I chewed on my finger for a little bit. "My mother would kill me," I said, "and my father would flip out."

I have a tip for adults: if you don't want a child to worry, don't say "don't worry" unless they are already worrying. If they're *not* worrying, they'll start to think, "Don't worry?" Why would I worry? They wouldn't say "don't worry" unless there was something to worry about. What do they know that I don't? and you'll get that worry train chugging right along.

So, after talking to Mrs. Earshon, I was worried.

I went crazy waiting for my aunt to get home. When she finally did get home, she went to her room, then to the bathroom, and I couldn't say two words to her until we — she and Mom and me — were sitting around the dinner table.

Jane looked a little worn out, and I wondered whether she'd have the energy to help me.

I told her my dilemma: about my father's office workers and the family picture. About who was Marcie and what happened to Mark, and what to say.

"That's no big deal," she scoffed, without looking up. "You already solved that problem."

"I did?"

"Yeah, with the tomboy business. You told everybody you used to be a tomboy. Now you take it one step further, and say you used to want to be a boy."

That was just about the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. Maybe my aunt was overtired or something.

"No," I said. "That doesn't make sense."

As if I hadn't spoken, my aunt continued, "You wore boys clothes and insisted on being called Mark. Now that you've grown up" (she gestured at my breasts) "you've changed your mind; you like being a girl. It happens in real life — sometimes — so that's what happened to you."

I frowned. It still didn't make sense. It was all wacky and backwards. But Mom's face just lit up. "That's it!" she cried. "That will work! Oh, I can't wait to call Artie! Excuse me." She daubed her lip with her napkin, and ran out of the room.

With disbelief, I watched her go and heard the boops as she dialed the phone. I let out a big, frustrated huff and shook my head.

Aunt Jane looked at me with a laughing smile. "You're not convinced?" she asked.

"It doesn't work!" I protested. "It doesn't go! There's no way that it makes any kind of sense. And nobody's going to believe it!"

"They have to believe it! What's the alternative? That you were a boy?" She laughed. "Even if they look at pictures of you when you were little, they'll still believe it.

"The only masculine thing about you is your jaw, and even that not so much. And a few boy-mannerisms you have. Like the way you shovel food into your mouth.

"Your mother is right. When you go to the girls school, you'll act more like a girl. Here you spend too much time with boys and boyish girls like Carla. If you spent most of your day with girls like Eden, you'd behave more like her and nobody would ever think you were a boy."

"I guess," I allowed. Boy-mannerisms, I muttered to myself. As if!

My aunt chuckled. "Don't worry. Everybody will buy the I-wanted-to-be-a-boy story."

"But I didn't want to be a boy!" I said.

"You didn't?" she asked, a little surprised.

"No — that's not what I mean. I mean, I'm supposed to tell people that I was a girl who wanted to be a boy?"

"What's the problem?" she asked. "It's not a girly enough answer? It's a lie. But it's a good lie. It fits into the facts in a very neat way."

"Hmph," I said. I didn't know what I didn't like about it. Mom, to hear her in the next room, seemed to think it was a wonderful solution. "I guess I just wanted Mark to be someone else entirely," I told her.

"Mmm," Jane nodded. "Like your twin brother who was lost at sea."

"Yeah," I said. "That's the kind of story I was hoping for."

Now that the REALLY big question was (apparently) answered, I had to talk to Carla and Eden about ANOTHER big question: what costumes would the three of us wear for Halloween?

I kind of assumed that we'd have some sort of group costume. Eden did, too, but Carla didn't like the idea at all. She was going to be a hula girl, period. AND, she wanted to be the only hula girl.

"I don't want you girly girls showing me up," she explained.

Carla's remark gave Eden the perfect idea for our costumes: we wouldn't be girly at all! We could be football players! Her mother helped us put the costumes together. We got black spandex pants and jerseys that were just long enough to cover our butts. Then we found some cheap helmets and shoulder pads that were made for small boys.

The funny thing was that the mannish outfits only played up our femininity: dressing like boys made us look pretty girly — in spite of the padding, and even with the helmets on. We got some of the black stuff to smear under our eyes, and that was the whole costume!

Pat's Halloween party was fun. Some of the boys took our costumes as an excuse to give me and Eden fanny pats, which got old very quickly. Aside from that, the party was great. Nothing happened that you need to know about, though.

Jerry and I clung to each other pretty closely. He seemed to be the only one who really knew that I was going. You know what I mean. Everybody knew, but it didn't change the way they behaved.

Jerry told me, "I have to get as much of you as I can before you go!"

When he hugged me, I had to fight to not cry. I didn't want to waste the time crying on him... I just wanted him to squeeze me, and hold me, and touch my hand and kiss me.

Oh, and don't tell Mom, but I had a burning wish and desire to be one hundred percent girl in every part of me before I had to leave Tierson.

Tuesday evening, which was Halloween itself, I stayed home and handed out candy to the trick-or-treaters, who were mostly very small kids.

I wore my costume again, just for the heck of it. I was very pleased to see that everybody, even the smallest kids, knew I was a girl in spite of how I was dressed. It wasn't like I had any doubts... it's just nice to get a little validation! Although I did hear one boy say to his friend, "Of course she's a girl! Didn't you see those breasts?" The friend turned around, gaping. When I waved to him, he gawked and stumbled. The first time I made a boy nervous!

The next day at school, Cory asked me and Eden to meet him at the school newspaper office. "I got permission to use this room," he explained, as he led us into a small meeting room and shut the door.

We sat around a small metal table, and I waited while Cory composed himself.

Then he started wringing his hands nervously, and said in a shaky voice, "Uh, Marcie, I've been wanting to ask you something for a long time, and I can't wait any more. I know you're moving, and ah," he gasped for a moment, and I was afraid he'd have another asthma attack.

I waited anxiously for fifteen seconds, but then he drew a normal breath. I relaxed.

He continued, "So, ah, I feel like I'm, ah, running out of time to ask... to ask you... well, the thing I want to ask you." He looked me in the face, and I nodded.

As you can probably imagine, I was getting pretty uneasy. If Eden hadn't been sitting there smiling, I'm not sure what I would have done. I didn't want to be rude to anyone. Plus, he's Eden's boyfriend... which was a good thing, considering the way he was carrying on. He couldn't be wanting to ask me out, could he? That was just too, too impossible.

Cory stammered for a little while, talking about how much time he'd put into something or other, and not wanting to throw it away, but he would if he had to, even though he didn't want to, but if he had to throw his work away he wanted to do it now rather than later...

I gave Eden a desperate look, silently asking what is he talking about?. She smiled, almost laughing, and she interrupted Cory.

"Cory, you're taking forever! You're killing Marcie with the suspense! Can I ask her?" Before he replied, she turned to me and said, "Look, Marcie, Cory wants to do a webcomic about you. Well, us. I'm in there, too."

"A webcomic?" I asked. "What are you talking about? About me?"

Now, I was really starting to worry. I opened my mouth, but words failed me.

I remembered Cory's cartoons about the Little Train and my climbing the building. Mainly I remembered the short skirts and the hair in the wind. Big round breasts and lots of leg. I shook my head.

Cory nervously began pulling papers out of a portfolio. He was perspiring like a horse. Wet blotches appeared on his shirt.

The sheets of paper were very big, like two feet wide, and they all had cartoons on them. "I was thinking of you, like, as an action hero, you know?" He was talking very quickly, and his hands fumbled while he arranged the papers in front of me.

"And then I thought, like, superhero? And then it hit me, and I started drawing like crazy. I stayed up all night, three nights in a row! It was like, uh, inspiration, and I couldn't stop because it all worked so well..."

He set some more sheets on top of the ones I'd seen. It was a lot of work. He must have been making these for ... well, I don't know. A long time.

"I have more at home," he told me, as if apologizing.

"You do?" I asked. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be scared or flattered or what.

Some of the drawings were sketchy, but they all were good. Very good. Even better than the cartoons in the paper.

There wasn't a whole lot of dialog ... There was a lot of me, always in a short skirt, hair in the wind, showing lots of leg. The breasts were bigger, more than a little bigger than real life, but that I didn't mind. I mean, I didn't mind *that* much. It gave me something to aspire to.

And there were plenty of drawings of Eden in there, too. In most of them she was giggling.

"I'm the Giggler," she explained. "Your sidekick."

"Sidekick? And you don't mind that?" I pushed the pages around a little, and asked, "Is Carla in here, too?"

Cory blushed deeply. "I want to put her in, but ..."

"He's afraid to ask her," Eden finished for him. "He's afraid of her and of Pat."

"I've always wanted to do a webcomic," Cory explained, "but I never had any idea what it could be about. But, you, you know, with you as the central character — well, not really you, but inspired by you..."

Now, his nervous perspiration was pouring freely. It was a little gross, but not too... Eden grabbed some paper towels and mopped his brow. Then she gave up and handed him the whole roll.

He didn't seem to notice. His eyes were glued to my face, anxiously trying to read my face, to gauge my reaction.

I came to a page that showed only me and Eden. Lots of leg and hair. I shook my head.

"Cory," I said, "I don't look that good. I mean, I'm not *that* pretty or hot, or whatever. Eden is — you made her look the way she really looks, but you make me look perfect. I'm not."

Cory shrugged, and said, "Artistic license."

Eden said, "Oh, Cory! You're supposed to deny it and say she is perfect!" Then she giggled.

I smiled.

Eden went on, "It does look like you, but more heroic than you are in real life. Bigger." Her eyes twinkled mischievously.

"Whatever," I said, blushing a bit.

There were a few notes written on the drawing.

As I bent to read them, Cory quickly explained. "I figured you — your character — and the comic would be called Heroette."

"Is my name in it?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I call you Darcy Monet. Is that okay?"

"I guess," I said. "What's Eden called?"

"Dee Dee van Gogh." Eden giggled at that, and I had to laugh.

"Can I see the drawings before they go on the web?" I asked. "I'd like to have some veto power."

Cory squirmed a bit. "I can send you sketches, but by the time it's inked, it's too late to change."

"Hmm," I said, "but if there's something I really object to, I hope you won't put it on the web, or at least you'll take it down if I ask."

He was silent for a bit, considering it.

Eden said, "Cory, you know, she wants to make sure there isn't anything that makes us look stupid or ... well, slutty."

"I hadn't even thought of that," I said. "I was just worried about my life being on the web for all the world to see."

"Oh!" Cory said, in a relieved tone. "Is that all? It wouldn't be your life. It's all imaginary. You're just, like, the model, the inspiration, you know?

"See, this is the thing: in real life you do stuff that people only do in movies. So I thought, what if there was a girl who did that kind of thing all the time and had superpowers and a costume —"

"Yeah, that's another thing," I put in. "I don't like the skirt."

"No?" he asked, "I could change the style. I could put pleats in, or give it a ragged edge, or make it tighter, or add lace... if you show me a skirt you do like..."

"No, no, it isn't that," I said, "it's the length. It's almighty short."

"Well, yeah," he said, as if to say well, what did you expect?

I chewed on my finger for a little bit.

"My mother would kill me," I said, "and my father would flip out."

I thought a little more. "If somebody, anybody, like some clown in Arkansas or New Jersey or Tokyo reads it, they're not going to know that there's a real girl named Marcie Donner, are they?"

"No, no!" he said. "As far as anyone will know, it's all just stuff that I dreamed up in my head."

"Okay," I said. "As long as you agree to these conditions: (1) There can't be any way for people to know my real name, or who I am, or where I live. (2) You can't make me look stupid or slutty or too sexy. (3) I get to see the sketches first, and if I don't like the final drawing, you have to take it down. (4) You don't use anything from my real life without checking with me first. Okay?"

Cory smiled. He looked tremendously relieved.

"I can live with that," he said.

Eden clapped her hands and *almost* gave him a celebratory hug.

"I'll wait until you dry off," she told him with a cute smile.