Another thing I liked a lot was her healthy lungs, her ability to breathe so deeply and easily and go for hours without feeling the need for a cigarette.

When I woke up, I was Scott again. Cynthia or Emily was gone, but while I was figuring out what to do next — how to get back to my dorm when all I had to wear was a grass-stained bathrobe — Emily returned to the room, also wearing a bathrobe.

“You’re up,” she noted, not looking happy. “Turn your back while I get dressed, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, and did so.

When she said “Okay, you can turn around now,” I turned and said: “Any ideas on how I can get back?”

“I don’t know. What about if I call Carew Hall and ask somebody to get Randall to come to the phone? Then he can bring you some clothes.”

“Sounds good.”

“Okay. Don’t leave the room and don’t open the door for anybody, okay? I’m going to lock it.”

“I won’t.”

To cut a long story short, she couldn’t get Randall on the first try — turned out he was sleeping late, and so was Darrell, who’d slept in my bed because Taka didn’t want to have to explain jekyllase to Darrell’s roommate, who was kind of a straight — and it was almost two hours before Randall brought me a change of clothes, and Emily brought them up to her room. She wasn’t comfortable hanging around me, at least while I was wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and spent most of the morning down in the lobby, studying and trying the phone every half hour. So I had a lot of time to sit in her room and think about Jennifer and what it was like to be her.

And I was ashamed to admit I liked it. I liked having her cheerful outgoing personality, I liked having her smooth skin and feeling her breasts wobble around on our chest, I liked the way Randall and Taka looked at her, and I loved it when Taka and I kissed and he started touching me. It was weird and it didn’t make sense, I should have hated all that, but I liked it. I wouldn’t want to do that while I was me, but being her gave me permission to do those things and enjoy them.

Another thing I liked a lot was her healthy lungs, her ability to breathe so deeply and easily and go for hours without feeling the need for a cigarette. In those days not many people knew how bad cigarettes were for you; the tobacco companies had done a pretty good job of covering it up. But we knew they weren’t good for you, and being able to contrast lungs that had never smoked with lungs that had been smoking for years gave me a perspective on it that most people didn’t have. My lungs had gotten worse only gradually under the influence of smoking, so the problems it had caused weren’t that noticeable or bothersome until I realized what I was missing.

So when Emily came back up to her room with the clothes Randall had brought me, I said: “Could you do me a favor, sometime this weekend or next?”

“What is it?”

“Buy some clothes for Jennifer? I’ll get you the money and her measurements.”

“Oh! You want to try being her again?”

“It was... interesting. I think I can learn more from it if I let her go out in public, dressed properly, and see how people react to her and all.”

She smiled. “Sure. Get me her measurements and enough money, and I’ll buy stuff. Any preferences as to styles?”

I scratched my head. “Jennifer knows what she wants, but at the moment I’m not sure. Just use your judgment.”

“Okay. And I’ll buy stuff for Cynthia as well. We can have a girls' day out.”

I smiled. “That’d be great.”

So I got a couple more doses of jekyllase from Larry Ryman the next evening. The following Saturday morning, I met up with Emily at her dorm room after she called me to say her roommate had left.

“Okay, let’s do this before I lose my nerve,” I said, taking the jekyllase out of my pocket and the small carton of orange juice out of the grocery store bag. “You got any glasses?”

“Um, no. I can borrow a couple of coffee mugs from the kitchen, though.”

She came back in a couple of minutes, and I poured up and mixed the doses. We were about to drink up when Emily said, with a blush, “Um, remember how our clothes didn’t fit us that well last time? What about if we turn our backs and take off our clothes and then drink, and put on fresh clothes?”

We’ve seen each other naked before, I thought but didn’t say. We hadn’t dated in months, and Emily was dating someone else now; if she felt uncomfortable about it, I wasn’t going to needle her. “Sure,” I said, and turned my back.

Is this really a good idea? I thought after I’d gotten my clothes off, and then It was good the first time, and this could be better, and swallowed.

We felt our flesh shifting around again, and Scott felt anticipation and dread for a few moments before it was overwhelmed by my joy at being me again.

“Hey, Cynthia, you ready yet?”

“Almost done.”

“Can I turn around while we get dressed, since we’re both girls now?”

“I would be fine with that.”

I saw the end of Cynthia’s transformation, as she turned toward me while reaching her full height. I reached over to her roommate’s bed where I’d laid out the outfit Emily had bought for me, and started getting dressed.

“I’ll need you to help me with the bra,” I said, slipping on the panties. “My mother didn’t teach me how, for some unaccountable reason.”

Cynthia smiled. “Of course.”

We got dressed, with her helping me as necessary, and I chattered excitedly. “This fits okay, but not quite right,” I said. “Let’s go shopping and get some stuff that fits better, more outfits. If we’ve bought more clothes for us, Scott and Emily will be committed to being us again, right? Can’t let those go to waste.”

“Or perhaps they’ll resent us for wasting their money and be reluctant to put their funds in our hands again,” Cynthia said. “But I think one or two more outfits, things that fit better than what Emily bought without us having the opportunity to try them on, would be reasonable. And we can return these things, so it would not cost much if any extra. I certainly need a larger bra.”

“Yeah, you kinda do.”

So that was our first stop. I was all for taking my car, but Cynthia pointed out I didn’t match Scott’s driver’s license, and she didn’t match Emily’s either.

“Let me see her license,” I said, and peered at it closely when she got it out of Emily’s purse.

“Yeah, this could work. It’s blurry like all driver’s license photos, and your face is basically an improved version of Emily’s. You differ mainly in your figures.”

“And our personalities,” she said, taking the license back and looking at it again. “Perhaps you’re right. But neither of us matches the registration information on the car. If we get stopped for any reason, the police may suspect we stole the car.”

“Nah, we can tell them Scott loaned it to us, and he’ll back us up when they finally find him to ask him.”

“Very well.”

So out we went, and a few minutes later we were at the mall. It wasn’t a large mall by today’s standards, but it was fairly new, and though Cynthia wasn’t impressed with the selection of clothing, I was in hog heaven, since it was all new to me. I don’t know how many pieces of clothing I tried on that day. I was a little tired but still feeling enthusiastic when we stopped for lunch. I would have bought dozens of things, as much as I could possibly afford and maybe more, but Cynthia kept cautioning me not to spend so much of Scott’s money that he wouldn’t want to be me again. So I didn’t buy anything at first, until I’d tried on a bunch of stuff at several stores. Then after lunch I went back and bought my favorites: a flower-pattern peasant skirt, a solid green long-sleeved blouse, and matching shoes with a low heel. The skirt and blouse had no pockets, so I needed a purse as well. I wanted to buy a necklace or earrings too, but reluctantly decided I’d better not push my luck. Scott needed this stuff if he wanted to be me again, and the less money I spent, the more likely he was to want to be me again. Then, after he’d made a habit of it, I could buy the necklace and earrings.

“So,” Cynthia said with affected casualness, “what do you want to do next?”

“I don’t know. See a movie, maybe?”

“How about if we just go back to Emily’s dorm room, relax and listen to records? Emily has little or no taste, but her roommate has some decent records and doesn’t mind Emily playing them.”

“Do you think her roommate will mind us hanging out there? Has Emily told her about using jekyllase?”

“Yes, she mentioned it, and I have a secret phrase I’m supposed to use to identify myself as Emily’s hyde.”

“All right, then.”

So we returned to campus. Cynthia parked Scott’s car in the lot near Scott’s dorm, and we walked over to Utterson Hall. Cynthia unlocked the door of Emily’s room and walked in ahead of me.

“Hello, Alice,” she said. “I’m Cynthia — Emily told you I might come by.”

“Yeah, she did, and I gave her a secret phrase for you to use.”

Cynthia gave us a pained expression, and recited: “‘And the bald-headed birds are whispering everywhere.’”

Alice grinned. “Either you’re her, or you’re somebody she gave permission to use her stuff. Knock yourself out. Who’s your friend?”

“Hi,” I said, extending my hand to shake, “I’m Jennifer. I see you like Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan — I love their stuff!”

“Yeah, I’ve got both their albums. Are you also... um... under the influence of this jekyllite stuff?”

“Jekyllase,” Cynthia corrected.

“Yep!” I affirmed. “My jekyll isn’t as much fun as me, but he’s not a bad sort if you get to know him.” Maybe Scott would be more likely to become me again if I put in a good word for him with girls now and then.

“Wait — him?”

“Yeah, jekyllase turns Scott into me. Far out, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“So Cynthia said you had some records you didn’t mind Emily playing?”

“Umm, maybe. I know Emily’s real careful about handling them, but I don’t know you...”

“If anything, Emily is sloppy compared to me,” Cynthia said.

“All right, go ahead. But if you scratch anything you owe me for a replacement.”

So we looked through Alice’s eclectic record collection while Alice went back to studying. Cynthia wanted to listen to The Velvet Underground, and I wanted to listen to the Jack Blanchard and Misty Morgan albums Alice had mentioned. Scott was mildly amused by a couple of their songs that had gotten radio airtime, but he didn’t love them the way I did, and I’d never had a chance to listen to their other stuff. Cynthia, it turned out, didn’t like their stuff at all. We compromised on listening to a couple of songs I’d never heard from their first album, and then The Velvet Underground. Alice and I had fun teasing Cynthia by singing along with the chorus on “Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker,” and then she and Cynthia sang along with one or two of the songs from The Velvet Underground, which Scott had heard once or twice but which neither of us had paid a lot of attention to. Cynthia had a beautiful singing voice, much better than mine or Alice’s.

Cynthia and I sat on Emily’s bed while we listened and sang along. After the end of side one of The Velvet Underground, Cynthia said: “I guess we’d better change. You don’t want to be wearing that when Scott comes back.”

“Oh, yeah. His clothes won’t exactly fit me, though. Have you got a bathrobe or nightgown or something I could change into?”

“Sure,” she said with a smile. “I think Scott would appreciate the bathrobe more than the nightgown.”

I shrugged. “I’m pleasantly surprised — no, ecstatic — that he brought me back at all. I don’t think a minor embarrassment like coming back in a nightgown will scare him off trying jekyllase again. But the bathrobe won’t hurt.”

I changed into Emily’s bathrobe, and Cynthia into her nightgown. And none too soon; halfway through side two, I changed back into Scott.

Cynthia and Alice turned their backs while I changed into my guy-clothes. When I turned around again, Emily had returned.

“I’ll leave you to get dressed,” I said. “Shall we do it again sometime?”

Emily smiled. “I’d like that, but I’ll have to check with Darrell. He was none too pleased that I had a girls' day out planned for today.”

“Did you tell him with who?”

“No, I let him make his own assumptions.”

I left — and left Jennifer’s clothes in Emily’s wardrobe for the moment. At the time, I figured I’d go over there to change next time as well.

I have several books in the Secret Trans Writing Lair's Pride Month bundle. Note that unlike previous open-ended bundles, this is only available through the end of June.