Okay, where do I begin? Name, I guess… then a little background. My name is Max, and I’m not at all well. I’m serious about that, but I’ll get back to it. I live, if one can call it that, at the Technodrome… well, okay, The William Techtner Foundation for Advanced Applied Education, but who wants to say that… ever. Essentially its this school for Genii in upstate Oregon, where they teach us to use our gifts wisely and not, say, blow things up anymore or spend all our time painting pictures of people drowning. So it’s a little like a school and a lot like a psyche ward.

As I said, my name is Max, and I’m not at all well, but, and this couldn’t be more important, I am not crazy. Don’t believe me huh? Well you really aren’t going to believe me in a little bit, but I swear, while I’ve got emotional problems galore, I’m not delusional. Eric does exist, and he really does have magical powers.

Okay, stop sniggering. I know, I know. Magic’s not real. I live in the same world you people do, and that’s what I thought until a week ago. Things have changed since then, some for the better, some for the worse, and some for the very, very, very strange.

I guess I’m confusing you, it was bound to happen. So let me start over, this time at the beginning, and I’ll try to keep the narrative in some semblance of chronological order. I make no promises.

Looking back on it now, I realize that my grandfather, my mother’s father that is, must have been a real piece of work. I wouldn’t know, I never met William Techtner the Third, him having died the day I was born. But trust me, he really must have been. Why you ask? Two reasons. First, the Technodrome, founded 1899 by William Techtner the first, had been coed since it first opened its doors. Well, my grandfather, when he became regent, changed all that. I swear he did, even though only a select few remember it and there’s no record of it, I promise you he did. In 1976, William Techtner III, announced that the Foundation was going boys only, seeing as how, in my grandfather’s words “The presence of Females, serving as a distraction for already scattered Male mind, especially ones in a delicate and formative stage, is undesirable and shall no longer be tolerated.” What a tool, huh? I don’t know what his deal was, but it scarcely matters anymore, seeing how… no, I’ll get back to it in the proper time.

Where was I? Oh, right, reason two. Reason two is near and dear to my heart, well, not really. Okay, yeah, I guess I do love my mother, I mean, who doesn’t… love their own mother, you’ve never met my mother and you’d probably just go “eh, strange woman” if you ever did, and I’m rambling so I’ll stop. Anyway, my mother. Everyone loves his or her own mother, right. Its genetic or something. And I do, I love her. When she’s far far far away. I also hate her. I know it’s a horrible thing to say, but I do. I told you I wasn’t well. Why? Well, its part of the reason and has to do with The Dream.

The Dream? What Dream, you ask? Why the capital letters, you ask? Well, if you’ll just shut the fuck up for a second I’ll tell you. Sorry, that was rude, but I’ll forgive me. So, The Dream.

One of the ways in which I am “Not Well” is that I don’t sleep. Well, I do, but not much. An hour here, an hour there, maybe, just maybe 9 hours a week. Really. I take medication, lots of it, just to keep me from going, you know, crazy. And I meditate. A lot. Hours and hours of it, usually from the time my roommate Craig… I mean Valerie, goes to bed till when he… um, she wakes up. Sorry, still not used to all this, but then, if I was used to it like everyone else, there wouldn’t be much of a story.

So there I was, last Friday morning, about three or four a.m., meditating, keeping my mind clear as glass or something, when I fell asleep. Just like that. And the reason I don’t sleep came rushing in to attack. The Dream. Its always the same, and I hate it.

In The Dream, I am six (and still Max), and my parents have just told me that they are getting a divorce. I cry, who wouldn’t, and my father leaves, and I try to go with him, and my _______ mother holds me tight and not in the good way while I’m reaching out for my father’s back, sobbing and screaming “daddy, don’t go” or some shit like that. And then my mother is reciting The Litany.

You know, The Litany. The rote list of things Boys Don’t Do, as if it were something sacred, like catechism or a mantra. Boys don’t cry. Boys don’t beg. Boys live with their mothers because daddy’s are too busy to take care of kids. Boys don’t do gymnastics, they don’t get a pony, they don’t eat candy, they don’t, they don’t, they don’t. That’s right, anything she didn’t want to explain or didn’t want me to do, or just fucking didn’t like, Boys Didn’t DO. And she made me recite the list, every day before bedtime. And every few days, the list got longer. Sure, some of it was good, or at least positive. Boys do their homework every day. Boys clean their bedrooms. Boys make their beds. Boys keep their winkles in their pants at Mommy’s formal parties. But most of them were Boys Don’t. My mother never punished me when I misbehaved. She just added stuff to The Litany and made me repeat it. Over, and over, and over again. Eventually I started doing it in my sleep, and eventually I stopped sleeping. I don’t hear voices in my head. I’m not that kind of crazy. I hear voice. Just one. And its always there. And its always saying Boys Don’t.

As I said, I hate my mother. And it’s very important to remember, that, even after everything that’s changed, I still hate her.

I didn’t have friends growing up. I wasn’t allowed to play with other kids my age, because my mother told me that I was special, gifted, a genius. That other kids my own age would make fun of me for my gifts, for being smarter than they were. So I had tutors or I did lessons that my father sent me, lessons that he was teaching his gradstudents in Massachusetts. And that was my day. Wake up, do lessons, read, get tutored, exercise, eat a few times, and repeat the Litany. That was my life until I turned 10. Then I went off to the family school. I’m not sure if my mother was trying to drive me insane so I’d fit in with the total freaks who go here, or what, but if she wasn’t she really succeeded.

So, when I dream, that’s what I dream. I dream about my life, or at least four years of it, compressed, into a torrent of emotional baggage that could sink an emotional Titanic. And then I wake up, gasping for air, for release, for freedom. And for a second I can’t remember who or what or where I am. That’s normal, by the way. But it usually lasts only a second.

That Friday morning, the morning everything changed? Yeah, it lasted about a minute. So I’m looking around the dark room, gasping, catching my breath and I realize, “Hey, why is the window glowing green?” It really was. I get out of bed and pad over, still unsure of who and where I am, but its slowly coming back to me, and I pull open the curtains. And what do I see? I see the Foundation, built into three sides of this hill that wraps around a charming and picturesque little green valley on the edge of this nice little town, two dorms flanking the massive central bulk of the school where all the labs and classrooms and studios and such are. And in the middle of the valley, not on the valley floor mind you, but in the very fucking middle of the valley, suspended as if caught in a magnetic field where the wings of the school were the magnet, was this glowing green-black ball of fire. And a figure floating inside it.

This is too much. So I try and wake Craig, cause He’s gotta see this… I mean Gotta! Cause if he can’t, I’m a sooooo nuckin futs. But if he can, then clearly its just the situation that’s, you know. So I go over and grab what I think is his shoulder, but its way too damn soft and has, you know, a nipple on it and I jerk my hand back like I’ve been scalded.

A Girl. There’s a girl in Craig’s bed. I figure she must be a townie, cause Craig spends, well all his free time down in the town, “checkin’ out the talent” as he says. And Craig’s been with, well according to him, loads of honeys. Me? I’m a sixteen year old virgin… not surprising considering… well just considering.

Craig’s a painter by the way, the one who spent all his time painting scenes of people drowning (His parents died in a boating accident when he was eight). So the school’s been good to him, made him open up, use his talents for more productive things… like getting local girls to pose nude for him surrounded by mountain flowers… or the sheets of his bed, apparently.

I look around, trying to figure out where Craig is, and also trying to figure out how we are going to get Townie Girl out of here before anyone notices her, when the light begins to fade. I leaned over Craig’s bed, trying see if he was on the far side, and just kept on going. Something was terribly wrong with my balance and only quick reflexes kept me from faceplanting right between those very pert and only slightly covered breasts. As it was my nose was now close enough to ruffle the delicate silk gauss of the thing that could only laughingly be described as containing them. I levered myself up and tried to take stock of the situation. My chest felt… heavy. Very heavy actually.

I looked down.

Oh such a very, very bad move.

Remember The Litany? Well, one of its many don’ts was “Boys Don’t Faint!” Good thing I wasn’t a boy anymore.

I woke up slowly, a sensation I was completely unfamiliar with. Another unfamiliar sensation was what was waking me up. Someone was poking me and giggling, someone with a high pitched voice. Was one of the little kids in my room? Was I in my room? I seemed to be kneeling on hardwood floor, but my head was resting on something soft.

Slowly I opened my eyes. A girl was looking at me. She smiled and waved, a cute little wave.

“Morning Sleepyhead” she said.

“Morning?” I replied, feeling very confused. In fact I’m not sure if I was more confused by having slept, by the fact that it was morning, by the fact that there was a strange girl here who seemed to know me, or by the fact that my head was resting on her thigh. I sat bolt upright and looked around frantically.

As I looked towards the window the brightness blinded me and I screamed and covered my eyes. I looked away and then opened them again. Much better. Still too bright, but much better.

“Max?” she said.

“Ummm… yeah?” I replied.

“Can I ask what might be a stupid question, and bear in mind that I don’t really, you know, object or anything, but why are you sleeping on my lap? And why is the curtain open? Are we trying to give any boy with a pair of binoculars or a telescope a peep show?”

“Ummm, what?” I replied. Why would boys be looking in here? I thought. Then I asked her exactly that.

“Cause boys like looking at girls.”

“There aren’t any girls here too look at. It’s a boys school.” I pointed out.

My pillow giggled “Yer silly. Okay then, if this is a boys school, why do I have tits… and extremely nice ones if I do say so myself.”

“Cause you’re a townie my dumbass roommate brought up here to… to…” I couldn’t finish. “you know!” I added in a whisper.

“Max!” she squealed, then giggled “Okay. Say I am a townfloozy who could be sweettalked by a sophisticated genius painter, why then do you have titties? Bigger titties than mine, I might add?”

Then I remembered. I groaned and covered my face with my hands “It wasn’t an hallucination?”

“What wasn’t?”

I ignored her and very carefully checked out my… my breasts. Then, even more trepidatiously, I slid my hand crotchward, but I couldn’t bring myself to… verify.

Time for rational thought, I thought. I sat back, my knees sore from kneeling on the floor for four or five hours. Leaning back against the wall under the window, I took ten short deep breaths and released them. “Okay. Assuming I’m not crazy.” She giggled and looked at me. “I’m not.”

“If you say so Max.”

“Then there must be an explanation for all this.”

She nodded, “There must be.”

“Since you are in Craig’s bed, and a girl…”

“I am.”

“And since I am Max, and a G… g… girl.”

“You are.”

“Thank you.”

“NP”

“Then you are…” I looked at her. The hair was the right shade of brown, albeit much longer and curlier. The eyes were the same however, laughing almost manic… with a deeper sadness that I’d never really noticed but now realized had always been there. As I looked closer the outward appearance kind of melted away to reveal a swirling vortex of energy and some other stuff I didn’t have a name for and suddenly I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this girl, somehow, was Craig… and a good person… and surprisingly, a virgin… who loved to flirt with boys and girls… and who had a crush on at least three of her teachers… and I blinked and she was back. “Craig?”

“Yes?”

“You’re Craig.”

“Well, duh. You, Me, roomies for six years Maxi. Did you hit your head?”

“Ummm…. Look, Craig, which is a really strange name for a girl by the way, last night, when you went to bed, were you… and me… boys?”

She shook her head. “Ewww No!”

“Right. Then just me.”

“No, you were a girl then too.”

“Not what I meant, but goodish to know. When you went to bed last night, as far as I remember, this was a boys school, and had been since 1976. You were a boy, and so was I. I fell asleep at some point, and woke up from The Dream, as usual, and there was this green-black light coming from outside. So I opened the curtains and there was this figure floating in a ball of Green-black fire-“

“Eldritch Fire?”

I blinked at the interruption. “What?”

“Green-Black fire is eldritch-fire.”

“Rrrright.” I nodded. “Where was I?”

“Boy in the ball of eldritch fire.”

“Right. So I turned to wake you up, only you had breasts and then so did I so I passed out.”

“Right onto my lap?”

“I guess so.”

“And now you don’t remember ever being a girl.”

“Too true.”

“Bummer.”

“You might say that.”

“Just did. So what do you remember.”

“I remember everything, except that in what I remember you are a boy named Craig Valerian.” I paused to see her reaction.

After a really long pause where she seemed lost in thought, she gave a short curt nod and then smiled. “Valerie Craig.”

“Right. And I am?”

“Maxima Greyhouse-Techtner.”

“I remember myself as Maximillian but okay. And this is Techtner Foundation for blah blah blah?”

“Yep!”

“Coed?”

“Yep!”

“And this is Gracie Hall?”

“Yep!”

“Which is the girl’s dorm?”

“You betcha!”

“And the president?

“What president?”

“Of the US?”

“What about him?”

“Okay, still a him. Just, you know, checking to make sure I’m not suddenly in an alternate reality where all the boys are girls and vice versa.”

“Okay!”

“You seem to be taking this awfully well?

She shrugged, “Max, you don’t know how to lie. You suck so much. You couldn’t fool the most gullible nincompoop in the universe.”

“You mean you believe me?”

“Sure!”

I looked at her for a very long moment and she looked back at me, smiling softly. Finally I asked the obvious question. “Why?”

“Why not?”

“No, I’m serious! I sound crazy! We’re both clearly girls, and if you’re right then all, and I mean ALL the evidence is against me. Why would you possibly believe me? I’m beginning not to believe me.”

“Max?”

“Yes?”

“Breathe!”

I breathed… it didn’t help.