A Field trip

By Lynda Shermer

Chapter 1 - A certain magical railtrip

In a way, it all started when I ran across a school uniform in a thrift shop.

I'd recently moved to Chicago from my original home in Minneapolis, with my mother, after the breakup with my father.

The way things worked out, my new school would not accept me until after the new year, which left me at loose ends, as it was only mid-October; my mother worked in an office downtown all day, and so I was in a new apartment, alone, having to pass time in an unfamiliar city. Mom wanted me to stay home, of course, but I wanted to take advantage of my rare freedom. Public transit and cultural institutions and free time; when would I have all three again?

I'd always been interested in the evolution of how people saw their world, and for some periods, that is shown most clearly in their art, and here, the Art Institute and the Field Museum were within a short transit ride on the El; I tossed a coin to decide between them and the Art Institute won. Some days, I wonder what would have happened had it fallen the other way.

As I said, my mother works, and so I'd wait for her to leave in the morning, then leave, myself, taking the el downtown to the Art Institute. At first, I'd just wander the galleries and read the plaques (pausing to look at the evolution of the hook and eye fastener on armor, for example), and then hit the library branch near home afterwards, to learn what I should have observed.

But in the galleries, adults kept stopping me and asking why I wasn't in school, or if I'd wandered off from my tour group. Proving I was doing what I was supposed to be doing there was getting time consuming. So many well-meaning adults in the world! I began to understand the appeal of hiding and browsing after the museum closed, as in that mixed up children's book.

Well, and also branch libraries are not really big on art history. Eventually I figured out I'd get more information if I attached myself to a school tour and followed along, listening to the docent's lecture.

The first time I tried that, though, I must have stood out, somehow, because I got asked to leave. Somehow they figured out I didn't belong, seemingly effortlessly. It must have been more than my lack of a bagged lunch, though. So I'd have to think about how to blend in better. I'd have to find an ironclad way to avoid having my presence questioned; something that would make it inconceivable for them to consider checking if I belonged. (yes, that word does mean what I think it means, I'm sure.)

I was at thinking about that while browsing at a local thrift store, looked for a cheap way to increase the size of my wardrobe, when I saw it: a complete school uniform, in what seemed to be my size. It didn't particularly matter to me that it was a girl's uniform (yes, I'm small for my age, thank you so much for pointing that out.) It seemed the perfect disguise; surely anyone seeing it would automatically assume I was just a student they hadn't seen before. I'd dressed as a girl for halloween, and it didn't particularly bother me (I found myself oddly at home in the role, actually); all that mattered to me then was it was a disguise. Still, maybe the fact that I considered it so casually should have given me more pause...

As it was, I piled it in my cart, and went off in search of items to pad out my shopping, so it would seem less noteworthy.

I found winter coats, girls and boys. I had a good boy's coat from Minneapolis, of course, but the Chicago winters, while nothing to sneeze at, were not as severe as Minneapolis, and a lighter coat would be a welcome addition to my closet. And, indeed, my purchases passed without undue comment.

Taking everything home, I hid the uniform and the girl's coat in the back of my closet well before my mother got home and asked me about my day. I had a cover story prepared about spending the day at the library.

My mother joshingly threatened me with asking for a term paper on art history.

The next day, as soon as she left, I disinterred my finds and inspected them more closely; the uniform had some signs of wear; clearly, it had been worn for some for time. Perfect. I tried it on; I was going to need shoes and underwear. For shoes, I'd look for a pair of Mary Janes.

For my hair, I wanted something like a brown, curly, but coarse haired wig, and I'd have to keep an eye out for an unflattering pair of glasses.

And brown socks, a little fuzzy, I figured. I had a picture of this girl clearly in my mind.

I went out to shop for the rest of my disguise.

The uniform, thanks to to economics of resale, had been cheap; the shoes and the wig were probably going to be the biggest expenses. Fortunately, my mom had augmented my allowance, to aid me in getting around on mass transit; she insisted I eat a balanced diet, and avoid fast food, which raised costs considerably so she compensated for that.

She also worried about me traveling in the city, but I'd promised to stick to the museums, so she was willing to give me a little slack. I was going to "bend" that rule a bit, today, though.

From my reading of the transit agency's website, I knew that if I didn't pick up a connecting train at the Howard Street Station, I could, instead, switch to regular bus routes. Doing that, I'd quickly reach Andersonville, a major LGBTQ community in Chicago, where I could hope to find some understanding merchants.

It took some looking, but at last I found a couple of stores listed that ought not look sideways at me while I shopped. So off to the buses I went

The shoes were no challenge, as my feet had always been a bit small. The lingerie was pricier than I'd realized and put a strain on my budget, but at least I could get fitted so I knew I would have the right sizes. I'd have to economize on the wig a bit, though.

And that was the hardest purchase, as I'd expected, but for a different reason; a nice woman who ran the shop kept trying to steer me to wigs that would look pretty, whereas I was trying to be a bit plain and avoid attention. Finally I found a curly brown one in a back corner of the shop, which seemed to have been mistreated by a novice beautician; over the objections of the shop owner, I tried it on, and knew I'd found what I was looking for. The lady said if I ever thought better of it, she would give me a discount on the other one, but was willing to cut me a deal on the one I'd selected. After making sure I promised to be back for the Pride parade next June, she rang me up and I'd achieved most of my goals. The glasses, I found at Walgreens; reading glasses, with slight magnification and thick black frames.

Back home, using a YouTube tutorial, I fashioned fake braces out of beads (well, actually small pieces of metal hardware; the tutorial used beads, but I want unadorned braces) and paperclips. If I held my mouth tight as though embarrassed by my braces, no one should notice they were fake, and they should slur my speech as they got in my way.

My complexion, on the other hand, was a problem. I had disgustingly good looking skin, and the girl I was picturing clearly had problems with acne. (she also had bushy eyebrows, which eliminated the necessity of me trimming them, lest you think that the visualization induced nothing but hardships.)

At first, I experimented with covering the "acne" I didn't have, hoping that would look right. A few daubs of the wrong color foundation didn't do it, though. I used techniques from an old theatrical makeup handbook I'd found at the library, utilizing tissue paper and oatmeal, intended originally for monster makeup, here. After some Horrifying early failures, I found a look that was mild enough to evince mild sympathy rather than evoke pity. Perfect!

I even planned my lunch meticulously, figuring what flavor of yogurt my character would favor. I found an online survey, and chose the third most popular flavor of yogurt amongst teenage girls. I was clearly enough of a rebel not to be impressed by the most popular flavor, after all.

The uniform eliminated the need to make most fashion choices, fortunately. Having assembled the pieces, I tried it out. There, staring me in the face was a gawky, horse faced teenaged girl. She'd not stand out in a crowd. Fortunately, my voice had not changed yet; I would sound odd, but acceptably female.

The next day, I couldn't wait for mom to leave. Watching out the front window, as soon as I saw her round the corner on her way to the El, I stripped and donned my disguise.

Once finished, I prepared my bag lunch, keeping one eye on the clock. Grabbing my girl's jacket, I left through the back of my building, running to catch the last morning Express train to the loop.

Once there, I travelled the remaining block on foot. There, in front of me, was the Art Institute and it's iconic lion guarded front steps. No one had bothered me or even looked at me that I'd noticed; in my uniform and carrying my book bag, I might as well have been invisible. I was right on time, too; the school buses were just disgorging their student tours onto the steps. I stealthily crossed the street, and looked for a likely group of students to attach myself to.

Suddenly, my sleeve was tugged; "We're lining up over here," I was informed by a clear skinned red haired girl, in what certainly looked like a close match for my own uniform. I decided it was fate, and went where she had pointed.

"You must be in different classes from me; I'm Sally," she continued.

I had to quickly come up with a name. Thinking of the texture of my somewhat unkempt wig, I replied, "I'm Barb."

The two of us formed up near the back of the line, then we all filed into the building. Permission slips had evidently been checked before anyone got on the bus for the field trip, so my own carefully mud stained and torn effort was not needed, which was fortunate, as I hadn't even known what school to make it for. One officious looking student was counting people and looking puzzled at the list on his clipboard.

The tour went in and up the main stairs to the the room containing "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte", a pointilist masterpiece of people relaxing and strolling in a park, where all the tours at the Art Institute seem to start; It's in an area that spacious and easy to gather in, and is an easily understandable work of art.

"Wow! Imagine having to wear a bustle like that!" Sally remarked to me, looking at a figure in the foreground of the painting. As my own panties were slightly padded, I thought it best not to comment...

From there, we went down a hallway of dark, sepia toned portraiture from the Renaissance. I'd never been able to figure out if it was the lack of artificial light of the age, or if the museum just really needed to clean them.

"So dark; so many sour looking faces," I whispered to Sally.

"Yeah; I guess the food wasn't very good then. There always seems to be rotten fruit in the still lifes," she observed.

Listening to the docent talk about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, I was glad I'd read up on the period; I could listen with half an ear, and split my observations between the art and Sally and her classmates.

Still, I was struggling to see how much the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had been at odds with their rough contemporaries, the french Impressionists (who I was much impressed by), and noticing their devotion to more or less accurate representation of the figures in their paintings, when Sally nudged me and said to me, "That's you."
The plaque said it was "Beata Beatrix", by Dante Gabriel Rosetti, 1872. (You see why I went to the library after reading them? Who was he, and why was he important?)

I craned my face upwards in imitation of the figure, "You think? I don't see you here; I guess we'll have to look in the abstracts..." I joked. Sally responded by punching me in the upper arm.

From there, we passed into a more recent era. While looking at the Grant Wood's "American Gothic" (that famously dour farm couple) in the modern gallery, it occurred to me that Sally made a good companion for this sort of thing. I was enjoying myself and her company, and no one was trying to remove me from this tour; I was learning things, and felt contented.

When we sat in the lunchroom to eat our bag lunches, I carefully approached the topic of which school Sally went to. When I found out the answer, it was like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky. Hers was my school; the one I'd be going to in January! I'd somehow managed to connect with my future classmates. I immediately thought of all kinds of questions I wanted to ask her, but as I was supposed to already be a student, I bit my tongue and dared not ask any of them. Still, when it came time to leave, I boarded the bus with the rest, confident that I knew where it was going. That same officious kid counted us and again looked at his list askance, but didn't do anything about it.

Returning home, I snuck into my apartment and removed my disguise. I had plenty of time before my mother returned, but I wanted to be sure I did a good job of removing my makeup and "acne" before then.

That night, I thought a lot about the school group, and about Sally. I'd missed the camaraderie of being a student amongst my peers, even given the uncertainties I'd be facing at a new school, uncertain of where I might belong in the pecking order. And now, I found I was missing Sally; her wit and her observations. But suddenly it occurred to me I didn't have to. Sally had mentioned going to a football game next weekend. Certainly "Barb" could attend that, as well. A plan began to take shape in my mind.

But, of course, it was not easy. Outsiders hanging around schools are not considered quite the thing, these days. I was going to have to forge an ID, and it was not going to be valid in their database. The one break I got was that nothing I was wearing was going to cause trouble with the metal detectors popping up everywhere at school events these days. (At least, I didn't think my braces would set one off.)

A trip to my nearby library turned up a recent yearbook in the reference collection, and a poorly observant advisor had let a blow up of part of an ID form the background of some pages, I was going to have to mosaic several of those to restore its full appearance, and then shrink it to the real size, which I could assume was the size of a wallet ID pocket. I'd have to do a picture of Barb a little younger than she appeared now, but phone apps did that easily (I was careful to wear different clothing. It had to be my most androgynous outfit, but I managed. I made a note to get Barb more clothes.)

Of course, I was going to have to come up with a last name. Tired of always being towards the end of every alphabetical lineup, I decided on the last name "Abbott". Sally's last name was Ackerman; we'd end up pretty close together. My actual last name was Walsh.

The advisor hadn't been totally asleep; the ID number in the image in the yearbook was blurred out, but I managed to get a glance at one at a nearby convenience store, which offered student discounts, which allowed me to see how many digits they used, how formatted, and which were letters... I embossed the number I made up on my plastic fake with a heated paperclip.

The sign in front of the school supplied the name of the team and the colors. I made another note to get some scarves in school colors. The yearbook had shown the mascot; the local paper told me when the game was to start. I was set.

I changed in the laundry room in the basement of my building, securing the door by jamming a chair under the doorknob. After walking to the school, my forged ID seemed to pass the cursory examination at the gate to the field, outside the portable metal detector. I ran into the same officious kid from the field trip, but fortunately before he could question me more closely about my ID (which seemed to have attracted his attention somehow), an altercation broke out over some kids trying to sneak beer into the stands. I took advantage of the distraction to grab my forged ID back and dash through the metal detector. It stayed mute, and he failed to pursue me. I climbed into the stands on the home team side, looking for Sally.

There she was! Clearly the girls with her were friends. I waved and called out, and she waved me over.

I sat down on the edge of their group. One of them nudged me in the side and passed me a flat bottle in a brown paper bag. "Is this...?", I started. "Yeah; Vodka," said a girl I gather was called Sarah. "No, I better not," I said, passing the bottle discreetly back, "I hate the aftertaste of alcohol, So thanks, but no."

Actually, I have an addictive personality type, so I don't indulge in alcohol. I'm bad enough with sodas.

The other girls (except Sally, I noted interestedly) looked dismissive of me, after hearing this.

The home team won, by the way. It was a well fought game, the cheerleaders were cute and active, too; I watched them appreciatively, not realizing until later that Sally watched me watching them...

As we all filed off the bleachers, Sally touched my arm. "Want to hold a study session this weekend?"

"Sure, what subjects?"

"Geometry. I'm having some problems with proofs."

I was good at that! What luck.

"I'm pretty good at that. What time and where?"

"Saturday, 1 pm, my place?"

On the weekend. I'd have to pick up some casual clothes. I'd need to wear something other than my uniform, but I could do that the next day.

"Sure. What's the address?"

She named the address; she lived on the far side of the school from where I lived, but only a few blocks away.

And having made the arrangements, I said goodbye, and split off for the field house complex.

The game had gone long; I was going to have to change before going home and offering mom my ticket stub as proof of where I'd been. Fortunately, the field house was open to allow washroom and locker room access. I tried the door knobs and found a utility closet I could take off my disguise in. While I was in there, I heard footsteps and voices outside and I got really scared. I suddenly realized I'd made a fake ID for Barb, but not one for Dave! If I was caught, I couldn't establish my right to be there!

Fortunately, the people passed by; relieved, I stuffed my disguise into my backpack. Exiting the closet, I saw that kid from the gate again. He didn't seem concerned with me at that moment, though, as I was going OUT of the building. I walked the five blocks home, alone, in the dark, trying not to think of how scary this would have been as Barb.

At home, mom accepted my excuse, and just asked me to tell her ahead of time, next time. I showed her my ticket stub, and I described the action of the game and a few details of the cheerleader routines to her, which was enough to put her mind at ease.

The next day, I figured I'd start off with the resale shop. It seemed a likely source of casual clothes. I was looking for skinny jeans, what I gathered were called "Ballet" flats, and a sweater.

I found the flats, gold colored, but nothing else at the resale shop was in good enough shape for the main outfit. There was a bus stop out front, I figured another trip to Andersonville was in order.

Last time I'd been here, I hadn't bought any regular clothes, but I'd noted a couple of stores that seemed likely.

I went to the first one, fortunately still early enough that crowds were light. Going through the racks, I chose a pair of white skinny jeans, and a fuzzy pink sweater with some beadwork flowers on it. It had a V neck, so I'd have to be sure to shave my chest. Maybe I could contour a little, too, I thought. I took the jeans to a fitting room, and tucked my self back as I'd read about on the net, and indeed done the last two times I'd been Barb, and put my panties before trying out the fit of the jeans.

I had to turn the bottom of the legs up, and in fact, I turned them up a bit extra, exposing my ankles, as that was a style I thought I'd seen. Taking the flats out of my backpack, I put them on, and (wearing the sweater) went out to use the fitting room mirror. Yeah, I'd have to shave my ankles, but the look worked. "Oh! Cute! Nice butt!" I heard behind me. "You have a wig to go with that look?," she asked. Clearly, I'd been read, even though I was not wearing my disguise. I assured her I had everything I needed. I changed back and she rang everything up, giving me a 10% discount "just because you're cute. Come back anytime!"

Mission accomplished, I caught the bus back to my neighborhood.

Which left the dilemma of where to change. Before the game, I'd changed in the laundry room in the basement of the building I lived in; it had the advantage of water and a wash basin under a mirror. I'd proved I could jam a chair under the knob so that people would just assume the super had locked it again. Not ideal, but it should be secure, if I was careful not to need it when someone was using the laundry equipment. So that was covered; on to the next problem.

I'd managed to get a math textbook and an english text in a local used book store; they were the same edition used in our school here (probably from a student who hadn't turned theirs back in). They were a little marked up, but should serve.

So at 1 pm on Saturday, there I was in my girl's coat and my fuzzy sweater with my book bag at Sally's place. They were upstairs in a vestibule building, so I rang the bell and she buzzed me in. My pants were a little tight, so I climbed the stairs at a more decorous pace than Dave might have taken.

Sally met me at a door on the third floor landing; her mother was in the living room with her, and Sally introduced us. I said hello to Mrs. Ackerman, and we spread out on the living room floor. I lay there on my front, for a change feeling the little silicone pads I was wearing in my bra, with my lower legs raised and crossed at the ankles and my gold ballet flats waving in the air as we worked. It was such an idyllic scene.

After we'd worked for an hour or so, Mrs. Ackerman offered us cookies and hot chocolate. I accepted with alacrity, as it had been a cold walk over that afternoon.

"So, Abbott; I don't think I know your mother..," Mrs. Ackerman led off with.

I hadn't devoted much thought to my "family" when inventing my character, so I thought it best to stick close to the actualities: moved here (last summer, instead of last fall) from Madison (where at least I'd been), parents divorced, only child.

Another hour of work and we finished the chapters in the geometry text that would be on the next test. We talked for a few minutes while I stuffed everything back in my book bag, but I was at a disadvantage as all the people I'd met in school were Sally, Sarah, and the officious guy checking things on the field trip and at the game (whom Sally informed me was named Doug. She knew instantly who I meant when I mentioned him.)

But soon enough, I was walking home, smugly pleased that I'd pulled it off. Arriving at my building, I entered through a side basement door, blocked the laundry room door knob with a chair, cleaned my face, and changed my clothes. Returning home, I carried everything in my book bag, which I hid in my room. Mom was out, so I didn't even have to come up with an excuse for where I'd been all afternoon.

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, school was about to be out more often than in. Maybe it was for the best that my mother decided we should go visit relatives in Indiana for the holidays. I figured that Sally would barely notice I was gone, assuming that I was just busy with my classwork. I'd make a point of looking her up in the New Year.

I was trying to not think about how complicated THAT would be, when Dave would have a full load of classes, and Sally would still expect to see Barb from time to time. Maybe Dave could replace Barb in Sally's attention and Barb could just fade from the scene?

My enforced vacation from Sally (and Barb) led to some feelings of separation. It was like I was starting to MISS my double life. And what did that mean? I told my self it was just my lack of a social life, and a new school semester would soon deal with that.