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"Tony, you're home! I thought we might get to meet Alice..." Mom said hopefully as I stepped inside.

"Sorry Mom, Alice has to stay away for a while." I said, giving mom a quick hug and then saying hi to Dad. They both looked kind of confused, but I expected that. After all, they only heard about everything that happened this summer. They didn't get to see it like my grandparents had.

"You don't look very happy sport. Are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Dad asked.

"No, but I have to." I replied.

"Honey, you're only fifteen. Even if Jessica feels like you do, there's no guarantee that you'll stay together! Especially once she finds out about you." Mom said worriedly.

I sighed, "I know Mom. But I have to try."

They let it go at that, but reluctantly. I was sure I hadn't heard the last of it, though.

I wanted to go see Jessica right away, but I was tired from the long drive and Mom and Dad insisted I eat dinner first. I was so sleepy afterward that I reluctantly decided to wait until tomorrow and went to bed early.

In the morning I found myself sat at the kitchen table with the phone, listening to Jessica's answering machine. I tried five times, but no answer. "I'm going to go over there." I told Mom.

"Honey, they may have gone on a trip. They've gone on several this summer." Mom told me.

"I'll just run over and check." I replied. Sure enough, their car wasn't there and there was no answer when I pressed the door bell.

I slunk back home in a funk. I needed to talk to Jessica right away. If I could get things going fast enough, there might even be a chance of Alice going to school! But that wasn't going to happen if I couldn't talk to Jessica.

Most of the rest of the day was spent in the living room, not far from the phone. I kept trying, but there was no answer. This set the pattern for the week, with me getting more restless with each passing day. My parents got on me more and more, trying to get me to bring Alice out, but I refused.

Thursday came, the last Thursday before school started, and still no Jessica. I'd all but given up on her getting back before then. I spent most of the day in my room, either sleeping, crying, or staring at Alice's closet.

Friday was worse. After another failed call I cried myself to sleep and just couldn't get up the energy to get out of bed. Mom tried to coax me out, but finally gave up and brought my meals to me. I didn't eat much, but she wouldn't leave until I ate at least a little.

Melanie called Saturday morning. She tried to get me to bring Alice out, too. When that didn't work, she suggested I try some of the meditation techniques she'd taught me. That helped, a little.

"Tony! Phone!" Mom called out. I fell out of my meditative trance with a curse and climbed out of bed. Then I realized what she said, and raced downstairs so fast Mom gasped when I grabbed the phone from her.

"Hello?!" I said breathlessly, hoping against hope that it was Jessica.

"Tony, Hi! We just got back from another dull trip. Please tell me you're free to come over? My parents are killing me!" Jessica said, her voice melting all my worries.

"Hi Jessica! Sure, I'll be right over!" I said. I put the phone down and rushed upstairs to throw some clean clothes on and my shoes. Once dressed, I hurried back downstairs and said, "She's back! I'm going!" before racing out the door. I left a smiling Mom behind without a chance to reply, but I think she expected that.

When I got to Jessica's house a few minutes later I found her dad outside unloading their car. "Hi Tony! Go on in." he called out.

"Thanks Mr. Wright!" I replied, and walked up to the door. I reached for the door knob, but it opened before I could grab it.

"Tony! Thank goodness you're here!" Jessica exclaimed, dragging me inside before I could reply. She didn't say anything else until we were safely locked in her room. "You wouldn't believe how much my parents have been getting on me this summer! I'm sooo glad you're back. I missed you." she said, grabbing me in a baby bear hug. That's what I always called it, since she's so small.

"I missed you, too. Why would your parents be giving you trouble?" I asked. They're so proud of everything Jessica does that I couldn't imagine them harping on her like she said.

Jessica waved that off, "They just don't understand me. You know how parents are."

I rolled my eyes, "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean! My parents have been on my case since I got back, too."

She nodded, "I wish we could have had more time to hang out this summer. Now all we've got is tonight and tomorrow, and then we start school again!"

"I was hoping we'd have more time, too." I agreed sadly. "It's really not fair, my parents sending me away all summer like that."

"So what all did they have you doing all summer, anyway?" Jessica asked.

I shrugged evasively, "Not much. Just talking and playing board games and stuff. How about you?"

Jessica frowned, "We were all over the place. Even if you'd been home we wouldn't have seen much of each other unless you came along! It wouldn't have been so bad, if my parents would have left me alone."

An uncomfortable silence descended for a moment. Jessica finally broke it by asking, "What classes do you have this year?"

I hadn't thought to bring my schedule over, so we both went to my house and into my room to compare schedules. She'd managed to get me into honors Algebra II, so we had that class together. We also had tennis, which should be fun. Especially if we get to play as a team. Those were the only classes we had together, though.

"Well, at least we have those." Jessica said with a sigh. "And we can eat lunch together and walk home together. I'll help you with your math work, like last year. I guess it's not that bad."

"Yeah." I agreed absently. I'd had such a miserable week that being in Jessica's presence again was intoxicating. I had to work hard not to get caught staring at her.

"You okay Tony, you're quieter than usual?" Jessica asked.

I looked down in embarrassment, as she'd caught me looking again when she turned to say that. "Uh, yeah, I'm fine." I said softly without looking up.

Jessica snorted, "Yeah, right! You're acting weird. Did something happen at your grandparents'?"

I shrugged, "Not really." I lied. I hated lying to her, but I didn't dare mention Alice!

She didn't say anything right away, so I looked up. She was glaring at me! "Tony! Something's obviously bothering you! What's up?" she demanded.

I love you! I thought, but managed to keep my mouth shut. "Nothing." I said.

"Bullshit! What's going on?" she said angrily.

I felt tears streaming down my face, but I couldn't think up a believable lie.

"Tony?! Please, tell me what's wrong?" Jessica begged as she wrapped her arms around me.

"Iloveyouwillyoubemygirlfriend?" I blurted out. I slapped my hands over my mouth in horror. This wasn't how this was supposed to go!

Jessica pulled back and cocked her head to the side. I could almost see the gears turning as she tried to figure out what the hell I just said. She looked confused, then shocked. I could have sworn the corners of her mouth turned up for a moment, and then shot back down into an awful scowl. "Not you, too!"

"Huh?" I said. Obviously, intelligent conversation was right out for me.

"This is just too much!" Jessica screeched. "I thought you of all people would understand!"

"Huh?" I repeated my eloquent query.

"Argh! I can't believe this! You...you...asshole!" she screamed and pushed me away. I fell against my dresser and watched in horror as she stormed out of my room and, if her words were any indication, out of my life.

Years of agony later I felt Mom's hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her concerned face and it was washed away by a river of tears. She braved the torrent and held me against her, rocking us back and forth. "It'll be alright." is all she said, over and over again.

My eyes were glued shut when I woke. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to open them, but after cleaning out a few sand dunes they finally did. I looked around in confusion. I was lying on my bed with a blanket pulled over me, but I didn't remember how I got there. I glanced around the room and saw Mom sitting in my desk chair. She looked like she'd been reading a book and fell asleep, her head hanging down with her hair covering her face. The book was open on the floor.

Next to her book were two pieces of paper. One of them was my class schedule, and the other was also a class schedule. Looking closer, I saw that it was...Jessica's! Her words suddenly came back to me, pounding into my skull like a jackhammer. It was over. Before it could even begin, my life was truly over.

"Tony?" I heard Mom say. I hadn't notice her wake, let alone get up and sit on my bed. She gathered me up in her arms and the flood resumed.

That happened a couple more times before I really became coherent. By the time I did, it was dinner time, Sunday. Mom managed to drag me out to the kitchen where Dad was setting out takeout from my favorite restaurant. There were four different flavors of buffalo wings steaming away on the table, my favorite! Even so, they almost had to force me to eat. I finally managed to choke down about a dozen wings. I hardly even tasted them.

"Honey, we're worried about you. I think we should call the doctor." Mom said.

I shook my head vigorously, "No!" That idea had totally woken me up. "I can't risk going to a doctor! They'll find out!"

"How would they do that?" Dad asked.

I didn't dare tell them what Melanie told me! "Trust me, they would." I said instead.

"Well we've got to do something! Perhaps it's time you let Alice back out?" Mom suggested.

I thought about it, I really did. But I was surprised to find there was still a spark of hope inside me that I could patch things up with Jessica. I had to try. "No, not yet." I finally said. I surprised myself with how strongly I said it. Mom and Dad exchanged worried glances, but they eventually gave in.

Mom had gone shopping for school supplies, so she decided to change the subject by helping me get ready for school. With my bag full of everything that I'd need, including my and Jessica's class schedules, I said goodnight. Mom looked like she wanted to say more, but she sighed and said goodnight, closing my door behind her.

It was a good thing we got everything ready ahead of time. Mom almost had to drag me out of bed in the morning. I reluctantly got ready for school and left. Mom brought Alice up again, but I just shook my head and walked out.

Jessica's house is on the way to school for me, so I went by it like usual. I was hoping maybe she'd cooled down. I didn't see her, so I knocked on the door. Her mother answered the door. "Tony! Aren't you walking to school with Jessica?" she asked in surprise.

"Uh, that's why I'm here. I was hoping to. We, uh, kind of had a fight Saturday and I was hoping to patch things up." I said.

Mrs. Wright frowned and sighed, "I'm sorry to hear that Tony. Jessica already left. I just assumed you were with her."

The thirty ton weight that was my head drooped down and I managed to wobble it a bit to approximate a nod. "Okay, thanks anyway." I managed to choke out as I turned around and continued on to school. I think she said something else, but I'm not sure.

I fought a losing battle with my tears and finally hid in some bushes to have a good cry. Once I had myself back under control I made my way to school. I went to pull out my schedule to see where my first class was, and saw Jessica's there with it. I pulled them both out. I figured, maybe I could find her and give it to her. She'd need it, after all. Sure enough, I found her rifling through her bag near the office.

"Uh, Jessica? You left this at my house?" I said hesitantly.

Her head jerked up when she heard my voice. Conflicting emotions played across her face for a moment before a scowl settled there. "Thanks." she said with no gratitude at all in her tone. She snatched it out of my hand and rushed off.

And thus ends the life of Tony Green. I thought morosely. The warning bell sounded, startling me out of my self-pity. I hurried off to my own class, glad it wasn't one of the ones I share with Jessica.

In Algebra class she acted like I didn't exist. I ended up sitting behind her, but she never acknowledged me. At lunch I looked for her, but I couldn't find her. We had tennis together for sixth period, so I hoped maybe we could still play together. Then she'd have to talk to me!

We did play together, but on opposite teams. Jessica took great pleasure in hitting me with the ball as often as she could get away with. I left that class bruised on the outside, bleeding like a stuck pig on the inside. Or maybe I was already bled dry.

After changing clothes I hurried to look for Jessica. I spotted her leaving the girl's locker room and ran over. "Jessica, wait!" I called out. She didn't even look at me. "Please," I said as I got closer, "talk to me?"

Jessica ignored me at first, and then suddenly stopped. She finally looked at me, and that scowl was back. "I don't want to talk to you. Ever again." she said tonelessly. Then she turned and walked away.

I stumbled home, tripping over every crack and crevice. I was even more bruised by the time I got home, but I didn't care. Jessica hated me. She really hated me. What was the point without her?

My parents were, of course, worried about me when they got home from work and found me crying on the couch. I told them what happened. They again insisted it was time to bring Alice back. I'm not sure why, but I refused. I guess, deep down, I still harbored some tiny little gleam of hope.

The rest of the week was more of the same, except that I didn't bother trying to talk to her. I went through my day like a zombie, hardly even noticing the usual taunts and shoves I always seemed to attract. I felt like I was moving through molasses, and wasn't sure why I put forth the effort.

When I got home Friday I threw my bag on the floor and walked into the kitchen. My parents wouldn't be home for an hour or two. I grabbed a nice, sharp knife and took it into the bathroom with me. After locking the door I took off my clothes and climbed in the tub. No need to make too much of a mess. I hesitated for only a moment before slashing both arms open. The crimson fluid flowing out of my veins was strangely fascinating to watch as I slowly lost consciousness.

I woke to banging and yelling. Mom and Dad. Why was I hearing them? Shouldn't I be dead? A crashing sound brought my attention to the door, which now lay splintered on the bathroom floor. Mom and Dad rushed in, Mom shrieking when she saw all the blood. "Call 911!" Dad yelled.

Mom was too freaked out to comply, and Dad was too focused on me to notice. He started up the shower to wash off my wounds. While that was going he grabbed a couple of towels. He was about to wrap one around my left arm when he noticed. "Where's the wound?" he asked in shock.

I looked down, and saw that the water had washed away enough of the congealing blood to expose two long, thin red marks where I had cut myself open. That was it. No open wounds. "It didn't work." I whispered.

"Thank God!" Dad said in relief. He made sure to get the rest of the blood off, which calmed Mom down a lot. Once I was clean he turned off the shower. He tried to coax me out of the shower, but I was still in shock that I was still alive. And really weak. He wrapped a towel around me and picked me up. He carried me out to the living room and laid me down on the couch.

Mom, seeing what he was doing, grabbed a blanket and draped it over me. "Honey, what were you thinking?!" she blubbered, as the tears started pouring. Dad held her, but he had quite a few tears dripping down himself.

"I'm sorry." I said, seeing how upset they were. Soon all three of us were crying in a group hug. We stayed like that for what seemed hours, but was probably less than a minute.

"Sweetheart," Dad started, shocking me as he'd never called me anything like that before! "It's beyond time for Alice to come out! This can't go on any longer. We couldn't stand to lose you." Mom nodded along with his words, sniffling a bit.

I wanted to argue. I wanted Jessica to come in and say everything was alright. That we would be together forever. Even if only as friends! But they were right. Alice was my only hope now. I nodded in defeat. "Okay." I sighed. "I'll get started right now."

I laid back and closed my eyes in concentration. As I began working, I felt my parents' concern. Mom was holding my hand, so I squeezed it back to let her know everything was okay. I was a little rusty, but it wasn't long before I had things moving in the right direction. I got tired quickly, so I took a break and opened my eyes. I was surprised to find Mom and Dad sitting on the floor next to the couch watching me.

"Are you okay dear?" Mom asked worriedly.

I smiled weakly, "Yeah, I guess. I just started the process. But I'm really tired. I think I need to eat something and get some sleep. Then I can get back to it."

"How long will it take?" Dad asked. We'd never talked about it since I got back, since every time we did they bugged me about bringing Alice back. I realized that they had no idea how any of this worked.

"In the shape I'm in it may take all weekend." I said.

"That fast?!" Mom exclaimed.

"I could do it faster, if I hadn't..." I couldn't finish that sentence, especially when I saw how much it hurt my parents. They knew what I was going to say though.

"Wait a minute. How will we explain you changing overnight?" Dad asked worriedly.

"Oh, yeah, I hadn't thought about that." I admitted. What would I do? But then I remembered some of the stories I'd read online and knew exactly what to do. "I know! I'll make myself intersexed! I'll still look like a boy, you know, down there." I said, gesturing vaguely. "But it will only be skin. I'll start up all the secondary stuff, and you can take me to the doctor for it! Then they'll examine me and find out I was really a girl all along!"

"Intersexed?" Dad asked. I explained to them the stuff I'd read about online, and they agreed it was a good idea.

Mom heated up some soup for me and I managed to eat it all, along with the crackers she brought with it. Sleep caught up with me soon after.

Sunlight was streaming in through the living room windows when I woke. Mom was sleeping in the recliner and Dad was drinking coffee while he read the paper. "Hey, how are you feeling?" he asked when he saw I was awake.

"Better." I said. "I'm sorry about last night."

"Just don't do that again, okay? If you're feeling that bad, talk to someone! If not us, then someone else. Please?" Dad said.

I nodded, "Okay."

"So, ready for breakfast?" he asked, now that the heavy stuff was out of the way.

"Starving!" I replied.

Dad laughed and started cooking breakfast. I was going to take a shower, but the memory of last night stopped me in my tracks. Instead I went to my parent's bathroom and then got dressed. I joined Dad in the kitchen and helped out with breakfast. He seemed surprised that I had the energy to move around so much.

"I heal fast." was all I said. I figured I'd have to go into all the details eventually, but I wanted to concentrate on bringing Alice back, first. Dad shrugged and let it go.

Mom finally woke in time to join us for breakfast. I ate six pancakes, four sausage links, and a mound of bacon before I finally got full, and then washed it down with my third glass of milk! Mom and Dad stared in shock through most of the meal. "How can you eat so much?!" Mom finally asked.

"I have to replace what I lost. Also, I'll need plenty of energy to make all the changes I need to make." I replied. I helped Mom and Dad clean up and then laid back down on the couch. I figured my parents might want to keep an eye on me after last night.

"You're not going back to sleep already, are you?" Mom asked worriedly.

"No." I said with a small smile. "I'm just getting back to work. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it!" With that I closed my eyes and redirected things the way we'd decided. I didn't have to make many changes. I was a little disappointed to have to leave some things unfinished, for now, but Dad was right that we needed to be able to explain it.

I think my parents watched me throughout, but with my eyes closed it was hard to tell. I did hear a gasp at one point, when my breasts started pushing up my shirt! I took a break at lunch to eat, then took a short nap. Then I was back at it. Mom interrupted me to eat dinner, I'd totally lost track of time by then.

"Are you sure you're alright honey?" she asked worriedly when I opened my eyes.

"I'm okay Mom. I might even be able to finish tonight. Especially since I have to leave stuff unfinished." I said.

"Unfinished? What do you mean?" Mom asked.

"Well, if I made my breasts full sized, and all the rest, there would be questions. I never strip down enough in PE class for anybody to see me without a shirt or shorts, but it would be pretty hard to hide some things! So I have to develop slowly to avoid questions. There will be some, no matter what, but my answers will be believable if I don't push the envelope too much. Fortunately, I can do the reproductive organs completely, as nobody ever sees those." I explained.

"Oh." Mom seemed a little overwhelmed.

I didn't scarf dinner like I had breakfast and lunch. Mom and Dad worried that it meant I was depressed again, but I assured them that I had everything I needed. Most of the remaining changes involved taking away, not adding. "Uh, there is one problem, though." I said.

"What's that?" Dad asked.

"Well, I can't just drop fifty pounds of skeletal and muscular tissue overnight. I can shave a bit off here and there, but I can't do it all at once. So the clothes that Grandma and Grandpa bought for Alice won't fit yet, except for the loose stuff. I'll have to go through it, but I doubt I'll have enough stuff to wear until I've finished my changes." I said.

Dad groaned, but Mom actually looked kind of pleased. "Good." she said, confirming my thought, "I was a little peeved at missing out on that big shopping expedition you went on with your Grandmother and Melanie. This time it's my turn!"

Dad groaned again, more theatrically. "We'll be paying off the credit cards for years!" he said melodramatically.

Mom slapped his arm playfully and we all laughed. It felt good to laugh again.

Mom decided to use the time while I worked to go through my wardrobe. Dad just sat and watched as I laid down and resumed my trance. It was much easier to make these kinds of changes if I shut out the outside world. Melanie's wife could do it with her eyes open while riding a bike and holding an animated conversation, but she's got a real talent for it. Not to mention way more experience!

When I finally opened my eyes I glanced at the clock. It was only eight thirty! "Wow, I did it!" I exclaimed.

"You're done?" Dad asked in surprise.

I nodded, "For now at least, yeah."

"Good, then you can get some rest so we can get an early start tomorrow!" Mom said cheerfully.

"Sure you're up for that?" Dad asked with a grin.

"Oh, I guess I can handle it." I said, smiling back. It felt good to smile, too.

Mom woke me at six in the morning! "Why so early?!" I asked.

"I went through your closet last night. You picked out some nice clothes, but most of it won't fit for a while yet. It's much too small. Are you really going to get that small?" Mom said.

"Yeah." I replied with a grin. "I like small girls." My smile faded when I said that, because it reminded me of Jessica. She's pretty short at 5 foot, but she's also really petite. She would never tell me, of course, but I'm sure she weighs way less than a hundred pounds.

Mom sat on the edge of my bed and pulled me to her. "I'm sorry honey. I wish there was something I could do." My tears eventually dried and Mom helped me get cleaned up. We could only find one outfit that I could wear. I had to wear my boy's underwear underneath, because my panties were all too small.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised." Mom said as she watched me putting on my shoes. "But I am. You had no trouble with your bra, and generally act like you've been dressing this way all your life. I'm halfway surprised you didn't put on any makeup!"

"Mom, I was Alice almost all summer! Of course I know how to wear the clothes. And makeup. The only reason I'm leaving that off this time is because I'll be changing clothes a lot and I don't want to get makeup on them. I hate it when I find something I like at the store and it has makeup stains on it!" I said.

Mom shook her head ruefully, "I know you're right. But I wasn't there for any of that."

"I'm sorry Mom. I should have told you guys last year like I'd planned." I said, giving Mom a quick hug.

"Last year?" Mom asked, surprised.

I nodded, "Yeah. I was all set to tell you guys when I met Jessica. I was afraid transitioning would scare her off, though, so I didn't."

"Oh, honey, you can't deny who you are! Not even for the people that you love!" Mom admonished.

I nodded, "Yeah, I think I'm finally figuring that out. But I thought I had to."

"Enough of the maudlin stuff, let's shop!" Mom said with a giggle. I couldn't help but giggle in response. After another hug we shopped. And shopped. And shopped!

"Are you sure we can afford all this?" I asked worriedly as I looked at all the bags in the car on the way home.

"Don't worry about that. The important thing is seeing you happy. Besides, I got a few nice new things, myself." Mom said, grinning.

"Dad's not going to be happy, though, is he?" I asked.

"He was just playing around. It's fine, really!" Mom said. I could sense her sincerity, so I let it go.

Our shopping trip pretty well ate up Sunday. We had a quiet night in and went to bed. Mom tucked me in, something she hadn't done in a long time.

"Honey, please promise me something." Mom said.

"What?" I asked.

"Please, never do anything like that again?" Mom asked with tears in her eyes. I didn't have to ask her what she meant.

"Okay." I agreed. We hugged and said goodnight. Sleep was hard to come by, though, as I worried about how things would go at school. Mom and Dad were going with me, of course. I couldn't just show up at school as a girl without an explanation!

We were all nervous in the morning as we approached the school office. We didn't have to wait long, thankfully. The principal, Mr. Hearsting, greeted us when his secretary said we could go in.

"Good morning! What can I do for you?" he said.

"Um, well, we need to correct our child's records." Dad said.

"Oh, what's the problem?" Mr. Hearsting asked.

"Tony is going by Alice now." Mom said.

Obviously, Mr. Hearsting hadn't looked up my file, even though Mom called ahead of time. "Tony?" he asked, looking at me in confusion.

"Yes sir, I used to be Tony. Now I'm Alice." I said. I'd never had any reason to talk to Mr. Hearsting before, so I never expected him to recognize me. He turned to his computer and typed away for a moment, probably bringing up my file.

"Have you had your name changed then?" Mr. Hearsting asked me when he turned back.

"Things have happened rather quickly." Dad admitted. "We haven't had a chance to do that yet. I've also made an appointment for Alice for tomorrow, as she's developing..." He trailed off, uncomfortable saying breasts, apparently!

"She's developing as any girl would." Mom said. "Since she's not taking hormones, we're naturally wondering how that is possible. The medical aspects have distracted us from the legal. We'll get right on it, though."

Mr. Hearsting nodded. "There are rules, and laws, about dealing with transgendered students. So, if Alice is what you want to be called, that's what we'll call you. PE may be a problem, though."

"It's just tennis. Couldn't I get dressed in the bathroom or something?" I asked.

"If you used the disabled restroom near the gym, I suppose that could work. I suggest, at least at first, that you use the disabled restrooms exclusively for now. I wouldn't dream of asking you to use the boy's, but the girl's restroom is potentially dangerous, too. Once everyone's used to you then we can think about you using the girl's bathrooms. Is that acceptable?" Mr. Hearsting said.

I glanced at Mom and Dad, and they seemed satisfied with it. "Okay." I said. I'd hoped not to be separated like that, since I can easily take care of myself, but I understood where he was coming from. And I certainly wasn't going to explain how I could defend myself!

That was pretty much it for that. I was given a letter to show to my teachers, my records were amended in the computer, and my parents walked me to my first class. Nobody paid much attention to us, as I knew they wouldn't. While the changes I'd made had hardly touched my face, yet, my now longer hair made quite a difference. Combined with makeup and clothes, I looked a lot different than before. Besides, Jessica is the only person I really know, and she's not talking to me.

I said goodbye to my parents, who told me to be careful. I couldn't tell them in the crowded hall that I didn't need to worry about being attacked, so I assured them I would be. I showed the letter to the teacher and then went to my usual seat once he handed it back. He seemed a little uncomfortable, but didn't say anything.

He went through the roll call, calling my new name. Nobody really made the connection, I think. A few people glanced at the 'new girl', but that's it.

My next class was Algebra. I wasn't sure how Jessica would react, as she'd surely notice my last name, even if she didn't recognize me. So it was with some reluctance that I walked into the classroom. Ms. Sturin read the letter, smiled, and sent me to my seat without comment. That was nice.

Class started as usual, with Ms. Sturin calling names. Jessica hadn't noticed me yet, but when she called Alice instead of Tony, she looked up. When I answered, "here", Jessica's gaze locked onto mine in an instant. My voice had become more feminine, along with everything else, but it was clear she knew who I was. She looked very confused!

Being the second week of school, nobody really knew anybody yet, unless they'd met the previous year. So, again, nobody paid any attention to me. Except for Jessica. She got into a little bit of trouble with Ms. Sturin for not paying attention, because she kept glancing back at me. But she didn't say anything.

I thought about saying something after class, but she hurried off before I could.

Once again I looked for her at lunch, but she was nowhere to be found. I could only guess she was going off-campus for lunch to avoid me. I spent a while in the bathroom, crying. I berated myself for letting myself get all worked up again, I already knew she didn't want anything to do with me! I barely got myself cleaned up and my makeup repaired in time to make it to fourth period.

PE was different. I had to play against Jessica again on my third game. She seemed distracted and didn't try to hit me with the ball anymore. In fact, she was so distracted her partner was tearing into her for making them lose. That was the least of my worries, though, because of course my partner noticed the difference!

"What's the deal Tony?" she asked after our final game. She'd looked at me oddly when we started, but didn't really have a chance to talk until then.

"My name is Alice now." I replied nervously.

"So you want to be a girl?" Penny, my tennis partner, asked.

"I've always felt like a girl." I admitted.

"So why go to school as a boy for a week and then switch? Wouldn't it have been easier to start off that way?" Penny asked.

"Um, well, it's kind of...complicated." I said, glancing at Jessica as she walked towards the girl's locker room.

Penny followed my gaze and looked back at me. "What's the deal between you two?" she asked. "It seemed like she wanted to kill you last week. But she just looks confused, now."

"Look, I have to go to the bathroom to change. If you really want to know, I'll tell you after I get changed. Okay?" I said. She seemed okay with it, so I thought maybe this was a chance to make a new friend. It seemed I'd lost the only friend I had, after all...

"Oh yeah, I guess you can't use the girl's locker room. Okay, meet me in front of the office, okay? I've got to get some stuff out of my locker." Penny said. I nodded and we parted ways.

I had a book to get out of my locker anyway, so I was glad for her suggestion. A few minutes later we met up in front of the office. "Look, nobody but you and Jessica have noticed so far. Do you mind if we go somewhere else to talk about this?" I asked when I noticed how many people were hanging around.

Penny shrugged, "If you want. The park isn't far, we can go there."

"Okay." I agreed. We walked in silence to the park and found a bench well away from everyone.

"So, what's the deal?" Penny asked as soon as we were sure nobody was within earshot.

"I met Jessica at the beginning of last year. She helped me in math class and we became really good friends. We spent just about all our spare time together all of last school year. My parents sent me to stay with my grandparents over the summer, so we didn't get to see each other until last week. We got together and were talking, and I, uh..." my voice trailed off in embarrassment.

"What?" Penny asked impatiently.

"Well, I kind of...accidentally...told her that I love her." I said, blushing and looking down at my suddenly interesting hands.

"You like girls?!" Penny asked. "I thought guys that become girls did it so they could be with guys."

I shook my head, "No. We do it because we really are girls, in here." I pointed at my heart. "A lot of transsexuals are straight, so they like guys, but I'm a lesbian."

Penny shook her head, "That sounds weird! You're not even really a girl, but you're a lesbian?!"

"I'm as much a girl as you. I was just born with a birth defect." I corrected. She didn't sound like she meant any offense, so I tried not to get angry at her saying I wasn't really a girl. Besides, she didn't know what I'd already done to fix that little problem...

"Huh." she said, frowning in thought. "That actually kind of makes sense. You sure don't act like a boy. I just figured you were gay."

"I am." I said with a small smile.

She looked confused for a moment and then laughed. "Yeah, I guess you are! So, why is...Jessica?" I nodded at her inquiring look. "Why is Jessica so mad at you?"

Shrugging, I said, "I don't know. When I told her she just got all mad, screamed at me, and then ran off. She's only talked to me once since then, and only to tell me that she never wants to talk to me again."

"Wow, you've got it bad, don't you?" Penny asked, seeing the tears streaming down my face. She even hugged me lightly, much to my surprise.

"You don't think I'm a freak?" I asked.

Penny shrugged, "I think it's a bit weird, but it's not like you're hurting anybody or anything. Besides, you play pretty good. I don't want to have to break in a new partner!"

I laughed weakly at her joke and hugged her back. "Thanks. I don't suppose...you'd want to be friends?" I asked.

"Sure, why not? You haven't explained yet, though, why you went to school for a week as a boy." Penny said.

"Oh, that. I was hoping to patch things up with Jessica. I figured I wouldn't have any chance with her if she knew I wanted to be a girl." I said.

"But you still haven't really given up, have you? So why change now?" Penny asked shrewdly.

"Um, well, my parents kind of talked me into it." I said.

Penny frowned, "Why would your parents talk you into it? They're not forcing you, are they?!"

"No! Nothing like that! They were just worried about me. I...tried to kill myself." I said, hanging my head in shame.

"Ouch! Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad you didn't succeed." Penny said, giving me a little sideways hug.

"Thanks. I just wish I knew what's going on with Jessica." I said.

"Maybe I can find out. I don't have any other classes with her, but maybe I can get her talking in the locker room or something." Penny offered.

"Really? That would be great!" I said excitedly.

"Sure. What are friends for?" Penny said with a smile.

That earned her another hug.

"Um, there's another problem, though." Penny said hesitantly.

"What?" I asked.

"Some of the girls were talking in the locker room. Between the fact that you didn't use the locker room to change, and that you're playing with me, some of them have figured out who you are. It's probably going to be all over school by the end of school tomorrow, if not sooner." Penny said.

I shrugged at that, "I knew they'd probably figure it out eventually. Frankly, I expected to run into some trouble today! It's no big deal."

That got an incredulous look from Penny. "No big deal?! The girls will probably just talk, but the boys could get violent. Especially since some of them were interested in you." she said.

"They were?!" I exclaimed. I hadn't expected that!

"Duh! You make a cute girl. Some of them are likely to get angry at you for 'fooling' them, if you know what I mean." Penny said.

"I expected some guy to try to beat me up at some point, but not for that reason! Oh well, it doesn't really change anything." I said.

"Alice, you could get really hurt! Remember Gwen Araujo?" Penny said with a shocked and worried expression.

"Don't worry Penny, I can take care of myself. A friend taught me to defend myself." I said confidently.

"Well that decides that!" Penny grumbled. "I'm going to have to stick to you like glue to make sure you don't get yourself killed! You'd better be fun to hang around with, or this is going to be a miserable year."

I looked at Penny in surprise. She couldn't keep her straight face for long and we both cracked up. "Seriously, I really can take care of myself." I said between laughs.

"Seriously, I'm going to keep an eye on you. No matter how skilled you are, you can still be overwhelmed by numbers if nothing else. We're friends now, so you're stuck with me. Just don't get any ideas, I like guys!" Penny said.

"Okay, if you insist." I said with a laugh. I could tell we were going to get along well. She didn't take anything too seriously.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I've got a ton of homework to do. Why don't we meet up in front of the office before school tomorrow?" Penny suggested.

"Sure, sounds good." I agreed. To my surprise, she hugged me real quick before saying goodbye. I felt a lot better as I walked home.

My homework went by quickly. One change I never reversed was the augmentation to my brain that Melanie helped me do. Nothing really major, but it did give me an almost photographic memory, and I could think through problems a little easier than before.

I was feeling pretty upbeat about things, so I started dinner. Mom was surprised when she got home to find it almost ready. "Hi honey, have a good day?" she asked.

I nodded, "Yeah, it went pretty well. I even made a friend! Now if only I could get the Jessica situation settled..."

Mom squeezed me as she looked over my shoulder to see what I was cooking. "Still not talking to you, huh? I thought your change might shock her out of her funk."

"She acted differently, but she still isn't talking to me. Penny offered to try and find out what her problem is, though." I said.

"Penny? Is that the new friend?" Mom asked curiously.

I nodded, "Yeah, she's my tennis partner. She's the only one besides Jessica to notice me. Well, almost. Penny says some of the girls were comparing notes in the locker room after PE and figured things out. She figures the whole school will know by the end of tomorrow at the latest.

"You'd better make sure to stay in areas with lots of people tomorrow, then." Mom cautioned.

"Oh yeah, about that. I never got a chance to explain to you this morning, that I can defend myself." I said.

"Is this more training from the mysterious Melanie?" Mom asked.

"Yep." I replied with a nod. "I can sort of...super charge, I guess, my body with spiritual energy. It makes me faster, tougher and stronger. Between that, and being able to sense angry and violent thoughts, I can take care of any trouble that comes up."

"How much does this supercharging do?" Mom asked.

"Well, I'm not as good at it as Melanie, but I know I can run at least thirty miles an hour. My biggest problem in a fight will be not revealing my abilities or accidentally killing someone. Really Mom, I'm not in any danger." I explained.

"Still, be careful. If for no other reason, so you don't reveal your abilities. I'd hate to see what would happen then!" Mom said.

I shuddered as images of government labs came to mind like in the movies. "Yeah, I can do without that! I'll be careful."

The next day whispers followed me wherever I went in school. I think they still weren't sure about me, but that wouldn't last long. Penny met me as planned and we agreed to meet at lunch.

Other than the whispers, the only thing really different was Jessica. She kept throwing furtive glances my way, but always turned away when she saw that I'd noticed her. I had started paying more attention to the moods of the students around me, but that wasn't necessary with Jessica since I could see her aura so well. Her aura seemed to be fairly equal measures of anger, confusion, and something else...

Tennis was a lot of fun, now that Penny and I were friends. We chatted a lot while we played, which was made easier by the fact that we were playing better than most of the others. We met in front of the office again after class. Unfortunately, Jessica hadn't been any more forthcoming with her than she had with me. Penny promised to keep trying.

"Alice, it's getting kind of scary in there." Penny said after a brief silence.

"What?" I asked worriedly. Were they attaching whatever discomfort they felt towards me to her?

"I overheard one of the girls talking about her boyfriend. She didn't come right out and say it, but it sounded like he was planning on ambushing you. Please be careful?" she said worriedly.

"I told you, I can take care of myself. But I'll keep my eyes open. Oh, I just remembered! I've got a doctor's appointment today. I'd better head home." I said.

"Nothing bad, is it?" Penny asked.

"Nah." I said with a smile. "I started growing breasts and things a little while ago. My parents are a little worried about it, so they made an appointment. It's all good to me, but they want to know why it's happening."

"So those are real?!" Penny asked in surprise, pointing at my chest.

"Yep! Makes things a lot easier for me." I replied.

"Yeah, I guess so. I hope there's nothing wrong." she said.

"I'm sure there isn't. Well, see you tomorrow!" I said, giving her a quick hug before hurrying home.

"It's about time!" Mom said when I came in. "I was about ready to go looking for you. Did you forget you have an appointment today?"

"Sorry Mom, I did." I admitted. I felt embarrassed that I forgot, especially since it was something I really wanted to do!

"Let's go, or we'll be late." Mom said. Dad was still at work, so we locked up and left. We didn't think there was any need for them both to take time off of work, since we already knew what the doctor would say.

We went through the usual waiting to register, and then waiting again for the doctor. I was examined, poked, prodded, and lots of blood was taken. She seemed to think there was something odd with the arrangement of things in my groin for some reason...

After lots of tests it was decided I was intersexed. They had to wait on the results of some of the tests to know for sure what was going on inside me, as if that was a mystery! I knew we'd get a call back quickly, once they discovered that I was about to start menstruating without anywhere for the blood to go. I was careful to make sure it was timed just right for that purpose.

When Dad got home we went out to eat to celebrate. We were all careful to pretend like it was all news to us, just in case anybody overheard us. We'd all agreed it was important to stick to what we were supposed to know when talking outside the house to make sure we didn't trip ourselves up. It was a little tricky at times, but worth it.

I shared the good news with Penny when we got home; we'd exchanged phone numbers before parting after school since she was worried about me. I had to explain what intersexed was, and of course I couldn't tell her the full extent of the situation yet. She never really understood my excitement about it, but I knew it would take a little time for it all to make sense to her.

We talked about it a little more the next morning and she seemed to have a better grasp of it. She admitted that she'd looked it up online, along with transsexuals, because she couldn't really understand why I was so excited about what sounded like a birth defect.

Jessica was acting weirder by the day. She seemed kind of out of touch with the world and got in trouble for not paying attention a lot in Algebra. I was starting to get worried about her, but she still avoided me.

I got called into the office during fifth period, just as I thought I would. Well, I thought it might be earlier, but that's not important. My parents were waiting for me. They told me that the doctor had called them and said that I needed immediate surgery to clear the blockage. We laughed when we got in the car. Both of my parents had to come, to keep up appearances, since it was supposed to be such a serious issue. But we knew it was coming and weren't worried about it. After all, if the surgeon messed up, I could fix it!

It was really hard keeping my body from fighting off the anesthesia. In the end I had to maintain a deep trance in order to keep it at bay, and even then I had to partially neutralize it to maintain the trance! It made me wish I could separate my spiritual awareness from my body somehow, but Melanie hadn't mentioned anything about it. I'd read a story online about astral projection that sounded pretty cool!

Finally, that part was finished. I made sure to wake up slowly. I also retarded my accelerated healing so it was within human normal, barely!

Mom and Dad made the appropriate noises. I think they might have been genuinely worried at first, but quickly realized that I was fine. But then, maybe they were more worried about me revealing my abilities.

My doctor gave Dad some paper work to use to change my birth certificate. It was too late to get started on that, but Dad promised to get the ball rolling first thing in the morning before going to work.

"You know what the second worst part of all this is?" I asked on the drive home.

"What's that?" Mom asked curiously.

"Having to keep from healing too fast! I could be all healed up tomorrow if not for the fact they want me back in to check on things." I grumbled.

"What's the worst part?" Dad asked. Mom shot him a glare, having guessed what I was going to say, but I answered anyway.

"Jessica. It's not just that she won't talk to me, though." I said, much to Mom's surprise. "She's been acting really weird since I brought Alice back. She seems distracted and...kind of out of it. I don't get what's going on with her. I thought, if she really hated me, that she'd take advantage of the situation to make fun of me. Instead she just stares at me all the time."

"That does sound odd. Maybe I should talk to Vanessa." Mom said thoughtfully.

"Uh, could you hold off on that? I think that would just make things worse. Before she went berserk on me Jessica said something about her parents giving her a bad time. If they start asking her questions, on the behalf of my parents no less, I think that could be bad." I said.

Mom grudgingly agreed, but I was sure I couldn't put them off for too long if things continued as they were. They really liked Jessica.

There were three messages on the answering machine from Penny when we got back, so I called her back right away. "Alice, what happened to you?!" she practically screeched down the line.

"Sorry, my parents picked me up. The doctor called them and told them I needed emergency surgery. Turns out the only thing making me male was a flap of skin, and it was getting in the way of me menstruating properly." I said happily.

There was a long silence before she repeated, "Menstruating?" in a shocked voice.

"Yep!" I replied brightly. "I'm all girl, just like you! In fact, we stopped on the way home to get some tampons and stuff, since the doctor expects I'll be on any time now." That was a bit of a fib. We'd already gotten all that stuff on our marathon shopping spree. But I couldn't tell her that.

Another silence stretched out between us before she said, "Really? You were never really a boy?"

I felt a little bad about all this lying, but said, "Really. Never a boy." I consoled myself with the knowledge that, in my heart, I never was.

"Wow!" Penny breathed. It sounded like my news had finally sunk in. "That's...that's great! I'm so happy for you. That must be like a dream come true."

I nodded before remembering that she couldn't see me, "Yeah, it's great! My parents are keeping me home tomorrow, though, so I can recover from the surgery." Naturally, I could do fine at school tomorrow, but we had to keep up appearances. "Mom and Dad talked to the principal again. Now that he knows I'm really a girl I can use the girl's bathrooms and locker room, too."

"Wow! Things are happening pretty fast, aren't they? Don't worry, I'll give you the grand tour of the locker room Friday!" Penny said.

"Thanks!" I laughed. We had to get off the phone after that. I did my homework and relaxed. Since I was preventing myself from healing too fast, I was feeling a little worn out from the surgery, and a lot sore. I went to bed early.

The next day was really boring. I ended up spending most of my time online until Penny came over after school. "How are you?" she asked when I let her in.

"Bored! Sitting around all day by myself isn't much fun." I replied.

"Well tomorrow won't be boring! I heard more talk in the locker room, and it sounds like there's a few guys that are really pissed at you. Do me a favor though okay?" she asked.

"What?" I asked.

"Don't go into the bathrooms or locker room by yourself if you can help it, okay? Here, you can take my schedule. That way you'll know where I'll be and you can meet up with me if you need to use the bathroom and I'll go in with you." Penny said worriedly.

I was seriously thinking about telling her about my abilities so she'd stop worrying about me! "Okay, thanks Penny." I said instead.

We ended up watching a movie and talking until my parents got home. I introduced her to them and then she had to go home. "I'm glad to see you're making new friends." Mom said after she'd gone.

"Yeah, it's nice to have a friend. I doubt I'll have many, though, from what Penny said. Everybody in the school knows about me, after all." I said.

"I think you'll have at least one more before long." Dad said. I shrugged, it didn't seem likely to me. Unless Jessica suddenly came around, and she wasn't showing any signs of that!

I was really nervous about going to school Friday. Penny and I met in front of the office as usual. "You okay?" Penny asked.

"Just nervous." I replied.

Penny nodded, "Just stay close to me, you'll be fine."

She walked me to my first class. There were lots of stares and whispers all around us. I think I heard someone call me a freak, but I couldn't be sure. The emotions I was sensing were all over the place. There were more dark ones than I'd encountered before, too.

First period went normally enough. On my way to second period one of the guys that had teased me a lot my first week tried to shove me into the lockers. I sensed his intent before he acted, though, so I was able to deflect him. He didn't look too happy after bouncing off of the lockers himself!

Second period was Algebra, with Jessica. She looked...weird. Her aura was blazing with more emotions than I could count. She's the only person whose aura I can see reliably, but it hasn't done me much good. There was a lot less hostility coming from her, but I really couldn't figure out much more than that. She'd stopped staring at me, though, and just zoned out. I was really starting to worry about her.

I tried to talk to her after class, but she took off again.

I heard a lot of taunts and stuff on my way to third period. Two more people tried to shove me, and another tried to trip me up. None were successful, but the alertness required to avoid it all was getting tiresome.

In class people mostly just avoided me. Not that most people pay all that much attention to each other anyway, so maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed. I met up with Penny for lunch and made my first trip to the girl's bathroom. A couple of girls glared at me on my way in, but nothing was said.

"You see what I mean?" Penny asked when we found an empty table to eat lunch at.

I nodded, "Yeah, a lot of people seem to be unhappy with me. The fact I'm really a girl and always was probably wouldn't even sway them, if they knew."

Penny shrugged, "To them, you're different. That's all they care about. It's too bad. If they'd stop looking at how different you are, they'd realize you're actually a really normal girl. Except for the whole lesbian thing, anyway."

"Normal? Me?" I asked in surprise.

"Sure. You're not like, excessively girly or anything. And you're certainly not masculine! You're really just like any other girl here for the most part. You just got to this point a little differently. If they didn't know about you, you wouldn't stick out at all." Penny said.

I couldn't help but ask, "Why are you so accepting, anyway? You never seemed all that weirded out about me, even from the beginning when we didn't know I was a girl all along."

"I don't know. I guess because you come across so naturally as a girl. And like I said, I'd hate to have to find a new tennis partner." Penny said, grinning.

"You just like winning." I said. We both laughed. She does like to win, but she's not rabid about it or anything. She's too laid back for that.

"Hey, there's your girl." Penny said suddenly pointing behind me. I turned just in time to see Jessica disappear around the corner of the building. "She was staring at you weird." Penny added when I turned back around.

"She was doing that during Algebra class too. I'm getting worried about her." I said.

"She dropped you and shunned you. Why worry about her?" Penny said.

I shrugged, "I still love her. I can't help it."

Penny shook her head in wonder, "She doesn't know what she's missing. Anybody should be thrilled to have someone so devoted to them."

Penny laughed as I blushed and concentrated on my lunch.

By sixth period I was really getting tired of dodging attempts to shove or trip me. And all the insults were getting pretty old, too. I met up with Penny outside the girl's locker room and walked in reluctantly.

"You'll be fine, just stick close to me." she suggested.

Within seconds of entering all movement stopped as everyone stared at me. Some were curious, some wary, and some hostile. Then a locker closed with a clang and every eye turned towards it. The girl who had just closed her locker looked up at all the eyes focused on her, and then followed the collective gaze as it shifted back to me. I was the only one still looking at her, as she looked irritated and then walked straight towards me.

Penny started to step between us but I motioned her back. "Hi, you must be Alice." she said after glancing at Penny. "My name's Jan. These guys are kind of silly, aren't they?"

"Hi Jan." I said, surprised by such a public gesture. "Yeah, I guess they are. This is my friend Penny."

"Hi. Did they give you a lock yet?" Jan asked, gesturing at the combination lock on her locker.

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I had one in the boy's locker room, but I don't dare try to get that one!" I said with a shudder.

"That must have been weird, having to use the boy's locker room. Come on, I think Ms. Kerry is here. She can get you a new lock." Jan said. Penny and I followed her and got a lock from Ms. Kerry, the tennis instructor. There weren't any available lockers by Penny's, but there were lots by Jan's, so Penny took her lock off and emptied her locker and we both selected a locker by Jan's.

Jan and Penny didn't pay any particular attention as I changed into my PE uniform, but everyone else sure did! I hoped they'd get tired of the show soon. I never did see Jessica in the locker room. I thought she'd just gone through before I got there, but she was no where to be seen during class, either.

"Have you had much trouble?" Jan asked as we all walked back into the locker room.

I shrugged, "I've had lots of stuff said about me, and some people have tried to trip me or shove me into the lockers in the halls. That's the worst of it so far."

"I think someone decided to top that." Jan said as we approached our lockers. Someone had managed to pry open my locker far enough to pour something inside, which was now dripping out. It was red, probably some kind of juice or soda.

"Great. I guess I'm wearing my PE uniform home today." I said. Sure enough, my clothes were soaked with the stuff. And sticky. Several girls laughed as I pulled my soaked clothes out of the locker. I put the lock on a different locker, since the door was bent out of shape on the one I'd been using. We reported it to Ms. Kerry, but there wasn't anything she could do about it other than getting the locker cleaned and repaired.

Penny and I said goodbye to Jan and walked to my house. Penny insisted on following me home to make sure nobody caused me any problems.

She couldn't stay, so I was left alone to catch up on the work I missed. Mom and Dad were acting weird at dinner. I felt like they were keeping something a secret from me. I couldn't imagine what it might be, so I ignored it.

I dreamed about Jessica that night. Not an unusual thing for me, but this dream was dark and ugly. I woke even more worried about her than I was before. I tried emailing her, but I didn't really expect a response. I even called, but she hung up as soon as she heard my voice.

The sense my parents had some kind of secret grew stronger as the day progressed. They kept smiling oddly at me for no particular reason. Then I noticed that Mom was making a lot more food for dinner than she normally did.

"Are we having guests for dinner?" I asked.

"Yes, some friends are coming over." Mom said.

That's all the information I could get out of her. I decided to dress up. I hadn't really had any reason to do so yet. And I'd shrunk enough to wear a sundress my grandparents bought me that I really liked.

I was watching TV while waiting for dinner when the doorbell rang. Dad rushed to get it, which he normally wouldn't do. A few minutes later he walked back towards me with the Wrights behind him! Jessica looked great, she'd dressed up too in this little black dress I hadn't seen before. For a moment, I thought maybe she'd changed her mind about me. But then I noticed that her older brother, Bobby, was holding her arm rather tightly and kind of shoving her ahead. Her hair was messed up, too. She tried to pull away from him when she saw me, but he pulled her along with ease.

Bobby shoved Jessica into a chair across from me and then stood behind it with his hands on her shoulders to keep her from running away, as she obviously wanted to do. Her parents looked really uncomfortable and avoided looking at me. Did her whole family hate me now? But that thought was quickly dispelled when Bobby looked at me with his usual cocky grin and said, "Hi Alice, you look great. Doesn't she Jessica?" Jessica just grunted, but it was nice at least one of them didn't seem to have any problems with me.

Jessica wouldn't look at me, and almost managed to get away from Bobby when Mom walked in and he said hello to her. He still kept that cocky grin, but I sensed he was getting really annoyed with his sister. And his parents, which I didn't understand at all. I sensed a certain amount of animosity from my own parents towards his, too. What is going on here?

Jessica's feelings were impossible to sort out, besides her obvious desire to be somewhere else. Watching her try once again to get away, away from me, made me want to get away too. With tears streaming down my face I tried to stand, but Mom put her hand on my shoulder and stopped me. "You want to stay for this. Trust me." she said.

"Sorry for springing this on both of you like this." Dad said, looking at me and then Jessica. "But we got tired of what Jessica's actions have been doing to Alice. And Jessica's parents are tired of her moodiness. So we got together to figure out what we could do about it. When we did, we found out there had been some major misunderstandings."

I looked questioningly at Dad, "What kind of misunderstandings?"

"I want Jessica's parents to explain that. They started it, and Jessica kind of ran with it from there. I don't really blame her, though I wish she'd given you a chance to talk to her. But it's what her parents did that really started all this mess." Mom said. Mr. and Mrs. Wright kind of winced, which I guess explained everyone's unhappiness with them. But what could they have done?

"Um, first," Mr. Wright said, "we want to apologize to all of you. We thought what we were doing was in Jessica's best interest, but your parents showed us how wrong we were."

"We're sorry about pushing you Jessica. We should have listened to you. Instead we tried to push you to be something you're not. We shouldn't have done that." Mrs. Wright added.

"About time." Jessica grumped. Bobby nodded his agreement.

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Um, well..." Mr. Wright trailed off, looking inquiringly at Jessica. She ignored him. Silence filled the room as her parents looked at her, and she ignored everyone. Finally Bobby had enough.

"If you won't say it, I will. It's not like it's anything shameful or anything." Bobby said in annoyance. Then he turned to me. "A couple weeks after you left for the summer Jessica came out of the closet. She's a lesbian." he explained.

I heard the words, but they seemed like a dream. "What?" I said dumbly.

"She's a lesbian. You know; sexually attracted to girls instead of guys? It's not that hard to understand." Bobby said, smiling widely to show he was joking with me.

"You...like girls?" I said, looking at Jessica. She nodded slightly. "Cool!" I smiled widely, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I still had a chance. It felt like a huge weight I hadn't even realized was there suddenly lifted. A little.

Jessica looked at me oddly, and then her gaze went back to her lap. Bobby laughed with a huge smile on his face, while all our parents looked at me with confused looks on their faces. I guess they didn't expect me to react that way.

"Tell her the rest, Dad." Bobby ordered. It was kind of funny seeming him ordering his parents around like that.

"Oh, yes." Mr. Wright stammered. "We...well, we thought it was a phase. Or maybe we hoped it was. We thought, as a lesbian, Jessica wouldn't have any chance at a normal life. Or children, for that matter. So we tried to encourage her to date boys. We were, well, rather obnoxious about it."

Jessica snorted and Bobby shook his head, "I think that's an understatement Dad." he said.

Mrs. Wright sighed, "You're probably right, Bobby. Anyway, when we found out from your parents what happened between you two, we realized what must have happened. You thought," and she turned to look at Jessica, "that we'd put Tony up to telling you he loved you. So that you'd go out with a boy. Right?"

Jessica nodded, but she wasn't looking quite so certain of things anymore. "You really thought that Jessica? I thought you knew me better than that. I wouldn't have done that just because they asked me to!" I said.

"Unfortunately, what we were doing wasn't much different than that, so it was easy for her to believe on our side." Mrs. Wright said apologetically.

"But, if you're a lesbian, why did you keep avoiding me when I started living as a girl? Surely that should have shaken up your assumptions some?" I asked Jessica.

Her mouth moved like she wanted to answer, but no words came out. "I think I can answer that one." Bobby said. "I know how her twisted mind works." He was just joking, but it wasn't very funny to me seeing how twisted up Jessica's aura was.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I think, that she thought, that you were doing the whole girl thing to win her over. Once again at our parents request, probably. Plus, she felt betrayed already, so it was easy for her to put your actions into that context." he said. I often forgot how smart Bobby really is. He acts like a clown most of the time. "The fact she thinks you're a fox didn't help matters any." Bobby added with a smirk.

Jessica looked really uncomfortable when he said that. I noticed that her aura had untangled some, but I still wasn't sure what was going on with her.

"There's another factor here that I think might help to sort things out for Jessica." Mom said. She'd been watching Jessica really closely. "Did you know, Jessica, that Alice was about ready to come out to us as transsexual right before she met you?"

Jessica's eyes widened a bit at that. "Really?" she asked, looking at me for the first time. I nodded. "Why didn't you?" she asked.

"You." I said, looking down and blushing to have to say this in front of so many people.

"Huh?" she said.

Bobby smiled really wide and said, "I bet I know! You had the hots for her from the start, didn't you? And you figured you had a better chance with her as a guy, right?" I nodded weakly.

"You..." Jessica started in wonder and stopped, staring at me like she'd never seen me before. "You stayed as a guy for a year because of someone you'd just met?!"

I shrugged, uncomfortably aware of everyone looking at me. "I love you. I've always loved you." I said. I couldn't help but notice Bobby's big white smile out of the corner of my eye.

"And in case you still have any doubts about it, I can vouch that Alice had no contact with your parents before she went over to see you the day you got back. There was no plot to set you up with her as Tony." Mom said, smiling sadly at Jessica. I sensed that she was sad because we'd wasted so much time over a misunderstanding. I felt the same way.

"Let's give Jessica a chance to talk to her family for a bit and get things straightened out." Dad suggested, motioning for me and Mom to join him in the kitchen. I sensed there was another reason for him suggesting that and followed him and Mom.

"What's up Dad?" I asked.

Dad looked a little surprised that I'd seen through him. Mom, too, for that matter. "Um, well, I think it might help matters if you told Jessica about your training with Melanie. Maybe if she knew the full extent of what you've sacrificed for her, she might finally get her head out of her..." Mom glared at him, so he shut his mouth before finishing that sentence.

"But, wouldn't that mean telling her parents, too? I'm not sure if they can handle that." I said.

"Aren't you worried about Bobby?" Mom asked curiously.

"Nah, he's cool. He obviously handled the fact that Jessica's a lesbian a whole lot better than their parents. I trust him." I replied.

"You don't seem to be worried about Jessica either, though." Dad said.

"Of course not, she's Jessica! Besides, she had an opportunity to cause me lots of trouble when I first came to school as Alice. She never did. She never said a word to anybody about me. Even though she felt betrayed and was angry at me." I said.

"For what it's worth, I think her parents have learned their lesson. I think they can handle it. But even if you tell them, that doesn't mean that you and Jessica are going to get together. You've got a lot to overcome to get to that point, and we still don't know if she's really interested in doing that." Mom cautioned.

"Even if Bobby's right about Jessica thinking you're a fox." Dad added with a grin.

I couldn't help but smile at that. The idea that Jessica might find me attractive was wonderful! "If you really think they can handle it, then I guess it's worth a shot." I said after thinking about it for a bit.

"Okay, I'll see if they're ready for us to come back out yet." Mom said. She stepped out into the living room for a moment. When she came back she waved for us to come back out.

When I walked back into the living room I knew immediately that something had changed. They must have finally gotten through to Jessica that I hadn't been in cahoots with them, because Jessica seemed a lot happier. But she blushed and looked down when she saw me.

"We have something else we want to tell you, that might help put things in perspective. We had to get Alice's approval, though, because this is a seriously big secret. If we tell you this, none of you can ever tell anybody else. Ever." Dad said once everyone was settled again.

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Wright asked.

Dad looked at me, and I nodded for him to continue. "Okay. When Alice went to her grandparents for the summer she met someone there. There's no need to talk about who that was, I think they'd like their privacy on this. The important thing is what Alice learned from them. Uh, Alice, I don't really understand this stuff very well. Why don't you explain?"

I took a deep breath to calm myself before saying, "Alright. It's like this: Everyone has a spirit, although each spirit is different. But they're also all...sort of, asleep, I guess. My teacher helped me wake mine up. Once we did that I was able to learn to use spiritual energy to affect the physical world, including my own body.

Mr. and Mrs. Wright looked skeptical, as I'd expected. Jessica didn't really react, but then she hadn't been doing much reacting so far today. But Bobby looked open to the idea. "What kinds of things can you do?" he asked curiously.

"Well, the most ostentatious stuff I'm not really good at. But I think I can pull off a demonstration for you." I said. Whereas Jessica inherited a lot of her Japanese mother's genes, Bobby took after his father. So he's a lot bigger than Jessica, or me, for that matter. And he plays a lot of sports, so he's in good shape. I figured he weighed around two hundred pounds. So, I walked over to him, grabbed him around the waist, and lifted. At first nothing happened, since I'm no where near strong enough to pick him up like that. I'm not that good at what Melanie called boosting, but I finally got it working right. When I did I suddenly lifted Bobby up into the air as high as I could as if he weighed a small fraction of what he does.

"Whoa! How did you do that?!" he exclaimed.

I set him down before my boosted strength gave out and sat back down. "I can fill my muscles with spiritual energy. When I do that, I'm much stronger, tougher, and even faster than normal. My teacher can run at freeway speeds. I'm not nearly that good, though." I explained.

Bobby shook his head in wonder, "That's so cool!"

"I'm not that good at it, you may have noticed it took me a while to get it right. I'm better at the less physical things. But I also got pretty good at transforming my own body." I said.

"Transforming your body? In what way?" Mr. Wright asked. Mrs. Wright hadn't recovered from the shock of seeing me pick up Bobby like a sack of flour yet.

"With my teacher's help I was able to transform my body to become completely female. I spent the whole summer as Alice." I said.

"If you spent the entire summer as Alice," Jessica said, "why were you Tony when you came over to the house?" It was nice seeing her more active in the conversation. And I sensed curiosity from her along with...hope? Or maybe I was projecting.

"I didn't know you're a lesbian. I figured the only chance I had was as a guy. Although I was hoping that, if you were interested in me like that, I could talk you into letting me change back eventually." I said.

"It doesn't sound like your gender is really that big a deal for you, if you can just change it whenever you want to suit your situation. So why tell us this?" Jessica asked, obviously missing the point.

"You have no idea what you're talking about! Eight days ago Tony tried to kill himself!" Mom growled. I look back at her in surprise, but she was staring at Jessica to see her reaction.

"What?!" Jessica exclaimed with more animation than I'd yet seen from her. "Why would you try to kill yourself?!"

"Because you hated me." I said softly.

"So?! There are other girls out there, you know!" Jessica said.

"I don't love them, I love you." I replied.

She didn't seem to know how to answer that one and changed the subject, "What has that got to do with her gender?"

Bobby was looking thoughtful and answered that before Mom could, "I get it. She was depressed for two reasons. One because she was living as a boy, and the other because you seemed to hate her. So she corrected one of those problems. That let her deal with the other better. Right?"

"My parents insisted, actually. But yeah, you're right." I said.

"She was very stubborn. Fortunately, she's harder to kill than she used to be." Dad said.

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Wright asked.

"She did a good job of slicing her wrists open. Anybody else would have been dead by the time we broke down the door. But her abilities caused her to heal herself automatically. There was no wound left when we found her." Dad replied.

Nobody said anything else for a while, until Mom said, "Dinner is going to get dried out if we don't eat it soon. Why don't we do that and you can take that time to think about things." The Wrights all nodded, but it was Jessica Mom was obviously talking to.

Dinner was kind of tense. Bobby was the only one who seemed to want to talk. He kept up a constant chatter about school, games, whatever. Anything other than what we'd been talking about in the living room.

When we were done eating I helped Mom clean up. Bobby volunteered, too. While we worked he asked me about the other things I can do. Then he asked if he could learn, too.

I took a good look at him, trying to see his aura to get an idea of how developed his spirit is. After a couple of minutes of trying I finally got a glimpse. "Sorry Bobby, I don't think so." I said. "Maybe, just maybe, if you had something going on that caused you extremely strong, persistent emotions I might be able to pull it off. Without that I don't think there's any chance of waking your spirit."

"Strong persistent emotions? Like what?" he asked.

"My teacher said that the most effective emotion is sadness. Someone who is extremely depressed has a much better chance of awakening their spirit. Apparently, it sometimes happens spontaneously to people with especially developed spirits. Only, without a teacher, they don't even realize it's happened. Then their depression causes their spiritual energy to destroy their body." I said.

"Ouch, that sucks! So how did anybody ever learn how to do all this stuff in the first place?" he asked.

"My teacher's teacher was born with an awakened spirit. Their spirit is extraordinarily well developed. We don't know if there have ever been any others like them or not, though. But they learned how to awaken other spirits." I explained.

We finished cleaning up then, and rejoined the others in the living room. Jessica looked upset, so I walked over to her. "Jessica?" I said uncertainly.

"What?" she asked. She seemed kind of lost.

"Can we at least be friends again, do you think? I really miss you." I said.

"You really want to be friends with me, after all of this?" she asked. She seemed truly surprised by that. I couldn't understand why, since I'd already told her I love her several times today!

"Of course!" I replied.

"You deserve better friends than me." she said morosely.

"I don't think I could find a better friend than you." I said. She looked up at me like she was trying to decide if I was serious or not.

"Okay, if you really want to. For what it's worth, I'm sorry about how I've treated you the last couple of weeks." she said. Tears gathered at the corner of her eyes. I sat beside her and hugged her. She was really stiff at first, and then returned the hug. I held on until she stopped crying.

"Feel better?" I asked.

"A little." she agreed.

"It's about time! She's been moping around ever since we got back." Bobby said.

"Really?" I asked, looking first at Bobby and then back to Jessica.

"I missed you, too." she said softly. That earned her another hug!

"Well, my work here is done." Bobby said. "Come on Mom, Dad, time to go home." Bobby was still leading his parents around by the nose and it was hard to keep from giggling at the sight. He and his parents stood and said goodbye to my parents and I. Jessica frowned and reluctantly stood to follow them.

"Where do you think you're going?" Dad asked her.

"Home?" she said.

"Not tonight, unless you really want to. We all thought you two should have some time together to patch things up. So, if you want, you can stay here tonight. I believe your parents have everything you'll need with them." Dad replied.

Jessica looked questioningly at her father, who nodded, "If you want to stay just say so and I'll get your bag out of the car."

She looked to me and I gave her my best puppy dog eyes look, "Please?"

A smile slowly spread across her face and she nodded, "Okay, that would be great. Thanks Dad."

After delivering her bag they all said goodbye again and left. "So, you were as in the dark about today as me?" I asked her.

"You didn't know what was going on, either?" she asked in surprise.

I shook my head, "Nope. I sensed my parents were up to something, but I couldn't get anything out of them."

"Sensed?" she asked.

"Yeah. I can usually sense people's emotions. Occasionally I'll even pick up a stray thought or two. Once in a great while I can even see auras. Except for you, that is." I said.

"You can't see my aura?" she said.

"No, I meant that I can always see your aura. I think that's part of the reason my parents went to yours. I told them I was worried about you. Your aura was all twisted up. So much I couldn't even figure out what you were feeling most of the time." I explained.

"Why worry about me, after how I've treated you?" Jessica asked.

"How many times do I have to say I love you in one day?" I replied. She blushed and dropped it. Her aura was much clearer than it had been, so I could tell that she felt guilty. I hoped I could help her feel better.

"So, uh, why can you see my aura better than everyone else?" she asked in an attempt to change the subject.

"I'm not sure, but I think it's because of how I feel about you. I know that there are bonds that people's spirits can form to each other." I said. What I didn't say was that the only bond I knew of for sure was a bond formed of love, like that Melanie has with her wife. I didn't think we had that kind of bond, though, because she would have to feel the same way I do. Also, I'd probably be able to hear her thoughts as easily as I see her aura.

"Oh." Jessica said. "Um, so, what all did you do over the summer? You were obviously holding out on me before."

"Yeah, sorry about that. I was afraid to tell you about Alice, then. There's no need to hold back anymore, though." I said apologetically.

"It's okay, I think I get that. This teacher, is there anything you can tell me about him?" she asked.

I was so happy being back with Jessica again that I didn't even notice that my parents had left the room until I looked around. "Do you mind if we move over to the couch?" I asked.

Jessica shrugged and we moved to the couch. I felt much better being able to sit next to her. I wanted to put my arm around her, but she hadn't given any indication she liked me like that and I didn't want to scare her away. "I talked about you with my teacher, and she said I could tell you about her." I finally said once we were settled.

"What's she like?" Jessica asked.

"She's really cool. She's beautiful, she has silvery white hair and silver eyes. She used to be a guy, too." I said.

"Can only people like you learn to do this stuff?" she asked.

I shook my head, "No, other people can too. It helps, though, because strong emotions kind of energize the spirit. That makes it easier to awaken. The emotions have to be persistent, so just getting angry or something doesn't work very well. So, depression is necessary most of the time. Melanie, my teacher, thinks that might not be necessary for me, though."

"Why not?" Jessica said curiously.

"Well, Melanie says that it's not uncommon for people to have specialties. Apparently, the stronger your spirit is the more likely it is that you'll have some kind of specialty. Melanie is really good at what she calls boosting. That's what I was doing when I picked up Bobby. Her wife is really good at making physical changes to her body. She's always tweaking her body in new ways. Melanie says that if anyone ever really studied her, they'd probably think she was an alien because her body is so different from everyone else." I said.

"Wife? Is everyone like you a lesbian?" Jessica asked.

"No, of course not. Anyway, Melanie says my specialty is something she calls spirit meshing. When you help someone else awaken their spirit you have to align your spirit with theirs. Apparently I can go one better and actually temporarily weave my spirit into theirs. That way it's almost like I'm awakening my own spirit. She had me help someone else as part of my training and she said I had a lot easier time of it than she would have." I said.

"Does that mean..." Jessica said, stopping uncertainly.

"What?" I asked.

"Does that mean that you could...teach me?" she asked.

"Hmm, let me see..." I said as I took a closer look at her aura. I'd tried not to be too intrusive with her, especially since it's easier with her than anyone else. But when I really looked, I realized her spirit was stronger than Bobby's. "Yeah, I think I could." I said in surprise.

"Why so surprised?" she griped.

"Sorry, I just hadn't thought about that before. I don't know why. And when Bobby asked if he could learn before I looked and his spirit isn't developed enough for that." I said.

"Bobby isn't developed enough?! But he's so..." Jessica exclaimed, trailing off as she tried to find the right word.

"Together?" I asked. She nodded. "Yeah, he is pretty cool. For a guy." I was happy to see her grin at that and continued, "Melanie told me that how developed your spirit is doesn't mean much about what kind of person you are. She's met some people with more developed spirits that were pretty messed up. One of them had even been trained by her mom."

"Her Mom?!" Jessica exclaimed.

"Well, she's not really her mother. But she thinks of her that way. She's the one who trained Melanie, among others. So far as we know she's the first person to have an awakened spirit, and the most powerful." I explained.

"You really did have a weird summer, didn't you?" Jessica said.

"Yeah, but it was cool." I said.

"So tell me all about it." she said.

So, I did. It took a while. She really got into it, too. She was surprised to find out I had cross dressed and even had a few of my own clothes that I'd taken with me to my grandparents' house. Despite the fact I was sitting right next to her telling the story she got all worried and tense when I told her about that guy trying to mug me, until I got to the part where Melanie clocked him! She listened intently to everything I told her about my training, and to my description of the all day shop-fest my grandmother took me on after I'd finished changing into Alice.

"After all my training was done things were pretty normal, really. Melanie would come around everyone day and play games with my grandparents and I. They all argued against me changing back into Tony, but I was stubborn." I said to finish my story.

"Wow. You had a much better summer vacation than I did! We kept going on trip after trip. We went all over the place. Kathy was along for the first two. That was tense at first, because I'd just come out to them as a lesbian. But once she figured out I wasn't going to jump the bones of every pretty girl I saw she was okay. Bobby was cool from the start. But Mom and Dad kept pushing me the whole time. They got pretty inventive near the end, getting me to spend time with guys." Jessica said. She still sounded rather bitter about her parents, but I couldn't blame her. I doubt I'd handle being pushed at guys all summer very well either!

Mom came out a while later to make sure we didn't stay up talking all night. We probably would have, too.

I slept much better that night and woke early. Mom didn't want us sleeping in the same bed, even though we're both girls now. I don't think there was any danger of that happening anyway, though I'd have liked to! Jessica was still a little uncomfortable around me. I felt that it had more to do with guilt on her part, than about me being a girl now. Anyway, I'd decided to sleep on the floor and let Jessica use my bed.

That made it easy for me to get up without waking her. After taking a shower I got dressed and headed for the kitchen to see what I could make for breakfast. I felt Jessica's mind waking up, so I made sure to make enough for both of us. My timing was pretty good, so everything was almost done when she came in.

"Something smells good." she said sleepily. She's not a morning person.

"Good morning. Breakfast is almost ready." I said.

She nodded and sat at the table. When I brought the food over she started eating and slowly woke up. "Thanks." she said when she was finished and I picked up her plate to wash with mine.

"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked.

She didn't have any preference so we just played games for a while. My parents aren't morning people, either, so they didn't get up until a couple of hours after we started playing. Mom checked in to see what we were doing a few times, but otherwise they left us alone.

"So...how long have you known?" Jessica asked all of a sudden.

"Known?" I asked, confused at the question as I was concentrating on the game.

"That you're...you know, a girl." she said.

"I've always known." I said.

"Do you...like guys?" she asked. She was acting very tentative, which isn't really like her at all. I shook my head. "So just girls?" she asked.

"Just you." I said, and then slapped my hand over my face. "Sorry, I shouldn't keep saying stuff like that."

"Why not?" she asked.

I looked at her in surprise, "I figured you wouldn't want to hear it. Not after everything that happened. And I didn't want to put any pressure on you, either."

She slowly shook her head, "You're really too good to be true. I don't understand what you see in me, I'm all messed up."

I put my arm around her. She tensed up for a second and I was ready to let her go, but then she relaxed into it. "You're not messed up. You just got a little confused because of your parents. We'll just have to make sure to communicate better in the future so we don't have any more misunderstandings like that." I said.

She was quiet for a while and we continued our game. When we were done she put her controller down and turned to me, "Were you serious before, about teaching me that spirit stuff?"

"Sure. Want to give it a try?" I said. She nodded. "Okay, first we have to wake up your spirit." Our game was forgotten as I started teaching her. With my talent for meshing my own spirit with someone else's it wasn't too hard to wake Jessica's spirit. In fact, the hardest part was separating our spirits again after her's was awoken! I didn't have that problem before.

"Wow!" Jessica breathed. "That's a rush."

I nodded, "Yeah, it's pretty intense at first." I sat back and waited, wondering why Jessica was so interested in learning. It's not like she needed this to change her body or anything...

"I'm not a guy!" Jessica exclaimed.

"Huh?" I said, blinking in confusion.

"You were saying..." she started and then stopped looking at my confused expression. "Weren't you?"

"Uh, I was wondering why you were so interested. I guess I did get a little worried that you might want to change like I did, but I didn't say anything." I said.

"Oh. Did I...hear your thoughts?" Jessica asked.

I shrugged, "You must have. Weird, though. I'm not good at picking up people's thoughts at all, and I was even worse when Melanie first woke my spirit. I'm surprised you picked that up so easily."

"So, that's not normal?" she asked worriedly.

"What's normal? Melanie says most people develop a specialty, though. But that doesn't usually show up right away." I replied.

"So...I might be really good at hearing thoughts?" she said.

"Maybe. It could just be a random thing. I remember that I sensed things a little more acutely when my spirit was first awoken. It faded after an hour or so, I think." I said.

"Okay. So...what's next?" Jessica asked. I ran Jessica through some of the basic exercises that Melanie taught me for a while. We took a break for lunch.

"How are you two doing?" Mom asked when we walked into the kitchen. She and Dad were sitting at the table.

"Great! Alice is amazing!" Jessica exclaimed, surprising all of us. Maybe even her. She blushed and looked away from me.

"Jessica asked me to teach her to use her spirit like I do. We're just taking a break for lunch." I said.

Mom frowned, "I hope you're being careful."

I rolled my eyes, "Mom, teaching somebody else was part of my training. I've done this before!"

"Oh, that's right. I forgot you told us that. Well, you should still be careful. You don't have Melanie here to help you this time." Mom said.

"I will. Jessica's not going to be making any big changes to her body like I did, though, and that's the most dangerous part." I said.

Mom and Dad seemed to be watching us both really closely while we heated up some soup and ate. I couldn't decide if they were watching to see how Jessica is handling everything or if they were more worried about me teaching her. Probably both.

After lunch we got right back into it. Jessica seemed really excited and into it and learned quickly. Strangely enough, she kept getting flashes of my thoughts even hours after her spirit was awoken. But she wasn't getting anything from Mom and Dad at all.

Mom was still worried about us, so we agreed to stop at dinner time. Jessica's parents and Bobby came over for dinner again. The atmosphere was totally different, though there was still some animosity towards her parents from her and my parents. Bobby seemed to have forgiven them, but he's not one to hold a grudge for long. I was just glad Jessica was speaking to me again!

Jessica had to go home after dinner. I got caught up on some homework and went to bed.

In the morning I met up with Penny on my way to school, and Jessica joined us soon after. Penny was surprised, to say the least. We told her what happened over the weekend on the way. Penny winked at me when she found out Jessica's a lesbian but didn't say anything. I was just surprised Jessica was being so open about it!

I was so happy about the change with my relationship with Jessica that I wasn't paying attention after we split up to go to our classes. One of the neanderthals who likes to try to push me around caught me by surprise and knocked me into the wall face first. While I was dazed from the impact he grabbed my hair and yanked my head back.

"I don't want freaks like you at my school. Get out, or I'll throw you out!" he growled. Then he slammed my head into the wall again and walked off.

It all happened so fast that no one noticed. Or maybe they just didn't want to get involved. Either way I had a class to get to. By the time I arrived I had already healed my wounds.

I probably looked a mess, but nobody said anything. Concentrating on class was difficult. I probably missed half of what the teacher said. When the bell rang to signal the end of first period it startled me into awareness. I hastily grabbed my stuff and set off for my next class, this time making sure I paid attention to the emotions of those around me.

Jessica noticed something was wrong as soon as I walked in the door. "What happened?" she asked when I took my seat.

"I was careless; wasn't paying attention. It won't happen again." I said. I wasn't technically lying.

"Who did it?!" she asked angrily. She didn't bother asking me if someone did it, she just knew. Was she still reading my mind?

"I don't know his name." I said with a sigh. It seemed there was little point in trying to deny it. "He's just one of the idiots who tries to push me around. I'll keep my guard up."

"You shouldn't have to." Jessica grumbled. She didn't have a chance to say anything else, as the teacher chose that moment to walk in and start class. Jessica helped me like we'd originally planned to do, which was nice. If she could have kept the scowl off her face it would have been better. At least her aura was almost back to normal. Besides her anger at what was done to me, though, it was still weighted down with guilt.

She walked with me to my next class, even though it was almost on the other side of the school from hers. She glared at any guy who got close to me the whole time.

Third period was normal enough, and I met up with Jessica and Penny for lunch. Halfway through Jan found us and asked if she could join us. It was kind of weird having three friends when not so long ago I had none. But in a good way.

I managed to keep my guard up through the rest of the day and deflected several attempted shoves, trips, and so on. One of them was the same guy that knocked me into the wall in the morning and I finally got a better look at him. I even saw his aura, briefly, and it was pretty screwed up.

I was still the main attraction in the locker room when I got changed for tennis. Penny and Jan managed to glare most of them into submission, though, so it wasn't quite as bad. Jessica didn't move her locker over as Penny had. I was kind of disappointed, but then I would have had a really hard time not staring if she had so maybe it was for the best.

Jessica pulled Penny and Jan aside before class started. I found out what it was about when the teams got shifted around so that Jan was partnered with Penny, and I was partnered with Jessica! That made tennis even better! I felt a little guilty about being so happy about not playing with Penny any more, but we got to play against whoever we wanted so it ended up being the four of us.

I hugged all three of them after class, which made Penny laugh and Jessica blush. Jan didn't seem to know what the big deal was, but she hugged me back anyway.

"So I guess you've got a new bodyguard now, huh?" Penny said as we were walking out of the locker room.

"Bodyguard?" Jan asked.

"Yeah, I've been walking Alice home to make sure she makes it safe. But I'm sure Jessica will want that job now." Penny said with a sly grin. Jessica blushed again and Jan looked even more confused.

"Well, we do have some...homework to do, anyway." Jessica said. While we did have a little homework, I knew she meant she wanted me to continue teaching her. Penny winked at me, no doubt thinking she meant something entirely different. I wish! Jan just nodded and said goodbye.

Penny did end up walking part way with us, but split off rather than following me home as she had Friday. Once we were alone Jessica started asking me more questions about the things Melanie taught me.

My mind was only half on what I was telling her as I tried to think of a way to help Jessica with her guilt issues. I sensed that most of the reason she was so interested in learning was so that she could protect me better. She was really pissed off about what happened before class. I was a bit upset about it, too, but I did my best to keep that buried so she wouldn't pick up on it. I was getting the distinct impression that she was still picking up stray thoughts from me.

While Jessica was working on sensing the way her body works, an important first step in learning how to make changes to it, I kept thinking about the problem. She wasn't going to be happy until she felt that she'd made up for how she'd treated me, and I needed to convince her that there was no need. I'd forgiven her as soon as I learned what had happened. Maybe even before. All I wanted was for her to be happy, and being consumed by guilt wasn't very conducive to that!

Jessica had to be home for dinner, so I had a lot of time to think after she left. My feeling that she was picking up thoughts from me, something that should have been incredibly difficult for her at this point, finally gave me the answer. Once I'd taught her everything I know she'd probably be able to pick up more than stray thoughts. She'd feel emotions, as well, and maybe even see my aura at times. If that happened then maybe I could convince her that her guilt was misplaced. It was the best plan I could come up with, anyway.

The rest of the week went pretty much the same, except that I started working much harder with Jessica. She was very motivated and learned quickly. Nobody else managed to get the drop on me at school, though plenty tried. I sensed the guy who caught me Monday morning was getting frustrated; though it was hard to tell with all the negative emotions he was broadcasting.

We wanted to spend the weekend at Jessica's house, so we asked our parents Friday after school. I think Jessica's parents might have objected, except they still had a mountain of making up to do! My parents weren't a problem, of course. So I packed a bag and we walked over to her house.

After dinner we went to Jessica's room. "Alice, I've been wondering something you said about specialties..." she said hesitantly.

"What?" I said.

"Well, you said that your specialty was linking your spirit with the spirit of someone else, right?" she asked.

"Well, it's more like meshing my spirit with theirs, but yeah." I replied.

"Well, couldn't you do that to speed up teaching me?" Jessica said.

I took a minute to think about that, and realized she was right. "Yeah, I think that could work. There might be a problem, though." I said.

"What?" she said.

"Remember when I helped you awaken your spirit?" I asked. She nodded. "I meshed our spirits then, but neither of us got the full effect of it at the time because your spirit wasn't awake yet, and then because of the shock of it being awake for the first time. With two awakened spirits it's a lot more...intense."

"What do you mean?" Jessica asked.

"I've only ever done it with Melanie and the person I taught as part of my training. It was different with each of them, so I can't be sure what it will be like. But you could feel my emotions as if they were your own, and vice versa." I said. I'd considered suggesting it before so she could feel that I didn't blame her for everything, but I didn't think she'd go for it.

"Oh." she said. She thought about it for a minute. When she looked up she seemed determined, but scared, too. "Okay, let's give it a try."

"You're sure?" I said.

She said she was, but I felt like she wasn't all that sure at all. But she insisted, so we both laid down on her bed and I started weaving our spirits together as I had before. It was immediately apparent that something was different, as our spirits seemed almost magnetically attracted and merged extraordinarily easily. In moments it was hard to tell where she left off and I started. We gasped in surprise and shock and I hurriedly separated us. It took a huge effort on my part, and I was left panting and exhausted when I was done.

"Was that...normal?" Jessica asked a little breathlessly.

"N-no...way!" I gasped. Taking several deep breaths, I added, "Our spirits slammed together like magnets! It was really hard to separate them, too."

"Why did you separate us so soon, though?" Jessica said.

"It was too overwhelming. I couldn't even tell who I was anymore!" I said.

I was left with a bundle of emotional impressions from the experience, but I couldn't make head or tails of it. So much for that idea!

Jessica was at least as shaken up as I was, so we agreed that sticking to normal teaching methods would be best after that. Whenever she got tired we'd take a break and work on homework or just veg in front of the TV.

By Sunday afternoon we'd really made a lot of progress. At the rate she was going I figured Jessica would be ready to take a student of her own in another week or two. Considering how little time we really had during the week, that was pretty fast. And her specialty was starting to show, I think, considering how easily she was able to manifest her spirit physically.

Jessica was tired out from our practice so we sat in front of the TV and talked. She was still a little withdrawn at times like that, but things were almost back to the way they were before.

It turns out Jan lives near Penny, so the four of us met up on the way to school Monday morning. We'd all become really good friends in the short time we'd known each other, especially considering we'd mostly only seen Jan in tennis class.

"See you at lunch!" Penny said as we split up to go to our classes. She and Jan waved, as their first class is on the other side of the campus from mine. Jessica walked with me to make sure nobody caught me off guard again. They didn't.

"Jessica, something bad's coming." I said worriedly, as I felt that same guys emotions as he approached. He was really pissed!

Instantly, Jessica had herself sheathed in spirit energy. Melanie calls it spirit armor. It's not much use against inanimate objects, but it'll stop a punch or kick like a brick wall. "Where?" was all she said. I pointed in the direction the feelings were coming from and she turned just in time to see him barreling down at us.

"Freak!" he spat, taking a swing at me. I was so surprised I didn't react in time, but Jessica just stepped in front of me and took it on her chin. She didn't even react to the blow. "Ow!" he screamed, cradling his hand. Judging from the sound of the impact, I was guessing he might have broken it.

Jessica pulled her fist back and was about to hit him when I grabbed her arm. "Wait. If you hit him like that you could kill him. Besides, there's something weird going on with this guy." I said. With a little effort I was able to get a good look at his aura. What I saw almost made me throw up. It wasn't that he was evil or something, but he was hurting. Bad!

"Get away from me you freak!" he screamed when I took a step towards him. Jessica looked like she still wanted to take a swing at him, but she stepped back as if she knew what I was seeing. Which maybe she did...

"Who hurt you?" I asked.

"...what?" he muttered. I could barely make out that one word, and all the fight seemed to melt right out of him. I heard the five minute bell go off, but ignored it.

"Look, I don't know why you hate me so much, but I can see that someone's done something really horrible to you. Maybe I can help?" I said.

His rage snapped back into place as he snarled, "Yeah, right, like you helped my little brother?!"

Jessica and I exchanged confused glances and she asked, "Who is your brother?"

"Like I'm going to point him out so you can mess him up even more?" he said angrily.

"What did I do to him?" I asked, totally confused. How could I have done anything to someone I didn't even know?

My words seemed to trigger some memory, or something, because his aura roiled in a really disturbing way. "Just stay away from us!" he growled with a little less energy as he turned and ran away.

Jessica relaxed, her spirit armor fading away as she turned to look at me in confusion. "Why did you try to help him? He's the same guy that attacked you before!" she said.

I shrugged, "He needs help. You didn't see his aura!" I shuddered at the memory. How he was keeping from killing himself, or someone else, I couldn't imagine.

"I wonder what that bit about his brother was about?" Jessica said.

"I don't know. But thanks, he would have nailed me for sure if you hadn't stepped in front of me like that!" I said.

"Why didn't you armor up?" Jessica asked curiously.

"I'm not really good at the physical stuff like that. Even boosting is hard for me." I replied.

"But your spirit is stronger, I know it is." Jessica said.

"Yeah, I guess. But it's like having a specialty. Just like I'm good with sensing emotions, I'm bad with the physical stuff. I guess you're kind of the opposite, there." I said.

"Oh shit, we're going to be late!" Jessica suddenly exclaimed when she glanced at her watch. We waved as we rushed off to our classes. I made it in time, barely.

I thought a lot about that guy during class, but I still couldn't figure out what was going on with him. We were too busy with a test in Algebra class to talk about it, so the first we were able to talk was at lunch. We told Jan and Penny a carefully edited version of what happened.

"Weird." Penny said when we were done. "Sounds like he's got some wires crossed or something."

"You'd better be careful. He could be really dangerous." Jan said worriedly.

"Uh oh, here he comes again." I said as I felt that familiar knot of emotions approaching. He wasn't as angry as before, though.

When I spotted him coming out of the cafeteria I pointed him out to Penny and Jan. "That's the guy I was warning you about before!" Penny exclaimed.

"You mean, the boyfriend of that girl in tennis class?" I asked. Penny nodded.

"His name is Patrick, I think." she added.

Patrick, if that was his name, noticed us and stopped. He locked gazes with me and stared, emotions flickering over his face in rapid succession. Then he looked at Jessica. He seemed to decide something, and started walking towards us. Jessica stood up and got between us, obviously ready for a fight. Penny and Jan looked at her like she was crazy; she's only about a fourth his size, after all!

He walked right up to Jessica and stood there for a long moment before saying, "I'm...sorry. Can I talk to you?"

His aura was different somehow, but I couldn't put my finger on what the difference was. "Talk." Jessica said shortly.

He looked around the table we were sitting at to the rest of us and then back at Jessica. "Alone?" he asked.

"No way!" Penny and I said simultaneously.

He ground his teeth and looked at me, "Okay, then just you two."

"What, so you can take another shot at her?!" Jessica said.

"No, I just want to talk. About my brother." he said.

I finally figured out what the difference in his aura was when Jessica said, "No." There was a light there that hadn't been there before, and it was extinguished when she said that.

"Wait, we'll go!" I said before he could slink off.

"What?!" Jessica exclaimed. Penny and Jan were looking at me like I was crazy.

"It's okay, really." I said, mostly to Penny and Jan. I figured Jessica could pick up enough from me to know what was going on. Or I hoped so, anyway.

Jessica sighed and nodded reluctantly. Penny and Jan tried to talk us out of it, or get us to let them come along. I insisted on going along with him, and he insisted on them not being there, so they reluctantly watched us go. I knew they'd follow us, though. I would!

Sure enough, I felt them following us as we walked out onto the baseball field. "So why did you want to talk to Jessica alone?" I asked when he finally stopped.

"Because of this morning." he said. "That punch...it should have knocked her off her feet! How did you do that?!" He directed the last bit at Jessica, and he seemed desperate to know for some reason.

Jessica glanced at me and I shrugged my shoulders. I didn't know if it was safe to talk to him about this stuff or not. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I know you did something! Can you teach me? Or my brother?" he said.

"You want to protect your brother from something, don't you?" I asked. "What's going on?"

He seemed to be fighting with himself as he paced up and down in front of us. Finally he came to a decision and said, "My brother's...different. Like you." He looked me right in the eyes when he said that and I started to get a really bad feeling.

"Wait." Jessica said, looking confused. "You're brother is transgendered?! Then why were you attacking Alice?"

He just started bawling at that, which frankly freaked me out. Jessica looked like she was feeling the same way about it. What a turn around! We comforted him as best we could, but we were running out of time. By the time he'd gotten himself together again the bell signaling the end of lunch was ringing. We arranged to meet with him in the park after school and hurried off to our respective classes. Jan and Penny met us along the way, but there wasn't time to explain.

It was hard to concentrate on classes after that encounter. I could hardly believe the big bully Patrick could turn into a puddle of misery so quickly. Even having seen how messed up his aura was it was still hard to reconcile those two images.

Tennis class was a joke. We'd knock the ball around a bit whenever the teacher got near, but mostly we just talked about our encounter with Patrick. Jan and Penny seemed a little less worried about our meeting him after school after seeing him break down like that (thankfully he never noticed them following us).

This time they made no secret of the fact they were going to follow us to the park to make sure he didn't try anything. I knew we'd never convince them not to, so I didn't even try. Jessica made a token effort, but I think she was just as glad to have them nearby. Just in case.

Patrick was waiting for us when we got to the park. I saw Penny and Jan hiding behind some bushes out of the corner of my eye, but made sure not to look that way so Patrick wouldn't notice. Not that I really thought their presence was necessary. This Patrick was nothing like the guy who'd been tormenting me since the start of school.

The conversation was...uncomfortable. For everybody. But eventually all our cards were on the table, so to speak. We went ahead and told him about our abilities, and he told us about his father. Turns out his father didn't take well to his youngest son being a transsexual, so he used Patrick to try and "beat the queer out of him". Not that he didn't get his own hands dirty, but that was mostly when he beat Patrick to get him to cooperate. And when he showed Tim, Patrick's little brother, what it was like to be "treated like a girl".

Yeah, you don't want to go there. Needless to say Jessica and I were a little green after hearing all the stuff his dad was doing, and making him do. Even attacking me was his dad's idea. Apparently Tim came out to his family after hearing about me, so his father blamed me for it. But when Jessica blocked his fist it gave Patrick an idea. If he or Tim could fight back...

It moved my timetable up a bit more than I'd have preferred, but the end result of the talk was that Jessica was going to train Tim. I'd have to be involved a lot, though, because she hadn't had to deal with changing her gender like I did. And Tim would definitely want to change his gender!

Another result of that talk was that we ended up telling Jan and Penny about our abilities. We kind of had to because of all the stuff they overheard, and because it didn't make sense otherwise for him to come to us for help. They took it better than I would have thought.

"You're super heroes?!" Penny exclaimed with a really big grin. Jessica groaned and I shook my head.

"So, you weren't really intersexed?" Jan asked, focusing on a different part of the explanation.

"Not really, no. At least, not before I made some changes." I said. "I'm sorry I lied about that."

Penny shrugged that off, "That's no biggie. I can see why you did it. This is so cool!" When we all looked at her like she was crazy she said, "Oky, not the Patrick stuff, but the super powers part is pretty cool!"

We had to laugh at Penny's enthusiasm, which was kind of nice after all the heavy stuff. They ended up joining us at Jessica's house while I tried to prepare her for having her first student. I'd thought about just teaching him myself, but Jessica really wanted to learn as much as she could as fast as she could. Teaching someone else is one of the best ways to learn, so I caved in and agreed to let her teach him. But only while I'm there to make sure nothing goes wrong. She'd probably need me to awaken his spirit, anyway.

Penny was asking all kinds of questions, which made it hard to get anything done. Jan seemed content to just watch, for the most part. I took a look at their auras and was relieved to see that Penny's spirit is strong enough to be trained. I figured she'd ask, eventually.

Jan had to leave for dinner, but Penny and I stayed at Jessica's house for dinner. Penny had to leave not long after that, so it was just the two of us for a couple more hours of training. Jessica was coming along so great that I figured I'd been overly pessimistic in my estimate on how long it would be before she'd be ready for a student. That made me feel a lot better about her teaching Tim.

Jessica walked me to the door when it was time for me to go home and I stopped and said, "Thanks again Jessica, for protecting me from Patrick this morning. I don't know what would have happened if you weren't there. I guess I can't protect myself quite as well as I thought."

Jessica shook her head, "It's the least I could do, after what I put you through." She couldn't look me in the eye when she said it and I could feel the guilt pouring off of her.

"That wasn't your fault Jessica. Please don't feel guilty about it." I said. Then I had a horrible thought, "You're not..."

"What?" Jessica asked when I trailed off. Then her eyes widened and she shook her head wildly, "No! It's not like that!" She practically screamed it.

I guessed she'd just heard my thoughts again, but I had to be sure. "So...you're not just being my friend again out of guilt?" I asked hesitantly.

"No!" she shrieked. She took a deep breath and said more calmly, "No. You're my best friend. You have been since the day we met. Even when I wasn't talking to you I missed you. I'm really sorry about that." She looked down at the end, sadness emanating from her like smoke from a fire.

I couldn't resist giving her a hug. She tensed up for a moment, but then hugged me back. "You don't have anything to be sorry for. Or feel guilty about. Okay?" I said.

She nodded weakly, but I sensed that she wasn't really convinced yet. I left reluctantly after that, thinking about how I could help her get rid of that guilt.

School was interesting Tuesday. We were all kind of distracted in our classes, I think, by the revelations of the previous day. And by Patrick introducing his brother Tim before school. They'd been waiting in front of the school for us. Tim was a couple of years younger than Patrick and already almost as big. But where Patrick was muscular, Tim was skinny. They were both sporting fresh bruises and Tim seemed shrunken. His aura was even more disturbing to look at than Patrick's had been before.

Tim was so withdrawn that even our promises that he could become a complete girl hardly seemed to faze him. On the plus side, his spirit would be incredibly easy to awaken due to his deep depression. We were all really worried about him, though.

After school we all went over to Patrick's house to start Tim's training. They were both worried about how their father would react if he saw us, but they said he'd definitely be angry if they weren't there when he got home. Tim and Patrick both seemed to shrink in on themselves as soon as we entered the house. The whole place felt weighted down with anger and despair. I don't know if the others felt that way or not, but it depressed me just being there.

Their father had a habit of coming home at odd times, so I focused on getting myself boosted and shielded while Jessica started working on Tim. If he came home early and tried anything, I wanted one of us to be ready to stop him.

As I thought, Tim's spirit was awoken in record time. Not only was he incredibly depressed (Gee, can't imagine why...), but his spirit was pretty strong, too. Once it was awoken, Tim's mood improved greatly. Apparently he hadn't really believed us until he felt it himself.

The hardest part of the afternoon, besides the tension about their father coming home, was the argument over whether we should talk to someone about what was happening or not. Patrick was far too scared to do that, but Penny and Jan both thought we should. I agreed, but it took most of my concentration to keep myself boosted and shielded so I couldn't really contribute to the conversation. Tim and Jessica were preoccupied, too.

That argument ended up being a moot point. Their father did come home early, and he wasn't happy to find four strange girls there! Especially since Penny started shouting at him almost immediately. She showed no fear at all as she stood up and advanced on him, yelling the whole time. I hurried to her side and was there just in time to intercept a back-handed slap from him. He yelped in pain as his hand smashed into my spirit armor.

"You bitch!" he growled, reaching for me. I was about to knock his hand away when Jessica suddenly appeared between us. He blinked in surprise, then tried to brush her aside.

"You. Don't. Touch. Her!" Jessica growled, grabbing his arm. He tried to pull his arm away, but he couldn't move it. I was rather surprised, as I didn't think she'd gotten quite that good at boosting yet. But she proved she had when she started squeezing and he howled in pain. He's got to be about six and a half feet tall and over three hundred pounds of pure muscle, but he was putty in her hands.

Patrick, Tim, and Penny looked on in shock as Jessica proceeded to bat him around like a cat playing with a mouse. A really big mouse, in a room full of very breakable things. She really made a mess, but I don't think any of us cared about that! When I looked to see how Jan was doing I saw that she was already talking to a 911 operator.

It was Patrick that dealt the final blow. By the time the police arrived he was standing over his unconscious father, looking at his own fist in shock. Jessica let him take the credit, for obvious reasons. Our parents had to be called, of course. We all ended up at the police station to give our statements and Jessica's parents offered to let Tim and Patrick stay with them until something more permanent was worked out. That worked out great for us, of course, since it meant she had easy access to continue Tim's training.

When all was said and done I was back at Jessica's house again. Once Tim and Patrick were shown to their rooms and Mom and Dad went home we were left alone again. "Why did you get between us Jessica?" I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.

She looked at me oddly and said, "Don't you already know the answer to that?"

"I think I do, but I'm not sure." I said.

"I had to protect you, of course!" she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"But I was boosted and shielded. He couldn't have hurt me if he tried." I pointed out.

"Well, your concentration could have wavered. I couldn't take that chance." she said weakly.

I decided it was time to push her a little, "Why not?"

"I...I didn't want you to get hurt." she replied, looking away. I think she was blushing.

"Why not?" I asked again.

"You're my best friend." she said.

"Is that all?" I asked. She kept her gaze fixed on the floor and didn't say anything. "Jessica?"

"Oh, all right!" she exclaimed. "I love you! Satisfied?!" She was glaring at me then, but I had the biggest smile on my face you ever saw. It hurt, it was so big!

"Yep. Just wanted to hear you say it." I chirped happily.

"I don't see why you're so happy about it." she grumbled.

"Oh, gee, I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been in love with you since I met you and had almost despaired of you ever feeling the same way?" I said.

"...but you deserve someone better..." she whispered.

"Oh no! You're not going there! I love you, you love me, what could be better than that?!" I exclaimed.

"But..." she stuttered.

"No buts. There's a reason you can hear my thoughts. And why I can hear yours right now. Neither of us are good at that. In fact, we can't hear the thoughts of anyone else reliably at all. We're like Melanie and her wife. Maybe our bond isn't quite as strong as theirs yet, but we're only fifteen! And you know, since you can hear my thoughts and feel my emotions, that there's no need to feel guilty about our misunderstanding before. That's in the past." I said firmly.

"But what if I do something like that again?" she asked weakly.

I snorted, "Yeah, right. Like you'd do that! You'd cut off your own arm before you did something like that. You're already trying to cut out your own heart to keep from breaking mine!"

I figured she needed some time to get used to the changes going on. So, I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek before leaving. I waved at her from the sidewalk and noticed with a smile that she was holding her hand to her face where I'd kissed her and was smiling dazedly. That really put a skip in my step!

Things were really crazy for a while after that. Patrick and Tim started seeing a psychiatrist. Tim in particular was prone to start crying at the drop of a hat, but his brother did a fair bit of that, too. We made sure to watch out for them at school as much as we could. Patrick had made some enemies who tried to capitalize on his condition, but we managed to...persuade them to leave him alone.

Their dad went to jail, of course. Their mother had died years ago, but her sister lived in town and agreed to take them in. She seemed a little overwhelmed when she learned everything they'd gone through, but she was really great with them. And Tim continued his training with Jessica and slowly started becoming the girl he was meant to be.

Penny, Jan, Jessica and I were eating lunch one day at school when Patrick came over with a girl I hadn't seen before. But Jessica recognized her right off, "Hey Lisa, how are you doing?" she asked.

"Hi Jessica." she said nervously.

I nearly dropped the apple I was eating when I heard her voice. It was different, of course, but it had to be Tim! "Lisa, huh? Looking good!" I finally said, seeing that she needed the encouragement.

"Thanks." Lisa replied shyly.

I turned to look at Jessica, "You knew she was going to be here today, didn't you?"

Jessica smiled, "Yeah, but I wanted it to be a surprise. She looks great, doesn't she?"

"Yeah. It certainly is that! I didn't realize she was so far along. You've done a really good job with her." I said.

"I had a good teacher." Jessica replied with a smile. And now it's time for the teacher to learn something from the student. The thought was so clear I knew she'd intended for me to hear it. I looked at her in surprise and she leaned over and kissed me. I kind of spaced out for a bit after that.

"Earth to Alice, come in Alice." Penny said, giggling.

"...huh? What?" I asked, glancing over at Penny. I couldn't figure out why my jaw hurt at first until I realized I had the biggest smile ever plastered on my face.

"I think you broke her." Jan said. She and Penny laughed and Jessica smiled at me.

When I came back to my senses I realized that a bunch of people were staring at us. Are you sure you want to be public like this? I thought.

Yeah, I do. I love you and I don't want to have to hide that. Jessica thought in reply. I was amazed at how easily this thought reading thing was going now.

I guess our bond got a little stronger, huh? Okay, public it is. I thought with a grin, and leaned over to kiss her. I was amazed at how wonderful it was to kiss Jessica, and I knew it would only get better from here!

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The End