One boy is about to learn that he has already passed such an event, and nothing will ever be quite the same…

“Brandon, please!” his mother addressed him. “I think I liked you better in heels yesterday!”

“Sorry, Mom!” he apologized blushing. Yesterday had been “Gender-Bender Day” at school and he had attended wearing a pretty dress and high-heeled shoes. His mother and sister had done a fine job with his makeup and hair, respectively. A couple of girls had loaned him a dress and shoes in his sizes and a matching purse for the day. His sister, Sheila, a year older, had given him a matching set of a panty and a training bra, while Mom bought him a slip for the dress and a package of pantyhose.

Mom offered him a slice of toast and a plate of scrambled eggs, both of which he accepted with an eager smile as she poured a glass of orange juice for her son.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, spreading strawberry jam on his toast. “This is a good breakfast.”

“You’re welcome, young man,” she replied. “Uh—we can still apply that phrase to you after yesterday?”

“I hope so!” Brandon acknowledged chuckling. “And I do wanna thank you and Sis for helping me out with it.”

“Yeah! You were almost too convincing,” Sheila said, grinning in mischief. “A couple o’ boys asked me to match ’em up with my little sister!”

“What?” Brandon asked in surprise.

“You didn’t look like a boy in a dress, little brother, but like a real girl,” his sister continued. “I was proud of how nice you looked yesterday.”

Despite eating breakfast Brandon suddenly felt a growing emptiness in the pit of his stomach. That detail of his transformation mostly had been lost on him. But for his sister to be proud of him dressing up like a girl could not possibly be a good thing. Crossdressing was not a hobby that Brandon wished to take up, after all.

“Uh, that’s not quite what I was hoping for, Sis,” he lamented.

“What then?” Sheila probed on.

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously!”

“I was hoping Jenny Chang might notice me that way.”

That was news to both Brandon’s mother and sister.

“Son, since when did you start taking an interest in girls?”

“Since Jenny and I had most of our classes scheduled together,” the boy admitted. “She’s too cute not to notice. And she’s my lab partner for both Computer Science and Earth Science.”

Mom flashed a knowing grin to her daughter. But Brandon now simply pushed the scrambled eggs around his plate. Mom noticed this and knew immediately that his breakfast had been spoiled by the revelations of his interest in one girl and then his too successful appearance as another.

“Excuse me, please,” asked Brandon in a decidedly subdued tone as he arose from his chair. “I should go and bring that dress down now. I certainly don’t need it around any longer.” With that, the boy sullenly returned up the stairs to his bedroom.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” apologized Sheila. “I had no idea he’d take it so hard.”

“Now, don’t blame yourself, honey. You couldn’t’ve known,” Mom assured her daughter. “I’m not so sure that even he knows how he feels about it all just yet. He was cheerful enough when he left here yesterday morning.”

“Y’know, even after he came home, I thought he was never gonna take that dress off,” recounted Sheila, smiling as she sipped her coffee. “He was so into it. But still, he really seems embarrassed by it now.”

“Think maybe he might’ve been hurt somehow?”

“Well, most of the boys had dressed up silly or goofy—a few went for the slutty, streetwalker look—but only a handful looked nice like Brandon. Their ‘look’ might’ve crossed a line somehow. I hope we didn’t like push him too far.”

“No, Sheila, not at all! Your brother was quite willing—almost eager to dress up. But his feelings about it are confused right now. He certainly didn’t expect any boys to ask you to fix him up as your sister.”

“I just thought he’d feel happy to know how successful he was at dressing up.”

“I think he might’ve been too successful, maybe—if you know what I mean?”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“He looked perfectly like a girl. If you had a sister, that’s how she might’ve looked.”

“I could see that. Everyone at school noticed it, too. Maybe he should just go for the silly look next time.”

“Next time?”

“The school is considering other ‘Gender-Bender Days’ during the year.”

“So he’s gotta go through this how many more times?”

“I don’t know yet,” Sheila admitted. “But as cute as he was, he’ll be under strong pressure to be a cheerleader for the Powder Puff Football Tournament.”

“Your dad might be able to help him out with that,” Mom told her. “He did it in school a few times himself.”

“Omigosh! Are you kidding?”

“I should show you my yearbooks sometime,” her mother said with a smile. “And he was so cute!” Mother and daughter giggled together.

“So Dad really was okay with Brandon dressing up then?”

“Mm-hmm! He thought your brother was cute—almost as pretty as you!” Mom said bending down to kiss her daughter on the crown of her head as she hugged her shoulders from behind. “But he decided to keep quiet about it, so Brandon wouldn’t feel any more pressure for Gender-Bender Day than he already did.”

Sheila glanced back up at her mom with a concerned look on her face. “I hope Brandon will be like alright after all this.”

“He’ll be just fine, sweetie!” Mom reassured her daughter, renewing the hug.

Brandon took the garment bag out of the closet and laid it out on his bed. He zipped it open and made certain that the dress inside was alright before returning it to Debbi Snyder. Since they were the same size and build, he had swapped his navy blue dress suit for her green and blue dress. (She had said it would emphasize his pretty blue eyes and dark curly hair, much like his suit did for him.) Valerie Schmidt had loaned him a very smart, black leather purse and a matching pair of two-inch (5 cm) heeled pumps. Debbi’s garment bag had pockets for shoes, so he put the pumps in those. Since the other accessory pockets weren’t quite large enough for the purse, he stowed it in the main compartment with the dress before zipping it closed. The dress was short enough that he had no worry that the purse might wrinkle or otherwise damage it.

After he returned the borrowed items to Debbi and Valerie, he could declare the whole thing over—well, not quite. He had only noticed in the shower this morning that he had not removed the pink polish from his toenails. He had forgotten about it when Sheila helped remove his fingernail polish before bedtime but there hadn’t been time before breakfast. He’d have to get her help again after school. It was a good thing that his own gym class didn’t meet today. He expected teasing enough just from how he had been dressed yesterday; he didn’t wish to display painted toenails to classmates in the locker room the next day after Gender-Bender Day.

He slipped his backpack on before grabbing the garment bag to take downstairs with him. But this time he walked down the staircase quietly, unlike how he had earlier.

“Brandon, why not go back and finish your breakfast?” his mother suggested. “If you want, I’ll even warm it up again for you.”

“Okay, Mom,” he answered. “Please do that then. I’m sorry I ran from the table like that.”

“I meant to ask if you wanted any hash browns with your eggs?”

Brandon smiled at that. “Yes, please! That’d be great!”

His mother removed his reheated breakfast from the microwave oven then added a well-shaped patty of hash browns to his plate, which she set before him.

“So tell me, what changed between yesterday and today?” Mom asked him. “You were so excited about Gender-Bender Day yesterday and the day before, but earlier at breakfast, you seemed more than a little distraught. What’s up?”

“I don’t know really,” Brandon admitted taking a bite of toast. “But I think I made a big mistake. All the other guys were dressed silly or goofy, so I should’ve, too. I don’t think I was really supposed to look like a pretty girl.”

“Well, if that’s true, it was quite a gutsy move to dress up so completely and convincingly,” Mom assured him. “It makes me even prouder of you than I was!” She bent over, kissing her son on the crown of his head.

“I thought it would be fun, Mom. I really did,” explained Brandon. Then he lamented, “But now I feel foolish and stupid for doing it.”

“Brandon, I want you to think about something,” his mother began. “This was a schoolwide activity, right?”

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled shoving more hash browns into his mouth.

“Even the girls were dressing up like boys?”

“Well, sorta—,” Brandon answered sipping some orange juice. “Debbi Snyder looked even girlier in my suit than she does in her own clothes.”

“She’s who you borrowed the dress from?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Mom smiled at her son. “We girls know how to do that,” she told him. “We can wear men’s clothes and look just as feminine as we do in our own. But now, since this was schoolwide, let’s think of it like an assignment. Why not think about what you’ve learned from it?”

Brandon just looked at his mother’s smiling green eyes as he cleaned his plate of breakfast. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, Mom.”

“That’s what moms—and teachers—are for,” she reminded him. “Try asking a teacher or a counselor or someone. Why did your school have a Gender-Bender Day?”

Brandon pondered his mother’s suggestion for a moment, then emptied his glass of orange juice. “That makes a lotta sense, Mom,” he acknowledged. “I’ll do that.”

Mom drove Brandon and Sheila to school. Their house was close enough that they could walk to school most days. But today both teenagers needed to return clothes that they had swapped with or borrowed from friends to wear for Gender-Bender Day. Their mother drove them so that they wouldn’t need to carry the garment bags the entire distance. They only had to carry their bags from the car to their lockers.

Since Brandon was a freshman, his locker was on the top floor, so he had to take his bag up two flights of stairs from the main floor. It wasn’t too heavy—just awkward to carry up the stairs.

Debbi Snyder, an athletic blonde with blue eyes, was already waiting for Brandon when he arrived at his locker. She was holding his garment bag, which undoubtedly contained the suit that he had swapped for her dress. She had worn it with a pair of shiny black four-inch (10 cm) stiletto pumps and a gray fedora under which her gorgeous blonde curls cascaded all the way down her back to the waist.

“Hi, Brandon!” Debbi greeted him. “Thanks for letting me wear your suit.”

“You looked better in it than me,” he complimented her. “In fact, you looked even prettier than usual wearing it.”

“Why, thank you, Brandon!” she said, bestowing a kiss on his cheek. “And you looked just darling in my dress. You really pulled it off! You looked so sweet, so pretty!”

“Thanks,” answered Brandon, diverting his eyes from Debbi’s cheerful face. His embarrassment grew as he sensed that he was about to get a similar review of his yesterday’s attire from every girl who knew him. “It was fun,” he admitted, “but I don’t think I’d wanna do it again.”

“Aww! Please don’t feel that way!” Debbi begged him, almost whining. “You were so darling!”

As he watched Debbi’s visage fall, Brandon deftly worked the numerical sequence to open his locker and placed the garment bag’s hanger on the door’s inside hook. He unzipped the bag then knelt down to take Valerie’s purse out of it. Checking all the purse’s pockets one more time he verified that it was empty—save for the thank-you card in a small matching envelope in the main pocket. While still kneeling, Brandon also took the matching black pumps from the shoe pockets.

“Here it is, Debbi,” he said, showing her the dress. “Thanks for letting me wear it.” She nodded and Brandon zipped her garment bag up and then they exchanged their bags so that he again had his suit, and she, her dress.

“You were so pretty yesterday,” Debbi reminded her friend once again. “I have another dress and a skirt or two I’d just love to see you try on.”

“Sorry, Debbi, but yesterday was enough,” Brandon declined with a sheepish look.

“Oh, alright!” Debbi sighed. “I guess like it’s just not as important to you.” With that, she smiled at him, turned around, and carried her garment bag down the corridor to her own locker.

It’s not as important to me? wondered Brandon. Of course it isn’t. But then why would it be so important to you?

Next Brandon organized his books for his morning classes and put them inside his backpack. Just as he slipped his backpack over his shoulders, he noticed Valerie Schmidt, a tall, athletic brunette wearing her hair in a pageboy style, the tresses gently caressing her jawline. She was going to her locker, so he grabbed her purse and shoes from his locker and went down the hall to meet her. Valerie stood head and shoulders above Brandon and most everyone else in the freshman class and only a few boys were taller.

“G’morning, Valerie,” he greeted her, holding out the shoes and purse. “Thanks for letting me use these yesterday.”

“You’re welcome, Brandon,” she answered in a chirpy tone. “How didja like the shoes?”

“Uh—I—I can't say,” he admitted, flashing a somewhat embarrassed grin. “I’ve never worn high heels before, so I can’t really compare them to anything else. It was nice being a couple of inches taller for a day, though.”

“Did they pinch or hurt?”

Brandon thought for a moment. He didn’t want to say anything negative about what she’d loaned him. “Not really, but they were a little tight.”

“Heels are often like that. They force your toes down into the shoes and they get pinched,” explained Valerie. “The higher the heels and the longer you wear them, the worse the pinching.”

“Then why do you wear them?”

“Because they make my legs look great,” she answered. “Your legs looked really nice yesterday, too. More than a few girls were like jealous of you.”

“What?”

“Brandon, you may not believe this, but you were turning heads all day yesterday,” continued Valerie, with a smile to avoid intimidating Brandon. “I’d like to see how you’d look in my higher heels. You should come to my house and try on a few more pairs.”

“Uh—thanks, Valerie, but I don’t think so,” he declined, somewhat worried. “It was fun for a day, but that was enough for me.”

“Too bad,” she lamented. “Seeing you all dressed up again would be such fun.”

“Sorry, Valerie, but I’m a boy, after all.”

“Well, if you ever wanna borrow a pair of heels again, you know who to call,” Valerie offered with a smile before closing her locker. She turned to hug Brandon, bent down, and kissed him on the cheek before going off to her homeroom.

Checking the time, Brandon noted that he also needed to get to his own homeroom, which was around the corner, down the main corridor and around the next corner and all the way to the end of the opposite wing of the building. He didn’t run, but walked at a faster than usual pace. Yesterday, he had taken very short, dainty steps in his feminine attire. As he continued on his way, he found himself puzzling over why both Debbi and Valerie had thought that somehow he wanted to do more crossdressing. What Debbi had said, that it weren’t as important to him, had especially bothered Brandon. She’d said it as if dressing like a girl ought to be more important to him, for some reason, although why it should be was certainly not something he had thought about.

Just as Brandon arrived at the door of his homeroom, it opened and the petite Kelly Harrigan, irrepressibly and proudly Irish, with long, curly red hair, green eyes, and fair, freckled complection, emerged with a hall pass attached to her identification lanyard.

“Good morning, Brandon!” Kelly beamed.

“Good morn—!”

Kelly had pulled him immediately into an embrace and kissed him right on the mouth before he could even return her greeting. She also eyed Brandon up and down as she stepped away.

“You were so cute yesterday,” she said. “Are we gonna get to see ‘Brandi’ again soon? You were just so adorable!”

“Not planning on it, Kelly.”

“Aww!” she whined, then distended her lips into her altogether-too-cute patented pout before pressing them against his cheek. Next, Kelly sputtered into giggles, pirouetted around, and finger-waved to him. “I’ll see you at lunch!” she announced then continued on her way, the box pleats of her gray tweed miniskirt naughtily bouncing as she skipped along rather than walked. Brandon continued watching Kelly as he backed through the doorway, nearly colliding with the teacher.

“Did Miss Harrigan whoosh by you, Mister MacDonald?” Ernest Markham, Ed.S., his homeroom teacher asked.

“Something like that, sir,” the boy answered. “More of a whirl than a whoosh, though.” His classmates laughed in response to their brief exchange.

“Son, you also might wish to check your face,” the teacher continued. “You’re wearing more lip color than yesterday but not so neatly applied.”

Brandon immediately raised his fingers to his lips expecting to feel the waxy texture of lipstick, but Alice Johansson sitting across the left aisle held out a compact to him with its mirror open. “Your cheeks, Brandon.” He looked in the mirror and saw three lipstick marks, two on his right cheek, one on his left. Debbi, Valerie, and Kelly had set him up!

“Here, take this,” Mr. Markham sympathetically offered Brandon a hall pass, which the boy clipped to his lanyard. “Go take care of it.”

Brandon dashed to the Men’s Room to clean his face. Most of his classmates laughed as he left, but Mr. Markham pulled the door shut with a loud slam. He glanced across the classroom before raising his voice. “Quiet!” the teacher addressed the students. “Give ’im a break, will ya? The next one of you who so much as giggles gets five days of detention.”

The teacher had stunned his homeroom into silence, which now continued from a collective sense of guilt. He sat up on the front edge of his desk and continued talking.

“I know that quite a few of you like to have fun at Mister MacDonald’s expense. But not one of you guys had the courage, or the fortitude, to dress the full monte like he did yesterday. You just tried a skirt here or there, or maybe tights with a pair of shorts or maybe a pair of pantyhose under your jeans. And you, Mister Danziger, must think yourself too cool to dress up at all.”

“Yeah, Billy! Yeah!” exclaimed a few other students razzing him and bouncing balls of crumpled paper off his head. Billy Danziger leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs out on an empty chair next to him.

“But hey, man! What difference does it make?” he protested. “It’s just clothes. I’ll wear what I want to.”

“The rest of us guys all wore something of a girl’s,” complained Dave Hamill. “I think you were trying to embarrass us by refusing to participate.”

“That’s a boldly serious claim, Mister Hamill,” opined Mr. Markham. “Mister Danziger, did you intend to embarrass your classmates by not taking part in Gender-Bender Day?”

“No! Not at all!” Billy denied. “And I’m offended that anyone would think so!”

“Then why didn’t you—dress up, I mean?” Teri Hamilton asked him.

“Because I didn’t feel like it,” the besieged student maintained. Billy was beginning to feel his coolly aloof attitude threatened. “Anyway, I like my blue jeans.”

“We girls wear blue jeans, too,” Alice pointed out. “One of the slightly taller girls could’ve loaned you a pair of hers, but I think you’d be cuter in a denim miniskirt or maybe a pair of bib-shorts.”

Laughter filled the room again as another salvo of crumpled paper missiles rained down on Billy. Alice had called his bluff, leaving him without an easy riposte. He looked angry for a moment, although no one, not even Billy, understood that his anger was aimed mostly at himself. So he just continued to fume silently, unsure with whom he needed to even the score: Dave? Alice? Teri? Brandon? Mr. Markham?

“How ’bout it, Mister Danziger?” asked the homeroom teacher. “Can we expect Miss Danziger to grace us with her presence?”

Billy decided he might try something just a little more diplomatic. “No, my sister’s away at college during the week.”

Ernie Markham tightened his lips, keeping his next thought to himself, as he didn’t like to compare students publicly with their siblings. Nancy Danziger had been a joy to teach in his American History and World History courses, but he was glad that his responsibility for Billy ended with the daily attendance roster. Hmm? Ernie mused. If Billy wore any of his big sister’s clothes, might some of her lovely personality rub off on him? Well, I can hope—

Stop! Ernie blocked his thoughts. Am I so upset with this student that I’m wishing for some kind of magical intervention? Ernest, get a grip!

The classroom door opened and Brandon quietly entered and unclipped the hall pass from his lanyard to hand back to Mr. Markham. “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry, sir,” the boy apologized to his teacher.

“Sorry?” Mr. Markham asked him. “What for?”

“The lipstick marks,” Brandon answered. “Y’know? From the kisses?”

“You don’t have to apologize for kisses, Mister MacDonald,” the teacher joked, “unless you’re married and they’re not hers!”

The class laughed at their teacher’s joke and two of Brandon’s classmates in neighboring seats offered him high-fives, which he accepted with cheerful slaps, along with a fist bump from Alice, as he gave her compact back with thanks. And then Brandon felt some of the joy from the previous day return. After all, he had gone all out when he dressed up like a girl yesterday. It had been fun, but more than that, he had done it well. And although he wasn’t sure why, he felt that he might have done something important. Even if he couldn’t tell anyone now, Brandon had enjoyed it, although just for that day.

Kelly met up with Debbi and Valerie on the main staircase on their way down to the Guidance Office. Each year’s class had it’s own academic counselor who shepherded them through all four years of high school. The three girls had arranged an early morning appointment with the freshman class guidance counselor. The office assistant, Marla Peterson, greeted them as they filed into the Guidance Office.

“Good morning girls,” she said. “Doctor Van de Meer is expecting you.”

The door was already ajar as the girls read its engraved brass nameplate:

Xenia van de Meer EdD
Guidance Counselor

Marla waved the girls into the counselor’s office. Kelly and Debbi sat together on the short sofa, while Valerie, the tallest of them, took the armchair, stretching her long legs out.

“Alright, my fine young ladies, how may I help you?” Dr. Van de Meer asked, smiling over a mug of coffee.

“Well,” began Valerie, “you said at your presentation Monday afternoon that high school girls can be too cliquish at times. So, we wanna do something about that. Like, we wanna recruit more girls to belong to our Circle. We wanna be more accepting. We really do, but we don’t quite know how.”

“You might start by asking them,” Dr. Van de Meer suggested. “It’s an effective technique, but often underused.”

Kelly and Debbi giggled but Valerie apologized. “I guess we sorta had that coming,” she conceded. “But we’re afraid to ask because they might say no.”

“Listen to yourselves, ladies,” said the guidance counselor. “You and your group of friends are the most popular girls in the freshman class. If you’re worried about rejection, how do you think other girls might feel?”

Valerie, Debbi, and Kelly all looked at one another. “Doctor Van de Meer, we were hoping you might know them well enough to help us figure out, like, if they’d be okay to ask?” Valerie admitted. “I mean, d’you think they’d wanna be in our group?”

Xenia just grinned to herself and sighed. The girls’ anxiety was fresh and honest. They were just as afraid to approach new friends as were the ones they were seeking. She asked them, “So what do you have to offer new candidates?”

“Well,” began Kelly, “we always eat lunch together—”

“We like to coordinate days we all dress up,” added Debbi, “so we also go shopping together—”

“And we swap clothes with each other, too,” Valerie interjected. “And that’s not all, either—”

“We help each other with our homework and projects,” continued Debbi. “Someone might be better than others at a subject so we try to put them together in study groups.”

“And we have like our own pep squad at football games,” added Kelly, “and participate in other school-sponsored activities.”

“You girls have apparently already been thinking about it,” Dr. Van de Meer noted. “So who do you have in mind to ask?”

“Well, we want to try asking three girls at first,” explained Valerie. “If they join us, we’ll ask others. If not we’ll hafta try something else.”

“That’s a good scientific approach,” the counselor encouraged them. “Continue, please.”

“Our first candidate is Mindy Baxter,” disclosed Kelly. “She hasn’t fit in too well and we don’t think going Goth would be like good for her.”

“And it’s our fault she might go Goth,” admitted Debbi. “We didn’t get off to the best start with her when she transferred in and we need to apologize to her whether she joins us or not.”

“So you think her going Goth is your fault, then?” the counselor sought to clarify.

“In a word, yes,” confirmed Kelly. “Our attitudes propelled her toward a lifestyle of disaffection.”

“Did you consider that maybe she’s going Goth because she may like it?” Dr. Van de Meer posited. “You claim that it’s your fault like it’s a crime or something. When you apologize to Melinda and invite her into your club, don’t disparage Goth style nor her Goth friends.”

Valerie spoke up again. “Next, there’s Jenny Chang.”

“As bright and friendly as she is, I’m surprised she’s not already one of your associates, anyway,” remarked the counselor.

“Her parents are so conservative, like, and her mom makes her dress really frumpy,” reported Debbi. “She’s not allowed to attend school mixers or other activities, either.”

“And that’s really too bad,” Valerie concurred. “As nice and capable as she is, she could be a real asset to the school if she got to do things with us.”

Dr. Van de Meer wondered about Jenny Chang for a moment. She had noticed the girl’s absence from any extracurricular activities. Maybe she needed to talk with her about participating in a few school-sponsored events—or if Debbi’s report were true, maybe with Jenny’s parents instead. After all, the best colleges and universities now included such achievements as part of their admission criteria. For such an excellent student to miss out on a promising future because her parents held so limited a perception of education would be a shame, but within her ability as a guidance counselor to address and perhaps to change.

“Girls, I agree that you should ask Jenny,” Dr. Van de Meer told them, “and I may talk to her as well.”

“Oh, would you?” Valerie almost begged their counselor. “I know like I’m not as smart as she is. I’m afraid of making a fool of myself.”

“Are you asking her to debate with you or asking her to lunch?” Kelly inquired of her friend.

“Lunch,” admitted Valerie.

“So what’s the worst answer she could give?” Debbi followed up.

“No?” Valerie guessed.

“Val, would Jenny saying no make a fool of you?” Dr. Van de Meer asked.

“Not really,” answered Valerie quite sheepishly. “I’ve been scared over nothing haven’t I?”

“You young ladies need to go and invite her,” the guidance counselor confirmed. “And I still have my own reasons for wanting to talk to her. So, who else gets an invitation to your girls’ club?”

The three girls all looked around at one another before Kelly opened the bidding. “She will be like the most challenging girl to bring into our Circle.”

“We’ve hardly been able to think about anyone else since we found out how she’d fit in yesterday,” explained Debbi. “And it’s not just us three—everyone in the Circle was unanimous about it—we gotta try to help her become one of us—”

“Because until yesterday, she had no idea that she’s really a girl!” Valerie declared. “She thinks she’s a boy!”

“But Brandon MacDonald doesn’t know he’s a girl yet,” announced Kelly, raising the stakes of the discussion. “He needs to become Brandi MacDonald and we’re gonna help him do it.”