Does my hair look all right?

Mom kissed me good night on the cheek. "Get some sleep, honey," she said. "We're going shopping in the morning to get you more of your own stuff." To avoid giggling in embarrassment, I gave her a swift peck on the cheek too. I hadn't kissed Mom goodnight in years.

She left, and I turned around to look at my room. It didn't look that much like a girl's room, at least not yet, but the decorations that identified it as a boy's room were gone. The tallboy chest of drawers in the corner had a lace doily on it that hadn't been there, and a decorative lamp I didn't remember seeing before.

What had been there had been a lamp, the base of which looked like an old-time race car. Now it looked like...something inspired by Bo Peep? Lambs and a girl wearing a pink bonnet. I rolled my eyes. It was a thing a little girl would think really cute.

Feeling a bit sheepish myself, I put on a pair of fuzzy pink slippers and padded down the hall to the bathroom I shared with Hannah. After I closed the door, I stood in front of the toilet bowl and realized something. Panties don't have a fly, and holding your nightgown up while peeing is likely to be awkward and lead to accidents.

So, giving in to the inevitable, I pulled down my panties and sat down to pee. No one can see me blushing with just the nightlight on, I told myself. I couldn't even see myself. It's harder to shake yourself dry sitting down, so I just sat there for a bit, contemplating what the next two weeks were going to be like.

Was I still grounded? Probably. No, wait, they said if I did this, I wouldn't be grounded, just on restriction. A subtle difference, if there was one. Could I still see my friends? Did I want to? What were they going to say? I could just picture Wally and Skip braying their enjoyment of my predicament. And since I hadn't killed Leon with the blow to his head, maybe a belly laugh would finish him off.

For some reason, that upperclassman I had a run-in with last fall came to mind, along with Hannah's observation that boys annoy girls just to get their attention because they like them. What would Del think of my new appearance?

Veering away from that confusing and embarrassing line of thought, I tried to come up with something else to worry about.

My parents had confiscated my phone and turned it off, but there'd been calls on the house phone during the evening. I suspected a few of them had been from my buddies, but no one had called me to the phone. Which would be part of being grounded, not allowed to talk on the phone except for necessary stuff.

I sighed. I finished business as well as I could, convinced for some reason that one teeny little drop of pee had gotten into my panties when I pulled them up. I flushed and then used a washcloth to clean my feet before putting on my slippers and going back to my room.

Climbing into bed, I discovered fresh new sheets. Probably pink, I decided, but I couldn't tell in the dark. I grabbed Sugarpie off the other pillow and cuddled her up close. It had been a long time since I had slept with a stuffed animal, but if I was going to live as a girl for the next two weeks, I didn't have to deny myself that comfort.

And I could use the soft security. It must have worked because I was asleep before I could wonder if I should roleplay the part to the hilt and kiss Sugarpie good night.

*

I walked out to the bus wearing my nightgown and slippers, carrying Sugarpie hugged to my chest. I'm dreaming, I told myself. The other kids looked as bored as usual, ignoring me while I took my usual seat across from Skip.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," I replied. He didn't make a comment on how I was dressed or that I had my hair in the soft curls from the salon this morning, and I didn't mention that two or three of his pimples were oozing pus. I finally managed to stop staring at them.

Sugarpie tugged on my nightgown and I bent my head so she was inside the tent of my hair and could whisper in my ear, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. It sounded like, "Watch out for the possibles." But that didn't make any sense.

Skip and I had each saved a seat for Wally, who is the last stop before the bus heads for the school. But we didn't stop at his house or go on to the school, either. In fact, we drove right past it and stopped in an industrial area near the river. Wally was there. He climbed on and came to me.

"This is where you get off, Samantha," he said. His caramel-colored complexion looked especially pale today and his freckles really stood out. He looked frightened. "The teddybear, too," he added.

Sugarpie cuddled against me. I stared out the windows. It looked gloomy and scary, like a scene from Stranger Things. The only way to make that show creepier would be to add a bagful of possums dumped on a table.

*

The possums squirmed and jumped off the table and chased me around the room. What happened to the bus? How did I get here, I wondered, scared out of my mind? I tried to scream for my mommy and daddy, but the possums had my toes in their sharp little teeth and wouldn't let go.

Sugarpie had turned into Hannah, holding my hand like she had when she walked with me to kindergarten years before.

"I told you to watch out for the possums," Hannah said. We were at school, and we were both wearing the yellow sundress. Or, I guess each a copy since we wouldn't both fit into one dress. Hannah opened her locker, and the possums tried to get out, but she closed it on them, and only one ran down the hall, squeaking and waving its naked tail at us.

I shuddered.

School was boring, but at least the girls passed notes back and forth in class. I got one that said, "I think Del likes you."

Somebody pulled my ponytail, and I turned around and there he was. DelForte. I grinned at him, but only because I now knew his first name was Pasco. He was a junior, and I was a freshman, and we didn't have any classes together. "You're not supposed to be here," I said. I tossed my head, just to feel my hair settled back around my face.

He had a big, lean face with dark hair and green eyes. He grinned at me. "You're prettier than your sister," he said.

"I know," I said. "But I'm a boy, and you're not supposed to be in the girls' bathroom." The bathroom was around us, and all the fixtures were shining pink, and I was sitting on a stool with no stall around me.

*

There's no plot to dreams, and the logic doesn't make sense. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, I pulled my braids out from under my head then I lay there in the dark before I could get back to sleep. I spent some time worrying about why in my dreams, I was Samantha, not Sam. The possums were bad enough but that part was really scary.

Sugarpie disagreed with me just before I fell back asleep. "It might have been a dream, but your hair looked so nice," she whispered.