Look out, world, here I come ...

by Jesse Rabbit

Chapter 16: - Ready or Not…

 

    That night I dreamed I was in the Army, serving my time so I could get my Citizenship and Voters rights, but instead of a gun I had my Watch, and I would point it at the enemy and every time I pressed a button they would either grow old and die before my eyes or turn into children, many of whom had the faces of my family and classmates. I tried to stop firing my Watch, but it kept blasting people, and the number of enemies kept increasing until it seemed there was a solid wall that stretched from horizon to horizon and towered kilometers into the sky. Finally there was just me and a field covered with little kids, all looking up at me as if asking “Well? What now?” And then I woke up, gasping and shivering. The dream, which had been so very vivid seconds before, faded rapidly until I could only remember what I’ve told you above. I cannot, even to this day, remember which gender I was, which at the time worried me quite a lot.

    I got some water and thought about getting back to sleep, but figured it was a lost cause and decided to spend the few hours I had before school in my lab. My hamster, Igor, blinked up at me when I turned on the light and then she (used to be a he, just like me, sigh) rolled up into a ball and went back to sleep. Lucky brainless little furball. I said good morning to my workstation, which responded cheerfully, just as it was programmed to do. I did get a little work done on Project #621: Fabrication of Simple Materials by use of Nanomachines. I was trying to get the little gits to make a diamond plate 1mm thick and 1 cm square, but they kept making a kinda blobby lump of quasi-diamond. You’d think it would be easy to make a simple lattice of carbon molecules, but it had taken me almost two months to produce coal, and I’d been working on diamonds for another. My goal in all this was to be able to make complex shapes out of diamond before the 16^th of January, which is Mom’s birthday, and I wanted to give her a diamond rose. Unfortunately it was looking more and more like Mom would be getting some cleverly constructed quartz glass tulips instead, silica being much easier to work with than carbon.

    Morning finally came and I resigned myself to a day that was not going to be the most pleasant, as I am very crabby when I don’t get enough sleep. Karen dragged me off to school and I tried not to throttle her when she insisted on being happy, cheerful, and - worst of all - upbeat.

    The morning went by almost completely without me noticing, so wrapped up in my grumpy fugue state was I. Monsieur Frank, my French professeur, gave me a pretty scathing lecture about my use of avoir and I wanted to scream at him that I didn’t even know if I was une fille or un garçon, so what did it matter if I couldn’t use blasted avoir the right way. So there I am, grumpily eating my lunch, wondering what else can go wrong, wondering where Karen is, hoping the Trio (and by that I really mean Ty) won’t be annoyed that I decided to eat outside today instead of in Sports Heaven with them (him). I’d just carved the quadratic equation into my mashed potatoes without really noticing when Karen finally materialized next to me. I gave her this look which meant something like “How nice of you to show up and where the hello have you been?” but she just smiled and pointed at something on the other side of me.

    When I turned to look I nearly fell out of my chair, cause Kristen Duncun was sitting right there next to me, smiling like she was planning something evil. I suddenly had a very, very, VEEERRY, bad feeling. In my experience, then and now, whenever a girl smiles at you like that, well lets just say it’s trouble, as in The Music Man trouble, right here in Aqua Vista, with a capital T and that rhymes with G and that stands for Girl. Also for grin.

    I glanced back at Karen and she too was grinning. I was doomed. “What?” I asked, trying not to sound extremely worried.

    “As you might know,” Karen began.

    “Karen and I sit next to each other in geometry.” Kristen finished.

    “And we got to talking,”

    “Seeing as how we meet yesterday, Elayne.” I wasn’t at all sanguine (it means calm) about how Kristen almost purred my name, like I was some kind of prey animal or something, but Karen continued before I could give it any more thought.

    “And Kristen thought you were a really cu… cool girl.”

    “And I know that Karen and you are like two chips in a motherboard.”

    “So Kristen wanted to know if we were busy this weekend, and-”

    “Karen said that you had to cheer on Saturday, but-”

    “That Sunday we were both free. So-”

    “So I said, Cool! And-”

    “And she invited us to spend the day on her dad’s yacht” here I feel compelled to explain that Karen pronounced the word yacht as “Throatwarbler Mangrove” which is a Monty Python reference. This is important cause it explains what Kristen said next.

    “On my dad’s What?”

    I groaned as Karen repeated herself, or at least began to, and then I kicked her in the shin and explained. “That’s what karen calls yachts, cause there’s this old Monty Python sketch where there’s this guy with a huge fake shnoz and his name is spell Raymond Luxury Yacht, but pronounced Throatwarbler Mangrove. Its her being a great big doofus.”

    Kristen just blinked at us and then shrugged and said “Oh. Whatever.” And then her voice went all perky and happy and she grabbed both my hands in hers and practically bounced up and down, “So you’ll come, right? Both of you, Karen already said Yes, if her moms say its okay, so please say you’ll come, I’d lo… really like it. We can get some sun and it goes really fast.”

    For a moment I thought she meant that the sun went really fast, and then I thought maybe she was talking about Sunday, and then I realized she was probably talking about the boat, but by that time I must have nodded or done something else to give her the impression that I’d agreed, ’cause she leaned in and hugged me tight and squealed right in my ear. Then she leaned passed me, nearly knocking me out of my chair and hugged Karen. “Thank you Karen, I owe you one. Ta all!” And with that she left, practically skipping.

    I was just looking to Karen to ask why Kristen owed her anything when the bell rang and we had to go off to class. I immed Karen about it but she just emoticoned me with a J with horns and wouldn’t say anything. She wouldn’t even agree to meet up with me after school, cause she had to have family dinner like she always does on Friday night. In choir Kristen wouldn’t tell me either, but when Miss Roston chided me for talking too much in class, Kristen just told her that we’d been talking about maybe doing an accapella duet at the recital. This got Miss Roston all in a tizzy cause she loves accapella, but no-one ever volunteers to do it cause if singing before an audience is scary with a group of singers behind you and musical accompaniment, think how scary it is without anything but your own voices to rely on. I went pale at the idea, first a Solo and now an Accapella Duet? Was Kristen trying to kill me? I clutched at her arm, trying to telepathically tell her that if I had to go out into those spotlights not once but twice the sheer mortification would see me in the loony-bin if not the morgue before the night was out, but both she and Miss Roston were oblivious to my terror.

    In fact, Miss Roston sent us both to the Library to talk to Miss Pertry about material. As we walked I hissed at Kristen, “I cannot do it… I’m not even going to be able to do a solo! I can’t… all those people… looking at me… I’ll freeze and then you’ll be left all alone in the spotlight with a dumbstruck idiot and no one to back you up and it will be horrible and ruin the” but I didn’t get to finish cause she put her finger up to my mouth and went “Shhhhh!”

    I went silent and blinked up at her, eyes I’m sure filled with dread at the mere idea of performing alone with everyone focused on me. She grinned and shook her head “For such a smart girl, you say stupid things. It’s just stage fright. You’ll be fine. And when the applause starts and you realize that its all for you…” she squealed with glee and hugged me with one arm, “Its like nothing else. It’s like an orgasm, but better.” She looked down at me, “You do know what an orgasm is, right?”

    I nodded, although I didn’t know from personal experience, I’d seen enough movies and read enough books, and they’d been covered in Health and Human Sexuality class.

    “Well applause is so much better, cause it just goes on and on and on. your whole body feels alive, trilling and ringing as a wave washes over you. Its like power cause you made them cheer like that.”

    I shivered and opened my mouth to speak, but it was too dry and I had to close it and swallow hard before I could ask, “What if they, you know, don’t cheer? What if its just dead silence, or if…” I trailed off.

    “If they boo? Are you kidding, at the worst they’ll give you polite applause, we’re middle schoolers, not rockstars or divas, so they aren’t expecting much first of all. And trust me, when we sing, it won’t be polite applause. We’ll bring the toffing roof down. At least I will, and if you don’t help me I’ll tickle you until you scream and then everyone will laugh, and not in the humiliating way but in the that’s so damn funny way. Hi Miss Pertry!” She cried this last out loud enough to make me jump and to earn her a stern reproving glare from our librarian.

    That was how I ended up with the music and recordings for two songs, one for the solo and one for the duet. For my solo I’d picked Alegria, which is my favorite song in the whole world. Its from the show of the same name, by the Cirque du Soleil, which means Circus of the Sun in French. The song, which has lines like “I see a Spark of life shining.” And “there is a love in me raging, Alegria, a joyous magical feeling” is in French, English, and Spanish. Its title means “Joy” and it is simply the most wonderful and glorious song I know. I chose it ’cause I figure there is no way I can mess it up, seeing as how I know it by heart. My mother used to play it for me when I was a baby in the cradle, and I’ve been singing it all my life.

    The other, which Kristen picked out, is called Holding out for a Hero, which is kinda perfect for two girls to sing, cause its about wanting to be saved. I know that sounds kinda sexist, but never in my entire life, with the exception of in the movie Monty Python and Holy Grail, have I ever heard of a boy wanting a hero to save him. Never have I read about a boy wanting to be swept off his feet by a big strong woman. I imagine that in gay teen literature there might be some boys who want big strong men or something like that, but I’ve never read teen literature, gay or straight so that doesn’t count. My idea of literature pretty much went from Roald Dahl and L Frank Baum to Tolstoy and Assimov without skipping a beat.

    Anyway, Kristen made me promise to consider the duet, and said we’d talk about it more on Sunday, and she gave me a contact number, her netmail address, and her IM callsign so I could confirm with her as soon as my parents gave their okay.

    School went pretty fast after that and I was on my way out the doors to my bike when Ty caught up to me. He pulled me around to the side of the building and kissed me quite thoroughly for a few minutes before setting me down and asking me if I was ready for the next day. I shook my head and blushed, although mostly that was cause of the kiss and the fact that my nipples were all hard and kinda throbbing. It was embarrassing and painful and also a little nice, all at once.

    He just gave me a smile and said I’d do fine. He reminded me about getting to the school early and about making sure I knew how to do at least one of the cheers so I wouldn’t look stupid and embarrass the Trio, although he didn’t use those words and was actually really sweet about it. When I got on my bike he pinched my butt and I squeaked and he chuckled, a deep chuckle that made me feel kinda tingly inside.

    When I got home I did indeed do some practicing in our basement dojo, a padded room my parents use for sparring and that me and my siblings use for gymnastics practice. Its nice and smells of cedarwood. I’d just worked up a good sweat when Miss Wei’s voice echoed through the house intercom.

    “Elan. If you not busy, please come to kitchen and help with Dinner.”

    I called up to her that I needed to hop into the shower but I’d be up in five minutes and she said good cause her kitchen was no place for smelly kids.

    When I got there she gave me an apron and tied it on me, then pointed to a big bowl full of matzo meal, and told me to make balls. I got the step ladder out and began to work on the matzoballs. After about ten minutes Miss Wei, who was working on the hot and sour soup that the balls are for, looked across the range at me (we have a range in a center island in our kitchen) and says, as calm as you please “So, you girl now? Very strange.”

    I just stood there for about five minutes, hands buried in crumbled flatbread and egg, unable to think until Miss Wei snapped at me to get back to work. I came back to reality with a start and shivered all over. Our nickname for Miss Wei is god, both cause she always seems to know everything, be everywhere, and is a really nice lady who takes no guff from nobody, and because her name is Ya Wei, which sounds a lot like Yahweh, the hebrew name for god. So I didn’t ask how she knew, which she’d never tell anyway. I just looked at her and said, “Yep.”

    Without looking up from her soup she said, “Do you this with tiny robots you make in lab? Like you do Igor?” I nodded, remembering what I’d told my sister Sam, and thinking, somewhat triumphantly, “So god doesn’t know everything does she!”

    Miss Wei just shook her head, “So strange. When I was a girl, boys were boys, girls were girls. In china many girls were not wanted cause only one child was permitted and fathers wanted sons. So many girls died or were… aborted.” The last she whispered, as if afraid to say it out loud. I dimmly remembered my teacher’s talking about abortions in history class and a little in health class, so I knew what she was talking about, at least a little. “it was not good time. Now everyone want to be something different, girls want to be boys, boys want to be girls, boys sleep with boys who want to be girls sleeping with girls who want to be boys. Aya! It make my brain hurt.” She pointed her spoon at me. “Why you want to be girl, You nice boy! A little small, kinda shy, but nice boy!”

    I shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t like I could tell her that I didn’t want to be a girl and was stuck that way, cause a) I didn’t want to give up the secret and b) I could have been a boy a lot more than I had been this week but had chosen against it. That realization gave me pause and it was a little while before I said, “I just wanted to give it a try, you know, see how it was different.” And this time, I kinda meant it. I was beginning to enjoy the exploration of being a girl, although I still felt as if I was Elan in someone else’s body.

    Grunting, Miss Wei added the vegetables she’d been cutting up to the soup and said “Difference obvious, boys have winky, girls have coochie. Boys have muscles, girls have breasts. Boys do work, girls tend house, raise kiddies.”

    I was a little shocked to hear her speak that way, but then I realized that in her culture that was indeed the way it had been for more than five thousand years. It was a little disconcerting and it warred a little with what my grandfather had said the night before. I continued to help and pretty soon the hot and sour matzoball soup was finished and the Tuna Steaks were coated in Sesame Wasabi crust and ready to be put on the grill. Dinner went well, and my mother gave me a big smile when Miss Wei told everyone that I’d helped cook, although Pig questioned if I had poisoned the food and got a stern reprimand from dad.

    After dinner I went up to my room and puttered around for a while. I was just getting ready for bed when a horrible thought occurred to me and I dashed over to the phone. I hit the button to dial Karen’s room and a few seconds later a sleepy voice answered, “Elayne? Zatchu?”

    I remember thinking it was kinda creepy how fast she adjusted to using that name, but I shrugged it off in the face of real disaster. “Yeah Karen. I got a problem. I need your help!”

    “Hunh? What timezit?”

    “Its not that late, its only,” I looked at the clock, “23 hundred.”

    “Oh, musta just drifted off. What’s up?”

    “I just was thinking about tomorrow and I had… I realized that… Karen, what do I wear to the arena, cause I don’t want to show up in uniform, but should I wear boy or girl clothes, and how should I do my hair and nails, and what about makeup? Most of the cheerleaders wear at least a little, and I’ve never worn any.” I kinda trailed off after that and just listened to Karen giggle at me.

    Finally I snapped, “Thanks a lot, so nice to have supportive friends.” Which only made her giggle more. Her face popped up on the vid screen as she finally turned it on and she gave me a huge smile.

    “My little girl is growing up!” she chortled. “I’m so happy I could plotz. I’m quelling, really!”

    “That’s Kvelling, you git. I wish you could be there tomorrow, cause I’m really, really nervous about this. I mean, after tomorrow, everyone in school will know I’m a girl, for better or worse. And I don’t know how I feel about that. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel about it.” I put my head down on my arms and sighed .

    From the screen which I couldn’t see from my current position, Karen said “Chill babe. You are a sexy girl, and everyone will just be drooling all over you, so no worries. At least if you gotta be a girl you get to be sexy, right?”

    I shuddered and moaned, “Noooooooooooo. Nononononono. Not sexy. Not sexy. Anything but sexy. I’m eleven! I’m too young to be sexy.”

    Karen giggled “Your sisters both hit puberty at age nine, I hit it this summer Elayne. By the time my mother reached age twelve she had huge knockers, although not as big as they are now.” I knew which mother she was talking about, cause Sanna is almost flat-chested, but Linda’s breasts are like the size of my head, each. When I just moaned again, Karen said “Cute then?”

    “Not that either!” I mumbled into my arms.

    “How about cuddly?”

    I just groaned.

    “Hey, I got an idea! When I get my watch, maybe I can steal you away from Ty and I’ll be your boyfriend!”

    I lifted my head at that, snapping it up so fast I almost gave myself whiplash. “Ty’s not my… You and I aren’t…” I just kinda trailed off as she giggled at me, so I glowered at her until she stopped.

    “Elayne, Elayne, Elayne. You are too easy. Look, you know that I’m not sure whether I’m into girls or boys or whatever, but I promise you, if I ever do decide that we should be together, I’ll tell you straight out and let you decide on your own. And since we’ll both have watches, we can cross the gender balance bridge if we ever come to it. Anyway, I think you have enough admirers as it is. I know I do. Did you know that Davis sent me like five dozen tulips with a note asking me to go with him to the dance?”

    I gave her a sour look, “No. I didn’t. How would I have known?”

    She grinned, “It wasn’t really a question doofus, I was telling you that he asked me to the dance.”

    “What dance?”

    Karen sighed, “Boys! How can you not know what dance?”

    “I just don’t, okay. I had no reason to know. I don’t usually go. Neither do you!”

    She blushed a little at that, “Only cause I’ve never been asked! Same reason I’ve never been felt up for that matter. Or kissed. You are so lucky. What’s kissing Ty like?”

    “Ahem, focus here? What about my problem?” I said, quickly changing the subject

    “That’s not a problem, just wear girl’s stuff, and set the watch to give you a little lipstick and longer darker eyelashes, thinner eyebrows and you are set. And remember to remove the tattoo, bonehead. Now back to the kissing…” she gave me a wicked smile, but I wasn’t about to let the conversation get back on track.

    “Wow, look at the time. Gotta go. Love yas. Kisses and hugs and all that. Night.” And with that I went to bed, remembering to set my alarm and to turn off my phone’s ringer.

***

    Morning dawned bright and, as it is wont to do in late autumn, not that early, and so it was that I biked to school in the crepuscular (it means twilight) gloom of NoCal dawn. As I crested the hill I saw the sea down past the schools, stretching out into the darkness and I shivered a little. The sea has always been mysterious to me, and that morning I felt as if I was at sea, uneasy, awash with new and strange feelings, caught in the moments between childhood and adulthood, between manhood and womanhood, between home and school, between the safety of what I had always known and the uncertainty of the future. I realized that I was physically at the perfect metaphor for my condition. Poised twixt darkness and light, at the top of a hill, looking down at the ocean of possibilities, alone. I could choose to remain as I was and go nowhere at all, soon to be overtaken by the light; go home, return to the security of what had been, and still the light would come; or to strike out for my destination, unswayed by the unseen dangers ahead, and let the light chase me.

    Really, what choice did I have? Science is about data, knowledge has a price, and nothing worth having is easy. Ignorance is a cop out and although I have often been afraid, sometimes too terrified to move, I have never in my life been a coward, too scared to do something simply because I was worried about the outcome. I’ve always gone through with things even when I’ve dreaded them. Like the solo I’d agreed to do, and like keeping the watch a secret, and like I’d almost certainly agree to the duet, eventually. When I’d been about four or five, and scared to sleep in the dark, my grandmother had picked me up, carried me into my room, and turned off all the lights.

    “Elan,” she’d said to me, holding me tight as I tried to squirm free, crying in terror, “There is nothing in the dark that is not here in the light. You are not afraid of the dark, but of the unknown. Do not be afraid, but seek to embrace the dark, like I am embracing you.”

    I’d never forgotten that, which is why, just as the sun began to rise behind me, I rode down the hill and into the parking lot where twenty or twenty-five cheerleaders and roughly twice that many athletes greeted me. I barely recognized Ty, so bundled against the chill was he, but since he was the tallest student at Cascade, he stood out a little.

    I was just waving to him when arms wrapped themselves around me and I was hoisted in the air. I must admit I gave a surprised shriek and squealed a bit at that. Ty walked over and kinda grunted “Put her down Davis you trog. You gonna break her. Mornin’ ’Layne. You lookin’ nice.”

    As I was gently returned to earth I looked up, face flushed a little at the chill and a little with exertion, but mostly at the complement. I was about to respond when Coach Nicols told everyone to line up and took attendance and then we were on the bus and away.   Somehow I ended up in the midst of all the cheerleaders who claimed they were protecting me from the quote-unquote naughty boys who might try and take advantage of me while the coaches were otherwise occupied. At first I couldn’t figure out what the other girls were talking about but after a few minutes of listening to their suggestions and insinuations I felt my face begin to warm and at that moment I kinda wished I was anywhere but there. I think I even tried to hide under a seat at one point, but the girls decided a good tickling might get me over my shyness and proceeded to test their hypothesis.

    I was gasping for air and batting their hands away when we arrived at the Armstrong Cube (Center for Urban Beatification and Excellence, I kid you not) and almost everyone was off the bus before I’d managed to catch my breath again. I hurried to catch up with them but if it hadn’t been for Coach Nicols directing me to the Locker Room I’d have been totally lost in the underground maze of corridors, parking areas, and event pre-staging venues.

    For what happened next I can only claim temporary brain lock… Yes I’d seen girls naked before, in sex ed, on TV, Karen, my mother and sisters and cousins once or twice, and most recently myself, but I tell you now, nothing prepares you for the reality of walking into a locker room full of sixty or seventy cheerleaders (i.e. hotties) and athletes (also hotties) in various states of dress and undress. I opened that door and my mind went numb. I think some part of me was just waiting -- like a deer caught in a hunter’s sights -- to be seen and for the screams and cries of outrage to pour down upon me… but of course they didn’t come cause I was allowed to be there.

    Tabitha Moorehead, the Cheer Captain found me standing in the door, oogling all the luscious pulchritude (I have a very weird vocabulary) and dragged me over to where our team was changing. “Get changed, we’ve got like ten minutes to be out on the field.” Easy for her to say. A) she was already in her mini-skirt and belly-revealing top. B) she was actually - at least to all outward appearances -- comfortable being seen in public wearing an outfit that was at once less revealing and yet somehow more erotic, if that’s the right word, than a string bikini. And C) she wasn’t distracted by some rather profoundly disturbing tingling sensations that had, the moment I walked in the door, begun to well up deep inside of me… well, I don’t know about that last, but since I later saw her making out with… well that’s a tale for another time. Let’s just say that I’ve never gotten any indication that Tabitha Moorehead is anything other than completely boy-crazy and leave it at that.

    Let me tell you this though, for those of you who’ve never had to deal with swapping genders because of a bio-nano-tech Watch (or any other non-surgical instantanious method) If you think being an adolescent discovering that members of the opposite sex aren’t actually giant evil cookie machines and might be good for snogging or fondling or the occasional disturbing dream is hard, imagine discovering that you’ve turned into a member of said gender and discovering that those feelings haven’t vanished. Now walk into a changing room full of atractive individuals and see if your brain can withstand the hormone overload. Mine couldn’t. I just sat there on the bench until everyone had left except for Tabitha.

    She’d apparently decided I was still being shy because, right before she left, she said. “Okay, the coast is clear, you’ve got two and a half minutes. But Elayne…”

    I looked up at her, “Yeah?"

    "You’re gonna have to get used to changing in front of strange girls sooner or later.” And with a flick of her long hair she was out the door and up the ramp to the field. I shook my head to clear it of both the metal images of all those girls in various states of undress and the confusion those images were causing. It didn’t work at first so I tried again. When my mind stubbornly refused to rise out of the gutter I got changed.

    Let me tell you, if you’ve never put on a cheer-skirt, the first time to do so is not when you are emotionally concussed and in a hurry. Two minutes later I walked out of the locker-room, blissfully unaware that the skirt was on backwards. I was well on my way up the ramp when Ty stepped out of the shadows… well, not really. He got up from where he’d been fastening his track shoes and smiled at me in that “Ain’t I da Man” way I’d gotten so used to over the six days.

    “All set, Layne?” he looked me up and down, then grinned, “Guess not.”

    “Huh?” I said, proving once more that Intellect has nothing to do understanding people.

    “Skirt’s on backward” is what he said, but he might as well have been speaking Tibetan for all that. I looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown horns and repeated myself. “Huh?”

    Rather than trying to explain to his obviously mentally impaired girl-friend -- another thing I was confused about -- he pulled me close and fixed my skirt. His nearness made me feel suddenly very small and very conscious of the fact that I was wearing a very skimpy skirt and a top that showed way too much of my tummy.

    Once my clothes looked presentable, or at least looked that way to Ty, he took me by the hand and lead me out onto the field. Ok, I’ve been in the stands at Armstrong before, at least a dozen times in point of fact, but I’ve never been on the field before. Never ever. As I took in the vast (and very noisy crowd) I froze. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, and as the roaring got suddenly a thousand times louder and then began to rapidly fade away to silence I realized I was going to faint again. My vision went all dark and I must have staggered against Ty because the next second I was in his arms and he was whispering something in my ear.

    At first I couldn’t make it out but as I focused on it, the silence parted and was not replaced by the roar of the crowd. A few moments later I recognized it as the lullaby “hush little darling” and I relaxed, just a little. When I was once again stable (physically, not mentally… the first is possible, the second? After this week, even if genetics weren’t a factor, I doubt I’d ever be even close to stable again.) I pushed myself away from him and smiled weakly. “Sorry, just…” I trailed off, unable to think of what I could say by way of explaination.

    “Stage fright?”

    I nodded. “Yeah. I kinda get nervous when people notice me.”

    “Yeah. My sister was that way… you know before…”

    I nodded again. “Yeah, before the accident. You sang to her too?”

    I swear he blushed, but with his dark complexion it was impossible to tell. “Sometimes. She’d smile and…”

    I hugged him, forgetting for a moment that I was in front of forty thousand people. When I released him he held on for a second and had this funny look in his eye when we were at last face to face again. I couldn’t take the intesity of his gaze so I looked out at the crowd, searching for our school’s colors. As I scanned the sea of faces I caught a glimpse of a smirking, malicious little face and froze. There in the crowd, her beady little eyes fixed right on me was Pig.

    She noticed me noticing her and do you want to know how I know she noticed? I know because, keeping her eyes fixed on mine she mimed making a call and then ever so slowly drew her index finger across her throat.

    Before I could, I don’t know -- freak out, run into the stands and tazer her, hide, break down in a pittiful sobbing mass -- Ty took me by the shoulder and guided me over to where the other two were warming up. He announced his presence by rather cheerily saying, “Hey guys, look-see what found.”

    Jim grinned, “Ooo it’s a mascot. We needed one-a them.”

    “Still, it’s a shame she ain’t got bigger tits.” Davis added, then howled with laughter. Ah the joys of adolescent humor.

    Ty tensed and Jim threw an empty power-ade bottle at Davis . Before things could devolve into a full fledged ruckus, the loud speakers blared and an anouncer began to welcome everybody to the proceedings, yada, yada, yada, and so on.

    Pretty soon the formalities were over and it was time for the competition. I did my best to cheer the boys on, bouncing up and down, yelling, trying not to be too selfconcious and only managing because I knew that everyone was focused on the competators and not on the idiot girl in the stupid skirt on the sidelines. I brought them their shoes and those light weight jacket and pants suits they wear over their running gear. I was especially good at getting them towels and power-ade before and after each race, not to mention durring the longer ones (which are classified as cross country I learned). I even gave out a few good luck kisses (on the cheeks, you pervs) and more than one consolation kiss. Still by the end of the five hour meet, Ty had won six races, including heats, for a total of two medals, Davis had won three, and Jim only one. Of course his only event was the 5000 meter, so he only was eligible for one.

    I was dead on my feet as we reboarded the bus, but strangely elated. Never in my life had I been as active or as in public as I’d been today and somehow I’d survived both. The excersize hadn’t killed me, and neither had the crowd. The bus was fairly buzzing too, happy cheerleaders and exausted but amped athletes. Still, as person after person either drifted off into nap land or hushed conversations, my elation slowly faded as dread over what lay at home loomed large in my mind.

    There was simply no way Pig would ever not tell my parents. This was too good an opportuinity to pass up. I was busted and I knew it. Pig isn’t stupid. All week I’d been dressing like a girl, and she’d gotten in trouble for it. She’d even seen me in a filmy nightie, which she almost certainly could have seen enough through to put two and two together and get a nearly perfect intiger, at least had she not been so stunned at the time. She’d have to know I was a girl, and if she didn’t then she could tell my parents that I was a crossdresser and was kissing boys… boys who were two years older than me.

    Busted was exactly the word for it. I considered calling Karen and asking her advice, but I didn’t want her to get into trouble on my account. Yeah, I know that real friends are always willing to get into trouble on each other’s behalf, but real friends don’t get each other into trouble when it can be avoided. So I sat and I stewed and I ignored Ty when he tried to talk to me and Davis when he made some stupid remark that got him slugged a few times in the shoulder. I sat and stewed and stewed as I sat.

    What would I say to my parents? What could I say? I could reveal the secret of the watch, just get everything out in the open and be done with it. The problem with that idea was that my parents would try to interfere. Also they wouldn’t want their own presents and would almost certainly try and take the watch away. If they couldn’t manage that they’d probably take me out of school to minimize my social hardship factors and to keep people from finding out. They’d also make me see a councilor and probably make me act like a boy at all times. They’d take away the programming manual. Anyway, if I told them the truth Sam would know I lied to her, and be hurt. So clearly I couldn’t tell them the truth. So what could I do. I stewed somemore.

    I could tell them what I’d told Sam. That was the easiest thing to do. I’d get in trouble, sure, and they would take away my unsupervised lab privileges, and they’d probably still make me see a councilor but… I could see no other way out. Still there was one big problem with this plan and it was a big one. The question was, was it one I could live with.

    As we pulled into Cascade’s parking lot I ran through my reasoning again in my mind, checking and double-checking everything I was going to say and every possible counter argument. Did I have a choice? I had to admit that I did, in fact, have a choice. Was it a pleasant one? Not even remotely.

    I got off the bus, thinking about that last bit. That was grandpa’s whole point wasn’t it. Unpleasant choices and having to make them. I looked over at my bike and then walked the other way. I headed down the hill that seperated Cascade Middle from Crestview Elementary and sat on one of the swings in the deserted playground. I sat there, gently rocking back and forth for a long, long time. My watch beeped, telling me I had an incoming call. I didn’t even bother to look and see who it was, just connected the transmission, said “I’m fine. I’ll be home soon.” And hung up.

    Grandpa had said that the whole point of this experiment was to make a better kind of human. And to teach me about being proud of who and what I am. He wanted me to make a choice. On the face of it, that choice was to be a boy or a girl, and the date of decision was 51 weeks and a day away, so there seemed to be no hurry. But I’d missed the biggest choice of all, one I hadn’t realized I’d missed or that it was even a choice at all.

    I’d been going along for the ride the entire time, acting as if the universe (or my grandfather) had played a mean, cruel, and unreasonable joke on me, forcing me to act and be a certain way. But that wasn’t it at all. Not really. I’d just missed it. I had chosen to think of it as unreasonable, as cruel, as unfeeling, as something forced on me. I’d chosen to complain, to just try and cope with the changes happening to my body. But they were also happening to me, to my whole being. And it was time to embrace the process, not to fight against it. I wasn’t a passenger, I was the pilot, and dammit all, if I had to pick the destination, I was going to chart the course.

    That decided, I pulled out the manual, navigated my way to the Conversion Engine menu and tapped the Girl Year option. A short description popped up on the screen, notifying me that the Boy Day Lock Out feature was irreversible and would also void any emergency Boy Reversions. It asked me if I wanted to proceed.

    I tried to say yes, but my throat was too dry and way to tight, so it came out as a kind of half choke. I tried again, but couldn’t manage it any better this time. I got off the swing and pulled a half empty power-ade bottle from my backpack. I took a long swig and tried again. My hands were shaking.

    The screen cleared and then a calendar function appeared. It listed how just how much boy time I was giving up and pointed out that I wouldn’t be able to be a boy again until 11/01/2030, 11:01 pst. Again it asked me to confirm. I growled, annoyed at this and said yes again. Grandpa’s face appeared on the screen.

    “What’s going on?” he asked.

    “I’m cancelling Boy Time.”

    “Why?”

    “Never you mind why, just let me do it. It’s my choice.”

    “My scans show you to be emotionally stressed and physically exhausted. I think it best you wait and-”

    I cut him off. “Look you ass. This is my life. My choices. You said to choose, but flipping back and forth isn’t choosing. Its vacilation. Its waffling. Its taking the easy way out. I’ve been a boy, whether I appreciated it or not, for 11 years. To really know what being a girl is like I’ve got to be one all the time. I can’t just be one while waiting for Boy Day’s to come around. I’ve got to go whole hog, and find out what kind of girl or boy or person I really am and I’m going to do it my way! So shut up and let me do this.”

    And you know what? He shut up and the screen cleared and it flashed “Girl Year Mode Activated.”

    So I got on my bike and rode home.

 

To be concluded in Part 17 (already written) The Epilogue is Prologue.