"So do you like ballet?" Jenny asked as they walked, then looked over at him with her head cocked and a little smile spreading on her face. The ballet school was housed in a building adjoining the campus of their regular school. They were outside, crossing the grounds, and though they had left the crowded halls behind they still walked closely together.

"I, well, I guess so. I don't know. I've never really seen it." Jimmy paused. "Well, except on TV a few times. My mom is crazy about ballet, so sometimes she watches it."

"Oh, Jimmy, ballet is ten times more in person than it is on television! A hundred times! If you haven't seen a live ballet performance, then you don't know what you're missing! I'm so excited that you're coming to our school so you can experience a taste of it!"

Jimmy started to respond, stopped himself, then started again as Jenny looked at him questioningly. "Well, I sort of did experience a tiny little taste of it, actually." He felt his face reddening–a now-familiar feeling around these Dale girls.

"You saw a ballet performance?"

"No. Well, almost. I was kind of forced to take a ballet class by my mom when I was 8." Before Jimmy could go on, Jenny grabbed his elbow and stood in open-mouthed amazement, beaming at him. "It was a class for boys. Back where we used to live. It was kind of silly, really, because we were just a bunch of goofy boys horsing around. We had class twice a week one summer and that was it."

"Jimmy, you never told me that! You knew I've been taking ballet for years and you never told me YOU'D taken a class!"

"Hey, nobody knows I took it, except my mom. And now you, so don't tell anybody!"

"Aww, you don't want all your friends to know you got to dance around in a tutu?" Jenny was visibly excited by this little confession, and tempered her teasing by softening her voice and rubbing his shoulder.

"No, we didn't ever get that far. We didn't put on any special outfits or anything–just did everything in shorts and t-shirts. I guess they didn't want to make us feel like sissies or whatever." Jimmy looked at the ground.

"Hey, boys who wear tights are not sissies! I happen to know one so I know what I'm talking about!" Jenny tickled his stomach playfully.

"Ha, yeah. It's kind of funny that I finally got to, um, I never had to wear tights until last night. Yours, I mean."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, they never made me wear tights when I was taking the class, but last night there I was putting on your tights." Jimmy was on the verge of stuttering–his tingles were spiking through his stomach now.

Jenny paused. "Was that bad of me? I thought you might like to wear them cause I like them so much, and I saw you looking at my–well, I got a feeling you just might like them."

He gulped. "I did."

"So wait a sec, when you were in that class, did you ever wish you could dress up in the costumes?" Her eyes sparkled as she analyzed his face.

"No way!" Jimmy's automatic response didn't deter her.

"Jimmy, it's okay. You can tell me if you did! I think it's cool–remember, I'm the one who's been dressing you up in my nighties for the past two nights! With cute little panties!"–the last sentence in a loud whisper.

"Well, I never even thought about costumes until the last class. That's when we had another class of girls having a session on the other side of the studio. It was the first time we'd seen anyone else doing ballet–maybe they taught us in a seperate area to protect us sissies."

"Jimmy! That's enough of that!"

"I'm just kidding about the sissy thing, but maybe they were afraid other kids would tease us. Do the boys in your ballet school ever get teased?"

"I'm sad to say that we have no boys in our school. Not even one. It's such a shame, 'cause we could use him."

Jimmy took a breath and continued. "Anyway, those girls were alot more into ballet than we were–they all had on leotards and stuff. I think the teachers brought our classes together because they wanted to figure out which of the boys were good enough to join the girls in a recital that was coming up. They needed two boys to do a little dance number with the girls."

"See, Jimmy? The whole world needs more boy ballerina–er, ballet dancers!"

"I didn't know what to think, cause I hadn't really connected our beginning 'ballet for boys' class with the whole girlie ballerina thing yet. I liked the class, but seeing those girls walking around and stretching like that was different."

"Different how?"

"Well, a little intimidating cause they were way more disciplined then any of us, but also kinda crazy because I was still at an age where I hated girls. But they looked great to me, even back then. I pretty much knew right off the bat I wanted to be one of the two boys."

"And?? Were you??? What happened, Jimmy?" Jenny's interest was palpable.

"I tried as hard as I could, without looking like I was trying hard, but they picked two other boys." Jimmy smiled wistfully.

"Oh, poor Jaybird! So you didn't get to be in the recital?"

"Well, they offered it to the rest of us. Only we weren't going to dance with the girls up close. We'd be part of what you might call the 'chorus line' or something. We'd just do some simple steps in the background. I halfway considered it, until I found out that we'd be dressed up in some kind of chicken costume!"

"A chicken costume??? That is precious! I can just see you."

"I told my mom there was no way I was going to dance around on stage in a chicken costume, and she just laughed. That was the end of my ballet career." Jimmy was a little trembly from having revealed all this, but started feeling a sense of relief at having a friendly ear to bend.

They walked on, chuckling. "Well, you know Jimmy, I used to be in recitals like that. You probably would have had to wear tights for that chicken costume, you realize that don't you?"

"Well, no. All this time I guess I thought it would have been some kind of miniature chicken thing." This time Jimmy was the one who stopped walking for a beat.

"Oh, no. They'd have put you in a ballet costume! It would have been decorated like a chicken, but believe me it would still be a ballet costume. Leotard and tights, slippers, the works. Maybe something on your head and even makeup!"

"I, hmmm." Jimmy became pensive. The sky was clear and cold, but talking about this with Jenny was making him feel warm. Last night Jenny's nightie made him feel abit like he was wearing a pink dress, but now his mind drifted to the little pink ballet skirt one of the taller girls wore during that one fateful class.

"Would it have made a difference?" she asked.

"What?"

"If you knew that you'd have to wear a leotard and tights for your recital, would it have made a difference to you? Would you have tried it?"

"I, uh...." Jimmy went from pensive to flustered in a few heartbeats.

"Did you like the way the girls looked in the girls class?"

"Oh, well yeah, I..."

"And you liked your ballet class, right?"

"Yeah."

"And you wanted to dance with the girls?"

"Yeah..."

"So didn't you ever want to try on a real ballet outfit?"

Jimmy paused, then cleared his throat. "Well, I never really even thought about it until..." His eyes were cast down. He was not lying, but Jenny was extremely close to finding out a real secret. Not that he had daydreamed of what it would have been like to dance with those girls and touch their costumes–he had as much as admitted that already. But he didn't want her to know about that stupid Sears catalog–how he had studied every page of female clothing, including dancewear. How certain clothes had become extraordinarily sexual for him. How terribly crushed he'd be if she didn't drape one of her nighties over him tonight.

"Until the recital? Or until me?" she said, after a few moments, her voice very quiet now. Jimmy couldn't answer, his stomach was in utter turmoil. He just looked at her once as they neared the ballet school. Her eyes were following her fingers as she played with the zipper of her jacket.

They walked in the front door. With a glance, they silently agreed to suspend the conversation, now that they were once again in earshot of other people. They were both blushing, though any passerby would have attributed that to the chilly wind outside.

As they entered the building, Jimmy was immediately struck by the sight of girls in dance outfits. It was like a replay of that fateful class, only now the girls were older and far more beautiful. If his conversation with Jenny hadn't silenced his vocal chords for the moment, the proximity of these ballerinas-in-training certainly did.

It seemed that the different classes had different dress codes, because the girls seemed to be drifting into their studios in like-colored leotards. On one side of the hall was a class of younger girls all in pink. Some of their tights were footless, others wore little ballet slippers. On the other side a class formed of older girls in light blue leotards.

Everyone seemed to be wearing pink tights, except for the handful of adult teachers who favored black tights that were abit on the sheer side. It had taken Jimmy a few moments to take all this in, when he found that he was already halfway down the hall, standing alone.

A few yards behind him, Jenny had dropped her book bag and was pulling off her jacket. She laughed at Jimmy for his confusion, and then at the look of surprise on his face when he saw long maroon sleeves appearing from under her t-shirt. "I changed at school already, to save time. It's a good thing, too, cause class is about to start!"

She pulled off her shirt to reveal a beautiful maroon leotard with a pinch-pleat design in front, accentuating her small breasts. He felt a surge in tingle activity, and when she kicked off her shoes and shrugged off her jeans to reveal her long legs clad in pink, he felt a physical surge in his own jeans. He'd never been more attracted to anyone in his life.

For her part, Jenny was inscrutable. She slipped easily into the role of dance student and hurried into the studio with her slippers in hand, not looking back to Jimmy but giving him a half-wave. He was dumbfounded. He began moving toward her studio door, and caught a glimpse of her talking with a few other similarly-clad girls, but just then the teacher walked up and closed the door.

Jimmy slowly walked back to the main door, only half-noticing the handful of girls still hurrying to their classes. He went outside, found a sunny stair step to sit on next to a pillar, and realized that they hadn't seen Laura. He figured she must have arrived before they did and was already in her class. With a self-conscious grimace, he realized that he'd gone for a full twenty minutes or so without thinking about what he'd been wearing last night. Instead he was now thinking of a maroon leotard, a pair of pink tights, and the warm body that danced inside them right now.