“Hi,” I said. “I’m, uh — I’m fixing to turn into Jennifer, okay? So if you could not look this way while I’m changing clothes, that would be good.”

 

“Sure, man,” he said. “You got some chick threads at some point?”

---

I talked to Emily after class Tuesday afternoon, and she said she had plans with Darrell for much of Saturday, and with some other friends Sunday. That left me at loose ends for the following weekend — I’d wanted to hang out with Cynthia as Jennifer again, I’d had so much fun. I wanted to hang out with Taka, too, but I was pretty sure Darrell would never take jekyllase again. He’d been avoiding me since our jekyllase party; when I ran into him in the hallways or stairs and tried to talk to him, he’d brush me off, saying he was in a hurry to get somewhere.

I went out and bought an opaque dry-cleaning bag, and went over to Emily’s dorm with it after calling to make sure she was in. I took Jennifer’s clothes back to my dorm room and hung the bag in the wardrobe. The shoes, underwear and purse I carried in a paper sack, and stuck it in the back of the wardrobe.

I hadn’t told Randall where I’d gone all day last Saturday, but if I was going to use jekyllase on my own, without Emily/Cynthia, I’d need to tell him one way or another. Even if I waited until he was out to change into Jennifer, I couldn’t be sure he’d be gone when I returned to the dorm and waited for it to wear off. Still, I put it off for a while, not sure if I’d maybe change my mind about being Jennifer again... part of me thought it was a bad idea, but it was a smaller and smaller part every day.

But Friday afternoon, after my last class of the day, I headed back to the dorm. Randall was there, lying in bed reading and smoking a joint.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m, uh — I’m fixing to turn into Jennifer, okay? So if you could not look this way while I’m changing clothes, that would be good.”

“Sure, man,” he said. “You got some chick threads at some point?”

“Yeah, I gave Emily some money and Jennifer’s measurements.” I didn’t mention that the clothes I was actually intending to wear that evening were things I’d bought — or Jennifer had bought — last weekend.

“Groovy. Well, give me a minute here.” He got up, put his pillow at the foot of his bed, and laid down again looking away from me and the wardrobe.

I dissolved the jekyllase in water from the bathroom sink, having forgotten to buy any juice — and realized why Randall had dissolved it in orange juice before. The stuff tasted foul. But soon enough I was Jennifer again, and I giggled in delight. I had Scott hooked. I stripped off his ill-fitting clothes and hummed “Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker” while I pulled the dry-cleaning bag out of the wardrobe and got dressed.

“Okay, you can look now,” I said, and Randall sat up and turned around. “Ta-da!”

“You look fine,” he said. “You going somewhere now?”

“Out to dinner, I think. Somewhere in walking distance of campus.”

“I’ll go with. If you’re walking back after dark, you don’t want to be alone, not as a girl. Want to help me finish this first?” he added, offering me the joint.

I hesitated, then took it and drew a hesitant toke, coughed, shook my head, and handed it back. “Sorry,” I said. “I like the way it makes Scott feel, but I don’t know if I can smoke it like he does. Maybe we can make brownies sometime.”

After he finished the joint and got his shoes on, we went out.

“So,” Randall said as we walked, “Scott liked being you, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m so much fun to be. Wish you could be me too, don’t you?” I teased.

“I’d rather be with you than be you, but I’d rather be you than Walter,” he admitted. “None of us really got a great deal from jekyllase except maybe Emily, but I really got the short end of the stick, even worse than Darrell.”

We walked over to a little place two streets over from the east edge of campus and got a table. We ordered sandwiches and chatted as we ate. Randall asked me some questions about myself, but after a few minutes, the conversation drifted to a letter I’d just gotten from my older brother Robert in Vietnam, then to the war and other people we knew who’d enlisted or gotten drafted.

The restaurant had a couple of pinball machines over in the corner by the restrooms. At some point during our conversation I became aware that a small crowd was gathering around them.

“What’s going on over there?” I wondered, pointing. Randall twisted in his chair and looked.

“Looks like some guys watching a pinball wizard,” he said. “You want to take a look?”

“Sure,” I said. We got up — we’d pretty much finished our meal anyway — and wandered over that way. At first the crowd around the pinball machines was too thick to see the person playing. But I wasn’t shy; I squeezed in until I could see.

It was Taka.

And he was ensorceling that pinball machine. He kept the ball going for another four or five minutes after Randall and I started watching, and I don’t know how long he’d been going before that. Finally the ball shot right between his paddles despite his best effort, and he wiped a little sweat from his brow and turned around. He looked startled by the crowd, and didn’t seem to notice me at first.

“So,” he said, “uh, who’s next?”

“We wanna see you play again,” somebody called out, and another guy yelled, “Yeah, show us your wisdom, master!” Taka blushed, but it might have been because he noticed me about then.

“I’ll play again in a few minutes — I’ll let somebody else have a turn for now.” And then he took a couple of steps toward me and said, “Hi, Jennifer.”

“Hi, Taka,” I said, and gave him a hug. He seemed surprised at first — he shouldn’t have been, considering how we’d left off a couple of weeks ago — and then hugged me back, and kissed me. I heard a couple of catcalls, but I was only vaguely aware of them.

“I didn’t know you were back!” I said. “How’d you talk Darrell into it?”

“I hardly know why he did it,” he said. “I’m just glad he did, and at the same time Scott let you out... He didn’t want to hang out with Scott or Randall the last couple of weeks, and he hasn’t been going out with Emily as much either, because they know about me and he’s kind of ashamed of me. But then yesterday he goes and buys a dose of jekyllase and now here I am.”

“And basking in the adoration of the crowd,” I said. “You’ll be back now, I’m sure of it.”

“Good to see you again, Taka,” Randall said. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Hi,” Taka said.

“Let’s me and Randall pay for our food,” I said, “and then we can do whatever. Watch you play pinball again, for instance, or go see a movie.”

“Ah,” Taka said. “Yeah, pinball would probably be better if I want Darrell to let me out again.” He glanced at Randall, and I saw he was jealous of him. It was sweet.

I flagged down our waitress and paid for my sandwich, and Randall paid for his, and after a few minutes' chat Taka went over to the pinball machines again. A minute or so later somebody lost their ball on the other machine Taka hadn’t been playing earlier, and the guy who was next in line for it looked at Taka and said, “You go ahead. I want to see you play, I missed most of it earlier.”

So Taka started playing, and though he didn’t do as well as he had earlier, it was still pretty amazing. A crowd gathered again, not quite as many people as before but more than the couple of guys who’d been in line for one of the machines. I cheered Taka on until someone cautioned me not to distract him. I think he was too engrossed in the game to notice anything quieter than a firecracker, anyway. Finally, after seven or eight minutes, he lost the ball and stepped back to give someone else a turn. A spontaneous cheer broke out, several guys slapped him on the back, and I kissed him.

“You ready to do something else?” I asked. “I could watch you play a few more games, but I think Darrell’s gotten enough adulation that he’s sure to let you out again.”

“We could,” he said. “I don’t have a car... my face doesn’t match Darrell’s driver’s license.”

“Yeah, me too, and Randall was high when we left the dorm, so we walked here. I guess we could take the bus to the theater?”

“You two go on without me,” Randall said. “I’m gonna head back to the dorm. One question though, Taka — when did Darrell take the jekyllase?”

“About four o’clock.”

“Earlier than Scott, then. And you weigh more than Jennifer, so it’ll probably wear off faster for you... but unless you stay out really late, it’ll probably last until you’re back. If you change back into Darrell while he’s still hanging with Jennifer, though... you let him know from me that he’d better not go off and leave her by herself.”

“Um, yeah, that could be awkward,” Taka said. “We’ll head back before it’s likely to wear off.”

“Good night, then.”

Randall left, and I took Taka’s hand in mine. “Ready?”

“Sure,” he said. We walked out and down the street to the bus stop. Neither of us were very familiar with the bus routes, since our jekylls had cars, but we got on the bus that we thought was headed in the right direction, and then asked the driver whether it stopped near the theater. Sure, he said, and ten minutes later we got off there.

We looked over the list of movies starting in the next hour. “Do you want to see Tora! Tora! Tora!?” I asked.

“Darrell’s already seen it, and I don’t care to see it again,” he said. “What about House of Dark Shadows?”

“Scott’s not into horror movies, but I think I might be,” I said. “I’m not sure, but let’s try it.”

So we bought tickets for that — we each paid for our own — and went in. It was the bloodiest movie Scott or I had ever seen, and I loved it. And I loved pretending to be more scared than I was, and grabbing hold of Taka when something scary happened, which was pretty often.

Afterward, we made out on the bus stop bench. I loved having his hands running along my back down to my butt, but before he put his hands anywhere more interesting, the bus showed up. After we got on, we didn’t do any more except hold hands.

When we got out near our dorm, we walked a couple of hundred yards toward it before I turned to him and kissed him again. He put one hand on my back and another on my breast; we kissed for a long moment more before he reluctantly let go and said, “We should go in. My dose will be wearing off soon, and Darrell won’t want to be kissing you when it does. And if you don’t get in soon, you might have trouble sneaking in later.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We went in — nobody was around to dispute my right to enter — and up the stairs to the second floor. “This is it, I guess,” Taka said. “I hope we can meet again... but I don’t know if Darrell will want to be me again —”

“I think so.”

“— or if he’ll agree to take jekyllase at the same time you do.”

“Does your roommate know Darrell is you?”

“No... he waited until Greg was out before he took the jekyllase. And I’m supposed to stay out until I change back to Darrell.”

“You could come hang out in our room — Randall knows about us both.”

“I guess so.”

So we continued up to the third floor and emerged from the stairwell to go to the room I shared with Randall. I unlocked the door and let us in. Randall was lying in bed listening to the radio.

“Hi,” I said. “Taka wants to hang out here until he changes back to Darrell, so he doesn’t have to explain things to Darrell’s roommate.”

“Sure,” Randall said. “Did you two go see a movie?”

We told him about House of Dark Shadows, and that led to Randall talking about the last couple of movies he’d seen, and so forth. Taka and I sat side by side on my bed and held hands, but didn’t kiss or make out any more with Randall there. I thought about asking Randall to leave us alone for a while, but it was kind of late for that.

Then after we’d been chatting quietly for about forty-five minutes, Taka suddenly changed back into Darrell. He let go of my hand before he had completely transformed, and we scooted a few inches apart. Then Darrell stood up, looking kind of embarrassed.

“I guess I’d better get back,” he said.

“Good night,” I said. “Do you want to do this again sometime?”

“...Probably not,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “But I’ll talk to Scott about it sometime.”

I was feeling a little depressed after that, and I fell asleep, still Jennifer, after changing into Scott’s bathrobe — I tried on his pajamas, but they were too tight in the chest.

I woke up from a nightmare a few hours later, and cursed Jennifer for watching that horrifying film. That wasn’t the last nightmare I had from it, either. So after waking up in a cold sweat several times over the next few days, I resolved not to take jekyllase again.

---

Darrell came by our dorm room late Saturday morning to talk. “Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking. Taka is kind of a different person from me, and you’re not exactly Jennifer, but — I think Emily will think I’m cheating on her if I turn into Taka again, at least at the same time you’re Jennifer. You dig?”

“Yeah,” I said, half in relief and half in — what? I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but I wasn’t going to argue. “I don’t think I’m going to be Jennifer again, not anytime soon anyway. I had nightmares from that movie they saw last night.”

He punched me lightly in the arm. “Sissy,” he said good-naturedly. “Well, I’ve got plans with Emily. See you guys later.”

Randall heard all that, I think, but he didn’t say anything.

I didn’t plan to take jekyllase again, but I missed Jennifer’s healthy lungs, and I started the first of several attempts to quit smoking. My resolve to avoid jekyllase lasted for a little over a week, three days longer than my resolve to quit smoking. On Wednesday, after American History, I asked a girl I’d had my eye on for a while to go out with me Friday night. A couple of nights later, when we got into line at the theater, we ran into Darrell and Emily, and I said hi to them and introduced them to Linda, my date. It turned out we were seeing the same movie, and we sat together. Afterward, Emily asked me, “Have you seen Jennifer lately?”

“About a week ago,” I said after a moment of hesitation. “Why?”

“I’ve missed her, and I can’t get her on the phone, you know how it is. If you see her, ask her to call or come by and see me, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. Darrell looked a little uncomfortable.

Later, as I was walking Linda back to her dorm from the lot where I’d parked, she asked me, “Who’s Jennifer?”

“...My sister.”

I must have hesitated too long or something, because she immediately said: “No, who is she really? Another girl you’re dating?”

At that point, I figured that the truth, however embarrassing, couldn’t hurt as much as what she was imagining now that she had figured out I was lying. (Sort of.) “Have you heard of a drug called jekyllase...?”

By the time we got to her dorm, I’d told her the basics. She was incredulous at first, then listened quietly. We got to the door of the dorm. “So,” I said, changing the subject, “do you want to go out again next weekend?”

“Let’s talk after class Monday,” she said by way of answer, and I had to be satisfied with that.

Monday after American History, I went over and talked to Linda as she was getting her notebook into her bag. “So do you want to go out somewhere Friday or Saturday? Or grab a Coke at the student union before our next classes?”

“Yeah, let’s get something,” she said, and we walked the short distance to the student union. I bought a Coke for me and a Sprite for her, and we sat down at a table.

“Tell me more about how jekyllase affects you,” she said. “I looked it up at the pool hall over the weekend and I didn’t see anything about it turning guys into girls.”

(It was officially the Poole Memorial Library, named after a wealthy alumnus, but students called it “the pool hall” after the pattern of every other dorm or classroom building at Newcomen College being called “X Hall”.)

“Randall said he’d never heard of it affecting other people that way, but it affects everybody differently.”

“Hmm. So when was the first time you tried jekyllase and found out it affects you that way?”

“Let’s see... about three weeks ago.”

“And... you told that girl that you hadn’t seen Jennifer in about a week, right? So you’ve used it at least once after you knew how it would affect you.”

“Twice.”

“Why?”

I was at a loss for words at first. “I enjoy being her,” I said finally. “Not the being a girl part, especially,” (that was a lie, though I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time), “but she’s so cheerful and outgoing...” I was about to add “and she can breathe so easily,” but she said:

“And you aren’t? You weren’t shy about asking me out.”

“You don’t know how long I dithered over it before I finally got up the courage to talk to you,” I said. “Another thing... you know how, no matter what you do, no matter what new experiences you have, it’s always you that’s having them?”

“...I guess so?” she said, looking bewildered.

“Well, jekyllase lets you be someone else. That’s huge. It’s better than acid or pot or anything I’ve ever tried or heard of. It gives you such a wide perspective... You should try it sometime.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What if I turn into a bad person?”

“You need to be with friends when you try it for the first time,” I said. “So they can stop your hyde from doing anything bad if it goes wrong. We could talk to Emily — I’m pretty sure she wants to try being Cynthia again. But you don’t have to — I don’t want to pressure you into doing something you don’t want to.”

“Let me think about it,” she said.

---

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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.