“You sure you don’t have a boyfriend?” she asked.

I sat silently for a bit, thinking about everything that had happened. Less than 24 hours before I had come home from school, planning to go out later to my babysitting job.

Everything had changed. Especially, me. I wasn’t even using the same name anymore. I glanced down. They were still there, the evidence of my “growth spurt.” I sighed. Was there even a chance that I could go back to being Jonny?

Probably not without surgery. And there was the possibility that maybe I’ve been a girl all along, and just didn’t know it because of bad medical advice when I was a baby.

I squirmed a bit, thinking of that. I certainly hadn’t been very successful at being a typical boy. And I’d lost at least one friend because of it. Rod Pick had said some hurtful things, but he claimed to be trying to be honest. He just didn’t want me to embarrass him with my girlish squeals and giggles.

I felt my face go red. How could I have been so oblivious to how I acted? Had all those kids, mostly boys, going back to early grade school been right when they called me names?

I didn’t want to start crying again, so I stood up.

Mom and Donna were discussing some look for me they had found in a magazine, a look Donna described as ‘cute’, and Mom thought it ‘sweet.’ I had to get away from them or have a meltdown. I started toward the door.

Mom immediately asked where I was going. Since I didn’t have an answer, I didn’t try to give one.

“They’re going to call you in just a few more minutes, Joni. You can’t leave now,” Donna said, speaking as the voice of reason.

I stopped. “Okay,” I said. “Then you two have to leave. I need to be able to think.”

Donna stared at me, then stood and tugged on Mom’s hand. “C’mon,” she told our mother. “She’s serious. If there were a bowl of cereal nearby, we’d both be in trouble.”

I sighed. “You dump one bowl of soggy Cheerios on someone’s head when you’re eight, and it goes on your permanent record,” I complained.

But Mom stood, gave me a smile and a pat on the arm and followed my sister out.

* * *

One of the salon workers called out, “Joni?” and I raised my hand before starting toward the chair she indicated.

“I’m Buffy,” she announced as I turned to sit down.

“Buffy?” I asked, not sure I had heard right. It sounded like a name out of a sitcom.

“Yup,” she agreed, though I hoped she hadn’t heard my internal comment. “It’s a nickname for Elizabeth.”

I couldn’t resist. “What? Betsy wasn’t cute enough?” I winced, wishing I could take that back.

She waved a hand, smiling. “I do have scissors,” she pointed at the chair with them.

I giggled as meekly as I could and climbed into the elevated seat.

“You’re supposed to be the tomboy?” she asked, proving that Mom had spoken with her, and that I didn’t have a monopoly on risking offense.

“I’ve had to give that up,” I admitted, with a glance at my chest.

She nodded. “So, no crew cut?”

I giggled again, wondering if it sounded as silly to her as it did to me. “Can you just fix it, so no one recognizes me?”

That got a real laugh out of Buffy. “I doubt it. You’re sort of—distinctive.” And she glanced at my chest, too.

“Umph,” I said, just for the sake of making a noise. “Did you see my sister?” I asked.

“Blonde girl, about your height? Yeah,” she pointed at where we had been sitting. “You two look a lot alike, almost twins.” Another glance at my chest.

“I’m sort of a set of twins, all by myself,” I said, ruefully.

Buffy snorted. She moved the chair around to get a look at my head from different angles. “So what are you thinking?”

“I think I need my own look, something to separate us besides my recent growth spurt,” I suggested. “We’re not actually twins, but there’s less than two years between us. And I’m older, even though she’s taller.”

She nodded, looking thoughtful. “I’m getting some ideas. You both have this nearly-white hair. It’s not platinum because it has some gold in there. But yours, at least, is very fine and mostly straight.” She nodded again, agreeing with her own opinion apparently.

“Could you dye it, maybe red? I have a red-haired aunt, and she’s got the same coloring as me other than her hair.”

She shook her head. “You need some shape, some volume; I’m thinking a body wave, and your hair is so fine we really can’t perm and dye it at the same time, unless you want to end up looking like a cancer patient.” She grinned. “You’d be cute, but I think we want to avoid that.”

“Argh,” I grumbled. Donna had made a similar comment.

“Not to worry,” Buffy assured me. “We can do a color-rinse instead of permanent dye; it will wash out over a half-dozen shampoos unless you renew it, but I can give you the product to maintain the color until you come back.”

“That, that, that sounds good. Perfect, even,” I looked up at her and smiled.

She laughed. “Whoa! Killer smile,” she said. “What color red are we talking?”

I put a hand up to my hair, thinking. “Aunt Hilda calls her hair color strawberry, but it is really more of a peachy sort of pink, golden, uh….”

Buffy produced a color chart from somewhere and held it out to me. I pointed at the one I thought looked most like Aunt Hildy’s color, labeled Dawn Red. It wasn’t quite the same, but close.

Buffy nodded again. “I’ve got that in a rinse and in a stable dye for when your hair recovers from the permanent. I’m thinking soft, open curls around your face, not the kind of piled-up wavy stuff your sister had.” She showed me a sketch, not a photo, of what she meant.

It looked good, but this was my head, and I would end up wearing that hairstyle for weeks, if not months. “Uh…” I said. Make a decision, I told myself. If it turns out terrible, I can shave my head and get on a telethon somewhere. Please donate to help this poor girl buy a wig. Did I just refer to myself mentally as a girl? “Yes?” I offered.

She laughed. “I guarantee that your tomboy days are going to be behind you.”

“That part is not the big problem,” I said, pretending to look over my shoulder, and she laughed again.

Buffy worked quickly, trimming my hair, then putting it in rollers. The perm solution stank like someone burning skunks, but at least she had warned me about it. She talked a lot actually, and eventually, I sort of tuned most of it out. I remember parts of her chatter though.

“I’m doing a soft perm here and it will be even softer when I do the color rinse afterward,” she explained. I didn’t nod; I’d been warned about that already, so I just grunted.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked at one point.

“Oh, God,” I said. “I’m only fifteen.”

She laughed at that, but now she had me worried. If I went back to school looking like I did now, even with red hair, people recognizing me would not be the major problem. I’d already had a sample of how much male attention I attracted just walking around the mall. It would be twenty times worse than the stuff Rod had complained about, what he called me “acting like a girl.”

Looking at me, no one was likely to doubt I was a girl. That’s why I was hoping I could pass as someone else, my own cousin perhaps. Aunt Hildy’s daughter? Except she went by Heidi now, at least in her job selling real estate. Maybe I could move up to Orange County and live with her.

There was probably something wrong with that idea, but I needed to talk to my aunt about it. Unable to do so, I sort of constructed a scenario in my head where I went to OC and started school there as a girl. Maybe that was the best solution. According to Mom and Dad, the doctors may have made a mistake when I was born, and I really was a girl.

I sighed, and Buffy commented on that. “You sure you don’t have a boyfriend? That sounded like a romantic problem sigh.”

I sighed again. “I’ve spent at least twelve years or more telling people I’m a boy. The last thing I want to do is date one.”

She laughed.

* *

I wasn’t sure of how the process worked, but somehow she used the color rinse on my hair before the perm was finished and brushed out. I ended up with a head full of soft red curls. But it wasn’t all one color; there were pinks and oranges and dark reds that were almost maroon.

I sat there staring at my reflection. On the whole, it was much redder than Aunt Hilda’s hair and more interesting.

“Do you like it?” Buffy asked.

“I think so,” I said. “But it kind of looks like my head caught fire.”

“That might be too exciting a description,” she said, smiling.

My reflection turned this way and that, but I couldn’t detect any sign of a boy named Jonny. Just a flame-haired girl who was going to get a lot of attention and not just for her chest. “Hoo boy,” I breathed. I wasn’t going to get recognized easily but was this really what I wanted?

I wondered what Mom and Donna were going to say?

* *

“Joni!” Donna squealed when she saw me. “Look at you!”

I probably turned the new color of my hair. “Don’t!” I protested. They showed up at the salon just as I ventured out into the corridor to go looking for them.

Mom was smiling at me. “That is an amazing dye job! It looks like you were born with red hair. Even more than Pinkie’s does!”

“Who?” I asked, confused.

“Pinkie is what your grandfather called Hildy when we were growing up,” Mom explained.

“No wonder she goes by Heidi now,” Donna said, laughing. “We’ll have to pick a new nickname for you, Joni.”

“Don’t you dare!” I warned her. Her last nickname for me had been Sluggy when she discovered she could outrun me back in sixth grade. She’s always been more athletic and is the real tomboy in the family.

We headed off toward Nordstroms as if by previous agreement.

“It really does look nice.” Mom was saying as we passed through the food court.

“And not at all like your head caught fire,” Donna put in. Which got an accidental giggle from Mom and a glare from me, even though I had already thought the same thing.

A group of three boys waiting in line at the taco stand all turned to look at us as we passed. I frowned at them and they all grinned back. What the heck?

We reached the door of Nordstrom’s just as Donna said, “I know, we can call you Ember!”

“Huh? Why?” was the most intelligent question that occurred to me.

“Because you’re obviously hot stuff, your head is on fire,” she explained.