"You gonna live?" he asked...

The next day of school, Wednesday, was excruciating. I tried to talk to no one and not look anyone in the face. I did have to take my note from the doctor to the school office, and they changed my schedule so I would go to study hall instead of gym.

And I wore Mom's little elastic chest-band every day. Heck, I even tried to sleep in it, but it turned out to be a little too uncomfortable for that, riding up under my armpits in my sleep and stabbing me in the back with the stiffeners.

But no one at school paid much attention to me, just another short skinny sophomore. It didn't even seem to be bully season, though I did see Rod Pick chatting up my sister. He gave me an almost friendly wink, but I clutched my books and hurried past him.

Was I carrying my books like a girl? They were heavy; how else could I carry them?

I got my helping of gruel at the cafeteria and originally went out to find a place to eat on the patio, but everyone else had the same idea. Every table had several people already.

I started to turn back to find someplace to eat inside when Donna caught my eye by waving. My sister was in the same grade as me, being only ten months younger, a preemie. The family joke is that she's been in a hurry since before she was born.

I hesitated, so she stood up and waved harder. "Jonnie," she shouted.

I winced and decided I might as well expose myself to her and her friends while I ate brown rice, dubious chicken and steam-flavored vegetables. So I went in her direction, nodding to show I had seen her.

She sat back down, saying to her friends. "Jonnie's a sophomore, too, but we have, like, almost no classes together."

'Homeroom and World History, which are in the same place and time," I said, putting my tray down. I had ditched the heavy books in my locker before heading to the lunch line.

Two girls made room for me next to Donna by scooching over, and I settled into the empty spot. The patio tables were those picnic-style, with three curved benches around them and a center umbrella that was open but leaned toward the wrong side to provide any shade. The September sun was bright, but it's almost never hot in North San Diego, anyway.

"Wow, you two look so much alike," one girl exclaimed. She had a brown pageboy haircut and a sitcom smile.

"Well, they're twins; they ought to look alike," a second girl remarked. Her blonde hair was in braids, and she kept her lips almost closed, stretched over her braces.

Donna rolled her eyes. "We're not twins," she protested. We get this a lot and have ever since she caught up and passed my height back in the seventh grade.

"You're both sophomores, both fifteen? How are you not twins?"

I let Donna explain while I examined my lunch. The daylight had worked a strange alchemy on the color of things. Brown rice is not supposed to be gray; the crispy chicken coating had turned Hunter's Orange, and the veggies had achieved a limp rainbow in muted tones. I tried the rice. It wasn't any worse than it looked.

Pageboy suddenly stabbed a finger at me, excited, "So you're the little sister!"

I frowned at her, and Donna exploded, laughing so hard she almost fell off the bench. It only got more embarrassing.

* * *

Thursday morning came at last, and I got ready for school as usual. My appointment was at 9 a.m. So the plan was for me to go to the doctor in the morning and attend school in the afternoon. I stayed out of Donna's way till she left for school, then I did my own morning routine, including putting on the chest-band.

Mom and I had an hour or so to sit around the kitchen table before we really had to think about leaving. I don't drink coffee, and it was still too summery for hot cocoa, so I had a cup of tea while Mom sipped her coffee.

We nibbled a bit on butter cookies. She looked at me curiously, and I fidgeted under her gaze. "What?" I finally asked.

She tilted her head and looked at me a bit more intently. "Just noticing who in the family you look like."

"Um," I said.

"You actually look more like your Aunt Hilda than you do me," she commented.

I shrugged. Aunt Hildy was four years Mom's junior, but they looked quite a bit alike. Both round-faced blondes with blue eyes and dimples. "I look like you," I said simply.

She nodded. "Yes, but you've got that determined little chin, like Hilda. And when you grin, it goes a little sideways, just like hers. And your hair has red highlights in the sun."

I rolled my eyes. I wanted to think I looked like Dad, but really, that was Donna's department. The narrower eyes, more gray than blue, darker hair and a wider mouth — since Dad was adopted and didn't know his birth family, we didn't have any of his other relatives to compare to.

Dad always claimed he looked like Barney Fife or maybe John Denver, which made Mom laugh and shake her head. "Your ears don't stick out far enough," she would tell him. He didn't really look like those guys, though he was skinny and a bit less than average height by a couple of inches.

But talking about who I looked like reminded me of what Mom had admitted after the last doctor's appointment — that they hadn't been sure when I was born if I were a girl or a boy. I'd been trying not to think about that. It was just too weird.

* * *

The doctor wanted to do a lot of tests, including ultrasound and several blood draws. Why do they need several tubes of blood? Can't they do it all with just one tube?

By the time I'd been examined (I had to take off the chest-band), poked with needles, tortured with an ice-cold sonic screwdriver, and dressed again, the morning was gone. Mom and I sat in the doctor's private office, waiting for her to finish looking at test results.

The walls of the room were covered in bookcases with a few places left for framed documents attesting to Dr. Silva's qualifications to practice medicine.

Oh, I had a new doctor, also named Silva, but Dr. Beatrice Silva this time. Being switched over by the clinic to a female doctor disturbed me a bit. Did that mean anything? And if so, what? So I fidgeted.

"Sit still," Mom scolded, just as the new doctor entered carrying a sheaf of folders. She was tall, blonde, and slender and looked more Northern European than someone named Silva probably should. I wondered if she were the other Doctor Silva's wife. She certainly didn't look like his sister; he looked like you might expect anyone named Silva in Southern California to look.

Smiling at me, Dr. Silva, the lady one, leaned against her desk. "Jonny?" she said. "Do you prefer to be called Jon or Jonny?"

I shrugged. "Either is okay, I guess. Being short, I'm not going to talk everyone out of calling me Jonny, am I?"

She smiled wider. "Probably not," she agreed. "Well, the ultrasound didn't show much, some technical problem, but we have your blood test results from before. I ordered another sequence to confirm because they are a bit — unusual."

I felt a sinking sensation in my chest. I wanted to make a joke, but I'm not a comedian and something like, "Give it to me straight, Doc. How long have I got to live?" likely wouldn't go over well, anyway. Something in her stance or attitude prepared me for bad news.

"I'll try not to get too technical," she said. "The actual numbers are not that important, but your body, Jon, is beginning puberty with the wrong flavor of hormones."

"Huh?" I said. Strawberry? I thought inanely. I did mention I wasn't good at comedy.

She nodded as if responding to the unasked absurdity. "You have slightly more estrogen in your system than a girl your age and almost no androgens. We've ruled out conditions like adrenal hyperplasia and androgen insensitivity, but the imbalance seems key to what is happening."

I blinked. I didn't know what those conditions were. I felt Mom's hand grasp mine, but I kept looking at the doctor.

She nodded again. Maybe it was a nervous tic. "This is almost certainly why you are experiencing your symptoms. It's unusual but not unheard of. Both sorts of sex organs normally produce both kinds of hormones. You just seem to be making more of the opposite kind than usual."

I wanted to protest that I was not doing it on purpose, but I swallowed that and looked across at Mom.

"Is there anything we can do?" Mom asked.

Dr. Silva nodded again. Definitely a tic. I repressed an urge to fidget and tried to keep listening and not let my mind go screaming off into the mental underbrush.

"We've already got you an appointment with a specialist, someone your Dad's company recommended, an endocrinologist, next week, but I just spoke with her on the phone and made a suggestion she agreed with."

"Huh," said Mom. "What would that be?"

The doctor looked at me. "Your problem seems to be that your body is not producing enough androgen. We decided we should try boosting your blood level of androgens with an injection."

I don't like shots, but it would be worth it if it went some way toward solving my problems. No one mentioned that injecting testosterone into a muscle is one of the most painful shots you can get.

* * *

I was still rubbing my thigh where I got the shot in the car on the way home. Mom was saying something, trying to be supportive and optimistic, but I really wasn't listening.

I had a lot to think about, but every topic seemed to end up in tail-chasing circles. What if I really were a girl? Nobody was out-and-out suggesting that, but something sure wasn't right with me. My ex-friend Rod thought I was queer and girly. Even my own sister seemed to have doubts about my masculinity. Mrs. Henderson wanted me to watch her kids, not an offer made to many teenage boys.

I thought again about what Dad had been saying the night before. Had the whole point of that conversation been to give me permission to… to do what? Even if the testosterone shot made my body more manly, would that really solve my problem?

"…after the swelling goes down," Mom was saying.

I had totally lost the thread of what she was talking about. "Huh?"

"If the shot works, you'll probably be able to stop wearing the chest band I made for you," she said, evidently repeating herself.

I glanced down at my chest. The homemade constriction kept it nice and flat, making me look more like a boy. But was that just a lie?

I remembered the girls at lunch the day before deciding that I must be Donna's little sister. My hair is a bit shaggy, but it isn't that long, and I was wearing boys' clothes, except for the chest binder they couldn't see. What made them think I was a girl?

I must have sighed loud enough for Mom to hear because she gave me one of those worried looks. She didn't ask, though, so I didn't tell her anything.

*

Thursday afternoon at school was pretty uneventful, except Rod caught up with me in the hall after the one class, Science, that we had together.

"Where were you this morning?" he demanded.

I may have cringed a bit. He sounded annoyed, and I looked around for the cohort of bullies he usually ran with. None in sight, but I kept my answer terse. "Doctor."

"Oh." He looked thoughtful. "You gonna live?" he asked.

I shrugged, as if it weren't important.

He grinned at me, and I smiled back because, for that moment, he seemed like the old Rod who had been my friend.

Then he slapped my books out of my hands, and I almost tripped, trying not to step on them. I felt my eyes burning as I watched him walk away while I stood there with my books scattered at my feet.

“Sorry, but you know…,” I heard Rod mutter as he sauntered away.

Somebody commented, "Dropped your books." Like I hadn't known. Nobody stopped to help me as I gathered them back together, but I saw the girl, Donna's friend, that I thought of as Pageboy standing near a classroom door. Just watching.

I guess we'd finally convinced her I was a boy yesterday. If she'd still thought I was a girl, she probably would have come over to help.

I left, probably carrying my books like a girl with them held close; no one was going to knock them out of my hands. But I went down the wrong hallway and walked into room 231 instead of 321. Someone was sitting in my seat, and I glared at him.

He looked confused. "Que cosa, chica?" he asked. What is it, girl?

Then I looked around, realizing my mistake. I hurried out and was late for class, but no one cared. I settled into my own seat this time.

My eyes were burning again.