Maximum Warp
Chapter 5: Mirror, Mirror

I finally got a call back from my doctor’s office on Monday afternoon. I let it go into voicemail. At this point it was abundantly clear what was happening to me. But I needed to figure out how public I wanted that information to be.

Janet invited me to join her on her secluded back patio with its sinfully comfortable chairs. At her insistence, I was wearing a bra, panties and a light cotton dress. The unfamiliar clothes felt surprisingly nice, but I knew I looked ridiculous. My downstairs equipment may have been the first defection in my internal battle of the sexes, but it hadn’t yet convinced the rest of the team to get onboard the double X express.

“I look like a doofus in a dress, Janet,” I said as I joined her outside. “Maybe I should hold off until I can be a bit more convincing.”

“Feeling awkward and unlovely is part of almost every girl’s experience of puberty,” she responded. “No reason you should be spared entirely. We all go through years of it. Besides, maybe it’ll make you a bit more understandin’ of the rest of us when you’re a blond bombshell.”

“Keeping me humble, whether I need it or not?”

“Trust me, Honey. I’ll let you know when you don’t need it anymore!”

“Only if you outlive me.”

“Got it in one,” she said approvingly.

I could see her point about the experience. Though there was a stupid part of me that was wishing she had contradicted my disparaging words about my appearance. Vanity? Over my appearance? Really?!!! Whatever was going on was playing the limbo with my professorial dignity. How low would I go?

I quelled my inner idiot long enough to sit down. But before I could say anything, Janet had me stand up and do it again. “You have to capture the back of your skirt when you sit down in a dress, Jessica.”

When I gave her a blank stare, she stood up and demonstrated the motion, even though she was sensibly wearing shorts.

“So I run my hand over my ass, then down the backs of my thighs towards my knees?” I asked.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “It’s expected. Doesn’t even count as feeling yourself up.”

I managed the maneuver as instructed. But . . . given how sensitive everything down there seemed, I thought it kind of did count. I quelled my inner hedonist too. “I just got a call from Quibble’s office. I’m on the fence on whether to go see him.”

“I’m assumin’ this is more’n just your usual dislike of doctors, dentists and snake oil salesmen,” she said.

I nodded. “We know what’s going on now. There’s nothing he can tell us we don’t know, and he won’t believe the explanation anyway. But . . . given how much I’ve already changed, will he even believe it’s me?”

Janet looked thoughtful. “You still look enough like yourself that he might. At least today. And you’ll keep changin’, so that’ll make the story more plausible once he has baseline data . . . . “ She came to some internal conclusion, nodded her head decisively, and said, “you should go. Today, if you can.”

“You want me to create an official record, don’t you?” I could see where she was going.

“Yup. It’ll give you some chance, anyway, to keep the powers that be from declaring you – James Marshall Wainwright – a missin’ person.”

“If he actually ends up believing me, he – or maybe just my bloodwork – might end up ringing some alarm bells in officialdom. That . . . might not be a bad thing.”

“You WANT officials to pay attention?”

“Not sure,” I said. “But I think so. The termites – aliens – whatever – said they’re coming back in a couple weeks. They’ll want me to speak for them. To whom? Well. Gotta be someone official.”

Janet’s eyes were big as golf balls. “Wait – you aren’t seriously thinkin’ of trying to arrange a little purchase of weapons-grade uranium, are you?”

“Well . . . .”

“They’ll lock you up!” she exclaimed. “In an asylum, if they’re feelin’ friendly and forgivin’. Frickin’ Guantanamo if they’re not!”

“Maybe, but . . . maybe not.”

“Okay,” she said. “That girl juice IS scramblin’ your brains. You’re nuts!”

I held up a hand to forestall her outburst, just noticing that it looked . . . different. Smaller. Less palm, maybe? Nevermind. “I’m thinking that the aliens said they wanted to trade. They might have something that would peak enough interest to at least get a hearing.”

“A hearing on selling some U-235?” She sounded skeptical. Make that, “appropriately skeptical.”

“Maybe. But anyway, it’ll give me something to discuss with the termites when they get back. I can tell them it’ll take something really, really good for it to be worth even approaching our authorities. Maybe we’ll find out what’s in their goody bag.”

“More’n likely it’s a monkey’s paw,” she said darkly.

“What?” I was baffled.

She just shook her head. “You’re hopeless.”

“Look,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about this. There are undoubtedly people who would sell some enriched uranium in exchange for the secret that’s got me growing younger.”

“Not to mention purtier,” she interjected.

“Yeah,” I sighed. “That too. But I’ve got my doubts about whether that’s a good idea.”

“Huh?” She looked puzzled.

“Let’s say every old goat on earth is suddenly young . . . “

She nodded with sudden understanding. “And fecund. Yeah, I think I see where you’re headed.”

I reluctantly agreed. “Population explosion . . . today’s kids having to compete for work against people at least as healthy, but with decades of experience . . . social unrest . . . a world-wide baby-boom . . . .”

She capped it with, “followed by a Malthusian catastrophe. So . . . maybe that’s not the best thing to ask for. But you know, some people might trade U-235 for just a few shots of the stuff.”

I nodded. “Not here, I don’t think. Too many controls, and it couldn’t be kept secret. If the President showed up looking thirty-five again, someone would notice. But if we can’t think of something else . . . . Well. Put it this way. If I don’t speak for them, they’ll just find someone else. ‘Spose that someone is from, say, the less-well-lit parts of the Korean peninsula?”

She digested that thought for a minute. “Aren’t you a little ray of sunshine this morning?”

* * * * *

A wrap on the door and Quibble – Dr. Quentin Bell, as absolutely no-one called him – wandered in.

“Alright James,” he said, sounding mildly irritated in a whiny, nasal way, “what’s the emergency that you don’t want to discuss with . . . . James! What’s with the hair?!”

“I was hoping you might tell me that.” Quibble doesn’t bring out the best in me.

“I’m not a psychiatrist, James,” he said quellingly. “Though you’re a bit, ah, mature for a mid-life crisis.”

“Am I?” I asked, a bit offended. “What, do you schedule the damned things?”

“Not my department,” he replied. “Look, we squeezed you in ‘cuz you insisted, but I’m backed up. What is it?”

“Well, apart from suddenly becoming both younger and female, I guess not much. Does that fit within the narrow confines of the problems you are permitted to address?”

“There are doctors who handle gender dysphoria,” he said, “I don’t, and anyway that doesn’t seem like an emergency.”

I was getting annoyed at his attitude. I usually did, though it normally took more than half a minute. Maybe he was getting more efficiently officious? Still, I quelled my strong desire to march out. “Fine,” I said. “How’s this for an emergency?” I lifted up the stupid hospital gown to reveal my new equipment.

His irritation turned to shock. “Fuck me!” he exclaimed, forgetting to be officious. For once.

“Hard pass, doctor,” I said, repressively. “And you’d get failing marks for bedside manner if I taught the class, which, thank God, I don’t. Now, can we get on with it?” I dropped my gown.

“You had a vaginoplasty?” he asked, still sounding shocked.

“No. I was injected with magic juice by space aliens, and I’m turning into a gorgeous young woman.”

“When did you have the surgery done?” he asked, ignoring my remark.

“It wasn’t surgery. Space aliens.”

“You didn’t raise this with me when you had your physical. I don’t know that insurance . . . “

“Space aliens,” I repeated firmly, cutting him off.

“I don’t know what you think you're playing at, James, but it’s NOT amusing,” he snapped. At least he was actually responding to what I was saying.

“Look,” I said. “Don’t believe me. Be a skeptic. That’s even better. But run your tests, take blood work, and then give me your hypothesis. If you’d looked at your chart, you’d have noticed I also shrank a couple inches since I saw you in March. Did I make that up too?”

He checked his chart. Checked it again. Then looked at me more closely. “Wait a minute . . . Of course! You aren’t James Wainwright. You aren’t sixty, and you're shorter, and you have red hair . . . a daughter? What’s your game?”

I said, “Janet was right. She came along because she figured you would need convincing. She’ll confirm my identity.”

“Janet who? Wait . . . Janet Seldon? She’s here?”

Janet and I – and probably half the faculty of arts and letters, come to that – were his patients. Not because he was any good, but because the alternatives were probably worse. Though I was starting to question that conclusion. Maybe I should have taught at a university with its own medical school, I thought to myself.

“Yes, she’s in the waiting room.”

He scurried out like a rabbit, muttering something about being late.

Minutes later, I heard Janet well before I saw her. “Don’t be such a damned fool,” she was not-quite-shouting. “You’ve known him as long as you’ve had your practice!”

I didn’t hear Quibble until he opened the door, and only caught the last part of his response, which was, “Or a vagina!”

“Doctor,” I said, trying mightily to sound reasonable, “You know me. Besides, who else has my sparkling wit and pleasant demeanor?”

“Half the damned faculty,” he growled in response. “I don’t know why I deal with academics. Pack of over privileged, overeducated, assholes!”

“‘Cuz we cover your green fees?” Janet suggested, caustically.

“And try to stay out of your office as much as possible?” I added.

“Fine! Whatever! It was a rhetorical question!” he said. Intemperately, in my view.

“I’d give you low marks in rhetoric too,” I said. “And I do teach that one, when I can’t get out of it. But that’s not important right now. Look, Janet has vouched for my identity. Will that do at least to get the ball rolling, or are you going to call her a liar too?”

“Oh, come on!” he said. “Space aliens?”

“Like I said, don’t believe it. All you need to do is take measurements, make observations and get some blood work done. I don’t know what any of that will show. But I can come back in a week and you can do more tests. If this progresses the way I think it will, you’ll know then.”

“How do I know that next week, you won’t just send in someone who’s younger and prettier than you are?” he asked.

“No idea,” I responded, exasperated. “You’re the doctor. Surprise me. Think up some way to tell.”

He grumbled some more, but finally he took some measurements, snapped some photos and drew some blood.

* * * * *
“Janet,” I said warily, “this looks like a bioweapons lab.”

She gave a critical look at the tubes, vials and bottles spread out over the top of her vanity and said, “yeah, well . . . I guess maybe it IS a bit daunting.” She chewed her lip a minute before adding, “Also toxic; I’m pretty sure you’re right about that.”

“You actually use all of this . . . stuff?” I asked, incredulous.

“Not very often, these days,” she conceded. “At 60, pursuin’ glamor can be a bit like chasin’a bullet train that’s already left the station. But I make sure I look good for class, and better if I’m goin’ out to dinner or somethin.’”

“I’ve never seen you slathered in makeup!”

“Well, Honey, if you do it right, people don’t notice the cosmetics. They notice you.”

“Okaaaaay,” I said, shakily. “Chemistry was never my strong suit, and I was purely hopeless at art. Which I last took in grade school, for the record. But . . . lead on, MacDuff!”

“It’s ‘lay on,’ you Philistine,” she scolded. “And that’s probably more descriptive in this context anyways. So let’s get started.”

Moisturizers, primers, foundation, concealers (“‘Spect you won’t need these in another week’r so”), highlighters, setting powder, finishing powder, eyeshadow primer, eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, eyebrow pencils and powders, lip primer, pencil, stick and gloss . . . . How could anyone even keep it all straight?

After a solid hour of demos and practice, I didn’t look like myself, and I did look female. Just not a very attractive female. Decidedly unpretty. And . . . that bothered me. Why?

“I’m ugly,” I moped.

“Keep at it,” she admonished. “They say beauty is skin care.”

“They do not!”

“How do you know? I didn’t even say who ‘they’ were.”

“Other than manufacturers of skin care products, you mean?

“Yeah. Other’n them.”

With great satisfaction, I said, “Anyway, even I know that beauty is supposed to be skin deep!”

“Oh,” she said. “It is? ‘Cuz if so . . . well . . . you’ve still got ‘miles to go before you deep.’”

“Arrrrrrrgh!!!!” I said. “This is hopeless!”

“Don’t you fuss, Jessica,” she said. “You’ll be there long before you’re ready, I ‘spect.”

* * * * *

I stared at the new mark on the doorframe. Five feet, eleven inches. I had lost another two inches of height since I moved into Janet’s spare bedroom. Just a week ago, it was. I was now two weeks into what the strange aliens had said would be a month of transition.

Once my poor overmatched testes threw in the towel, there was no big source of testosterone in my system to fight whatever I’d been injected with, and the changes were coming fast.

In the course of a week, my chest had exploded with two pert breasts. They didn’t come close to filling out the practice bra Janet had me buy a week earlier, but they were straining mightily to exceed expectations. Every morning they greeted me like a pair of hyperactive edelweiss, each time just a bit larger, a bit rounder, a bit softer and a whole lot more sensitive.

My hips were spreading, my ass was kicking, and my waist was wasting. Even my face was becoming unrecognizable. That it was framed by an effulgence of fine golden hair that came down past my increasingly narrow shoulders didn’t help. If I went to buy lingerie today, no-one would bat a false eyelash. I’d be just another woman.

I tried to maintain my professorial detachment about the changes. My body was part of a novel experiment. I had an obligation to record the changes minutely. And I did, keeping a careful log of measurements, the physical changes, the amount I was eating and – especially – sleeping. It seemed like I was sleeping a lot more than I was awake. I was hoping that was related to the process of changing, and not to what I would be like when I was “finished.” I couldn’t get much done if I only had seven hours in a day to do it. Especially if a statistically significant portion of those waking hours were taken up with primping.

But what I wasn’t writing was far more important than what I was. For example, that I was coming to actively enjoy primping. That I loved the feel of silky underwear. The mild perfume of a floral shampoo and conditioner. The way my shirtdress showed off my new curves. I was enjoying my lessons in cosmetics. And even deportment. All of it suddenly felt right. Increasingly, I found the idea that I would soon be a beautiful young woman . . . appealing. More than appealing, really. Exciting. Attractive. Even . . . hot?

Yikes!

Of course, I might just blow past all of that lambent hotness and continue shrinking until I ended up a really cute 5-year old. THAT possibility wasn’t appealing. Not at all.

To all appearances, my current age was somewhere in the mid-thirties. I could be Janet’s daughter, except that we didn’t look much alike. But my feet had shrunk to the point that her shoes would fit me, and part of today’s curriculum was learning to walk in them.

A week ago, I would have approached that prospect with absolute horror. And I’ll confess, I still wasn’t ready to dance a jig about it. Assuming, of course, that one could dance in the kind of footwear Janet was proposing I try. I mean, women do it, every day. Apparently. But I’ve never heard any of them say good things about it. Not once.

“Okay, Jessica,” said Janet. “Let’s get you started. For your first attempt, let’s go with a two-inch kitten heel.”

I shook my head and took the offered shoes. They looked . . . fun? Cute? God help me. But I had no idea why she was talking about kittens.

* * * * *

“So . . . what d’you suppose your aliens might offer, that the powers that be might want?” Janet asked.

We were in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a salad, rehashing our recurring topic of conversation: what do I do when the bugs come back?

“You mean, apart from drugs that would revolutionize medicine and exponentially increase the likelihood that our population will exceed the planet’s carrying capacity?” I asked in response.

“Yeah. Apart from that.”

“It does sort of highlight the problem, though, doesn’t it?” I asked. “It’s easy to see the benefits of superior technologies, but . . . without the infrastructure in place – biological, engineering, social, political – any change sufficiently large to be tempting to the folks who control enriched uranium could have disastrous downsides.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you think too much?”

“We’re professors. We’re paid to think too much.”

“I’m not,” Janet protested. “I’m paid to read fun stuff and chat about it with children. It’s a pretty good gig, really.” She nonetheless thought for a few minutes before offering, “How ‘bout they fix global warming for us?”

“That’s kind of amorphous, don’t you think? They might just decide to move the planet a bit further from the sun. One problem solved, a whole lot more created!”

“It worked for Larry Niven,” she replied.

“Amazing! You know someone who tried it?” I was unable to restrain the bite of sarcasm.

“A story, Jessica. Science Fiction. Really, you should branch out some!” She shook her head ruefully, apparently saddened by the hopelessly narrow focus of my intellectual endeavors.

“The key element in your description is ‘fiction,’ Janet. Not ‘science!’”

“Huh,” she said in response. “Maybe, but if I had to choose one or t’other to help us right now, I’d choose a good SciFi writer over a good scientist.”

“Absurd,” I said.

But she cut me off. “Not remotely. No-one’s ever even MET one of these aliens, apart from lucky you. So scientists would have nothin’ to work with. But SciFi writers are used to speculating’ about what aliens might be like. Thinking outside of what we know. Some of them are damned good at it, and we could use that kind of thinking. I’d give a lot to have Niven with us right now.”

I just looked at her. Literature, I decided, was a dangerous discipline. It did strange things to the human mind.

“I’m just sayin’, it’s possible that a couple of tenured professors from a liberal arts college in New England might not be the best people to deal with this problem,” Janet added.

“Ya think?” I replied. “But . . . Just at the moment, we’re all we’ve got.”

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Are YOU ever screwed!”

* * * * *

“What should I wear to see Quibble again?”

It was Monday, and I was scheduled to see the quack again. But that now presented a dilemma. We needed him to know that I was the same person he’d seen a week ago. But . . . I didn’t look much like me anymore. Not even like the ‘me’ he had seen and been skeptical about just a week prior. I couldn’t even convincingly present as male. My overachieving edelweiss alone were getting a solid C+ in advanced curvature.

“Not much sense tryin’ to look like a guy; no-one would buy it,” Janet confirmed. “I’ve got the photos and videos as well as your log. Not much else we can do.”

So we decided I’d just look like a woman going in for a doctor’s appointment. The sports bra was a better fit, so we went with that, leggings and what Janet persisted in calling a “top.” At least the word’s origins were clear and the meaning was logical. The shoes I borrowed from her were apparently called “flats.” That, too, was refreshingly logical.

This time, Janet came in with me. The nurse tried to stop her.

It didn’t go well.

Finally, Quibble joined us in the examination room. When he saw me, he said, “And you are?”

“Younger and prettier than I was a week ago, just like I warned you I would be,” I said caustically. He really brings out the worst in me.

He did a double take, then looked sharply at Janet and said, “I knew it! I knew you would bring in someone else. What’s your game, Professor Seldon? ‘Cuz I’m not playing!”

“STOP!” Janet said, full blast. “Just shut up for five minutes and look at these photos. Multiple photos, with date stamps, and time-lapse photography at one-hour intervals while she was sleeping.”

“Anyone can fake . . .”

Janet cut him off again. “Can, sure. Just like your wife can fake an orgasm, and almost certainly has to. Difference is, why the fuck would I fake this? Look at the damned photos, then tell us what your tests showed!”

Before Janet’s volcanic ire the highly credentialed rabbit quailed and deigned to look at the photos on her pad. Then he looked at them again.

Finally he looked up, sniffed, and said, “They have software that does this.”

I stood up. I might only be 5’10” today, but I could be a midget and I’d still be bigger than this little shit. “Doctor,” I snarled, making his title an epithet, “What. Did. Your. Tests. Show?”

He folded his arms, looked triumphant and said, “I don’t have to tell YOU anything. And can’t, by law. ‘Cuz you aren’t my patient!”

“If you were right about that – which you aren’t – it wouldn’t matter, because that would mean you didn’t run the tests on your patient,” I responded.

He had missed that obvious flaw in his reasoning, but he recovered quickly. “You aren’t the person I ran tests on, either!”

Janet was about to explode, but I stopped her. “We’ve completely wasted our time with this quack,” I said. “Let’s go.” I turned to Quibble and said, “Good luck trying to find the right billing code for this!”

“Just a minute!” he snarled at Janet, ignoring me altogether. “I need some answers!”

“Fine,” she snarled back. “Forty-two!”

I stormed out. Janet followed, doing a fair bit of storming in her own right. Between the two of us, we were a regular polar vortex of icy displeasure. The staff very prudently got out of our way.

“THAT could have gone better,” I sighed when we got to the car. “Forty-two?”

“Jessica,” she said, shaking her head, “I keep tellin’ you. You have got to start reading some fiction!”

* * * * *

“You should be safe ‘till a week before term starts,” Janet said. “Everyone knows you’re off the grid and on the AT somewhere. But once summer’s over, they’ll put out an APB.”

We were back at Janet’s house, and the cool of the evening was making her back patio pleasant. So long as you enjoyed the regular sound of electric shocks and the ozone-infused smell of mosquitos crisping in Janet’s big box bug killer. Which, honestly . . . I kind of did. Served the little bastards right.

I was nursing a glass of white wine. At Janet’s suggestion, I was sitting with my legs tucked under me. Full of suggestions, Janet. Pretty good ones, mostly.

“Well,” I responded, “I guess there isn’t much we can do about that. But the termites should be back well before then anyhow. Who knows what happens then? Maybe they’ll turn me into a tree frog if I can’t get them uranium.”

“If they do, I want you to promise that you’ll hop on over to Quibble’s house and keep him up all night with your chirping.”

“Frogs don’t chirp,” I asserted.

“I’m sure you’d be a chirpy frog,” she replied.

* * * * *

By the time the weekend came around, I was 5 foot nine and I looked like I was somewhere in my mid-twenties. I’d looked good before, but now . . . . The image I saw in the mirror was positively breathtaking. Blue-gray eyes in a heart-shaped face, plump, full lips, delicate nose, shapely brows, high cheek-bones and flowing hair halfway down my back. The sports bra could no longer contain my girls, and while the red underwire bra’s cups fit, its band no longer did. I was starting to see why the store had so many choices.

But in the absence of dams, levees, or usable bras, I was left with no effective containment options. For around the house that wasn’t as much of a problem as it should have been. Large as they had gotten, my bold but sensitive new friends seemed almost indecently perky. They did not sag or flop like fish. They just . . . jiggled. Spectacularly. Meanwhile, my hips, ass and waist were starting to look like the inspiration for fertility goddess icons.

At least everything appeared to be in the right place, even if the portions were, so to speak, generous. I had been worried, based on my original impression of the alien called Worm, that they might get something seriously wrong. But other than Janet’s periodic observation that they had endowed me with an extra large portion of asshole, the only anatomical abnormality I noticed was that the tendons in my ankles were uncomfortably tight when I was barefoot or wearing flats. Which, when I took time to think about it, was probably my own fault. When I thought about the People Magazine covers I had seen at supermarket checkout stands over the years, I could see why the termites might have thought that women’s feet naturally pointed.

But the exterior changes, however extraordinary, roiled me less than changes I felt inside. We had gotten a FedEx delivery – Janet, bless her, had ordered two new bras and a few extra things for me to wear, just to carry me through the transition. She was running some errands and I answered the door, only to find myself the subject of intense and hyper focused scrutiny by the man doing the delivery.

It seemed he was a fan of edelweiss. A big fan. And, until I unwrapped the package he was delivering, the thin fabric of my top was all the covering my eager blossoms would get, and it showcased, rather than concealed, them.

My face become hot. I quickly squiggled something on the pad so that he would go back to his truck.

He almost fell off the stairs, though, because he was looking back at me. Well, at the flowers. So to speak. It was his turn to blush.

I went back inside, closed the door, and leaned against it. His scrutiny had been unnerving. Not because I had felt scared or threatened, but because I had enjoyed it. Like everything else touching the core of my new femininity, I had felt a jolt of pleasure, powerful as an electric current. A tingling in my bountiful handfulls; a stirring in my curvaceous core.

Shit.

I’d never thought much about my sexuality, honestly. It was fair to say that I had been attracted to women rather than men, but the attraction had been mild. More than anything else, I guess I had been undersexed. It just hadn’t been all that important to me. My intellectual pursuits had wholly dominated my life.

In consequence, that damned FedEx guy had probably gotten more of a rise out of me than I could remember experiencing. He had looked maybe twenty-five, and although he probably wasn’t quite as callow as the typical grad student of my acquaintance – having to scratch for your own worms tends to mature people in ways that college life does not – he wouldn’t be far above the mark. Conversing with him would be, in all likelihood, downright tedious. He was certainly unlearned and, far more regrettable, he was probably even earnest.

But my body was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that conversation was not the critical dish on this particular menu. He was cute. And that, somehow, that was a matter of great, even urgent, significance to the part of my brain that's responsible for responding to stimuli.

The part of my brain that remained capable of scientific inquiry – or, at very least, of simple logic – was forced to conclude from this evidence that whatever was flowing through my bloodstream was changing both the orientation and intensity of my sexual desires.

To which the judgmental part of my brain relied, “Fucking splendid!”

When Janet came home, she could tell something was troubling me. “How’s the girl whirl goin’ for you today?”

I mumbled something. I hadn’t told Janet how much I was coming to enjoy all things feminine. I was embarrassed by it, really. But my feelings towards Janet were also becoming tangled. We were friends and colleagues. I had worked with her for decades. And, at the same time, part of me wanted to react to her like she was Mom. I wanted to confide in her.

She is also sharp as hell, so she saw lots of things I wasn’t eager to talk about. She responded to my mumble by saying, “You can keep tryin’ to fool me, I s’pose, but really, it’ll just set you back. You know you’re lovin’ it. I know you’re lovin’ it. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s not even a neutral thing. It’s great.”

“If they’d turned me into a goat, you’d cheer when I started eating grass,” I grumbled.

“I would, too,” she said cheerfully. “Goats gotta goat. Girls gotta girl. Why fight it?”

“Oh, come on, Janet!!! That’s absurd! A noun should not follow a word that’s being used as a stand-in for ‘must.’”

“I’m a literature professor,” she said archly. “We get to take liberties. And you’re changing the subject.”

“At least I’m not making the subject an object. Anyhow, will you still cheer if I turn into a bimbo?”

“Oh, I dunno. . . . It’d probably be great for enrollment. We could get the college to change the name of your endowed chair so that you could be the Bodacious Professor of Linguistics. You’d have heaps of strappin’ young men trying their very hardest to learn . . . ah . . . ya know. Words ‘n shit.”

“Janet,” I growled.

She threw up her hands. “I know, I know. But seriously . . . have you noticed any signs of cognitive decline? ‘Cuz I haven’t.”

I thought about that. I didn’t feel intellectually focused. At all. But . . . No, I wasn’t any less sharp. I shook my head. “I still seem to be okay when I’m thinking about things like the aliens and the fate of the human race.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” she responded. “Glad to know we’re still in good hands. So, s’pose you tell me what’s got you in a funk?” she asked.

I turned beet red and said, “A guy just checked me out. And . . . I . . . I”

I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t say it. Instead, I burst into tears, ran into my bedroom, slammed the door and flopped down on my bed, face down.

Seriously. I did all of those things, in the prescribed order, like a distressed debutante. God in heaven, what’s WRONG with me?

Janet left me alone for a bit and, amazingly, I fell asleep. Again. When I woke up, the shadows were long, and Janet was rubbing my back gently.

“Hey, sweetie,” she said softly.

Even she felt it. She certainly wasn’t treating me like a colleague.

It should have hurt. Instead, I had a sense of deep peace. Of security. Mom was watching out for me. “Hey,” I said back.

“You okay?”

I thought about it. Was I okay? “I just don’t feel like I’m in control. If I’m not on the verge of tears, I’m giggling. My body’s reactions to . . . any sort of stimulus. You name it. It’s overwhelming me.”

“Your emotions are stronger now, Honey,” she said, soothingly. “How much of that is female, versus all the crazy in your system? Who the hell knows? But that outburst was pretty typical of a girl in puberty, and they have less goin’ on than you do. Cut yourself some slack.”

She rubbed my back some more, not pushing. The shadows grew longer. It was nice.

“Janet?” I said, making it a question.

“Uh huh?”

“Do you read People Magazine?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “For the articles, ya know?”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Do I look like anyone . . . anyone you’ve seen? In the magazine, I mean?”

“I know what you mean,” she assured me.

“And?”

“Do you know who Margot Robbie is?”

“Ah . . . no,” I confessed. “Movies?”

“Yeah, movies,” she agreed. “You know? Fiction, but with pictures that, well . . . move. Anyhow, you look a bit like her – more’n a bit, I guess. In the face, anyhow.”

I rolled over and looked up at her. “Anyone else?”

“No one livin’ comes to mind,” she replied, a bit warily.

“Someone who’s died?”

She shook her head. “Nooooo . . . . Not exactly.”

“That sounds pretty mysterious,” I probed. “C’mon. Give!”

She looked down at me, sprawled on the bed in all my dramatic bodaciousness, and asked, “Have you ever considered changin’ your last name to ‘Rabbit?’”

To be continued. Bodaciously.