It was cloyingly hot and humid in the Rossington High School gym as I stood to the side of the basket at the east end. The school year had just ended two days before, and summer workouts were already in progress for the school’s basketball team.

My best friend George Parker was the star point guard, and I was cheering him on as he led the team through seemingly interminable offensive drills. Everyone in the gym was dripping in sweat as it was an unusually sweltering June day, and the administration was taking its sweet time fixing the air conditioning system. Even Coach Bullins’ whistle sounded wet whenever he called for a different play.

I fished in my pants pocket for a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from my forehead. That’s when an errant pass from George hit me smack dab between the eyes, knocking me off my feet. I’m afraid I screamed out in pain as I fell.

“Reggie! Reggie! Are you okay?” George and the rest of the team ran over to my crumpled body. My vision was blurry as I nodded and tried to speak.

“I’m…I’m okay, Georgie. Help me up, will ya?” George pulled me up onto my feet. I wobbled and took a step forward. I caught myself just before my knees buckled, George still holding onto my arm.

“Whoa, Reggie. We should take you to the infirmary,” George said, looking at Coach Bullins for his endorsement.

“Yeah, Coach, let George take his girlfriend to the infirmary, and we can end practice a little early today too—” said Larry, our 6’8” center, as he towered over me, eyeing my face for bruises.

Frowning in Larry’s direction, I quickly waved it off. “I’m all right, guys. Gimme a minute.”

“He looks okay to me. No bruises or cuts from the ball. Walk it off, Perrin,” advised Coach Bullins. I nodded and gave George a reassuring smile.

“Listen.” Coach blew his whistle unnecessarily. It still sounded like a wet fart. “Men, let’s call it a day. It was a very good session. We can improve those screens on the pick and rolls, though.” He paused thoughtfully and then resumed. “Anyway, with the damned AC out, we’ll all drown in a pool of sweat if we go another hour in this heat and humidity. Let’s reconnoiter at ten tomorrow morning. Okay? Dismissed!”

The instant we climbed into George’s mom’s 10-year-old Honda Civic, he turned on the AC.

“Sorry about Larry, Reggie. Sometimes, I think he’s secretly attracted to you.”

“Do you think I look that much like a girl, George? “

George gave me an odd look, and we moved out of the school parking lot.

“I thought your dad promised to buy you a Dodge Challenger for your last birthday,” I teased George.

“That’s before they downsized his firm and reassigned him to the branch office in Keansburg. That’s a two-hour drive twice a day from here in Northern Jersey. He claims the gas and tolls are taking years off his life, not to mention the damage to his wallet. If I graduate on time next June, he’ll buy me a used Challenger.”

“You’ll still be BMOC no matter what you’re driving. You’re in like Flint at Seton Hall.”

“Well, if we don’t make State next year, I’ll probably have to settle for Monmouth. But enough about me. When is your uncle picking you up today?”

“His last class lets out at four, so I guess around five. Oh shit, I’ve got to make sure everything’s turned off and locked up when he picks me up.”

We stopped at one of the few intersections in town, waiting for the lights to turn. George sighed. “Sucks you’re moving to New York. Won’t be the same senior year without my trusty sidekick around—”

“At least I’ll be in town through the summer. I threatened to run away if mom forced me to move right now. I wanted to say goodbye to all my friends—”

“I’m your only friend, Reggie.”

“That’s not true! There’s you…and…and…yeah, you’re right.”

“You and your mom have to work your differences out. I don’t think it’s New York City you’re avoiding. It’s living with your mom.”

“Everything was fine before Dad died.” I started to tear up and pretended to peer out the window to hide my reddening eyes from George. “He was all for me seeking counselling for my…my gender dysphoria—”

“Reggie, you don’t know that’s what’s wrong with you—”

“You sound exactly like my mom. She even thought I was making this shit up to rattle her cage.”

“Yeah, she wasn’t happy when the other parents in the neighborhood complained to her about her 17-year-old son dressing up as Taylor Swift on Halloween.”

“Mom was the one who insisted I chaperone Artie to go trick or treating. I’m surprised there were complaints, George. I thought I looked pretty damn good. I wish I could’ve gotten my hands on a better-quality blonde wig—”

The light turned green, and the old Honda Civic lurched across the intersection. “Come on, Reggie. You’re too smart not to know better. We’re in Northern New Jersey. Cross-dressing isn’t one of the more traditional seasonal activities in these parts.”

“I just want to live my truth. And Dad was really supportive. He was my stepfather, but he loved me like I was his biological child.”

“Your mom loves you too. I’ve known you since you were six years old. I wish my mother doted on me as much as yours does.”

“Then why doesn’t she believe I’m really a girl?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to lose a son. She already lost a daughter.”

“She gave my twin sister up for adoption when we were two weeks old—”

“She was 16 years old, Reggie. She could barely take care of one baby, much less two. You should consider yourself blessed that she chose to keep you—”

George parked in front of my house. Hurriedly, I leaped from the car so he wouldn’t see the still-wet tracks of tears on my cheeks.

“My uncle will drive me to practice tomorrow morning, so you won’t have to pick me up. Bye!” George waved and drove off. I wiped my cheeks with the handkerchief I had been reaching for when the ball conked me and, composing myself, stepped into my empty house.

I sat on the stoop of my soon-to-be former house, waiting for Uncle Richie’s car to pull up to the curb. On either side of me sat two oversized suitcases containing all my worldly goods, including clothes, books, laptops, and a 2TB external drive containing my favorite music, movies, and data files. The sky was darkening, presaging a summer shower.

Hurry up, Unc, I’ve locked up the house. Don’t feel like going back inside, even for a few minutes. I looked up, and Uncle Richie was already hefting both suitcases and heading back to his car.

“It’s going to come down like a monsoon any minute now, Reggie. Let’s move it!”

Uncle Richie lived only a couple of miles away, on the edge of town, steps away from the interstate. He’d purchased the ramshackle pile of junk when he got his tenured position in the Contemporary History faculty of Parsons State University, just two townships over from Rossington.

The renovation project never quite progressed as he’d planned. All his free time was devoted to his obsession: what he called “the strangeness beyond.” It’s the title of his only published book. You might have even read it. Mom told me the Discovery Channel approached him about doing a TV series based on his book. It’d be weird seeing my kooky uncle on TV talking about UFOs, ancient aliens, and bigfoot.

Rain fell like pellets, impacting the windshield before being swept away with the rhythmic doggedness of the wipers.

Uncle Richie turned to me, which worried me, so I kept my eyes on the road ahead. “Why didn’t you go with your mom and Artie? A summer in New York City would’ve been pretty exciting when I was 17, I can tell you.”

“Ever since Dad died…”

“Yeah, you and your mom have been at odds. She even asked me for advice. She didn’t take it though—”

“What did you tell her?”

We were outside Richie’s quaint, baroque-style house (I mean broke). He shut off the engine and turned toward me again.

“I told her that I’ve suspected you were always a girl. A girl trapped in a boy’s body. I could tell that from the time you were 4 years old, and your grandmother tried to give you a toy firetruck and you screamed your head off because you wanted a My Little Pony jewelry box, like the one your cousin Cindy got.”

“I was a little brat, wasn’t I?”

“You know it. Well, anyway, I told your mom to find proper counseling for you because I had little doubt you were suffering from gender dysphoria. But she wouldn’t hear any of it.”

“I’m not going to New York. I told her I’d run away…if it came to that.”

“That’s why I suggested you stay with me for the summer. At least until she and Artie can find a permanent place to live, and she settles into her new job. By September, the two of you can declare a ceasefire. She’ll come around, Reggie. She does love you.”

“I’ll be 18 next March. Then she can’t tell me what to do. At all!” I took one of the suitcases, and Uncle Richie carried the other as we entered his house.

The rest of the week, Uncle Richie would drive me to basketball practice in the mornings. He only had two classes for the summer semester, so he’d usually go back home after dropping me off and work on his follow-up to “Strangeness Beyond.”

After practice, George and I would spend the rest of the day driving around in his mom’s junky old car, visiting people and places as they came about. One afternoon, we ran into his putative girlfriend, Winifred, while walking down the main drag in town, Dowd Avenue, looking through the shop windows.

I say putative since Winnie (as she prefers) acts rather blasé about her relationship with George. I’ve told George she probably has a number of out-of-town boyfriends. Maybe even dudes on rival high school basketball squads.

“Well, well, if it isn’t the odd couple.” She brushed her cheek against George’s and then stared down at me (I’m only 5’6”, and she’s practically a giantess). “I heard you’re moving to New York City, Reggie. I’d be careful with the cross-dressing there. You never know if Taylor Swift is in town. She might pitch a hissy fit. You look more like her than she does.” She cackled at her own witticism.

“Leave Reggie alone, Winnie. He’s not a pervert. It was a Halloween costume for chrissake.”

“Live and let live, I always say. Anyway, I’m late for a salon appointment. Have fun, boys…and girls!” She exited stage left, cackling all the way down the street.

“You really like her, George?”

“She’s got her good points. Come on, I’m hungry. There’s a White Castle about three blocks that way.”

I found myself early Saturday morning carrying an open laptop and entering numbers on an Excel spreadsheet as Uncle Richie barked out readings from the magnetometer he was pointing at the ground in Parsons State Park. We seemed to be walking in ever-widening circles across the vast green expanse dotted with white birch and red oak trees. Besides occasionally stumbling on picnic blankets and camping gear, I tried to keep him from blindly walking into Parsons Lake.

“Vortices, Reggie. Vortices, or portals, are areas of heightened levels of electromagnetism. Did you know there have been a dozen cases of unexplained disappearances in this park in just the past decade?”

“They probably drowned in the lake, Uncle Richie.”

“63 uT. A little high but not unusual. Got that, Reggie? Put it in the right cell on the grid sheet now. We want the map to be accurate. Drowned in the lake? No, sir. They dragged the lake in each case. No bodies.”

“Eaten by bears?”

“The largest mammals in the park are otters, squirrels, and foxes. Little chance of being some cute critter’s dinner. No, I believe they slipped into another dimension, a parallel universe. Unable or unwilling to return.”

“You’re serious about this shit, aren’t you?”

“Serious enough to spend every weekend this summer surveying the electromagnetic fields in this park. There’s something strange going on here, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

“New York City doesn’t seem such a bad idea right now.”

Laughing, Uncle Richie stopped a few yards short of the lake. “Reggie, you’re under no obligation to come with me and help me with the survey. I can handle this myself. Why don’t you hook up with your friend George and go joyriding or whatever teenage boys do these days?”

“He’s taking Winnie to the multiplex to see the new Tommy Kincaid movie this afternoon, and then his cousin’s getting married tomorrow in Bergenfield. His mom says he’s gotta go. And then most weekends this summer, his folks rent a house on the Shore in Sea Bright…”

“Well, then, you’re stuck with me, old boy. Let’s continue, okay?”

When my stepfather Nick first moved in with us, even before Mom and he got married, I was three years old and gave my mother fits because I wouldn’t sleep through the night, sometimes two or three times a week. Nick would come into my room and entertain me until I fell asleep by making hand shadows against the wall in my room, which was dimly lit by a small lamp because I was afraid of the dark.

Years later, I would learn that Nick was practicing an art form called shadowgraphy. He could tell whole stories populated by shadow horses, rabbits, birds, dogs, and even people!

As I lay in my sleeping bag in the tent Uncle Richie had erected, unable to sleep, not a little disturbed by his loud, rhythmic snoring, I made hand shadows against the side of the tent to amuse myself.

“That’s pretty good, Reggie.”

“Oh, sorry, Uncle Richie. I guess I was being too loud—”

“Cut the sarcasm, kid. Can’t sleep?”

“Yeah, it’s weird trying to sleep in a tent in the middle of a wilderness park.”

“We can talk. I can bore you to sleep.”

“So, why are you so obsessed with the possible vortex in this park? I mean, why not Yosemite or Mount Shasta? As a college professor, you get your summers off. You could spend months exploring those places.”

“About five years ago, I met a guy named Grant Moorefield at a Strange Phenomena Convention in Buffalo. We hit it off immediately. We were both into arcane, supernatural, even extraterrestrial scenarios. He was a freelance writer. Sadly, he was barely making a living at it.

I invited him to town specifically to investigate the disappearances in Parsons State Park. He was very excited about being the first to write about the park. One day we split up to better use our limited time and he walked toward the lake. I went off in the opposite direction. Night came and he never returned to our camp site. He just disappeared.

They dragged the lake, searched with bloodhounds, even flew a helicopter over the entire 10,000 acres of the park. Nothing. No body. Not even a stitch of clothing.”

“You think he stumbled into a vortex, a portal into another dimension?”

“Maybe. But I get the feeling he didn’t stumble. He wanted to find the vortex and escape into another reality. He was very unhappy. Unfulfilled, you’d say. I suspect he’s happier wherever he is now.”

“How can you say that? You’re just taking a shot in the dark.”

“About a year after he disappeared, I kept having this weird dream. It was as if Grant was communicating with me through the curtain that separates this world from his. He looked pretty much the same as before he went missing, except he had this really broad smile on his face all the time. He told me he had passed over into a parallel universe, almost identical to ours. A few things were different. Important things. Like the Grant in that world was his twin. Of course, he didn’t have a twin brother in our universe.”

“Uncle Richie, you’ve been partaking too much of the ganja—”

“Never touch the stuff. No, listen, I had these dreams almost nightly for almost a month. It was like I was watching a docuvideo! Ultimately, Grant said he was the happiest he’s ever been, and he wouldn’t return even if there was a way he could. His twin and he host a very popular podcast on strange phenomena. They make millions! Then the dreams stopped. It’s been years.”

Uncle Richie went silent. He seemed to be lost in contemplation of Grant’s journey into the unknown. At least he wasn’t snoring anymore. My uncle didn’t exactly bore me to sleep, but I was definitely pretty tired. I slipped into unconsciousness and hoped not to see Grant in my dreams.

I woke with a start in the middle of the night. I looked to my left and saw Uncle Richie in a deep sleep, his snoring now only a quiet, occasional rumble of breath. I lay back down, intending to resume my slumber, but found I felt compelled to extricate myself from my sleeping bag. I didn’t bother to put on anything over my skivvies and lifted the tent flap.

The night sky was filled with bright, twinkling stars. There was a warm breeze, and the air smelled of oak wood and earth. I felt myself pulled in the direction of the lake and almost mechanically walked toward its shore. I fought myself to turn back from the water, but, in the wink of an eye, I sank into the lake, the bottom sloping down, down, down.

I was drowning but I was still breathing. Breathing something that seemed to be both liquid and gaseous. An impossibility. I kept moving forward. The water, if that was what it was, was pitch black. I must be dying. This is what it must be like to die.

I emerged into the sunlight and inhaled gulps of air as if I had been holding my breath for long minutes. Walking out of the water onto the lakeshore, I noticed I was completely dry. As I looked myself over, I also noticed I was wearing a completely different set of clothes than when I woke up in the tent. In fact, I realized I was wearing a glittery t-shirt with a floral pattern, a belted pair of light-wash straight-leg jeans, and a pair of white sneakers.

What a teenage girl would wear! That’s when curiosity got the better of me, and I looked down my shirt to see I had small but perky, braless breasts. There was also the absence of something down there between my legs. The facts hit me like a two-by-four to my noggin. I had somehow been turned into a girl!

I searched my surroundings for the tent. I turned around in a 360-degree pivot and was certain I was in the exact location where our tent was minutes ago or was it last night? It looked like late afternoon as the sun was low in the sky. How was that possible? But then, how was it that I had been transformed into a girl? Was I in a parallel dimension, another universe where Reggie Perrin was a female?

There were a few campers and hikers in the park who crossed my path as I wandered, looking for any sign of my uncle. My anxiety edged into panic as late afternoon started to turn into evening. I was still moving about in muted sunlight, but it had to be close to 6 o’clock.

I patted down my pockets and realized I had neither a phone nor a wallet on me. I had determined to make my way back to town to my uncle’s house in the hope that he existed in this universe, but now, with no money to hop on a bus or a phone to order an Uber, I decided to make my way out to the highway and try to hitch a ride home. Thumb out, I confirmed the belief that nobody wants to take the chance of picking up some likely homicidal maniac.

The one guy who offered was an older dude with a leering eye. I thanked him but declined, backing up so far I almost fell into the brush by the side of the road. After about half an hour, a familiar-looking silver SUV stopped on a dime ten feet ahead of me.

I was so tired from walking that I ran toward the car, throwing caution to the wind. The driver powered down the passenger side window and turned to address me. The surprise in his eyes turned to anger when he saw me.

“Regina! What the hell are you doing out in the middle of nowhere, thumbing a ride? Are you insane?”

“Dad? But… you’re…you’re dead.”