring this to Aunt Faith. Getting the “talk” by the zombies or by my extremely open aunt wasn’t something that I wanted to happen within this universe or any other one. No version of me should ever go through those moments whose awkwardness would probably make the devil feel bad for me.

“Clément, I just have to say that I like your ponytail, but you might want to change it a little since it makes you look quite feminine.”

I just noticed that I hadn’t changed my hair back. Well, crap.

I answered with a nod.

“Wearing my pink hair tie isn’t helping either.”

I blushed like I did a few minutes earlier and then passed her the hair tie.

“Sorry about that, I was trying something different.”

“I think cutting your hair shorter might help. I personally think that ponytails on guys only really work if they have facial hair, otherwise they just look androgynous. Not that there is something wrong with that, but I am sure that you want look like a manly guy. Let’s just hope for you to have your growth spurt soon so you can mix with the other guys and stop being so miserable all the time, eh,” She said winking at me.

I nodded once again.

For some reason the thought of changing didn’t seem like a great thing right now…

“Pepperoni like always?” asked Émilie smiling.

“Yes, please.”

Also let's stop talking about me, please!

As soon as I finished eating my pizza, I took my bike and rode back home. I couldn’t stand being in there it just felt so… awkward. I knew that Émilie didn’t know about what had happened earlier but I felt like at any moment she would say something and I would answer something incriminating.

I opened the door of my place of residence and the house was fully silent like always. My parents stopped coming home at reasonable hours when I turned twelve because they judged that I was old enough to take care of myself. I got all of my girl clothes out of my school bag and then stashed them in my closet mixing them with my other stuff.

This whole day had just felt so exhausting. I brushed my teeth , sat on my bed, wondered what the hell was wrong with me and then started lying in my bed.

…

…

…

I couldn’t sleep.

I really hated Erik right now for making my life so goddamn complicated in a matter of a few hours.

I took my headphones, started playing music and I prayed that morning wouldn't come without me falling asleep.