In this chapter, Billie is faced with some hard choices. Will he continue wearing his sister's dress and put up with people assuming he's a girl? Will he wear some of the boy clothes he's gotten from the commissary? Is there a third option?   Madam Martinique's Finishing School Part Four Copyright 2007 by Heather Rose Brown =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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Part Four
 
Once I got my new school clothes put away in the space Tod had made for me in the closet and in the drawers of the dresser we shared, I flopped backwards onto the bed my new roommate said she wasn't using and closed my eyes. The mattress springs creaked and the bed shifted under Tod's weight as she sat down next to me. "Ummm, Billie?"

I opened my eyes, looked up at her, and tried to make sense of the odd looks she was giving me. "Yeah?"

She reached over her shoulder and pulled a strand of hair from her ponytail. "Would you mind if I gave you a bit of advice?"

I decided she mostly looked worried, so I smiled to try putting her at ease when I answered, "Sure."

"Well," she said, twirling the hair between her fingers for a moment before continuing, "when you're wearing skirts and dresses, you may wanna be careful how ya sit."

I lifted myself up until I was leaning back on my elbows. "Whatcha mean?"

"I mean, ya might wanna try keeping your knees together. With the way you're laying down with your legs dangling over the edge of the bed like that, anyone who walked in might be able to see your panties."

I could feel my face burning as I pulled my knees together. Just then, someone knocked on our door. I quickly sat up the rest of the way and Tod helped me adjust the skirt of my dress before she asked, "Who is it?"

"It's me, ya dope," someone answered through the door.

Tod smirked as she said, "Come in, Tracy."

The noisy chatter from the hall filled the bedroom for a minute when the door opened and a tall girl with long copper hair walked in, closing the door behind her. A huge smile stretched across her face when she saw me. "Hey there! You must be Tod's new roomie."

"I guess so," I answered, hoping my nervousness didn't show when I smiled back. I really wasn't used to talking to girls, unless you counted teasing them. I probably shouldn't have been nervous, since (if everything I'd heard about this school was true) she'd started off as a boy, but she still looked and acted like a girl.

While I was trying to sort through my confusion, she turned to my roommate with a small frown. "So, you gonna introduce us or what?"

Tod grinned as she stood up beside my bed. With a half-decent British accent, she said, "Billie, I'd like to introduce you to my good friend, Tracy. Tracy, allow me to introduce you to my new roommate, Billie."

Both girls broke into giggles when she finished. When Tracy was able to speak again, she said, "I wonder if Miss Joanquin knows how good you are at imitating her."

Tod snorted. "Oh, jeez. If she ever caught me at it, I'd probably wind up in detention with her ... again."

For some reason, this got them giggling even worse than before. They eventually calmed down again, but before I could ask what had been so funny, Tracy crossed the room in three long-legged steps until she was standing right in front of me.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when her arm shot out just a few inches from my face. It wasn't until I saw the way she was holding her hand that I realized what she was doing. After we shook hands, Tracy sat next to me and asked, "So, you girls just about ready for dinner?"

My mind was still spinning from all that had happened today, plus, I was feeling lost for words with a girl I'd just barely met sitting so close to me, so I was glad when Tod answered for both of us. "I think so. We just finished putting his school clothes away a couple minutes ago."

Tracy gave her a questioning look. Tod just nodded and smiled. When Tracy turned to me, her whole face was turning a deep pink. "I'm sorry. It's just I didn't see any tag pins, so I was kinda taking a guess, based on the way you were dressed."

I could feel my cheeks starting to warm again as I looked down at what I was wearing. "I see whatcha mean. This dress does kinda make me look like a girl."

"Well, it ain't just that. The way you got your hair styled don't really look like what most people expect on boys."

"Oh, that can be fixed pretty easy." Tod gasped, and Tracy's mouth dropped open when I yanked my wig off. I'd forgotten about all the bobby-pins my mother had used to hold it in place, so I hadn't been expecting it to hurt the way it did when I pulled it off. It wasn't actually all that bad, since it was over pretty quick, and was almost worth the surprised reactions I got. "Do I look more like a boy now?"

Tod pulled a couple of the bobby-pins from the top of my head that hadn't come off with the wig. "Well, your hair does look shorter."

I thought about what she said, then about what she didn't say. "But, it don't make me look like a boy, right?"

"No, not exactly." She reached out and brushed back the hair covering my eyes. "I don't know. Maybe ... yeah."

"So which is it?"

"That's not easy to say. There's some girls who wear their hair short and some boys who wear it long. The length by itself doesn't make someone look boyish or girlish."

Tracy started fluffing the back of my hair out with her fingers. "Ya know, if you brushed it out a little, your natural hair would look pretty ... ummm ... I mean, pretty nice."

Even though she'd caught herself, I still had a good idea of what she'd meant to say. "So ya don't think I look like a boy, neither?"

Tracy gave me a quick look up and down before she answered, "To be honest, it's hard to give a yes or no answer."

I sighed and looked down at myself again. I really couldn't blame anyone for the assumptions everyone was making. I bent over so I could see my legs. Puberty was taking it's good old time getting around to me, so there wasn't any noticeable hair on them yet and they weren't very muscular. Even I thought I looked like a girl, or at least my sister, when I wore her clothes. "I guess I aughta change out of this dress so people won't keep thinking I'm a girl."

Tod rested her hand on my shoulder until I sat up again. "If you want to change 'cause you don't like dresses, that's not a problem. So long as you wear some sort of school uniform while in class and don't go too crazy when you get to dress casual, you can pretty much wear what you want. Still, if it's just an issue of wanting people to know you're a boy, there's other ways of dealing with that."

"Like what?"

My roommate smiled, went over to the dresser and searched through the top drawer on her side, then came back carrying a small cardboard box. When she opened the lid and held it where I could see, I found what looked like a dozen or so tiny silver pins. "Are those your tag pins?" I asked.

Tod gave me a huge grin. "Good gir-- ummm ... good guess, Billie." I could tell she had caught herself, but I decided to keep my mouth shut, since I wasn't as interested in correcting her as in what she had to say. "I had a bad habit of losing them for a while, so I wound up with a bunch of spares." She picked out a pin similar to the one she was wearing on her name tag, but with an arrow attached to the circle instead of a plus sign. "This is the one you use to let people know you're a boy."

"So, that little thing will stop people from thinking I'm a girl?"

My roommate shook her head."They can't change what people think, but everyone here knows what the symbols mean, so people will refer to you as a boy and use words like 'he' and 'him' instead of 'she' and 'her'."

Someone rapped on the door and shouted, "Five minutes!"

"Who was that?" I asked when I heard the shout coming from farther away. I hadn't really heard enough to recognize the voice, but something about it seemed familiar.

"That was the head girl¹, Jessica." Tracy stood up and walked to the door. "We only got five minutes before dinner's ready. We better get going."

"Wait a minute. What's a 'head girl'?" It sounded like something I'd heard in a story² a while ago, but I was lost on the word's meaning.

"It's just a name for an older girl who gets to boss us around," Tod answered. Her frown made her look annoyed, but the way she was smirking made it look like she thought it was more funny than anything else. "So, would you like to use the tag pin, or would you rather get changed?"

"I guess we're in a rush, so I better just use the pin."

Tod glanced over her shoulder at her friend. "That girl's always in a rush when it comes to food, but I'm sure she can survive a couple of minutes while you change."

Tracy rolled her eyes and sighed. "I ain't that bad. Tod's right about one thing, though. I won't mind waiting for you if you want to change."

"Oh," I said when I realized the choices I had. Having grown up in a house where most of my choices were made for me, it wasn't easy working through what I really wanted. If it wasn't my parents or other adults telling me what to do, it'd be other kids who'd make my life hell if I didn't dress and act the "right" way.

I thought about my choices for a minute. On the one hand, my sister's dress was the only thing I had from home. Wearing it made me feel safe and warm, and not so lost in this new place. On the other hand, boys weren't weren't supposed to wear dresses. On the other hand ... I was running out of hands.

"I think I'll go with the pin."

Tod nodded as she set the box on the bed next to me. "Would you like me to attach it for you?"

"I'd appreciate that. I ain't got any idea where it's supposed to go."

She lifted my chin and fiddled with something around the neckline of my dress. "Usually, if you're not wearing a name tag, it'll go on the left side of your collar."

I felt like I'd crossed a line when I heard the backing for the pin snick in place. I was now officially a boy in a dress.

"Are you two done yet?" asked Tracy with just a hint of a whine.

Tod smoothed out my collar as she looked over her shoulder and said, "Yep, all done." She turned back to me with a wicked grin. "We better get her to the dining hall before she wastes away."

Tracy just groaned before opening the door. Tod took my hand, helped me stand up, and soon we were following our noses to my first meal at Madam Martinique's Finishing School.

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¹ Even though this story takes place in the US, I've borrowed terms like head girl from the British education system.

² Just in case you were wondering, the story in question was the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling.