Friday night found Amanda Evans perched on the edge of her bed, facing the large mirror on the opposite wall. Her dark blonde hair had been wrangled into a

passable braid; she had tried to teach herself simply by watching her mother do her own hair, but had not quite gotten the hang of it yet. Amanda had draped

herself in an overlarge college tee of her father’s, a makeshift nightgown. Her new, smaller frame was pronounced by the fact that the shirt hung down to her

knees. Mere days ago the shirt would have comfortably fit Peter. Not Peter, Amanda chastised herself, me. I am still Peter inside, aren’t I? However, she could

no longer be so sure of this. She could not lie to herself; she had made no attempts to undo the life-changing transformation and become Peter again. Referring

to Peter in the third person seemed completely natural.

This scared her. She should have wanted her old life as Peter back. But she didn’t. Why not? The more she dwelled on it, the more she realized that a more

accurate question would be: Why would I even want my old life as Peter back? To be perfectly honest, life as Peter had sucked. Single; monotonous, low-salary

job; lonely, depressed feelings and regrets constantly dogging him; not even a best friend. It was quite easy for Amanda to convince herself that she was not

insane for not wanting that aspect of her former life back. No, the thing that caused her disquiet was that she had been thrust into an entirely unfamiliar role

that she would have to navigate as a fourteen-year-old girl. Amanda knew nothing about being a girl, or what it entailed. Peter had not been married, was an only

child, and had lost his mother at a young age. Needless to say, the constant presence of female role models in his life had been quite limited. This was not so

with life as Amanda.

The week had been full of revelations for Amanda; every scrap of information she learned about her new life seemed to her to be pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

that she was gathering, slowly putting together to form a picture of who she now was. She had at first been terrified to converse with even her own mother, due

to the fact that all she had found out up to that point was that her own name was Amanda. That was before she was aware of the existence of Connie.

Connie was a tiny, conscience-like presence that spoke only to Amanda in a voice that sounded very much like her own. It was almost as if Connie was part

of her, just as her arms and legs were parts of her. Whenever she would encounter an unfamiliar person or situation, Connie would immediately be there to fill

her in. She had noticed Connie for the first time while lying in bed on the night following the transformation. The quilt pulled up to her chin and her mind

racing like a runaway train, she desperately wondered how she would ever be able to adjust to her new life if she hadn’t even an inkling about this Amanda girl.

She didn’t even know if her father was still around in this life; she hadn’t caught a glimpse of him all that night.

Where could he have gotten to? Is he still here? Or is this an exchange….I get mom back, but not dad?

No sooner had these thoughts arisen than she heard a tiny voice speak to her. Don’t get all worked up, now. He’s on a business trip for his company, don’t

you remember? He’ll be back in a few days.

Amanda’s racing thoughts were stopped dead in their tracks. Where had that come from? How could I have known that? She couldn’t have, was the obvious

answer. Yet, she did. It was almost as if a stranger’s memories were being injected into her brain. However, it did not feel abnormal to suddenly have this

memory. In fact, it felt as if she had had it all along, but it had just now been extracted from the very backmost corners of her mind and brought to light.

Shaking her head slightly to clear it, she felt her long hair tickle her face. It was a very foreign feeling.

“Okay,” she whispered, “okay, I’ve got to test this again, to be sure.”

She closed her eyes tightly, wrinkled her nose, and gripped her quilt rather hard as she concentrated with all her might on another thought.

I wonder if I have any brothers or sisters. I’ve never had any before.

The reply was instantaneous. Duh, of course you do. How could you forget your own sister? You know, little seven-year-old Paige? I don’t see how you

could; you usually get along very well, although she does know how to push your buttons and can really get on your nerves at times.

Amanda was thunderstruck. She was not an only child! Recalling how painfully lonely Peter had been at times without any brothers or sisters, Amanda was

willing to embrace any sibling she got. The voice she had discovered would be invaluable in her effort to acclimate to her newfound life. Exhausted from the

bizarre events of the day, Amanda didn’t even bother to change into her pajamas. As she lay on her back in bed, registering the weight on her chest and the

startling emptiness between her legs, she sighed deeply. The sound that issued from her mouth was utterly feminine.

Amanda was torn about her newfound womanhood. Part of her screamed that this was not the way things should be. I was born male, and I want to remain that

way! Remaining female is not an option. There’s got to be an escape route, some way out of this….What man in their right mind would want to remain a woman?

However, no matter how much she attempted to force herself to conform to this pattern of thought, to convince herself that being male was what she desired and

that she would go to any lengths to regain her masculinity….she found the struggle futile. The part of her that spoke with a voice of truth and reason, the same

voice that had recently supplied her with the memories of her father and sister, overpowered Amanda’s immediate thoughts in a heartbeat.

Be completely honest with yourself, Amanda….though you may have masqueraded under the guise of unwavering masculinity, the person under this illusion was

truly desire to be. And if you play your cards right, your former trek as Peter will pale in comparison to your new journey as Amanda.

Eyelids heavy, Amanda couldn’t keep her exhaustion at bay much longer, though her mind was still teeming with a virtual hurricane of curious thoughts. She

dwelled on the business card she had found on her pillow mere hours before, and which was now resting on her bedside table.

A blank page is now yours. Go forth and write your story anew.

“A blank page, huh?” she yawned as she closed her eyes. “Well, Amanda Peter Evans’s pen is at the ready.” And with that she sank into a deep sleep.

After the first night, which she could recall so vividly, the rest of the week was a blur. Only snippets of it stuck with her. For example, her first

morning as Amanda, when she had christened the voice in her head Connie, a short, cute name taken from the word conscience. Connie was an ever-present, extremely

useful asset; if truth be told, if not for Connie, Amanda might have been stuck in a hospital room with a diagnosis of amnesia. The tennis tournament went very

well, considering that Peter had never so much as laid a finger on a tennis racquet before. Amanda found that it all came naturally to her; much like one is

still able to ride a bike even after months and months of being out of practice. She managed to take second place, a feat that she was immensely proud of. In the

hours following her second place finish, her father had returned from his trip. His appearance was the same as it had been when Peter had been his only child,

albeit obviously younger: same messy brown hair, same twinkling blue eyes, and same crooked smile. Ecstatic to see him back at home, she could not prevent

herself from wrapping him in a tight hug as he entered the front door.

“Hey, Mandy, my beautiful daughter! It’s great to be back at home. How’ve things been going?”

Amanda could not suppress the jarring sensation in her chest when he called her “my beautiful daughter.” She still had much adjusting to do in order to

fully come to terms with her new female identity. Speaking into his argyle sweater, Amanda’s voice was quite muffled. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Fair enough,” he laughed. “Now, where’s that mother of yours gotten to?”

A few days after dad’s arrival, a red van pulled up into the driveway. Amanda knew that this must be Paige returning from her week-long equestrian camp.

Connie had informed her earlier that Paige, as most young girls do, had a strong liking for horses, and apparently was an up-and-coming talent in the area of

horseback riding. She raced up the walk to the front door, her suitcase bumping along behind her and her dark hair dancing. She swung open the front door and

burst into the threshold, trilling, “I’m ba-a-a-a-a-ck!”

Mom and dad converged on her, pelting her with questions about camp. Amanda observed from her bedroom doorway. Greeting dad was one thing, as Peter had

known him for years. The same could not be said for Paige. Amanda would have to play this completely by ear. She did not know why she felt so apprehensive about

approaching Paige. She was seven years old, for crying out loud. Perhaps she felt that she wanted her first impression on Paige to be a good one, as it would

mark the first time either Peter or Amanda had ever interacted with anyone like a sister before. Whatever the case, the only time she spoke to Paige that day was

when she popped her head into Amanda’s room, dark hair falling across her face.

“Hi Amanda!” she said cheerfully. “I’m finally back! I missed you! Did you miss me?”

Amanda couldn’t help but grin at the genuine joy that lit up her face. She really did miss me and is glad to see me! Amanda thought. It was a feeling that

she had not experienced many times beforehand, and she immensely enjoyed the sensation.

“Of horse I missed you,” Amanda replied with a rather goofy grin. Paige giggled at the horrific pun. Before she knew what she was doing, Amanda squeezed her sister into a close hug.

“Well, gotta go unpack!” she said after the hug had broken. And with that she dashed off towards her room, utilizing the seemingly infinite supply of

energy that only young children seemed to be blessed with. Well, Amanda thought to herself, as first impressions go, I would say I wasn’t too shabby!

Amanda was glad for all these events for two reasons. First of all, they made her feel loved and important in a way he had never really felt as Peter.

Secondly, if only for a short while, they prevented him from dwelling on the fact that now he was a she, and he was going to have to start playing the part.

Convincingly. As the week drew to a close, the prospect of Amanda’s first day of high school loomed ominously above her like a dark raincloud. Amanda was

terrified. It was not simply start-of-school jitters, for she had been through high school once already as Peter. No, the reasons for her terror this time around

were drastically different. For one, entering the doors of her old high school as a girl was deeply unappealing to him. She had to admit to herself, she was not

opposed to being female. She could accept this fact about herself. However, one week of adjustment time just did not cut it for her. Secondly, a causal statement

her mother had made on Friday afternoon hit Amanda with the force of a rampaging rhinoceros.

“W-what did you say?” she gasped
.
Her mother stared at her with an odd mix of suspicion and surprise.

“Honestly, Amanda, your ears work fine. I said, tomorrow you and I are headed out to do some last-minute back-to-school shopping. We’ve really left it

late this year, and I don’t fancy my daughter being the only one unprepared on her first day at Templeton High.”

“We’re just getting, like, pencils and stuff, right?” Amanda said, trying to keep the plea in her voice to a minimum.

“And your uniform.”

Amanda started to break out in a sweat. She understood “uniform” to mean “skirts.” She might be happier as Amanda than as Peter so far, and she might have

in her former life fantasized about being a girl and getting to wear a beautiful prom dress, but this was different. This was reality.

True, Amanda had been wearing some feminine attire for the past week, only the necessary ones, namely a bra and panties. She had taken to covering these

symbols of femininity with the most androgynous attire she could scrounge up in her closet. So far she had been able to prevent suspicion and still refrain from

wearing overly girly items. She had found several solid colored tops without any sort of designs on them, as well as five pairs of jeans. Although clearly made

for a female build, the jeans were at least more familiar to Amanda than a skirt. There was no doubt, however, that she would not be allowed to wear these to

school. The stupid uniform policy made it so.

“Oh, um, right,” Amanda stammered. “Well, I’ve got to be going–something important–“ She dashed out of the room without a backward glance. She had to get

to a place where she could be alone, sort out her feelings, and above all, find an excuse to skip out on the infernal shopping trip.

Her mother’s eyes followed Amanda until she disappeared into the confines of her room and locked the door. She couldn’t help but notice an odd change in

Amanda’s behavior over the past week….was it simply nerves about the upcoming school year, Amanda’s debut as a freshman? Or was it perhaps something more?