"Mark, look. This isn't some sitcom on TV. It's real life. It's high school. Kids can be very cruel. You never know — one tiny slip, one little detail could give you away, and it would all be over. Then what would you do? Leave school? Run away?"

Alice cried, "Jane, is everyone in your family crazy?"

Aunt Jane sputtered for a bit, then recovered, saying, "Good one, Mark, good one. You really had me going there for a minute. No, Alice, he's just getting me back for teasing him before."

Alice looked closely at my face and replied, "I don't think he is. You're serious, aren't you, Mark?"

I licked my lips and nodded.

"No, no, nonono," Jane said, waving her hand. "Out of the question."

"Why?" Alice asked. "I'm still having trouble believing that this is a boy sitting in front of me. I mean, I do believe it — Mark, you need some 'girl' lessons, by the way — but my eyes tell me that this is a girl."

"Everybody at school thought I was a girl," I offered.

"Girls don't sit with their legs splayed like that," Alice replied, pointing at my knees, which I quickly closed.

Jane was about to speak, but Denise signalled her to wait. She said to me, "Mark, look. This isn't some sitcom on TV. It's real life. It's high school. Kids can be very cruel. You never know — one tiny slip, one little detail could give you away, and it would all be over. Then what would you do? Leave school? Run away?"

"It's only one semester," I put in.

Denise continued, "It's not just about you, either. If you were found out, my job would be on the line. I would not only get fired, I'd never work in the school system again."

"You could just say you didn't know," I suggested.

"And the records?"

"If I get caught, you can take away the Mark record and say you didn't know."

She thought a moment, then said, "Then where did the Marcie transcript come from, if I didn't know?"

"Could I say I made it?"

Denise puzzled over that, but before she could speak, Jane burst in, "What about bathrooms? What about gym?"

"We talked about that before, remember? You said I could sit down and not stare, and you said you'd get me a doctor's note for gym."

"I was only kidding about the doctor's note," she said. "I just made that up."

"Anyway," I said, "Now I have gym at the end of the day, so I don't need to shower at school. I can just come straight home."

"She has an answer for everything," Alice said.

"He," Aunt Jane countered.

"Whatever," Alice said, smiling slightly.

Jane returned to the charge. "What about your parents? What are they going to say? They'll think I'm a total flake!"

Alice and Denise exchanged glances.

"Don't they think that already?" Denise muttered. Jane didn't take the bait.

"They don't have to know," I replied.

"If you get caught, they'll know," Jane retorted hotly. Then she turned on Alice and Denise. "And what's with you two? I see the looks and faces you're making."

"Uh," Denise faltered.

"The thing is," Alice replied, "is that Marcie is sounding a lot like you. You were always a master at talking people into stuff."

"Stuff they wanted to do anyway," Jane replied.

Denise looked doubtful. "I don't know about that," she countered. Jane glared at her.

"What all of you don't seem to realize," Jane said, "Is how much trouble I could get into."

Alice and Denise erupted into laughter.

"Do you know how many people have said that to you?" Denise countered. "The two of us included."

Now that the heat was off me for a moment, a thought suddenly hit me: None of them realized that I was just as surprised as they were. I didn't mean to say what I said. I meant it, but I didn't mean to say it. It just kind of came out. The moment of insight that I had on the sidewalk was like something out of time, a kind of cosmic moment that I didn't know how to process or what to do with. It was like a curtain was lifted and I saw this whole girly dimension calling to me. It felt like home. And now, sitting here, dressed in a skirt and cute top — well, it felt so incredibly natural, as if I always dressed this way. Jane was right: I liked these clothes. I didn't want to get changed.

Another thing: I liked being with these three women. For the first time I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: I wanted to be like them! Was that strange? Whether it was weird or strange, well, whatever it was, it was right.

It sounds so logical and clear when I write it down like this, but at the time it was just a jumble of inarticulate feelings. I felt them, but didn't know what they meant. I went with it, because it looked like the best way to go.

My experience on the sidewalk and my time with these women... sure, it was brief, hardly an hour. Still, it was enough to convince me that I could do it and that I wanted to do it. It would be fun and interesting to be a girl for a few months. And yes, maybe it wouldn't always be easy, but it would definitely be worthwhile.

Alice said, "Face it, Jane. All your life you've gotten people into mischief. Sometimes they've landed in more trouble than they could handle."

Denise added, "For once, the shoe is on the other foot."

Jane shook her head. "I can't believe this! I can't believe the two of you are ganging up on me!" She waved her hand as if to shut Alice and Denise off, and turned to look at me. "Mark, listen. You know I was only kidding before, right? I was just teasing you. I never, never, never meant for you to wear a dress to school. I will even go so far as to say that I'm sorry that I made you late for school, and I'll admit that this is all my fault, okay?"

I could see that she was almost choking on the words — that it was hard for her to apologize. Denise and Alice were astonished.

Denise said, "Wow! That's a first."

"I wish I had a video camera," Alice added.

Jane ignored them. "Don't do this, Mark," she asked quietly. "Don't do this to me."

"I can do this," I replied with a firmness and decision that surprised even me. "I can pull it off. Alice and Denise didn't believe I'm a boy, and no one at school thought I was a boy. I can do this, and I want to do this."

Jane sighed.

"Okay," Alice said. "But you're going to need some help. Seriously. You have to come over this weekend and I'll help you." Suddenly her face lit up. "Oh! And I have something you can wear tomorrow!" She grabbed my hand and said, "Come on, I'll show you." She led me out of the living room into a short hallway. "You two, stay there," she called to Denise and Jane.

I followed Alice into her bedroom and she pulled open her closet. "I have a dress that I think you could wear tomorrow. You can try it on now, anyway. I bought it, but then I never had the nerve to wear it. It looked good in the store, but when I got it home it looked more like a costume than a dress, but I think you can pull it off."

She handed me a dress on a hanger. It was a brown Bohemian dress. There were swaths of three or four different patterns, separated by blue or purple lines. If the pieces were arranged differently, it would have looked like a crazy quilt. One pattern was a soft tie dye of white, red and brown; the second was light red and white flowers; the third looked like cells under the microscope, drawn in brown and white, and the last was blue paisley. From the waist up, the stripes ran diagonally, but they were horizontal on the skirt. The sleeves were long and loose.

Alice said, "I'll leave you to it." Before she left the room, she said, "Are you really a boy? Tell the truth."

"Yes," I said. "Cross my heart."

After she walked away, I heard her tell the other two, "Let's open a bottle of wine. Dinner's just about ready."

The dress fit me perfectly, and I have to say, I liked it a lot. Being a boy, I'd never worn colorful clothes anyway, but I guessed that even girls didn't wear so many colors at once. Once it quieted down out front, I came out to show them.

"Is this too much?" I asked. "Too many colors?"

Jane's mouth fell. Alice's eyes lit up. Denise said, "No, it's you. It's just fine. It looks really good on you."

They asked me to spin, to walk up and down, to sit and stand again. Alice examined the fit. Denise and Alice commented on which shoes might suit the dress. Just then, a timer dinged.

"Oh!" Alice cried. "You can't eat dinner in that. If you spill something on it, you won't be able to use it tomorrow. Come on, I've got another one I can't wear. Then I'll put dinner on the table."

She shut off the burners on the stove and ran back to her bedroom, pulling me behind her. From the closet she quickly extracted a white minidress. "Don't worry about how it fits," she said. "This will help you learn what to do with your legs."

"But it's white," I said. "What if I spill food on this?"

"Don't worry," she said, "Neither of us can wear this dress in public anyway," and she ran from the room.

© 2006, 2007 by Kaleigh Way