So now, I am led outside and I can see a little bit but my eyes still hurt, and the entire club is waiting out there! There must be at least a couple of dozen other kids waiting for a bus that’s running late, and I’m trying to hide my face.

“Jackson!” the girls all yell. “Are you okay?” adds a few of them.

“I’mb ogay,” I mumble as I'm getting hugs. I hear a few of the other kids whispering, not very well, and they are talking about me. I wish I could just crawl into a hole. Deanna, Stephanie and Heather get into the car, Heather sits up front with mom and the other two herd me into the middle seat, with one on either side of me. As I’m leaving I overhear someone say “Cute top, I wonder where I can get one.” What's a top?

“Seatbelts everyone!” yells my mom, seemingly with nary a care in the world.

“Mom, cgan I bremove the gotton?” I ask, as I remove it.

“Jackson, don’t you dare, you might start bleeding again!” she yells as she turned around. “I should have known it would be out already,” she complains. “It’s ok, I have Kleenex in case it starts bleeding, Deanna, sweetie, please get some out of my purse if it does. Please, dear God, can you explain to me why 11 year old boys are such trouble?”

Of course, this has me trying to slide onto the floor as the girls all crack up, and Heather says “If you take a closer look, Mrs. Brown, we don’t have Jackson here now, we have Jackie,” through her laughter. This puts all the girls in stitches and me into confusion.

“Heather, I’m the same me, Jackie or Jackson. I don’t like using Jackie at school because it is also a girl’s name and I’ll get teased.”

“Mrs. Brown, do you have a mirror?”

“Sure honey, take a look in my purse”

Heather digs into the purse, pulls out my mom’s mirror and says “Jackie, take a look at what you look like right now,” handing me the mirror.
I’m still confused, and wondering why she is handing me the mirror as I take a close look. “I don’t see any change, Heather, except my wet hair is pulled back behind me now with a rubber band.”

“Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, give me back the mirror and try this again,” she says, and pulls the mirror further away from me.

“Aargh!” I scream. “I’m wearing a girl’s shirt, it’s got lace and... and... and... a butterfly! Why am I in a girl’s shirt! Is the Principal crazy? Mom, is Aunt Sue mad at me again? I promised I’d be good in her school. I didn’t make fun of anyone’s clothes.”

“Jackson, it isn’t because of anything you did, Sue’s not mad at you, I would imagine she couldn’t find anything else in your size, you almost fit in your sister’s clothes, and she’s 5!”

“Mooooommmmm!”

I’m sure if I try, I can slip back into the crack in the seat; there is space in the floorboards behind this bench, after all. I wonder, do moms take lessons in how to embarrass their children, or is it just a side-effect of pregnancy? It can’t be just being a parent, Dad doesn’t embarrass me like this!

“Mom, can you just stop, I’m sure they don’t want to hear all about that!” I moan.

“I’m sure Molly would love to hear it, but Mrs. Brown, I think maybe Jackson has had enough, he’s starting to shiver, I think from his wet hair,” says Deanna. “It is cold outside and this car’s heater isn’t working all that well. Besides, we are almost at Heather’s.”

Hey, Deanna, it isn’t my wet hair making me shiver, it’s this shirt, half the school saw me in this!

“On the left, the house with the old truck under the tree, Mrs. Brown,” says Heather.

"I'm just a few houses further down, I'll get out here too," says Molly, as both girls wave goodbye.

Once we got home, Deanna heads up to her trailer and we go inside to ours. We live in a mobile home park about a half a mile from the school, almost close enough to be on the bus route. My parents rent two lots for our mobile home, since for the longest time she was afraid to let me go anywhere and wanted some room for me to play. If you’ve never lived in a mobile home, the lots don’t have a whole lot of room left over once a home is on it, and we have an expanded living room. Daddy is very handy and rebuilt a beaten up motor boat, a camper trailer, and also built a workroom and a playhouse for us. Mom works as a waitress at DI Stoney’s. They met while Dad was stationed in Germany, from there they went to Thailand, where I was born. Dad is kinda small, for a guy, and Mom is even shorter. He’s from Virginia, with black hair and blue eyes, skinny but strong. Mom is a full blood German, in fact she spoke little English when they got married. I’ve learned some German, I have to if I’m going to survive mom, when she gets upset she forgets to use English. She’s got blue eyes, too, but I have no idea what color her hair actually is since she dyes it blonde – I think it is a light brown. I’ve got really pale blonde hair, it was almost white when I was born, blue eyes and, much to my dismay, lots of freckles. Mom says they are angel kisses, or that I swallowed a dollar and broke out in pennies. I look more like her than Dad, I’m told.

I’m off to my room to get changed and do my homework, and for some reason mom has told me to hang up the shirt in my closet – which I do, but with my eyes closed. I swear, I don’t understand her sometimes, it’s like she was born on Mars instead of in Germany. I guess maybe she wants me to take the shirt back tomorrow? Before I can start, though, mom comes in and blows my hair dry, which does help me feel warm. After I finish my homework, I head to Deanna’s. My home away from home.

I’ve been friends with Deanna since Thailand, so I just go ahead in, saying, “Honey, I’m home,” in a very bad Cuban accent. “Luuucy, you got some ‘splaining to doooo.” We both love the old Lucy re-runs.

“Oh, Ricky! Waahhhh!” cries Deanna in a perfect imitation of Lucille Ball, I just wish my Ricky was better.

“Would you two stop?” says her mom. “I’ve got snacks for you both, go wash up.”

After we’ve washed up, we get the snacks and head out to play. Mountain Home is in the Owyhee desert and our mobile home park is near the edge of town, so we can explore that desert all we want. There’s just enough of civilization to ward off the coyotes, at least during the day.
Once out away from the park, I turn to Deanna and ask “Deanna, is a top what I had on? It’s not called a blouse? I thought girl’s shirts were called blouses.”

“Jackie, for you, it’s simple. You wear a shirt and pants or shorts. Boring. I’ve got all kinds of different things to wear, jumpers, capris, camisoles and many more. We call anything we wear as you would a shirt a top.”

Oh god, I was wearing a ‘cute top’, goodbye cruel world.

“Jackie, what are you talking about, goodbye cruel world?”

“I said that out loud?”

“Yeah, you mumbled something and then said ‘goodbye cruel world’, are you ok?”

“Oh, I’m just thinking about what’s going to happen when the rest of the school knows about my ‘cute top’, once the gossip gets around, I’m going to find a hole in the ground and just pull it in over me.”

“Jackson, you’re exaggerating, besides, I bet it gets forgotten before Monday. Come on, let’s go play!” says Deanna.

For some odd reason, there is a ditch around most of the park, that's where the evil tetherball pole is that tried to take my eye. Papa put some wood planks across the ditch, and we cross there now instead of swinging across on the pole like we used to do. We wander around the desert for a bit, talking about nothing in particular, and before long, we come to our spaceship. I don’t know what it really was, but someone abandoned an old, round metal building out in the desert, it’s rusty and has some holes beat in it, but it is our spot. Once inside, we have our snacks and take out some books to read. My favorite time of day, reading with Deanna in the spaceship.

“Jackie, don’t forget we have Budokon training tonight.”

“I’m not sure I want to go to that, you know the only athletic thing I can do is run. You need strength for martial arts.”

“It is far more important to learn the katas and to be quick, and that I know you can do. When we started, Molly wasn’t very strong either and she is doing very well. If nothing else you learn how to avoid getting hurt.”

“Oh, all right,” I moan. “I guess I’ll at least try it the first day.”

Once it starts to get dark, we head home. I’ve got two days of bliss before my life as I know it ends on Monday.