Stephanie’s Deal by Jennifer Brock Five weeks ago, eleven-year-old Steven Brooks made a foolish decision and has been living with the consequences ever since. He peeked at his Christmas presents and for punishment his parents decided to make him dress like a girl during his vacation, since he’d already had to be a girl for the pageant at church, which was criss-crossing the boys’ and girls’ roles. School was delayed, and the punishment extended, but it really doesn’t seem like a punishment any more. Stephanie is enjoying her life as a girl far more than Steven liked being a boy, but there have been a few bumps in the road.

Episode 19

Saturday morning seemed kind of normal. Stephanie was lying on the living room floor watching cartoons. She had on her red tshirt with the sleeves that could come down over her hands if she wanted to under her brown corduroy jumper with tights on her legs and girl shoes on her feet, but otherwise it wasn’t that different from a Saturday morning Steven might have had back when he was a boy.

Okay, so she was also flipping through her new Cosmo Girl when a commercial came on or the show got boring. It had come in the mail that morning. She’d almost forgotten that her cousin Dan had gotten her a subscription for her birthday. It was kind of cool getting a piece of mail addressed to “Stephanie Brooks,” like it somehow made her existence official, like in that old movie Dad likes to watch every Christmas where the Post Office declares that guy to be Santa Claus. Was there a way she could use that same argument? “The U.S. Post Office delivered mail here to Stephanie Brooks, so I will have to continue to be Stephanie Brooks as long as these magazines keep showing up.” Would Dad go for that? Probably not, but he might get a laugh out of it. She’d have to try it on him.

The magazine was pretty interesting. Jessica Alba was on the cover, and Steven had only really known her from the Fantastic Four movie. The article about her turned her into a real person. There was a whole kind of Valentine’s Day section about how to get your guy to fall for you, and Stephanie took mental notes on how to use those techniques the next time she saw Brian. However, another article warned about what your boyfriend’s mother thinks of you, and she got worried. She was already kind of scared of Mrs. Somers.

There was a section on beauty tips, and Stephanie found it far more interesting than the cartoons, so she turned the TV off and went up to her room to look in the mirror. There was a section on hairstyles, and it really made her wish her honey-brown layered bob would grow just a little longer. She didn’t quite have enough to make a cute ponytail or braid. She tried a few things from the magazine, and it mostly just made her frustrated. Why couldn’t she have turned into a girl earlier so her hair would have had time to grow? It just wasn’t fair.

There were some cool exercises for getting “6-pack abs,” which made Stephanie strip to her underwear so she could get a better look at her body. She was a couple inches shy of five feet tall and only weighed 86 pounds, so she was smaller than the girl in the picture of the exercises. Her hips only went out a little bit, not nearly as much as a real girl’s would, and her waist only went in a little bit. And of course, her chest didn’t go out much at all. She had a really crummy figure. She tried to tell herself that it was because she was much younger than the model in the photo, but she knew the real reason. She had a stupid boy body, and all the lavender oil in the world couldn’t change that.

She just wanted to crawl into a hole. The only reason she bothered getting dressed again was that she didn’t want to have to explain, in case Mom came in or something.

Her sister must have been tuned in to Stephanie’s psychic frequency or something, because right when her spirits needed a lift, her cell rang with Michelle’s ringtone. She went over to her bureau where it was charging and answered. “Hello?”

“Hey, Little Sis, you sound a little down. Is something the matter?”

Stephanie sighed. “I just got my first Cosmo Girl in the mail, and I was just feeling frustrated that I’m never going to look like the girls in the pictures. I’ve got a dumb square flat boy body.”

Michelle almost laughed in response. “Kiddo, every girl who reads that looks at those pictures and hates her body. They’re unrealistic. Not only do they use mutant waif models, but then they Photoshop those images so they end up with no resemblance whatsoever to reality.”

She wasn’t buying that argument. “But at least those other girls reading it are still girls. They might not look like models, but they know their bodies are at least going to be girl-shaped, with hips and boobs and stuff. Mine just isn’t.”

Her sister could hear Stephanie’s pain coming through. “That’s where you’re wrong, Stephie. It just so happens that’s sort of why I was calling you. Let me send you a picture.” Stephanie’s phone made a weird beepy noise. “Did you get it? Go through the menu to your picture gallery.”

Stephanie pushed the buttons on her phone to try to do what Michelle had described. She found the picture her sister had sent, of a cute brunette girl sitting on what looked like Michelle’s bed in her dorm room. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts. “Okay. I got it. Who is this?”

“That’s my new friend Annette. She’s the one I told you about before. I took the time to get to know her, and some of my assumptions were wrong, but she’s helping me try to understand what you’re going through. And you can tell from that picture that she’s got, what did you call it, boobs and hips and stuff. It’s too bad I took the picture from the front; she’s got an amazing butt too, way better than mine. Hey, quit it!” Stephanie couldn’t tell what was happening, there were some weird noises on the line.

A new voice came on. Her voice was a little lower than Michelle’s, but still sounded like a girl. “Hi there. I took the phone away from your sister. I’m Annette, and as I understand it we have a few things in common. She showed me your picture, and I think you’re a very pretty girl. When you get a little older, I’m sure you’ll break a lot of hearts.”

Stephanie was trying to piece together what had been said. “Um, hi. If you’re the one she was talking about before, that means you’re really a boy?”

Annette tried not to go full-on diva to a poor confused kid. “No, it means I’m really a girl, but I had a considerable birth defect of being stuck in a male body.”

“You look like a pretty girl now. So they fixed you with operations and drugs and hormones and all that?”

“Thank you, Sweetie. I’ve been on hormones since my seventeenth birthday. I was an emancipated minor, so the doctor was able to start me early. I had a part-time job that paid for them. I haven’t had any surgeries; what you see there in the picture was all grown naturally. I wasn’t even wearing a bra, so you can’t accuse me of padding it. There’s only one surgery I want, but it’s a little beyond my means at the moment.”

“What’s that?” Stephanie couldn’t imagine.

“Oh you’re so cute! My plumbing situation still hasn’t been tended to. Once I graduate and get a job, I’ll start saving up for my SRS, or as it’s known in the vernacular, my chop-it-offa-me.”

It took her a moment, but Stephanie eventually decoded what she was talking about. “So you’re saying that those hormone thingies could make a dumb flat square boy body into a curvy pretty girl body?”

“Sure, that’s how all girls, even the genetic ones, get their curves. It’s just that girls like you and me can’t make our own hormones so we have to get them from somewhere else. When you’re old enough, if you’re still sure you want to be female, your doctor can put you on them. But in the meantime try to find an endocrinologist who’ll put you on blockers to stop your body going through male puberty. So first you’ll need a good transgender-friendly psychologist to declare you officially a gender identity disorder patient before the endo can treat you.”

“Is that what you did?” Your body doesn’t look male at all.

“Thanks again, Sweetheart. No, I took a nonstandard route that I would not recommend. I caused an injury to myself that stopped the production of my male hormones, but it also got me locked up for a couple years in a psych ward, and pretty much ruined my family, so I’d say you’d be better off going through proper channels. Besides, you might not be able to tell by that picture but I’m too tall, I’ve got horribly thick wrists, and my feet are enormous! In the wrong light, I’ve even got an Adam’s apple, so I guess there is one other surgery I might want. It was a growth spurt I had when I was fourteen than made me do what I did, and of course it was too late to undo what had already happened to my body.” Annette sniffled a little.

Michelle came back on the line. “She’s had a rough life. Anyway, she’s given me a lot of insight into what it’s like for you, and what it would be like if you wanted to continue to be Stephanie. Am I right that you’ve kind of been thinking that way? I mean, talking about wanting your body to grow into a womanly shape is serious stuff. You know that if you went down that road for real, you can’t really come back? It’s not like a costume you can just take off; you’d be changing the way your actual body works, and maybe eventually even taking pieces off.”

Stephanie thought about it. “I really like it better as a girl than I ever did as a boy, and Mom’s got me going to this psycho doctor about it, and she’s mostly trying to talk me out of it. I think that’s maybe to see how seriously I want it. I haven’t really said it out loud to Mom and Dad, but yeah, I think I would want to be Stephanie forever. It doesn’t seem like a costume at all. In fact, my doctor makes me wear my boy clothes for a while each day, and they make me feel like I’m pretending more than any skirt or dress ever does.”

“Okay. I’m sure your doctor will keep you from making any rash decisions, and make sure you’ve thought about all the implications. But if that’s what you want, I’ll support you 100%. If you ever need me to back you up with the folks, I’ve got your back. Sister or brother, I love you and won’t ever stop.”

“Thanks.” Stephanie was doing a little sniffling of her own. “That really helps. I love you too. When did you get so cool?”

Michelle laughed. “I’ve always been cool, but you were so caught up in the whole ‘little brother / big sister’ rivalry that you never noticed. And now that you know, I’m sure that if you ever did go back to being my little brother we’d get along a lot better. I’m not trying to push you to go back, either. I love having a little sister. You’re cute and fun and very sweet. But either way you want to be is fine with me as long as you do what feels right for you.”

“Aw. I don’t know what to say. You’re the best sister a girl could have.” Stephanie wished she could give her big sis a hug. They exchanged goodbyes and she was left with a warm feeling inside and a wide smile on her face.

Talking with her big sister reminded her that she hadn’t heard from her “little sister” in a while. She wanted to give Robin a call, but she wasn’t sure what the situation was for her. When Robin’s father had crashed her birthday party, Stephanie’s Dad had taken charge and seemed to know stuff. So she thought he might still know stuff and tracked him down in his study. She had to knock on the door and wait while he hid his papers before she could come in.

She asked his opinion on whether it would be okay for her to call Robin, and he figured that there shouldn’t be any problem with that. He even offered to place the call for her, so he could talk to Robin’s mother for her and make sure. She handed Dad her phone and said that Robin was number seven in her speed dial. He called and said hi to Kendra, Robin’s mother, told her who he was and asked if Robin, or maybe Bobby was available to talk to Stephanie, and then held up his hand to let her know something was happening while he listened for a long time. He said that whatever Mrs. Perrone had said sounded like a good thing, and that he understood. He then gave her Stephanie’s number and asked that if Robin had some free time later in the week, she would love to hear from her, and told her that she was still free to call him any time for legal advice.

He ended the call and passed the phone back to Stephanie. He told her that things had changed for the better at Robin’s house. Her father had spent the weekend away and calmed down enough that her mother was able to convince him to talk to a counselor. He was ready to accept that Bobby needed to be Robin, at least some of the time, and they were still working on figuring out where things were going to end up. Her mother even said that before she got pulled away to answer the phone, she’d been playing a Barbie-themed board game with both Robin and her dad, and Robin was in her prettiest dress.

It seemed nice, but Stephanie was still kind of bummed that she didn’t get to talk to her “little sister.” She thanked her Dad for his help, and let him get back to work. She gave him a little hug on her way out, as thanks for being supportive. Compared to Robin’s troubles with her father and Michelle’s friend’s family worries, Stephanie had it really good at home. On the spur of the moment, she even gave her Daddy a little kiss on the cheek. It felt right.

She was almost skipping when she left to go find her Mom, who was busy on the computer, probably working on someone’s taxes. She had a lot of work from January to April, and not very much the rest of the year. Stephanie wasn’t sure how much money she earned at it, but Dad was a lawyer, so they must have had plenty. She stood off to the side quietly and waited for an opportunity. Mom finished one of her documents, rolled her neck, and stretched her arms. She blinked and looked up and saw Stephanie there.

She walked over to her mother and gave her a hug and said thanks for being there. Mom was a little confused, but she didn’t ask any questions and just held her tight. Stephanie didn’t want to have to explain why she was shedding a couple of tears, so she kept her face out of sight as she left the room. She probably wouldn’t have believed that Stephanie wasn’t crying for herself, but for other girls like her who had it a whole lot worse.

It was getting close to lunchtime, and both her parents were engrossed in work, so Stephanie decided to try to make lunch for all of them on her own. She looked through the fridge and the cupboards to see what they had that would make a good lunch, that she knew how to make. She decided to make fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, and green peas for a vegetable.

The cooking went fairly smoothly. The peas in the microwave and the fish sticks in the oven both had instructions saying how long they would take to cook, so it was easy to synchronize things. The only timing she couldn’t control was how long it took the water for the macaroni to boil, but that just meant she had to pay attention to the pot, but the only other thing she had to do while it was cooking was set the table. She decided that they’d be eating in the dining room instead of the kitchen even though it was just a Saturday lunch.

When everything was ready, Stephanie collected her parents and told them that she’d fixed lunch. They were both surprised and grateful. Dad laughed a little when he saw the meal she’d prepared; he said it suited her. She asked if she’d made a mistake, and he just smiled and said that you could tell a twelve-year-old planned the menu. It was the kind of food that took him back to when he was a kid, and he was glad. Parents sure acted weird sometimes.

After lunch, she went up to her room and finished working on her model car. It looked kind of nice when it was done, but Stephanie really wasn’t into cars. It was also too small to be a car for any of her dolls, but she didn’t really play with them; they just sat on the bureau making her room prettier. When the paint was dry, she took her car with her to show her folks. They were down in the living room watching some dumb news show. She had to wait for a commercial.

When she did catch their attention, she showed them her little car. Dad looked it over and nodded approvingly. She showed him that the doors could open and so could the hood and see all the engine stuff was there. Mom just smiled and said that it was pretty, and asked why she hadn’t made it into something else, like the spaceships made from airplane models that she’d shown her doctor. She said that they’d gotten her a fancy model, so they deserved to see it the way it was made to look, before she rebuilt into her vision of a magical alien castle. That led into a whole conversation where Stephanie had to explain what her mother was talking about.

It was easier to show than to tell, so she ran up to her room and the rest of her creations out of her attic closet. She explained that it hadn’t really been her thing to follow directions (or rules, which earned a laugh) and it felt much better to create something that didn’t exist before than to just make the same model a billion other kids were making. The other part of it was that it was fun to dream about being someplace far away, another world where the people were different.

Mom and Dad either thought her work was very interesting, or they were just faking it to seem like they cared about something that mattered to her. Either way, they listened to her stories about the scientific explorers, and the hospital ship with detachable ambulance, and even the one from the water planet that could convert into a submarine. They seemed kind of surprised that Stephanie (or Steven, actually) could put all the work into making something that elaborate. There really were a lot of sides to Steven that he’d kept private and didn’t show anyone.

Mom told Dad about the comic books that the doctor had, and he said he’d like to read them when Stephanie got them back. It was really embarrassing for her. They’d only seemed interested in school stuff before, and this was different. She said she’d think about showing them to him. It was just really weird to almost be connecting to her parents.

Stephanie wasn’t comfortable with the way her mother and father were looking at her, so she kept to herself after dinner and read a book in her room until bedtime. She’d had a very emotionally overwhelming day. She spent extra time massaging tea tree oil into her chest before putting on her nightgown, picturing her breasts growing with every drop. She imagined waking up in the morning and seeing two big boobies filling out the top of her nightie.

When she finally did wake up, nothing new was growing there, but Mom was telling her to hurry up and get dressed. They were going to church in Morton again, so they had to get an early start. She said there wasn’t time for a bath, so Stephanie just took a shower instead and had to rush with the hair dryer. Mom had laid out her clothes for her — she got to wear her pretty dress with the purple stripes.

There seemed to be some tension in the car again on the way to Morton. Even though everyone was dressed up nice and looking sharp before they needed to go, Mom seemed mad that they took too long to get ready and said something mean to Dad about it. He turned to Stephanie and warned her that if she really wanted to seem authentically female she’d have to master the talent for getting angry for no reason and blaming others for your mood. Mom shot him the scariest look that Stephanie had ever seen, and she tried to shrink down in the backseat and not be noticed.

At the church, Mom put a fake smile on her face, and made Stephanie make one too. It was awkward. Stephanie also had to sit in the pew between her parents which was even worse, but once the service started she could mostly ignore them and focus on the religion stuff. She’d never given a lot of though to God, but lately she’d been praying that he’d make her into a real girl.

The sermon was pretty boring, but she paid close attention to it just to keep from noticing what was going on around her. The pastor talked about forgiving your neighbors, and she tried to see if her parents were listening to him, but it seemed like they weren’t. They just glared at each other every so often. She tried smiling at them, for real this time, but

At the end of the service, the reverend stood by the door again and shook everyone’s hand and wished them a good day. Stephanie thanked him and kind of shrugged to apologize for her family. Once again they had to skip out on the after-service refreshments.

Before Dad started the car, Stephanie leaned forward and said she knew they were fighting and it was all her fault and she wished she could fix it, but she didn’t know how. She started weeping uncontrollably, and regretted using a little mascara. Her face was going to be a mess. Mom opened her door and went around and got in back, and then embraced Stephanie in a firm hug.

“Honey, your father and I aren’t fighting about you.” She stroked Stephanie’s hair. “We’ve just been arguing about what church to go to. I wanted to try a different one back home, but he wanted to stay the same denomination which meant traveling three towns over. It’s not your fault at all.”

Stephanie was probably staining Mom’s blouse. She sputtered, “B-b-b-but it’s my fault we got kicked out of our old church.”

“Sweetie, your situation just helped us find out what a bunch of hypocrites that old church was. We’re better off without them.”

“Are you sure it’s not my fault?”

Dad chimed in from the front seat. “It’s not your fault. Your mother and I are just being stubborn. We’ll work something out before next Sunday so we won’t have to fight again. Okay?”

Mom had an actual smile on her face. “Okay.”

Dad smiled, too. “Now what do you say I take my girls out for brunch?”

Mom opened her purse and took out a tissue. “Sure, but first we’ve got to fix up a little mess here.” She dabbed at Stephanie’s face and cleaned her smudged eyes, and gave her another tissue to blow her nose. Stephanie checked her face in Mom’s compact mirror, and she looked okay. She hadn’t brought her mascara in her own purse, but she did reapply her lip gloss. Things were definitely looking up.