Take What You Can Get, Babe

Sammy’s parents drove him into the city and helped him carry his three cardboard boxes of belongings up to his new dorm room.  He’d been assigned a single, in a different building than Rowan and Zoey and Agatha had been in last semester.  It was a bare, grey, cold cube with a view of a brick wall.  Maybe he’d decorate and liven it up; maybe it wasn’t worth the effort for eight weeks.

It was hard summoning up much enthusiasm for anything; Sammy’s mood was overshadowed by doubt and trepidation.  Could he even do this?  Most likely he was wasting everybody’s time.

His father, by contrast, was all enthusiasm and excitement, pointing out and naming each building on campus and telling stories about his glory days at university.  He eagerly suggested the family eat lunch at the dining commons, “for old time’s sake.”  Sammy was going to be eating there every day for two months, but he agreed anyway, if only to share a little of his dad’s energy.

And then his parents were hugging him and telling him they were proud of him and they were just a phonecall away and then, finally, in the car and driving away.  He started unpacking his things into the built-in closet and drawers, but got distracted by his phone halfway through.

Rowan and his uncles knocked on his door an hour later.  It was no coincidence that they hadn’t come earlier; Rowan had texted to ask if his parental units were gone, and strongly implied that she was asking for Henry’s sake.

More hugs all round, and when it was Rowan’s turn she slipped a tiny little pill into his palm.  Sammy hugged her even tighter.  “Oh god, thank you so much,” he whispered into her ear, and then tucked the pill under his tongue.

She gave him a warm conspiratorial smile as they parted, and then turned to take in his three cardboard boxes, half-unpacked.  She cocked her head, put her hands on her hips, and asked, “Uh, Sammy, where are all your clothes?”

“You’re looking at them?” he hedged.

She scowled at him, because he knew exactly what she was asking.  “No, this is all grey hoodies and shit.  Where are your real clothes?”

Sammy opened his mouth, closed it.  This was supposed to be his last chance to tell them he’d detransitioned, the point he wasn’t even supposed to get to because he should have told them already, but now he wasn’t sure he could tell them at all.  One pill from Rowan was not a two-month supply to last the whole program.  He had to stay in her good graces, so he’d have to keep being Samantha Masters—but now he’d have to do it without Sydney’s bag of clothes.  If he even could.

He’d seen this coming and still didn’t know what to say.  He went with the occluded truth.  “I, uh, don’t have them any more.”

Rowan lifted one incredulous eyebrow at him; Gideon gently asked, “What happened to them, honey?”

“Did your parents—” Uncle Henry started saying, already building himself up to thunderous indignation.

“Oh, god, no,” he stammered quickly, holding out a hand to his uncle as if he could tamp down his building and misplaced rage.  “They didn’t do anything, they haven’t, uh, found out.”  He gestured vaguely at the boxes.  “I just… got rid of them.”  Which was still, technically, the truth.

Gideon placed a warm hand on Sammy’s shoulder.  “Are you comfortable telling us why?”

He looked from Gideon’s open face to Henry’s still-fuming expression, and in the latter found inspiration that he hoped didn’t make him a terrible person.  He spit it out before he could think about it too much: “My parents were, uh, getting close.  To finding out.  So I kind of… panicked.”  He flailed his limbs again.  “And so I got rid of it all.”

“Aw, we’ve all been there,” Rowan sympathized, and stepped forward to wrap Sammy in a tight hug.  “Even with a trans dad I had so many false starts.  It’s okay.”

Sammy squeezed his cousin tight, telling himself that she’d intepret it as trans solidarity or something when in fact he was just relieved that she’d accepted the story.  He was still in her good graces.  His eyes itched, but he ignored them.  He could do this.  He could get through the summer program.

“In the grand scheme of things,” Uncle Henry was saying, “it’s also an easy setback to fix.”  He produced his wallet, slid out a credit card, and held it forward.  “Rowan, I think you know what to do with this.”

The girl squealed and snatched the card out of her father’s hands.

Sammy blinked.  “Um.  What’s happening?”

Rowan turned back to him, eyes dancing.  “I’m taking you shopping.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Yes, you can,” Uncle Henry smiled genially.  “We’re happy to help you along your path, Samantha.”

“But—” he stammered again, interupted by Gideon’s hand on his shoulder.

“Samantha, if I may?” he asked, and then actually waited for his nephew to nod before continuing.  “Honey, you are a queer trans woman of colour.  This world is going to give you fewer opportunities than it gives almost anybody, and that’s when it’s not stomping on you directly.”

That sounded worrying, and not what Sammy was expecting, but before he could ask clarification, Gideon kept talking.

“So whenever you do get offered an opportunity, you take it, okay?”  He nodded his head and Sammy could feel himself nodding in return.  “It’s not greedy, it’s not grasping, it’s how you have to move through the world.  Take what you can get, babe.  Okay?”

Sammy had to admit, a new wardrobe would make it a lot easier to keep up the Samantha charade, and he was already nodding, so he just echoed, “Okay.”

And then Rowan was dragging him out of the room.  She waved the card at her father.  “Daddy, this is all paid off, right?  I’ve got the whole credit limit to work with?”

“I’d say you can’t possibly spend that much on clothes, but I won’t tempt fate,” he answered with a bemused nod.  “Just be sure to feed yourselves dinner tonight too, alright?”

“Don’t forget your keys, Sammy!” his other uncle laughed, scooping up the keyring from the desk and lobbing it to Sammy.  “We’ll lock up.”

“That doesn’t look like a clothing store?” Sammy observed, looking over the strange little shop that Rowan had dragged him through three subway trains to get to.  He squinted up at the sign over the awning.  “Transformations Boutique?”

“Oh, it’s not a clothing store,” Rowan told him confidently, and strode directly across the street, cars be damned.

“But I need clothes—” he started, and then had to scamble after her, looking fearfully up and down the busy street as he did so.  “What are we getting here?”

“Oh, lots of stuff,” she grinned, and yanked open the door.  “In you go.”

Sammy did as instructed and then stumbled to a halt immediately inside.  There were actually clothes here, after a fashion: long sparkly sequined gowns and plasticky latex costumes.  One wall was covered in shelves and shelves of wigs on faceless heads.  But most of the shelves held tubs and jars and bottles and… dildos.  Those were dildos.

“Is this a sex shop?” he asked incredulously.  He’d never been in a sex shop; in fact he’d only ever seen one on a show once.

“Welcome to my sex shop,” answered the young woman behind the counter, deadpan, not even looking up from her magazine.  She had short black hair, pale skin, and uncountable tattoos.

Rowan came in behind Sammy, grasped him by the shoulders, and shoved him deeper into the store, up towards the counter.  “Hey, Gloria!”

The clerk—Gloria—finally looked up from her magazine and blinked.  “Oh shit!  Hey.  Been a long time.”  She looked Rowan up and down critically.  “Damn, you filled out.”

His cousin preened.  “Thanks.  Hey, is Lucille in?”

But Gloria shook her head.  “Mom’s in fucking Italy now.  Painting lessons on the Riviera, can you believe it?  So is your name still…?”  She trailed off just long enough that the prompt became an admission that she’d forgotten whatever name she’d been given before.

“Still Rowan, yeah,” his cousin nodded, happy to play along.  She patted her hands on Sammy’s shoulders.  “And this is my cousin Samantha.  She’s just getting started.”

“Pretty good start,” the clerk observed, and smiled.  “Nice to meet you, Samantha.”

“Uh, thanks,” he stammered, and then sidestepped so he could see Rowan better.  “So what are we getting here?”

“Well your eyebrows need help,” his cousin told him matter-of-factly, “and if we’re waxing your eyebrows we might as well do your legs while we’re here.”  She nodded to Gloria as she spoke, and the clerk nodded in response.  Her magazine was quietly closed and tucked away.  “We’ll also grab you a gaff, get you some proper adhesive this time around, and most importantly, your very own titties.”

Sammy wasn’t sure how to respond, or if he even could.  He managed to blink.

“She had to borrow mine for a while,” Rowan explained to Gloria, and then tugged back Sammy’s hoodie sleeve so she could hold her bare forearm up against his.  “Which, you know, did not really match, so her choice of tops was very limited.”

The clerk nodded and examined Sammy’s forearm and face carefully.  “Yeah, we’ve got your colour in stock.  What are you, Dominican?”

Sammy at least knew how to the answer to this one, from long practice.  He shrugged.  “Don’t even know.  My birth mom surrendered me anonymously.”

“Don’t you worry, we’ll match you,” Gloria assured him with a wink.  “But let’s get started on the waxing, yeah?  This way.”

Between the wall of wigs and a wall of latex bodysuits —the wares of both walls in every imaginable colour—an overlookable corridor led deeper into the building.  Gloria led them down its length and opened the third door on the right.  The door was labelled with a placard that had once read “Salon #2” but had since been corrected with wedge-tipped sharpie to read “Torture Chamber,” followed by a happy face.

Inside was a sturdy padded massage table and a long sideboard counter filled with tubs and jars and what looked like small kitchen appliances.  “Pants off,” Gloria directed, and patted the top of the table invitingly.  Then she turned her back on them and started fiddling with the stuff on the sideboard.

Sammy dropped his sweatpants with trepidation, looking askance at Rowan.  “This is going to hurt, right?”

His cousin only laughed.  “Oh gosh, so much.  But I promise it’s worth it.”

As he settled onto the massage table, Sammy contemplated saying no.  He could; he could just say, “no thanks, let’s not do this part.”  Rowan always told him that nothing was strictly necessary, and he was sure she’d accept his decision if he backed out.  But he didn’t want to be a wet blanket.  And he’d heard horror stories about waxing from his aunts since forever, which made him, honestly, more than a little curious.  And it would all grow back, right?

Besides, his leg hair was not subtle, and if he was going to be wearing skirts for two months—short skirts, in the summer heat—he might as well look nice.

Right?

So he got stretched out on the table and got comfortable.  Gloria appeared above his head, rolling around on a wheeled office chair, and inspected his brow.  “All right, I’m going to draw out the lines I’m going to reinforce,” she explained, “and you can okay them before we get started.  Okay?”

He nodded.  “I don’t know what any of that means, but sure.”

Gloria demonstrated.  She brought out a white pencil and drew long, sloping lines along his eyebrows.  It tickled a little, but Sammy remained stoic.  Finally she gave him a hand mirror with which to see what she had done.

He’d never realized how much of a wild tangle his eyebrows were.  They’d always just… been there.  But now there were little ghost lines swoopping through the scattered hairs. With just a handful of graceful curves, they applied order to the chaos.  He could see what his eyebrows could be, with some judicious editing.

“That look good?” asked Gloria.

He looked up off the mirror to see her eyebrows.  They were thin, elegant, and perfectly shaped.  “Ah,” said his brain.  “That’s what eyebrows are supposed to look like.”  Which was obviously nonsense, but he nodded nonetheless.

Gloria then applied goopy warm wax to his eyebrows.  It was actually quite pleasant; a sort of bone-penetrating heat, as if just his forehead got a dip in a jacuzzi.  Then she pressed little strips of gauze into the wax and let the wax cool.  “Here we go,” she warned, and ripped the gauze off Sammy’s face.

It stung, sure, but calling it painful would be a stretch.  He chuckled in relief.  Okay.  He could do this.

Gloria repeated the process three more times around his eyebrows and declared that part done.  “Right now the skin around your brows is all red and angry,” she told him.  “I’ll give you the mirror back when it calms down, then you can admire my handiwork.”

In the mean time, she wheeled herself around the table so she was facing his legs.  There was no white pencil and guidelines now, but the rest of the process seemed the same.  Warm goopy wax spread out along his legs.  Then long strips of gauze pressed into the wax.  Let the wax cool.  Sammy readied himself for the little sting that came next.  “Here we go,” she warned him, and ripped.

Sammy howled.

The process may have been the same, but there was no comparison between having his eyebrows waxed and having leg hairs ripped out of his body.  His skin crawled; he fought down an impulse to leap off the table and run for the hills.  He wasn’t sure if he was whimpering.

Gloria started slathering more wax for the next round.

The next rip was no better, but nor was it worse.  And the next one he steeled himself for and it was… just as painful.  Rip after rip after rip, and each one left a wake of searing pain that took its own god damn time dissipating.  Sammy focused on his breathing and eventually just floated away onto a sea of disassociation.  At some point both girls guided him to turn over so that Gloria could savage the backs of his legs, too.

He wasn’t sure how long it took, nor how long he was out of it after Gloria was finally done, but then the little mirror was pressed into his hand and he was looking at his reflection.

“Oh wow,” he gasped.  His eyebrows were sleek, arched, and exacting; somehow that detail redefined the rest of his face, which seemed sharper and more open.  His eyes looked huge.

“Just wait till we get some makeup on top of that,” Rowan told him with a grin.  “Colours are gonna pop so much better.  Speaking of which, pick a colour!”

He took the hunk of plastic she handed him, which had rows of sparkling studs in various shades.

“Whatever you pick, you’ll be stuck with for two months,” she advised.  “So neutral’s probably best.  The silver, the white, the black.”

“What are these?”

Rowan giggled.  “Earrings, silly.”

“My ears aren’t pierced,” he told her, giggling a little, too.  Apparently he was still a little loopy from the pain.

“Yeah, that’s the point,” she laughed.

Ah, these must all be clip-ons, he thought, and pointed at the last studs in the line.  “What about these?  They’re all, uh, iridescent?  They’re like, all the colours, so they’ll match whatever else I’m wearing, right?”

Rowan grinned.  “Yeah, that sounds awesome.”

The next thing he knew, Gloria was fiddling with his ear and telling him to hold perfectly still.  “Are you… clipping them on?” he asked uncertainly.

“Well, I’m certainly clipping something,” she responded.  And then his earlobe was suddenly very very cold.

“Is that ice?”

Gloria moved to the other ear.  “Sort of.  I deep-freeze the needles so they’re super cold when I do the piercing.”  Before he could decipher her words, his other earlobe was hit with a spike of cold.

“Piercing?!” he repeated.

Rowan held the hand mirror in front of his face.  “Yeah.  Congrats, you got your ears pierced!”

He held the mirror steady so he could see better, and sure enough, each earlobe now had a little glint of irridescent sparkle on it.  More than he’d intended, but he could always take them out, right?  But then he remembered what Rowan had just been saying.  “…wait, what did you mean I’m stuck with these for two months?”

“You’ve got to leave them in so the holes can heal around them,” Gloria told him.  “I’ll give you a pamphlet, and some saline solution to flush the holes every night.  But it’ll take eight to twelve weeks to heal up.”

“Eight…. to twelve?!” he repeated.  “Rowan, I go home in eight weeks!”

His cousin laid a soothing hand on his shoulder.  “It’s okay, it’s okay.  You’re young, so you heal faster, so you’ll probably be fine at eight weeks.  And even if you’re not, all sorts of people get their ears pierced.  Girls and boys.”

“Boys don’t get glittery rainbow studs!”

“I mean, gay boys do,” she very nearly muttered.

“Rowan!”

“It’s not a big deal, I promise,” she half-insisted, half-plead with him.  “Worst case, you take them out before you go home and the holes close up and you’ll just have to get pierced again later, okay?  You’re okay.”

Sammy rubbed the bridge of his nose—yes, the skin was still sensitive—and heaved a sigh.  “Well it’s already done, anyway.”

She patted his belly affectionately.  “Sorry if I sprang that on you, Sammy.  I was just too excited.  But you’ll like the next part, I promise.”

He hesitated to ask.  “What’s the next part?”

“Let’s go pick out some titties!”

Gloria guided them into a different small back room where they sank into a pair of armchairs facing a small dias surrounded by mirrors.  “Shirt off,” she declared, and Sammy grudgingly stood to comply.  He’d just got his sweatpants back, and now he had to sacrifice his hoodie and undershirt.  With a tailor’s dispasssion, Gloria wrapped a cloth measuring tape around his torso, just under the nipples.  Then she produced a cardboard strip with a handful of skin tones, held it up to Sammy’s chest, and squinted appraisingly.  “Be right back,” she declared, and left.

“So what are you thinking of going with?” Rowan asked from where she lounged in her armchair.

“What do you mean?” he asked, trying not to cover up his bare chest.

“What kind of boobs, of course,” his cousin giggled.  “Big, small? Wide, teardrop, pointy?  Dark nips or roses?”

Sammy coughed to clear his suddenly tight throat.  “I didn’t realize it was going to be that complicated,” he admitted.  “I mean, I think I like whatever I borrowed from you last time.”  He looked uncertainly towards the door.  “You think she’ll bring some like those, just, you know, brown?”

Rowan grinned instead of answering.  “Let’s see what you end up liking.”

Gloria came back with a precariously-balanced double stack of boxes, which she carefully set down on the lip of the dias.  She also produced a bra, and tossed it at Sammy.  “That’ll do for most.”

Sammy’s struggle with the bra was almost embarassingly short.  Apparently he’d developed some muscle memory during Preview Days.

By the time he’d smoothed all the straps, Gloria was standing in front of him with two wobbling fake boobs in her hands.  She deftly slid them into his bra cups while also guiding him up onto the dias.  Suddenly he was confronted with his own reflection.

Boobs matching his skin tone made a big difference.  Instead of something pale and plainly foreign tucked up against him, the matching boobs looked almost natural.  He made a slight adjustment and sort of fuzzed his focus a bit and… it was like they were a part of him.  His stomach fluttered.

Gloria noticed what he was doing.  “With adhesive and a little foundation, you won’t see the seam at all,” she promised.

“Uh, great,” he mumbled.

“Those are asymmetric,” she went on.  “So the left is always the left and the right is always the right.  These have a relatively low profile.”

Sammy nodded, trying to focus.  He should probably pay attention if he was going to be wearing these for the next two months.  But a single pill had not magically brought him back to full power and focus.  A large part of his brain really did not want to think about what was happening right now.

They looked disturbingly real.

“I dunno, I think you looked better with bigger,” Rowan opined from her chair.

Sammy considered his reflection.  “These are smaller than yours?”  When his cousin hefted her actual tits and opened her mouth to comment, he added, “The ones I borrowed?”

Rowan squinted, nodded.  “I mean, I think?”

“You’ll be doing a bit of a balancing act,” Gloria told him.  “A lot of these are shaped for a completely flat chest, and you’ve already got a little curve.”

Sammy sniggered at that.  Sure he did.  “Too many chips,” he chuckled.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Gloria smiled.  “Pretty soon you’ll give your cousin a run for her money.”

Yeah, after he got a boob job like Rowan must have had years ago, and that wasn’t going to happen because this was just for the summer.  But he figured he should at least pretend like he hoped for exactly that, so he put a sappy smile on his face.  “That’s the dream.”

“Anyway, we’ll find a shape that takes your current topography into account, and will continue to do so as you develop,”  Gloria promised, although he was barely paying attention.  She was already unboxing the next pair of fake tits.

They went through almost a dozen options in different shapes and sizes.  Triangle forms projected out of his chest like torpedoes.  Teardrop forms made him look dowdy somehow.  He went back and forth, trying to find a match for how he remembered looking in Rowan’s old forms, but nothing was exactly the same.

“Oh, they don’t make that brand anymore,” Gloria explained when he finally put words to what he was looking for.  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to pick something a little bit new.”

And that was the problem.  Being handed a pair of tits and wearing them for the weekend because that was the only option? That he could do.  But actually picking out what he wanted?  That was a bridge too far.

Because he didn’t want tits.  That was something twelve-year-old girls dreamed about.  He wanted, what, like some strong pecs and washboard abs or something, right?  That’s what he was supposed to want.

He didn’t really want that.  Even if somebody could hand him that, like Rowan had handed him her old breast forms, he didn’t think that he’d take them up on the offer.  Because the guys who had bodies like that were insufferable, and he wasn’t like that and didn’t want to be like that.  And it’d look weird, right, to look in the mirror and see some hardbody chiselled build.  That wasn’t him at all.

Nor did he want what he already had, though.  Because face it: his body was doughy and shapeless and nothing to be proud of.  If anything, fake tits put some fucking landmarks on him, imposed some sense onto the landscape, even if it was the wrong sense.

He scowled at the mirror, aiming for his doughy belly, except he’d forgotten that he’d slimmed down this spring and so he was just looking at… okay, they weren’t washboard abs, but there was less belly than he remembered, and… yeah, the fake boobs did kind of complete the picture.

Wrong picture, he tried to tell himself, but the vehemence he reached for didn’t manifest.

He didn’t look half bad.

And if he was going to look something like this for the summer, he might as well look good, right?  “What are these again?”

Gloria answered without looking up.  “Those are ABC triangle mediums.  Triangles look good on younger women; they look like, well, like teenager boobs, rather than matronly boobs.”

“Do you have the same kind, a bit bigger?”

“We do,” she nodded, and opened up one of the boxes.  “Here you go.”  She looked up at him, considering the utilitarian bra she’d given him.  “These might strain those bra cups, though.”

What she handed him did indeed barely fit into the bra cups, and Sammy struggled between giggling at himself and seriously considering them.  With his shoulders and his frame, they weren’t completely ridiculous.  Rowan pointed out that he’d be edging into a size that made blouses hard to find.

“Oh, I think I mixed up the boxes,” Gloria groaned, apologetic.  “Those are XLs.  They’ve no business in that bra at all.”

She rooted through the boxes scattered around their feet, coming up with one size down from what Sammy was wearing, one size up from what he had been wearing.  They swapped out the massive forms and replaced them with the merely large and…

“I like these,” he heard himself say out loud.  A moment later the reflection of Rowan was nodding over his shoulder with approval.

They threw a tee shirt overtop the new boobs, then he tried on Rowan’s button-down, too.  With or without clothes, they looked good.  Proportional.  Youthful.  Curvy.  Correct.

Next they had him doff the shirts again and strip off the bra and then it was time to apply adhesive—not too much, a little goes a long way, no it doesn’t go that far—and smash the jiggly tits into his chest.  A little adjustment left-right, a little twist to make them hang (mostly) symmetrically… he took his hands away and they just stayed there, like they were a part of him.

Gloria sat him down in front of a salon mirror and showed him how to apply and blend foundation across the seam.  He’d assumed that this would be complicated, but it was really just… makeup on a large scale, and you could be a bit sloppy.

And then he looked in the mirror and… yeah, there was his naked chest complete with round, perky tits.

“How long does the adhesive last?” he asked Gloria and Rowans’ reflections in the mirror.

“The bottle says sixteen hours,” the clerk answered, but her voice made it clear that that wasn’t half the story.

Rowan chimed in: “You can usually rely on sixteen hours.  You can push your luck to like, a full day.  It’ll probably get you through the walk of shame the next morning.  Or as I prefer to call it: the walk of glory.”

Sammy sniggered into the mirror.  “Of course you do.”

Rowan directed him to pull his undershirt on over his braless boobs.  They’d be getting lingerie later, and he didn’t want a bra from Transformations Boutique.  They had fetish wear and valentine’s day lingerie, but nothing that could reasonably be called comfortable.  Even Gloria nodded in agreement at that one.  Without a bra, his boobs bounced and jiggled underneath the shirt, which was all sorts of weird.

While Gloria packed up the rejected fake boobs, Rowan took Sammy through the rest of the store.  “We should grab you a gaff,” she explained.  “You don’t actually need one of these… right up until you do.”

A gaff turned out to be a pair of very tight, very thick underwear that flattened down his junk.  He supposed that would be useful for shorts that would otherwise show a bulge.

“A little bulge is nice on occasion, though,” Rowan opined.  “I kind of miss the look sometimes.  There’s a sort of honest lewdness to it.  But then, I like a tight little bikini, too.”

“You’re not going to put me in one of those?” Sammy asked, almost fearfully pointing up at a latex apparatus on a mannequin.  The thing promised to do all the same functions as the gaff in Sammy’s hands, but also had a very detailed sculpt of labia and a clitoris on the outside.

Rowan looked up at it, then back to Sammy.  “I mean, if you want—”

He shook his head vigorously.  “That looks uncomfortable as hell.”

“It is,” Gloria agreed, coming up behind them.  “I wore one for a few months.  It helped quiet the gripey little voice, but… in the end I just got tired of struggling in and out of it.”

They made their way to the cash register and Gloria started ringing up their purchases.  As the register’s glowing green total started skyrocking, Rowan told Sammy to look away, if only for his own sanity.  And then with a swipe of Uncle Henry’s card, it was done.

As they climbed back up onto the street level, Sammy looked to Rowan’s lead.  “Okay, now we go get some clothes?”

But his cousin only snorted.  “Makeover first.”

Rowan took him to a fancy makeup place.  He followed her inside, feeling like he was a little boy again, getting dragged along after his mother doing feminine errands.  There was aisle upon aisle and row upon row of products in all sorts of colours, with the names of different manufacturers over each block of shelves.

He remembered Rowan showing him how to do his makeup and he was relatively sure he could do it again, but she’d only taught him by plucking items out of a single makeup caddy.  Everything was all over everywhere in this store, and he had no idea where he’d even start.  From where he stood, he could see half a dozen displays of eyeliner, all in different sections of the store.

Rowan pushed him towards a clerk again.  “This is my cousin Samantha, she needs a full face demonstration and then we’ll be buying everything you use on her.”

The clerk looked bemused, quirking his perfectly accented eyebrow high over cheekbones that could cut glass.  With a glance at the clock, he nodded.  “Yeah sure, let’s get started.”

First they matched his colours, wandering through the shop piling up a stack of foundation and contouring and blush and bronzer in his little basket.  The clerk selected a eyeshadow pallette that he promised would give Sammy a nice range, and plucked a bulbous mascara stick from another display.  Then they sat down and got to work.

The clerk narrated as he went, explaining what each product was for, how it was applied, and how to shift things for different looks.  Sammy watched in the mirror, nodding along and eventually even asking questions.

“So what prompted this?” the clerk asked, making conversation as he blended, blended, blended Sammy’s forehead.  When his subject only grunted querilously, he elaborated: “Well you’re doing kind of a big buy-in here.  In my experience when a butch girl ditches her existing look for something more… labor intensive, there’s usually a reason.  New job, big wedding coming up, a boy you want to impress?  Or girl.”

“Uh, new school,” Sammy answered uncertainly.  “Starting at Columbia.”

“Ahhhh,” he nodded in understanding.  “Leaving the casual days of high school behind, huh?  What did you play, basketball?  Soccer?”

Sammy wasn’t sure why he answered, “Soccer.”  He liked the game and all, but it wasn’t like he’d been on a team or anything.

But the clerk grinned and kept nodding as if that made sense.  “Yeah, you look like a soccer girl.”

“Hopefully less so once you’re done,” Sammy responded, leaning into the role.  If this guy wanted to believe he was a jock girl trying make up for the first time, who was he to correct him?  It certainly made a more comprehensible story than reality.

“No little grass stain as a sort of accent, then?” he chuckled, and put away the blending sponge.  “No, you’re gonna look immaculate.  Okay, let’s talk eyeshadow...”

By the time they were done, Sammy looked at his reflection with qualified awe.  He looked so different than he usually did… but he’d seen every step performed, knew every product that had gone into the look, and was moderately sure he could replicate it, give or take.  In fact, if he stared hard enough, he could mentally peel off the layers, going back in time to his un-made-up face, then turning around and running through the steps again.

This was his face, not somebody else’s, not some mask that he was wearing.  This was just what he looked like in makeup.

He thanked the clerk and they checked out with his bag full of cosmetics—Rowan made him hide his eyes again—and then they headed outside.  “Okay, now clothes?” he asked.

But Rowan rolled her eyes.  “You need a haircut.”

The hair salon was the opposite of the make up store.  Nothing was explained.  It wasn’t science, it wasn’t art, it was some sort of sorcery.

He sat down in the chair and said, as instructed by his cousin, “It’s been a long time since I had a cut.”  (This was true; he’d gone shaggy all spring, too distracted by his application to go by Aunt Steph’s.)  “I just need the loose ends trimmed and then… do what you think will work best with what I’ve got.”

The stylist considered him and his hair for a long moment. “Okay.  A feminine cut?”

Sammy swallowed.  “Um, yeah.  Femme.”

She got to work, combing and snipping and spritzing.  As curls and sworls of his dark hair collected atop the smock over his fake tits and across the floor, Sammy got lost in thought.

The make up guy had just assumed that Sammy was a girl.  A girl athlete, sure, but a girl.  But the stylist had to ask if he wanted a girl’s hair cut.  What had worked then and didn’t work now?  Had he somehow walked in like a boy?  Was it the fact that his boobs were covered up by the smock?  Or maybe the stylist just had to be more careful than the make up clerk; she was cutting his hair, which would take a long while to grow out, whereas the guy was just selling him stuff he could use or not use as he saw fit.

Or maybe the key difference was the stylist was a woman and the make up guy was a guy, and easily swayed by the presence of boobs.

It did not take long—he’d signed up for a “simple cut and style,” which was apparently the simple end of the services ladder, and something that they could squeeze into the rest of the salon’s schedule with zero notice.  But when she was done the stylist still had to shake his shoulder slightly to pull him out of his reverie.  He looked up at the mirror.

A girl in a hoodie stared back.  In fact it took Sammy a moment to actually focus on his hair rather than the whole effect of which the hair was a part.

The hair wasn’t even that different.  Or at least, it was still relatively short, but it was… fluffier, curled in a swirly nimbus around his scalp.  He dipped his head side to side and the whole mess sort of… shimmied around, shifting and moving subtley in ways that he’d never imagined hair could move and yet registered as unmistakably feminine to his brain.

Had he seen hair like this before?  Certainly he had.  Perhaps he’d just not thought about it, because it was girl hair.  Or really, because it was just hair, which he’d never thought about very much.  He just had Steph lop his off when the bangs started getting in his eyes.

This was different.  Now his hair had a sort of organizing principle, an impression it gave, a look.  It said, “This latina chick is too cool for you.”

Sammy might have been slightly intimidated by his own hair.

Combined with his makeup, his head looked striking and increasingly out of place nestled atop his hoodie.  He looked like he was slumming it, like he really should pull up the hood to hide his face and hair, because the only reason he’d be wearing this top would be to avoid notice.  Whereas his makeup and hairstyle were clearly geared to attract notice, not avoid it.

Rowan paid and guided him out of the salon while his head was still spinning.  She gave him a couple blocks before she asked, “You okay there, Sammy?”

He looked back at her from his reflection in a store window.  “Yeah, I.  Um.  Is it weird that I feel like my head doesn’t belong on my body right now?”

Rowan grinned.  “Sometimes it feels like some parts of you are transitioning faster than other parts, and you get this sort of mismatched feeling.  I can’t imagine the crash course makeover today is helping much.”

He nodded vaguely and looked at his reflection again.  He looked like an action figure that had had its head popped off and swapped with a different character.  “Yeah, this is weird.”

His cousin took him by the arm.  “Here, let’s see if we can bring things into alignment.  Because you know what time it is?”

Sammy answered for his squirming stomach.  “Dinner?”

Rowan laughed.  “Sure, yeah.  Let’s catch dinner and then it’s finally time to go clothes shopping.”

When they reached their next destination, Sammy stared with almost as much incredulity as the first.  When Rowan looked askance at him, he explained,  “I just kind of assumed you’d be taking me to some cool hipster hole-in-the-wall place for clothes.  Not… you know… Target.”

Rowan waved at the sprawling budget department store.  “You need a whole wardrobe, Sammy.  You need underwear.  You need socks.  Bras.  Camis.  Leggings.  We’ll go hit some cool stores after this, but first let’s get the basics covered, all right?”

He tipped his head side to side.  It did make sense.

“Plus,” she added as she walked through the automatic doors, “there’s a Starbucks in here.”

Rowan went through Target like a viking raider fleecing a defenseless village of all its valuables, filling their shopping cart with solid-colour everything and checking out no more than thirty minutes after walking in.

Rowan grabbed a seat in the Starbucks by the door and started fishing through the Target bag.  She came up with a bra, a camisole, a pair of socks, and a pair of shorts.  All of this she stacked in Sammy’s hands and pointed him towards the bathroom.  “Go change.”

Which is how Sammy ended up standing in the Target bathroom, dressed in a cami and shorts, contemplating his reflection.  Was it even his reflection?

He’d been dressed up by his cousin before.  He knew what he looked like.  In a word: unconvincing.  Sure, sometimes he’d looked good, and he’d maybe even looked kinda almost hot in an alternative-culture punky sort of way.  But he looked like a boy dressed up to be edgy and femme.

Except now he didn’t.

His face was softer, his eyes huge and bright, his hair a carefully-sculpted frame for his features.  His shoulders and chest gave way to cleavage, and no matter how much he reminded himself that was fake, it still soothed his brain into this weird false sense of surety that he was looking at a girl.

His head had been popped onto the matching body.

He had to pick out the details that didn’t fit: his too-prominent nose, the thick-boned brow ridge hiding under the distractingly-shaped eyebrow, his tummy that was smaller than it used to be but still wasn’t a girl’s belly but a young man’s gut.  If he held onto these details, he could still see himself as a boy.

But if he stopped concentrating, it slipped away.

Makeup, a haircut, and clothes could not explain this.  It was impossible.  And yet here he was: made up, styled, and wardrobe-swapped, and all the proof he needed.

He still looked awkward—he assured himself—without any of the carefree, put-together glamour that his cousin seemed to just exude.  But that was to be expected; she was an actual trans girl, and he was just dressing up.  Of course he’d look awkward like this.

Except when he didn’t, like when he’d come out of the stalls and glanced at his oncoming reflection and swear to god he thought somebody else was in here with him.  The mirror had just shown him a girl who was trying to find the mirror after changing her clothes.

He could undo this, right?  In two months when he’d secured his admission to Columbia, he could turn it all off.  Shave his head if need be.  Stop using makeup (although the guy at the make up store did look pretty hot with that eyeliner and contouring).  Leave the fake tits at home and just… be himself.

“Yeah, but who’s ‘himself?’” he muttered at the mirror’s reflection.  These clothes were comfortable in ways that his hoodies and sweatpants hadn’t been for months.  And his paltry little collection of shorts and tee shirts had only been a bandaid, a temporary stopgap.  He had no idea what he’d rather be wearing.  And if he didn’t know what look he wanted, he couldn’t very well “go back” to that look, could he?

If only he’d never got into the habit of thinking about “looks” and just stayed cocooned in sweatshirt material, where it was safe.

His phone buzzed; Rowan wondering if everything was okay.  He tapped back a response that he was coming out shortly.

Because this had only been the first stop, and there were more clothing stores to hit up next, where the interesting clothes could be found.  And Sammy would be shopping in those fancy clothing stores looking like this, like he belonged in them.

He refolded his old clothes into a tight bundle and headed out the door.  The evening was just beginning.

They got back to his dorm room well past ten, which was later than he thought any clothing store might conceivably stay open, but this was New York and they took that “the city that never sleeps” thing seriously.  Both of them were saddled down with a ridiculous number of bags, all of which went crashing into the corner opposite the bed.

The bed Sammy reserved for his own crash.  He was wrung out, physically and emotionally.

Rowan refused to let him sleep, however, and instead insisted on his popping off his tits, storing them properly, and then cleansing and toning his face.  She gave him a pill, tucked him in, made sure he had an alarm set for the morning, and slipped out the door.

He slept like the dead.

He woke before his alarm even went off.  Excitement and dread washed over him, but then he noticed a ziploc baggie on his desk, filled with little blue pills.  Rowan had come through in more ways than one.

He could do this.

Sammy tongued a pill, showered, affixed his tits to his chest, and carefully applied his makeup.  He had to go rooting through the bags on his dorm room floor to construct an outfit.  He paired a houndstooth pencil skirt with a dark red cami, and then draped over both a white cardigan.  He stepped into a pair of white sandals and checked his reflection in the mirror.

He looked like a competent young woman, ready to take on whatever challenge Columbia was going to sling at him.  If he could avoid distractions—besides the whole pretending to be trans thing—he could do this.

Sammy hurried to the dining commons for a rushed breakfast and then crossed campus again to sit down in his first classroom with ten minutes to spare.  Front row.  No distractions.  He could do this.

The professor called the class to order, introduced himself, and promised them that Remedial Biology was just as fascinating as any other BIO class he’d ever taught.  Then the door swung open and Sammy’s heart all but stopped at the sight of who stepped inside.  No dis—

The professor shot the latecomer a frustrated look and then extended a hand.  “Students, let me introduce you to my teaching assistant, Finley Aceves.”

Finley stood up at the front of the class and waved, bright grin beaming through his bushy beard.  “A pleasure to meet you all.  I promise I’m not usually late.”  He looked out over the whole classroom with a benevolent, welcoming air, then made direct eye contact with Sammy, and winked.

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