"Samantha!" Mom snarked at me from down the corridor. "There are more mirrors you can look at this way."

Getting my ears pierced didn't hurt as much as I expected. And the little pearl studs did look nice peeking out of my hair. Maybe I spent just a bit too long admiring them.

"Samantha!" Mom called to me from further down the mall corridor. "There are other mirrors in the mall you have to look into."

I made a noise like a squeak, embarrassed because the jewelry kiosk lady was grinning at me, then I hurried to catch-up with my parental unit. I was grateful I had worn sneakers, instead of the heels Mom and Sis had teased me about.

Still, I was dressed as a girl and I wasn't quite sure how to hurry gracefully. I sure didn't want anyone to think I was a boy in girl's clothes. Seeing that I was following her, (what choice did I have?) Mom turned and went on ahead.

Then I stopped so suddenly I almost tripped myself. Up ahead, Mom had gone into a trendy dress shop (oh, joy), but between her and me a boy had come out of the game store. And I knew him.

I turned quickly before he could see and recognize me. It was Del, the boy I had gotten in trouble over back in October! Wasn't he supposed to be in school? What was he doing here?

"This is not happening," I muttered.

I looked for some place to hide. A ladies' shoe store seemed the only nearby refuge and I ducked in there, heading for the back aisles. A saleslady followed me.

"Miss," she called out. "Can I help you find something?"

The back of the store had racks and boxes and displays but still was pretty open to the mall and not that deep. I maneuvered to put one of the taller displays between the front of the shop and my distinctive hair, keeping my back turned.

This involved walking sideways which must have looked odd, but I didn't care.

"Miss?" the saleslady inquired. "Are you looking for something?"

"Uh, no," I admitted. "I'm hiding from someone." I tried to peek around without really showing my face to the front of the store. My hair swished around me and I tried to grab it into a mass I could keep behind me.

Deirdre (it was on her name tag) looked amused. She moved to help conceal me then gave me a report. "Is it a tall dark-haired young man carrying a Nite-n-Day Games bag?"

"Uh, yeah," I said. Del had bought some cool game? I wondered what it might be?

"Nice looking boy," Deirdre commented. "He's apparently meeting up with an older man who resembles him and now they are heading on down the mall toward the Yukon Outfitters store."

"Cool." A lot of jocks at school shopped at Yukon but the important thing was it was in the opposite direction from where Mom went, so maybe I could slip past them. The older man was probably Del's father. "Please, tell me when they're in the Outfitters," I asked Deirdre.

She smiled, keeping an eye out for me. "Ex-boyfriend?"

I probably blushed, causing her to snicker. I reflected on Hannah's observation that Leon and Del liked me as the reason for their harassment. "Sort of," I said. I didn't want to get into any sort of explanation.

"They're inside," she observed and quick like a bunny, I headed toward the exit.

"Thanks," I called to her. I felt just a tiny bit bad that I had used her workplace as a refuge without even pretending to look at merchandise. "I'll be back to look at shoes," I promised, as much to soothe my conscience as anything. I didn't really want more girl's shoes, I had a small ocean of Hannah's excess on the floor of my closet already.

"We have some ankle boots in urban camouflage," she mentioned.

That was kind of funny but I didn't respond and hurried on toward where I had seen Mom disappear.

"Where did you go?" she asked when I found her looking at—school gym uniforms?

"I saw somebody who knows me," I told her. "We've got to get out of here."

"Hmm," she murmured, apparently unconcerned. "Your school colors are red and gold, right?"

"Mom!" I protested.

"Red and gold?" she persisted.

"Yeah, yeah. But a boy from school is here and I can't let him see me."

She pressed a pile of clothing into my hands. "Go hide in the dressing room and try these on."

"Mom!"

She pushed me toward the back. "Go on," she urged. "You can't keep wearing your sister's hand-me-downs."

"I can if I want to!" I retorted. Mistake.

I'd gotten Mom's Irish up, meaning her temper. We're more English than Irish, really. But I guess it's the principle of the thing, not the measure. Temper in most of our family takes the form of stubbornness, usually.

"What did you say?" Mom asked, glaring.

"I'm going to go try these on?" I offered meekly, waving the armful of clothing around.

Mom coldly nodded and I slunk off to the changing rooms, feeling lucky that I had escaped with no worse than a bit of side-eye.

I took a tab showing how many items I was carrying from the attendant, seven, and entered the changing room hallway, without thinking too much about where I was and why. After all, I decided, this was probably for the best. Del, even if he realized where I had gone would not follow me here. And who said he had even seen me?

I looked over what Mom had given me to try on. A gym uniform in our colors plus skirts and tops of the sort other girls wore to school. Other girls? Well, for the next two weeks, but when I went back to school I would not be wearing any of this stuff.

I knew I really did have to try things on, though. Mom would ask and I would tell her the truth. With Dad, you could fudge things a bit. Tell him what he wanted to hear and he wasn't so keen to ask more questions. Didn't work that way with Mom.

I did try on the gym uniform with the red shorts and the polo-style shirt with gold collar-and-cuffs and red pin-stripes. It fit my temporarily augmented figure well enough but something seemed off. After looking at myself from different angles in the tri-fold mirror, I decided that the thing bothering me about my reflection was my legs. They somehow looked very girly.

"Eesh," I complained. The one modest athletic accomplishment I really could claim was running, and such exercise had given my legs a not unappealing shape. It seemed likely Mom would insist we buy the uniform but I personally hoped never to wear it again.

When I went back to school in two weeks, I would be going as Sam, not Samantha.

I regarded the other clothes Mom had chosen for me to try on with a scowl. Having seen what my legs looked like in gym shorts, I suspected that they would maintain the illusion of girliness in the skirts Mom had picked out, too.

But before I could start changing, Mom's voice called from outside the little changing room, "Are you trying things on?"

"Yes, ma'am," I replied.

"Well, come out and let us see what you look like in something. What are you wearing now?"

"The gym uniform," I replied, pushing back the curtain before I realized I hadn't established just who 'us' was.