Belle of Vicksburg
-2-
459 Willard Lane, Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I cursed my fate for the rest of the day and on the bus ride home. You see I live in a kind of run down section of town. The side of town that the poor people come from. The people in Vicksburg call this neighborhood “The Swamp'' because it is in a low lying area. The whole area is prone to flooding each spring the Mississippi River swollen by melting ice from up North jumps its bank and creeps into the block. Our house is kind of this two story creole cottage located toward the back of the block. It also happens to be the closest one to the banks of the Yazoo River and our yard is one of the ones that are most prone to flooding.

Anyway I took a deep breath as I stepped off the bush, and breathed in the diesel fumes of the bush. Our public school buses always smelled like that, they had that sour diesel smell to them. Taking a deep breath I nodded my head and slowly made my way through the yard. Our yard looked like a swamp, okay it really looked like a marsh. The grass was tall, it reached up to my ankles. The grass was tall and it needed cutting. Another chore on the list I suppose.

Just then a strong gust of wind blew in directly from the river and the smell of rotten eggs toward me. I gagged a little and almost threw up in my mouth. I guess it was time to do something with the ditch. You see at the edge of our property there is a ditch. The ditch is filled with stagnant water and rotting vegetation. Wild cattails grow on all sides of the ditch and sometimes wild animals fall into the ditch and die. I also think the house next to us dumps their raw sewage into the ditch to shave a few pennies off their sewer bill.

And ditch is also a breeding ground for mosquitoes that could carry such dreaded and feared mosquito borne diseases such as West Nile and Malaria. It was also home to snakes. When I cut the grass about once a fortnight I always had to be on the lookout for snakes, one good, solid strike from a rattlesnake or his cousin the water moccasin would really put your day into a tale spin. Okay, really you did not have to worry about the rattlesnake, your biggest concern was the water moccasin, the water moccasin I'm sure found the cattail and reed covered ditch bank a perfect home. Plus, I knew from the thousands of tiny mud castles that dotted the yard each spring that crayfish by the thousands must make that ditch their home as well.

In short the nickname “The Swamp” really lived up to its name. There was a plus. I was only a mile and half as the crow flies from downtown Vicksburg. And from there it was only two more miles to the large regional shopping mall. I'll be honest with you, the words of my friend David haunted me. He was expecting me to show up and look like a boy in a damn skirt so the whole school could just laugh their ass off at me. And for the second time that day I saw red. Without thinking I started to march down the concrete driveway and quickly I turned onto the brick paved sidewalk that connected our front porch with the concrete driveway. A dozen, mean, pissed off feral cats scattered to the seven winds as I pushed through them. That is another problem we had down here in “The Swamp” feral cats roamed the neighborhood.

The feral cats that roamed around the block were not these cute, fluffy, meowing little cuddly creatures the name conjured up. No, these things were huge, often weighing around twenty stones maybe? And they often attacked the many stray dogs that roamed around the neighborhood, turning over trash cans in search of their next meal. And nine times out of then they won the battle and clawed the dog to death.
And sometimes the dog would win the day. Did we call animal control? Yes, but Vicksburg Animal Control turned a blind eye to our troubles. Anyway, as I pushed past the collection of wild feral cats, smelling the gut wrenching smell of cat piss as I did so. I pushed upon the wooden door and walked into our simply furnished living room.

Our house is kind of like most houses built in this neighborhood. When you walk through the front door, you will enter the living room. The living room is the hub of our house if you will. If you keep going straight you will enter the kitchen. Our kitchen is just your basic kind of kitchen. The floor is coated with linoleum.

In the middle you will find a simple, wooden table that had been since mom brought the house after she and dad split apart, and pushed beside the wall was a gas burning stove, beside the stove a fridge that again had been here since mom had brought the house. And beside the fridge a simple wooden down that leads down a flight of wooden stairs to the basement. The basement is your average basement, it has a concrete floor that is cracked from one end to the other, a work bench and it smells moldy and musty.

Anyway back to the living room, it is simple, again the floor is coated with linoleum. A large bay window overlooks the screened in front porch. Screen porches are common in the south, and again our yard needs attention. Furnishings are simple, an old leather sofa, a chair and a vintage television. We don't have cable, we can't afford it, so we make do with the free channels. Those are channels on through twelve and sometimes we can pick up a thirteenth channel if it's a calm, cloudless day outside.

Anyway to the left side of the living room there is another doorway, this doorway leads down a long hallway. At the end of this hallway there is something mom likes to call a “Half Bathroom” I guess because it only contains a sink and a toilet. If you want to get a shower you need to trek upstairs to the upstairs bathroom. Anyway this hallway leads to two other rooms. One is kind of a dimly lit room that always musty

This room has a small work desk and the walls are lined with books that sit on selves that have been built into a wall. I guess the former owner loved to read, because there are dozens and dozens of old books sitting on those shelves, most of them seem to just be collecting dust. The room is always cold, and like I said it's must and dusty and no amount of polishing, and dusting ever seems to leave a scratch or come close to touching the layer of dust that has settled there throughout the years.

Across from here one will find the guest room. The guest room was nothing but a spare bed, a spare dresser and we mostly used it for storage. In the hallway there was a stairwell, the stairwell led to the second floor. Here my mom had her own bedroom. My older sister who was a senior had her own bedroom. And also here was my room. And the house's only full size bathroom was located at the end of the hallway.

In the middle of the hallway, one could see dangling down a cord of braided rope. Pulling upon this rope would cause a hide away ladder to fold down, that ladder is what mom called an 'Attic Ladder' and by climbing it one would climb up to the attic were we kept a wide assortment of Halloween decorations, Christmas decorations, and a few Easter decorations. Despite our somewhat limited household income, and the often or not dreadful state of our front yard, not to mention our backyard. Mom was keen to decorate the yard for the holidays. I think it was one of her simple pleasures in life.

All of these thoughts swirled around inside my head as I climbed the wooden stairs. Taking a deep breath I pushed open the door that led to my bedroom and tossed my brown leather school satchel down upon the unmade bed and heaved a big sigh. My room was nothing fancy to look at. Just four plain walls that had been painted a light blue by the former owner. Trimmed in pastel pink at the top and white at the bottom. A simple bed that I think came from an old Mercy hospital with a collection of mix match covers and a desk where one rested a laptop that needed to be updated or maybe I should just go down to the local pawn shop and buy a brand new one.

Yes, we could not afford cable, but we could afford the internet. Now, normally I would open my leather school satchel, pull out my various textbooks and start right away on my homework. But right now my mind was still thinking about that dumb bet I'd made. Then an idea fell into my head. It was a crazy idea, a totally insane idea. But it struck me as the keenest way to turn the tables.

Now, I'm a bit on the androgynous side of things. And oddly enough the ongoing struggle with puberty has done nothing for me. My voice hasn't deepened in the slightest, I have little or no sex drive. I'm still short, and I rarely need to shave. Well I would be lying if I said I had little or no sex drive. I do tend to google risque images from time to time, And I do tend to read stories about girls getting covered in sticky things like custard, yogurt, chocolate sauce, chocolate pudding, gunge or getting pied in the face. That along with my normal reading of varies fanfiction authors and the many works of Robert Jordan and J.R.R Tolkien that lined the walls of my bedroom

Bun of that ever made its way into the half ass attempts at writing I tried to pass as stories. Anyway I've gotten off track, and now it's time to get back on track.

Anyway instead of going ahead and tackling my homework and getting it out of the way, tonight a light load anyway I decided to boot up my computer and then I took a deep breath as I peered up into space. Now I'm something of an “Otaku” , that urban slang for somebody who is really into anime. Now I'm going to be up front with you. I'm really into anime. I first got into anime a few years ago when I stumbled upon Toonami while I was doing my homework at a friend's house. Anyway I soon found you could buy bundles of DVD's of those shows for cheap at the local charity/pawn shops. So in a way Toonami was my gateway into the world of anime. Anyway I bring that up, simply because from time to time a guy often would be talked into crossdressing by the female cast for a gag or something. And that was often just done for laughs and giggles.

I mean though they were dressed up as girls, you could still clearly tell that they were a guy and they acted and talked like a guy. And that always bothered me a little/ And the more I thought about it the more bothered I became. Finally I pushed my rolling chair back and stood up and took a deep breath I proclaimed.

“Okay! Okay!” I said taking a deep breath “Two can play at this game!”

I don;t know what came over me at that moment. But a few minutes later I found myself walking into the upstairs bathroom. I emptied my bladder, then washed my hands, then my face even though I did not need to, I then found myself starting to shave again. Then I washed my face yet again, then I took off my school trousers, followed by my socks, then my boxers, then finally my button down school shirt, and finally my undershirt.

Then I stepped into the shower and took a nice, long, hot as hell shower. I washed and conditioned my hair and then on a whim I used one of my sister's disposable razors and some of her shaving foam to tidy up my legs.

Having been in a household with two girls, I'd seen them shave their legs dozens of times. So it was kind of second nature to me. Once that was done I washed my whole body, stepped out, toweled off. Dosed myself with sweet smelling bathing powder, stepped into my room, tossed on a pair of clean boxers, a clean pair of socks and a more casual shirt. Then I slipped on a pair of jeans and a pair of trainers.

And finally I started to brush my hair. As I brushed my hair I noticed how my wet locks of hair framed my round oval face. I smiled a little, already I could see the vision forming in the back of my head.

:If you gotta cross thin ice, you might as well do it in a dance.” I sang to myself.

To summon it all up, because I lost a bet, my friend or was he really a fucking bastard, after eight years I still did not know the answer expected me to show up for school tomorrow morning and make a total fool of myself so our little social group could get off a few cheap laughs, maybe even flip my skirt just to see if I was wearing boxers under it. Cause boys do that type of dumb shit. But let me run this idea past you. What if I showed up to school tomorrow dressed up like a girl? Not just any girl, a girl that  woke up that morning and decided she was finally going to leave that tomboy phase of her life behind her and finally decided to embrace her inner femininity? That would turn the tables on David big time, that would take all the wind out of his sails.

Little did I know I was starting out a grand misadventure. At that very moment, one door was slowly starting to close and another one was about to open. If I had foresaw the hardships, toil, and blood shed awaited me further down this road at that very moment. I'm sure I would have stopped, paused and turned around and said to hell with this dumb bet. But I did not. So please, read on.