Katie had told me some about her family during our dates, and I pieced together more from what people said during the weekend. Katie’s dad had stayed male for the first five years after the Divergence, and he and Katie’s mom had married Gus a year or so afterward, who’d been his best friend, and changed into a woman right after the Divergence. Then five years ago, Katie’s dad became female as well, and rather than break up the family, they decided they’d all stay together and find another man, and if they took too long to find one, maybe one of them would turn male. They married Katie’s stepdad Iris a little over a year later, and things had been stable since then except for a couple of the children changing sex when starting a new grade.

I got the phone call just after lunch, and I was late to my next class, sitting in a restroom stall until I got my tears under control. I couldn’t concentrate to pay attention to my afternoon classes anyway; I might as well have skipped them.

“If you go off and leave her alone while you dance, maybe you don’t deserve her.”

 

“She’s still my girlfriend even if we’re not glued at the hip every minute. Go away.”

“You were probably confused by being kissed. I understand that can be pretty distracting for people of your species.”

“Look,” I said, “I know this is a shock to you, and maybe I’m expecting too much for you to get over it in a day or so. God knows it’s taken me several months to get used to the idea of being a girl... But what about if we pause the game, and you just stare at me for as long as it takes for you to get it out of your system? Instead of, you know, glancing at me out of the corner of your eye and then trying to pretend you weren’t looking.”

Later, when we were getting ready for bed, Radhika said: “So, has my brother made another conquest?”

 

“No,” I said, my ears twitching. “He’s... I guess he’s kind of hot, but he’s too old for me.”

“It’s official,” I told Amy when I got back from the shower. “I’m going to be a girl.”

 

“Oh,” she said, and then she came over and sat next to me on my bed. “Are you going to be okay?”

 

“I... I think so. It’s something to have the uncertainty out of the way. I don’t know how much longer it’s going to take before I have to start wearing bras and, um, and tampons. And start noticing boys.” Or maybe girls, but that wasn’t likely.

“And be sure to tell us as soon as you know how you’re changing,” Aunt Ellen said, an anxious look on her face.

 

“Of course.”

 

“And... if you develop into a girl, be sure to remember everything I told you.”

They put one last pan of cookies in the oven, and Nora concentrated for a few moments on the way she wanted them to look, feel and taste before pulling them out again. “All ready,” she announced after taking a bite of a snickerdoodle. “Let’s go.”

She was obviously acutely embarrassed by her nakedness, though none of the dream-people standing around her were taking any obvious notice of it. Nora took pity on her and said, pitching her voice to carry over the music: “Talrasia, have you noticed that you’re dreaming?” Then she turned her eyes respectfully away.

“Most of you already know Jeffrey Sergeyev,” Ms. Turner said in a loud voice. “She will be using the girls' facilities from now on, as I explained Friday. Please be courteous to her.”

“Ignore the bit where she called me ‘she’ and ‘her’,” I said to the girls nearest me.

“I know there would be problems with you using the girls’ bathrooms or showers,” Dad said, “but — after today, there might be just as bad problems showering with the other boys.”

Dad snuggled in next to Mom on the sofa; she put aside the skirt she was working on and they hugged and kissed, but I thought I saw a little bit of hesitation, and it hurt. I knew too many kids at school whose parents were divorced, or looked like they might get a divorce any time now, and I was happy to think that my parents looked like the sticking-together kind. But when I saw her hesitate a little before letting him hug her and kiss her, it worried me. Could they still stay together after changing in such drastic and different ways? And if not, what would happen to me?