Would she never grow up to be a man like her father?

 
Ultragreen
5- Now What?
by Erin Halfelven

She smiled at her reflection, feeling her lip tremble just a bit. She had to smile or start crying again. Her shoulders had never seemed so narrow, her skin so smooth and clear.

Would she never grow up to be a man like her father? Moses Wye stood an inch over six feet with the muscles and rough hands he had made for himself as a young man in the building trades. That he’d ended up a wealthy contractor had taken hard work and some luck, but he still wore steel-toed boots with his suits.

And now his only son had gone and turned himself into a girl.

Shellie blinked and sniffed. She shook her head. “I am not going to cry,” she said out loud, pushing her red hair away from her face. “Even if I have turned into a girl, I am not going to cry!” She glared at her image in the mirror—daring the girl dressed as his old self to make him a liar.

“No one would know just to look at me,” she said, telling herself. Maybe she could keep being Sheldon long enough for George to find out how to reverse it.

She blinked again, eyes stinging but noticing something else now. Her eyes, once blue-gray, were now a startling, vivid green—as if an emerald light were shining out from inside her.

Now that might be noticed, she thought. She frowned accusingly at her reflection. She didn’t need another complication. She’d never heard of people’s eyes changing color, other than babies, maybe. Could she hide behind sunglasses?

And what was going on with her hair? She pulled a nearly blonde strand and tucked it behind her ear. Had her hair always had so many different colors? Maybe she just hadn’t noticed?

“‘Ew? ‘Ewwie?” George’s mushy voice came up the stairs and down the hall.

Shellie rolled her bright green eyes. George was half-problem and half-solution, and she puzzled for a moment over what to do about him.

Downstairs, George tried again, really bellowing, and this time with the stutter. “Sh-sh-shel? She-shellie?”

She ran to the top of the stairs, “Stop yelling! Someone might hear! And don’t call me Shellie!”

“Huh-uh-huh-uh!” George laughed in relief, the gasping intake that made him sound like a cartoon. “Y-you okay?” He started up the stairs from the kitchen, his feet awkwardly kicking the risers and clumping on the treads.

“I’m fine,” Shel said, backing up to allow George room. He was a big kid, six inches or more taller than Shel, as tall as some adults and twice as heavy as many. She laughed to see him, affectionately but with some exasperation. “If you start calling me ‘Shellie,’ someone might look at me really closely and find out what we’ve been doing. Okay?”

George nodded, peering around theatrically as if searching for eavesdroppers. “But we’re alone, Shellie,” he pointed out, his soft brown eyes guileless.

She wasn’t fooled. She rolled her own eyes again. George was pretty funny—even when he wasn’t trying to be and when he tried, he had a natural talent at clowning.

“I like calling you Shellie,” said George, grinning. “You’re the only girl I know well enough to call by name.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“I’m not supposed to be a girl!” she told him. “No one is going to find out, and we have to figure out a way to change me back!”

George nodded, the cowlick on the back of his head bobbing up and down. “Why?” he asked, standing there in front of her, his spiky black hair standing out in all directions, shifting his weight from one foot to another in a sort of syncopated rhythm.

“George!” Shel snapped at him. “Just don’t call me Shellie where anyone might be able to hear, okay?”

George nodded again. “Okay, Shellie,” he said happily. His goofy grin got even wider. He obviously enjoyed teasing her.

Grumping a bit, she turned away, trying to remember what she had been about to do. “Maybe he’d like it if I started calling him Georgie,” she muttered.

“Ug-gug-gug-ug!”

She turned back quickly to see George turning bright red, grasping the banister of the stairway tightly in one hand and clawing at the air with the other.

“Gug-ug-ug-a-gug!” he gasped. His body had stiffened, his movements even more jerky than usual.

She reached him quickly. “George! Are you okay? Can you breathe? What’s wrong?” George had to be okay. She’d never be able to get him safely down the stairs and out of the building without help.

The bigger boy’s gagging sounds turned to laughter, at least, the wheezing in-and-out gurgle that George used for that purpose. He tried to speak in between rattles and whoops. He swung one arm wildly, and she had to step back to avoid it.

Shellie finally managed to decipher what he was saying. “You can call me Georgie if you want to,” she made out between gasps, gurgles and the heavy swallowing sounds.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said. “I’m not going to call you Georgie!”

George looked at her with his big sad eyes, the face one of the counselors called hound-dog-hit-by-a-semi. “Please? Sometimes?” he begged. She wasn’t sure he didn’t mean it seriously.

She threw up her hands. “Okay, okay. If we’re alone and no one can hear, and I really want you to do something you don’t want to do, I might call you Georgie. Okay?” Her hands went to her hips, and she glared at him.

He nodded, smiling with his mouth wide open which she had told him a thousand times not to do. For all his smarts, George had a lot of little kid in him.

She turned away, giggling a bit in spite of herself. George could always make her laugh with his antics.

But what in the world were they going to do next?