If you were suddenly, unwillingly, a girl, where would you most not want to end up?

Chapter 5
A Chicken in the Fox House

By Jesse Rabbit

Do you know the fabulous thing about raw panic? That's right! Total obliviousness! Having just been kissed by not one, not Two, but THREE, count'em: Tyrone is one, Jim is two, and Davis is three, I did what any eleven-year-old girl who was a boy just two hours ago would, I ran straight to the locker-room that I knew best, the boys'. And having run into it, I promptly ran through it into the bathroom part and locked myself into a stall, all without realizing what I had just done. Remember that part cause it becomes important in a few minutes time.

Now that I was relatively safe or at least feeling that way, I slumped onto the toilet seat and hugged myself, trembling violently as I was. This had not been the greatest day of my life...in fact, it was fairly easy to say that although not exactly the worst day, it was certainly the most stressful and if it kept up at this pace might very well qualify as the worst day.

The worst day in my life was when my mother, my big brother, and I were in a car accident, back before they had autodrive vehicles. We were all rushed to the hospital and because I was in the back seat, I was relatively unharmed but Lawrence was in surgery for twenty two hours and they had to clone him two new legs and some organs. Mom had head injuries, but she was able to talk to me, but I thought she was a mummy and was going to eat me and I cried a lot and it was a very bad day. That was almost six years ago. Compared to that, today was a picnic, although one that was already overrun by ants and was expecting rain any second now.

I tried to calm down and review - in a rational manner - what had just happened, but most of my mind kept gibbering that I'd been kissed...thrice...by boys. Another, slightly less sane part of my mind commented that this was my first (and second, and third) kiss, assuming we can discount the time last year when my six year old cousin Mary-Beth hopped into my lap on the 4th of July and kissed me right on the mouth and told me in a dead serious - for a six-year-old anyway - that we were gonna be married one day and that she wanted to name our baby Princess. I later saw her do almost exactly the same thing to my sister Pig. Pig's reaction was priceless, I wish I had had a vid unit. Pig screamed and ran to the pool and wouldn't come out until Mary-Beth was taken into the house for nap time.

A third, much less sane part of my brain was comparing the boys' techniques. Sometimes, having a really good memory is a curse, I swear, 'cause I couldn't get the sensations of being kissed out of my mind. There seemed to be four major factors to a kiss: angle, pressure, moistness, and grip. Another important part seemed to be taste and or scent. This was the list the insane, but highly analytical part of my mind had come up with. Tyrone had the best angle, at nearly matching mine, and his lips were soft and tasted of cherry lip balm. His grip was a little too tight. Jim's angle was off and his pressure was too hard, but he held me close and not too tight. On the other hand his lips tasted like pizza. Davis had kinda dry, tasteless lips but good pressure, unfortunately he grabbed my butt and squeezed during the kiss, which the analytical part of my mind said was a little crass, at least according to the movies. I mean - that part of my brain said - we haven't even been on a date yet.

A fourth part of my mind was occupied trying to figure out a way to kill the third part of my mind without doing us all serious harm. A fifth part was trying to remember if I had any homework from first or second periods, while a sixth part was doing the happy dance cause I didn't have to go to Poly-Civ. The seventh, and hopefully final, part of my mind was singing Texas Chainsaw by the Smoking Popes, which has been stuck in the back of my mind for like a week, and I don't even like the Smoking Popes.

The various parts of my mind eventually gathered together to confer and figure out what I was going to do. The committee result seems to have been 1) kissing boys is bad. 2) Tyrone kisses nice. 3) I was going insane. 4) AHHHHHH!!!!!!! Having decided all that, I did the only sensable thing I could think of. I fell asleep, there, on the toilet, in what I did not yet know was the boys' locker-room.

***

While I slept I dreamed (I know, strange, but go figure) and in this dream Karen was telling me that I had to be a girl cause boys don't wear watches that talk and then I was running through the halls of the school and everywhere I went someone wanted to kiss me, boys, girls, teachers, my holographic grandfather, my old dog Raptor, my school's mascot, Joey the Echidna, even Darth Grell, Tyra Solo, and Yoda-D2. Which is really weird cause Yoda-D2 doesn't have a mouth. Finally Mary-Beth and Kristen Duncan (coolest girl in school, really smart, really athletic, lead soprano, and class president) cornered me, but the wall behind me turned into the Trio and they were all yelling at me to do my homework and dance about on the football field in the nude.

You'd think I would have woken up at this point, but noooo... now I was in composition reading an essay called what kissing boys is like and why talking watches will one day rule the world to a class full of nothing but the members of the Smoking Popes. That went on for a long long time and I was just coming to my conclusion which seemed to be written in morse-code when the door to the stall next to mine slammed against the wall that my head was leaning against, waking me up with a start. For about one second I was thrilled to be back in the real world which made much more sense than dreamland did, but then I remembered that, right now, life and dreamland were almost equally strange.

Awake, if not terribly happy or coherent, I straightened myself up a little, opened the stall door, washed my hands and face and - grabbing a couple of paper towels from a dispensor - I walked out into the rest of the locker-room drying my face. I heard a clunk, then a gasp and - a second later - the sound of flesh slapping against tile. I pulled the paper towels away from my face and looked up, confused. Everyone was staring at me, and almost no one was wearing any clothing.

There was utter silence except for the sound of the showers. For a second I couldn't figure out why everyone was staring at me in stunned, deer-in-the-headlights, horrified silence. Then I remembered, realized that I was looking at about two dozen naked boys and couldn't decide which to do: blush and scream, or fall over laughing at the full body blushes that they were displaying. The tiny, insane, analytical part of my mind was storing away physique, size, and faces for future reference.

Then the silence was broken when the boy who had fallen on his ass squealed and scrambled back into the showers and hid out of sight behind the wall. That got them all dashing to hide or snatching up towels to cover themselves with. All the while I just stood there, frozen by conflicting emotions.

A booming voice called out "What's going on in here?" and all conflict was swept away by my old friend, panic. I squealed, turned and dashed, slipping and sliding on the damp floor, into the door to the hall, banging my shin against a bench in the process. As I flailed for the door, trying to remember how to open the damnable thing I heard several boys begin to complain to Coach Nichols or MacMillian that there was a girl in the dressing room. Just as I heard the coach cry out in outrage I remembered that the door opened inward, yanked on it, slipped round it into the hallway and made a frantic dash down it. I skidded into the empty choir room, which made this sixth or seventh period. I looked up at the clock and saw, much to my relief, that in less than five minutes the bell would ring and school would be over for the day.

My relief was short lived as I realized that with the end of the day the office would call my parents and tell them that I'd skipped several classes. This, I can tell you, I just did not need. I quickly decided that I needed a plan, a cunning plan, and quickly. Then it came to me, it was a long shot but maybe grandpa could be useful.

I checked The Watch's menu commands and found the sound recorder option. Then I checked the telecomm commands and found what I had been hoping was there: Voice Modulator. I quickly called Mom on The Watch.

"Hello?" she said, obviously not recognizing the originating number.

"Hey, Mom, Guess what?" I said, trying to sound cheerful and upbeat, activating the voice recorder as I did so.

"What? Are you okay baby? Are you in trouble?" She sounded really concerned, she worries a lot.

I laughed "Nope, I'm calling from my new watch, from class."

"Elan Collin Owen! I'm not in the mood for jokes!" She said, now instantly grumpy, mom hated jokes, unless she was at home when she could relax and let her hair down, or so she said. But she was always sending everyone in the family every stupid joke she found on line, so... parents, go figure.

Again I laughed, a little less forced this time, it was kinda funny. "No really mom, grandpa's watch has a complete telcomms package. Anyway, I just wanted to say hi! And that I'd see you when you get home. Love ya mom." And I hung up.

That was part one accomplished. For the second, and I was running out of those really fast, I linked moms voice sample into the voice modulator program, used web pages to find the school's attendance number, and told The Watch to call it. When the attendance comp picked up I told it that Elan had had to go to a family function and that I was sorry that I'd forgotten to sign him out and that I would send a note with him tomorrow (She's done that before, so I remember). And then I gave my mother's name and hung up with twenty seconds to spare. I heaved a sigh of relief again and looked down at The Watch. "Grandpa, nice toy, but I still hate you right now and if you weren't dead I'd..." the bell rang, cutting me off. Now all I had to do was get out of here without anyone who knew the new me seeing me... I guess it was time to use my five minutes of normalcy, I hoped I wouldn't need it later, but I think it's for the best and Karen would definitely think it strange is a strange girl took my bike. Well, here goes nothing.

Sorry this part is so short, but the it seemed the best place to end the chapter.