I recently learned how to make ePub and Mobi formats of my stories, so I'm posting a copy of Wild Horses, an old story of mine that's been available here for a while. I'm also providing a link to a .mobi version for those of you who have Kindles. Hopefully people will find it easier to read on those devices than on PC.

The epub and mobi are both in a publicly available google drive, here for the epub, and here for the mobi. I'm also attaching the epub to this post, so you can download it direct from Big Closet.

Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A.

 

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Although it takes a true
story from a newspaper as its starting point (see the note at the
end), it uses fictional characters and events in the development of
the narrative, and all characters appearing in the story are the
writer's invention. Where the names of real people appear in the
narrative the characters that represent them are entirely fictional,
and no disrespect is intended toward the real people in the use of
their names or reputations. The events have been substantially
altered for dramatic effect and places and names changed to respect
the rights of the people involved. The institution called James
Brand is fictional, although there are many like it across the country.

Thanks: I want to say thanks to Hiromi and Akiko and Bill for all
the help with 70's culture, and Bob for the education about 70's
music -- here I was thinking it was mostly 'Hotel California' and
Kiss! I still dislike almost everything the Rolling Stones did after
1972, but I learned to like a lot of stuff I'd never have dreamed
of. I don't think I could have even attempted to write this without
their help.

I must also give special thanks to Geoff for his invaluable
assistance as editor. He provided focus at times it was desperately
needed, and he understands grammar. :)

Becky

Chapter One.

Maybe times have changed enough that my story couldn't happen today.
I read in the newspaper a few weeks ago that the officials at one of
the state juvenile facilities are under investigation for abuse
right now. That would never have happened when I was a kid. They
just got away with murder then. Okay, maybe not quite murder, but
they sure got away with screwing with people's lives. Perhaps the
way I acted made things worse, but I was young and confused and I
think they took advantage of that.

That makes me sound like I'm some kind of victim. I'm no victim.
I've never been totally happy about what happened to me all those
years ago, but I'm not dragging the memories of it around like some
ball and chain. Life was not as bleak as that first paragraph suggests.

Let me begin the conventional way, with childhood:

When I was twelve there were only two things to be in Cabrini Green
if you were a white kid. You could be a Blue or you could be a Thin.
Once you hit puberty -- if you wanted to be sociable -- you had to
be a member of a group, either the Blues or the Thins. If you were a
boy you were one or the other. If you were a girl you hung out with
one or the other. The Blues were so named because they wore blue
sweaters or t-shirts under their jackets. The boys had skinhead
haircuts, wore big, thick boots and lots of leather. The girls had
long hair, and wore anything short and revealing. The Thins wore the
same kind of clothes as the Blues, but both the boys and the girls
had androgynous David Bowie-style haircuts, short all over except
for at the back. Thin girls almost always bleached their hair, and
wore tight knitted tops and miniskirts with thick platform shoes.
The Blues liked to hang out on trains and at stations, for some
reason I never figured out. The Thins hung out in cafes, pool joints
and bowling alleys.

I don't know where the name "Thin" came from, but there were
inevitably jokes about a few overweight members.

Even in the seventies the rest of the Lincoln Park area was better
than Cabrini, and so school was a kind of jumble of races and
classes. Of course there were kids who weren't Blues or Thins, who
dressed like 'The Brady Bunch' and did their homework and answered
all the teacher's questions and are probably stockbrokers today, but
the kids from the projects knew that these kids were really robots,
not kids at all. Okay, so we were a minority, but we knew we were
the only people who really understood the world.

Being a Thin or a Blue wasn't just a matter of joining a gang. It
was a style thing, sure, and there were gangs, but most kids dressed
a certain way first and then gradually drifted into one of the
informal social groups. From there you could become a gang member,
or not. The group my older brother Danny was in was the Division
Thins, named for the location of the cafe they mostly hung out at on
Division Street.

I thought Danny was pretty cool. He was four years older than I was,
and he was a tough kid. All the older boys I knew were -- it was
just one of those things that went with where we lived -- but I
think Danny got that way just from standing up to our old man. He
and Dad would have big arguments about anything, even when Dad was
sober. When Dad was drunk the arguments got violent, and he'd hit
out at Danny. Danny just took it -- he didn't fight back. After a
year of that Dad changed his target. He would come home stinking
drunk nine times out of ten, and beat the crap out of Mom before
striking out at anyone else who was around. Mom would pick herself
up and whatever remained of dinner, and try to pretend he hadn't
done anything.

Most of the time when this happened Danny and I would try to get out
of the apartment. We'd sit on the front step of the building and
wait for the noise to stop. After a while Danny wouldn't even hang
around to listen to Dad hit her, he lit out for the Division Cafe
and hung out with some of the older kids. He started to dress like
they did, which made Dad angry. "Damned faggot kid," he'd say, even
though there was nothing about Danny you could think of as
faggot-like. Dad just didn't like the long hair at the back that ran
over Danny's collar. It was hard to figure out why, this was the
1970's and most guys were wearing their hair long. Danny's was short
everywhere else except the back. I don't know, my father was a
strange man.

I liked to be at home when Dad wasn't around. Mom was great. Even
Dad thought she was great at those rare times he was sober. That was
what made it so awful when he hit her. When he wasn't around she was
smart and funny and caring, and she was someone I could really talk
to. I couldn't talk to Dad; no-one could. As I got older I noticed
she smiled less and less, and after a while she never smiled when
Dad was around. I couldn't say I blamed her. I liked to try to make
her smile, by bringing her home things I found in the street and
making up stories about how they'd got there. They were silly
stories, about stuff like bottle tops and the people who'd thrown
them on the ground as they were on their way to a ball game where
the guy whose girlfriend threw away the bottle top caught the ball
on the home run that decided the game, or the one legged man who had
lost the sock I found outside the supermarket and then won the
lottery. Mom seemed to like to hear my stories, I guess because they
were always optimistic, and after a while, when things got worse
with Dad, she would always ask me to tell her something about my day
whenever I got home. I was too young to know it at the time, but I
think she felt almost imprisoned in the house, increasingly isolated
from the world around her. I've read that victims of domestic
violence get like that.

Although she was frequently bruised from Dad's beatings, Mom was a
very beautiful woman. She had creamy smooth skin, and perfect,
delicate features, which made the bruising even more obvious.
Although she had no money to buy clothes she always managed to dress
in a way that was more stylish than the other women in the
neighborhood, and I was very proud of her for that. It wasn't so
much the clothes she wore as the way she wore them.

Mom liked music, too. She never liked television very much, but she
and I used to listen to the radio a lot when I was young. She
especially liked English pop music, and on the rare occasions when
something had made her especially happy she would do her housework
while she sang Dusty Springfield songs. When I was a little kid I'd
follow her around the house singing along with her. I was probably
totally off-key, but she never complained. I loved the sound of her
voice, which was rich and throaty and sweet at the same time. When I
was really lucky she'd sing me little songs she made up herself.
Although I know she loved Danny I think I was her favorite.

When he hit his teen years Danny got right in with the other Thins.
They spent most nights hanging out together, just walking around the
neighborhood or hanging out playing video games, which had only just
been invented. Sometimes they'd see a Blue gang, and a fight would
ensue. Danny hated the Blues. "Fuckin' Nazis," he'd say. A couple of
times he came home with bruises, black eyes or minor wounds from
fights he'd been in. Once he got a broken arm. He had it in a cast
for months, because he kept using it as a weapon in fights and the
arm wouldn't heal properly.

Danny got into occasional trouble with the police, too. It was never
anything really serious, but they were convinced that all the Thins
were troublemakers. It usually sent Dad into a frenzy whenever the
cops bought Danny home, or called for Dad to go down to the precinct
to get him. Usually Dad would hit him worse than the cops. I don't
know why, really. Everyone in our neighborhood had some kind of
police record by the time they were eighteen. Heck, even I had one,
from an fight I was in with Danny and from another time I stole the
washing off Mrs. Bronowski's line on a dare. The washing incident
had been embarrassing, because the police report detailed everything
that had been taken, "brassieres, other lingerie, two dresses, one
pair of shorts," and the cop had read it out really loudly when my
Dad came to get me. Anyway, Danny's scrapes with the cops seemed
pretty run-of-the-mill to me. But the more he hung out with the
Thins the more the cops picked on him, and the worse our old man got
as a result.

The first item on my record occurred when I got arrested with Danny
one night when I was twelve. We were on our way home from the cafe,
and two Blues jumped us. Danny beat up both of them with only a
little help from me. I wasn't much of a fighter, since I was very
small for my age, and anyway I really didn't like all that
aggressive macho crap anyway. But I provided enough distraction to
one kid so that Danny could take out the other one. Danny was still
pounding on my opponent while I held the limp form of the first one
when a cruiser went by. We tried to run through some people's yards
to get away but the cops got us in the next street.

Dad was really pissed when he came down to get us out, but I think
he was secretly pleased that Danny beat the shit out of the other guys.

We got charged with assault because the father of one of the kids
Danny beat up wanted to push the issue, but all we got was stern
lectures from the judge and a caution on our records. No time in
juve or anything like that.

When I was thirteen Danny got a girlfriend, Maria, a chunky dark
Italian girl with a great smile. He never brought her home but I saw
them on the street together a lot. He wasn't allowed to see her for
about two months after she cut her hair into a Thins'-style look
that made her father freak, but they figured out ways to sneak
around together anyway. I thought she was dynamite. Big breasts, big
dark eyes -- she could have shaved her head entirely and it would
have been okay with me.

Danny kept a couple of pairs of Maria's panties in the table between
our two single beds in the room we shared. He used to take them out
some nights and tell me stories about sex, and what girls were like.
I hadn't gone through puberty yet, so I didn't understand a lot of
what he said, but it excited me all the same. A couple of times when
he wasn't around I snuck a look at the panties myself. They were
kind of cute, not like the big, sexless cotton things Mom wore.
Touching them got me kind of excited, in a new way I didn't understand.

Even though Danny told me all this stuff about sex, I figured he was
still a virgin. He had Maria's panties, but I don't think she had
put out for him yet. She was a Catholic girl, even if she was kind
of rebellious, and Danny complained a couple of times about how "the
fucking Pope" had made all these girls "think they were gonna
fucking die if they opened their legs." All the stuff he told me
about girls had a kind of abstract quality. I never questioned his
authority on the matter, but I wondered how far Maria let him go.
Maybe he'd felt her up, I thought.

He had quite a few porno magazines, which he hid in a space in the
wall in back of our closet. Most of them were just Playboys, but
some others I thought were kind of disturbing, even though I didn't
understand everything that was in them. There were a couple which
had pictures of women being whipped and chained, which I didn't like
much. One that disturbed me a lot had photos with a chick who had a
johnson. I couldn't figure that out. She was kind of pretty, but
there was this enormous schlong between her legs. Danny used to
laugh at me when he showed me that one, because he said it turned me
on. I knew it didn't. But it did make me confused. That seemed to
provoke Danny into bringing home more of that kind of thing to taunt
me with. He developed a big collection of really weird stuff. "That
gets you off, huh Mickey?" he'd say, just to get me riled.

All the hanging out each evening with Maria and the Thins meant
Danny never did any homework, so he started failing at school, and
he quit school before he graduated and took a job pumping gas over
in the next suburb. Imagine that -- this was before self serve,
even. It was a shitty job, but he had a little money and that made
him an important member of the group.

I saw him, and Maria, quite a lot after school. They used to hang
out at the Cafe together, early, before all the others would get
there. I liked Maria. She was the only one of Danny's friends who
didn't tease me about my height, or the fact that my voice hadn't
broken yet. And she made me laugh. She was really good at doing
imitations of Danny when he wasn't looking, and that cracked me up.
"You and I both know Danny better than he does," she used to say to
me conspiratorially. She'd wink at me and smile whenever Danny was
big-noting himself to his friends. I think I was almost in love with
her. Danny told me a couple of times to "watch it," and said if I
was older he'd have to take me out the back and whup me for the way
he caught me looking at her, but I think he misunderstood. I thought
Maria was wonderful, but I wasn't into sex properly yet and I wasn't
really thinking of her that way.

She fascinated me in a new way. Sometimes I caught myself staring at
her, or she caught me. I was amazed by everything about her, the way
she moved, the way different parts of her body moved when she
walked, the way she smiled, the soft, lilting quality of her voice
even when she was coming down hard on Danny. I watched her, almost
obsessively, every chance I got. I thought she was a goddess.

Danny dropping out of school made my old man even worse. He blamed
Mom instead of Danny, and he started drinking more, something I
would never have thought possible. Because Danny wasn't home much
Dad would lay into me if I was around. He used to get mad at me
because Mom liked me so much. "Momma's boy," he'd say as he lit into
me. Like Danny, I just took it. He was a lot bigger than I was, and
the one time I raised my hand to hit him back he just laughed at me,
which was worse than being hit.

I wasn't very good at making friends, so I never joined the Division
Thins even though I hung out at the cafe some nights. Danny had let
me know he wasn't too keen on having his little brother around
anyway. I cut my hair the same way, short at the front and long at
the back, but mostly I just kept to myself, sitting outside on the
front steps of our house to do my homework, or walking around
Harrison Park on my own. I didn't like a few of the other Thins
anyway. Danny's best friend in the group was this thuggish Italian
guy called Tony. He and I instantly disliked one another. He kept
calling me "Pussy," even in front of Danny, and I was annoyed that
Danny didn't stick up for me. I spat in Tony's food a couple of
times when he wasn't looking, and made faces at him a few times, but
I soon got bored with that. The funny thing was I didn't think Tony
thought much of Danny either, and he was always staring at Maria in
a really creepy way. I stared at Maria all the time, but this was
different. Couldn't Danny see that?

I think my dislike of Tony was the first time I had a visceral
response to someone's personality. If Tony had a soul it would have
been bitter, dark, oily. He gave me the chills in a part of me I
hadn't noticed before.

I didn't make many other friends, either. I was small and kind of
wimpy back then, and so I didn't get to hang with the jocks at
school, and I didn't pay enough attention to schoolwork to be with
the brains. Even though I got a Thins haircut, because I'm a redhead
with wavy hair and really pale skin I never looked at all tough. I
was part of that great amorphous mass that makes up the majority of
the school population, the ones that aren't real smart or cool or
good looking. The ones that just are.

The truth was, I guess I really didn't fit in well with anybody,
even the other 'average' kids. I always felt like there was some
barrier between me and everyone else in the world, like nobody could
see the real me. Maybe part of it was that people expected me to be
more like Danny, but I think another part of it was that I didn't
feel very comfortable with trusting people. Our house wasn't a good
environment for that sort of thing. It's kind of hard to explain,
but I think that it was because I could sense little things about
people that seemed to make me self-conscious around them, or made me
distrust them. About the only person I trusted was my Mom.

I didn't make many friends, but I didn't make too many enemies
except for Tony.

After my father hit my Mom badly enough to put her in hospital,
Danny stopped coming home. He wouldn't tell me where he was staying,
but he said he wouldn't be in the same house with Dad, because Danny
thought he might kill Dad next time he hit Mom.

With Danny and Mom away I took to staying out of the house almost
entirely myself. I spent most of the time just walking around, and I
took some blankets a couple of times and slept on a bench in the
park a couple of nights. I don't know if Dad knew, or if he did know
whether he even cared. He was usually drunk anyway.

After Danny had been gone a week or so I went to look for him at
work one afternoon, just to talk. His boss told me he'd been fired a
few days earlier, for stealing from the register.

I was devastated. Not Danny, I thought, Danny would never steal. He
did lots of other things that were questionable, but he wasn't a
thief. I knew that in my soul, but I could tell that his Boss
honestly believed Danny had taken the money. I went down to the
Division Cafe, but none of the Thins were there both times I called
in except Tony and an idiot guy called Pete who hung around with him
all the time. I asked Tony if he'd seen Danny, or Maria. Tony just
told me to fuck off.

It was a week later, while I was out in the park late one night,
that I came upon something terrible. I was taking a short cut back
home, through the bushes on the West side of the park, when I heard
the sounds of the bushes rustling and saw a figure sprint away
toward the road.

As I saw the person running, I knew that there was bad shit going
down. That's probably not really profound, in retrospect, but I
knew, I could feel before I looked, that there was something inside
the bushes that was unspeakable. Try as I might, I couldn't help
myself from walking over to them.

Inside the bushes I could hear a strange sound, kind of like a
person gargling mouthwash or something. I parted the branches, and
in a small clearing between the bushes there was a girl laying on
her back, moving slightly, something dark and fluid on her chest and
arms. I pushed through, and saw her skirt had been ripped off, and
was caught on a nearby branch, and her panties were lying on the
ground a few feet away. I looked at her crotch, first, and was
amazed to see the hair there. Then she gurgled again, and I dragged
my eyes away and realized, slowly, like it was some kind of movie I
didn't understand too well... Her throat had been cut. The dark
stuff all over her was blood, and it was still spurting from the
side of her neck. On the ground beside her neck was a knife, also
covered in what I assumed was blood. Without thinking I picked it
up, then, repulsed, threw it into the bushes.

Then I froze. There is no way to describe how I felt. It was Maria.
Even today, twenty-five years later, I remember that awful feeling
as I looked into those deep dark eyes and the bottom fell out of my
stomach.

I collapsed to my knees, grasped her head, and tried to lift it up
to support her. Blood continued to gush, all over me, into my lap. I
tried to staunch it with my hands, but it seemed to come right out
of her no matter what I did. Despite my first impressions, this
wasn't like seeing people die on TV. It was awful. Paralyzing. I was
shocked and desperate. I didn't think to call out for help or
anything -- no-one else would be in the park this time of night
anyway and besides I was preoccupied with trying to stop the blood
from coming out. I tried to plug the wound with my handkerchief, and
it stopped the spurting but the blood still seemed to be coming out
from somewhere.

After a few moments, I really don't know how long it was, her
twitches became less frequent and eventually she stopped moving. I
held her head in my lap for a while longer, then, sickened, I stood
up and forced my way back out of the bushes. I staggered away a few
steps and then started to run.

I ran, and ran. I didn't run toward home. I just ran away from
Maria, away from the park, away from everything. It didn't make any
sense, but nothing that night made any sense.

I figured afterward that I ran about eighteen blocks that night
without stopping. A car almost hit me once when I crossed the
street. I was still running blindly through the shopping strip when
someone grabbed my shoulders and threw me to the concrete sidewalk.
I was dazed for a few seconds, then tried to stand before a boot
came down on my back and held me there. "Whoa, kid. Hold it right
there."

He dragged me to my feet, and threw me up against the side of a car.
"Okay, kid, what's up?" he said, as he began to pat me down.
"Jeeesus," he said softly as he saw the full extent of the blood all
over me. "Are you all right?"

I wanted to say something but my mouth didn't want to work, and I
was still winded from when he had stood on my back. I could only
shake my head, which he thought meant I was hurt, and I still
couldn't talk. I tried to turn around to look at him, but he slapped
my head straight ahead, so I stared into the flick-pulse of the red
strobe stuck on the roof of the car.

He pushed my back again, then leant in the window next to me and
reached for something. I could hear him talking on the radio, but I
can't remember what he said. The events of that night are still kind
of hazy for me.

Eventually I found myself in a small green-painted room with a table
and two chairs. I was there on my own for a while. Then a couple of
guys came in and asked me questions. I answered them as well as I
could, but I can't remember what I said. Later on I found out that I
didn't say anything they could make any sense of.

After they left a long time passed. I'm not sure how long. Then a
woman came in and asked me some more questions. After she left I
couldn't keep my eyes open any more, and I lay down on the linoleum
floor and fell asleep.

I woke up in a strange bed. The room was gray, and there was nothing
in it except the bed I was laying on. There were bars on the window.
A quick inventory showed I was sleeping in my jockeys and t-shirt.

Eventually I got up. My other clothes were not in the room, and I
discovered the door was locked from the outside. So I went and sat
on the edge of the bed and waited. After a while, I don't know how
long, a large woman came in, gave me some gray pants to wear and a
gray shirt, and waited while I put them on. She didn't say anything
when I asked her where I was, or who she was, so I dressed and she
led me down a long, bare corridor, past lots of closed doors, to a
little room like the one I had been in the night before, except this
one was gray instead of green. I sat on the chair she indicated, and
then waited.

About a dozen people came and talked to me that day. I didn't
understand a lot of what they said because they used pretty big
words a lot. These days I'm okay at understanding most things, in
fact for a while people used to joke about me and call me "the
brain," I guess because after that day I discovered that if you
don't know what's going on people can screw you. But back then when
I was fourteen I wasn't real good at understanding older people.

The first person to see me was a fat old guy. I didn't know how old,
except he was older than my Dad which meant very old. He reminded me
of that Ed guy on Johnny Carson, only he wasn't funny. He told me he
was my lawyer. He asked me a couple of questions about Maria, and
about what had happened. I told him as clearly as I could remember,
but it was hard. I had to try to stop shaking when I thought of
having her head in my lap like that, when she went still.

After a few minutes the old guy got up and went into the corridor,
then came back with a woman who said she was a social worker. I
liked her; she seemed reassuring. She mostly just sat there while
the lawyer talked, and she held my hand when I started shaking again.

After we'd been talking for a while a couple of other guys came in.
They said they were cops, which figured after what had happened to
Maria. I found them really hard to understand, because they were
very formal and cold, but the guy who said he was my lawyer said it
was okay to talk to them so I told them most of what had happened.

Then they dropped a bombshell on me. Danny was dead, too. They'd
found his body in the river last night. He had died around the same
time as Maria, maybe a little before, drowned, and with a blow to
the head. I stopped listening to everything else they said, and
after a while the cops gave up and left.

I was stunned. Danny dead. I couldn't imagine it. I knew Maria was
dead, I had held her in my arms as she died, but I couldn't believe
Danny was dead.

Finally the lawyer left, and they took me back to the room with the
bed in it. I lay there for hours, crying softly. I knew tough guys
didn't cry, but Danny had been the tough guy, not me.

Late in the afternoon the social worker came in and asked me if I
wanted to see my Dad and I said yes.

About an hour later I was taken back to the interview room (I knew
what it was called now) and a few minutes later Dad came in. He
walked in with the social worker and a guy in some kind of gray
uniform. I stood up. I could see straight away that Dad was pissed
with me, even though he seemed sober. Probably, I thought at the
time, it was because he'd been called away from work. He walked
straight up to me and hit me in the face. Blam! Right in the nose.
"Fucking pervert!" he screamed at me. Then he hit me again, in the
side of the head and the chest, and after I fell to the floor he
started kicking me until the guy in the uniform dragged him away.

The social worker gave me some tissues to stem the blood from my nose.

I never saw my father again.

Over the next couple of days I spent most of the time in the room I
had woken up in, except for when people wanted to talk to me, when
they led me back down to the interview room. A doctor came and
examined me on the second day, then on the fifth day a woman who
said she was a psychologist came to see me and asked me a lot of
questions about my childhood.

The social worker asked a lot of questions, too, but seemed
friendlier than the others. I think that maybe she was the only one
who believed my story. She told me that the police thought I had
murdered Maria. I was dumbfounded. She said it was because I had
handled the knife, and I had Maria's blood all over me, and because
people thought I was jealous of Danny.

My Dad believed the cops. Now that Danny was dead, my Dad had had
some kind of change of heart, and it was like Danny was the perfect
son -- and I was the faggot creep who was jealous. I don't know, I
still can't figure my Dad out, even now.

They couldn't pin Danny's murder on me because they didn't have any
evidence, but they wanted to get me for Maria. The police had found
Danny's stash of porno magazines in the back of the closet, and were
convinced that since Danny no longer lived there they had to be
mine. I think that's what my Dad told them.

The whole thing sickened me. I couldn't believe it. How could they
believe I could have killed anyone? I was fourteen years old for
chrissakes!

Years afterward, while I was reviewing my case history, I discovered
there were several odd things about the two deaths. For one thing,
Maria had not been sexually assaulted, though her dress and panties
were ripped off her. Whoever had done it had probably lost control
of themselves, or she had struggled too much, and they had killed
her before getting what they wanted from her. I often wondered
whether that figure I saw running away was Danny. I've always
figured it was more likely Tony. I figure Tony for killing Danny,
too, though one of my lawyer friends once said he thought it was
more likely suicide.

I didn't believe Danny would ever kill himself. I still don't.

In really dark moments I wonder if it wasn't my Dad who did it all.
The figure running from the bushes didn't look like him, but... I
try not to think those kinds of thoughts.

The next couple of days are still a blur. I was taken to juvenile
court, where my lawyer said I was pleading not guilty, and I was
taken back to the place they'd been holding me to wait a few weeks
until the hearing. My Mom came to visit me, still bruised on her
face from where Dad had beaten her. She cried a lot, and spoke with
my lawyer and the social worker, but she was too emotional to talk
to me much. Mostly she just tried to hug me, and cried.

My social worker, who I discovered was called Angela, brought me
some stuff to read, and though at first I didn't feel like it the
boredom of being locked in the small featureless room soon got the
better of me and I read everything she brought me avidly. The books
all featured middle-class kids complaining about how tough they had
it. One was about this kid called Holden who wanted to be some kind
of wheat field hero, saving his kid sister from going over a cliff.
I kind of liked it even though I didn't understand all of it. Angela
also brought me some magazines about car racing, which depressed me.
Danny had always liked fast cars. He liked to help Tyrone, a guy who
lived down the block, polish his Camaro every Sunday. On the cover
of one of the magazines was a car just like Tyrone's, only more
tricked-up. I kept thinking Danny would have enjoyed the magazine
more than I did.

Eventually it was time for my next appearance in juvenile court. My
lawyer didn't want me to say anything. The police went on endlessly,
and I could sense that they were making me out to be some kind of
weirdo even though I didn't understand all the stuff the lawyers and
cops said. A lot of it was about the blood on me and my fingerprints
on the knife. But they also mentioned the time I had been arrested
with Danny, and the time I was caught stealing the laundry. They
made it sound like I was violent, and like I had a fetish for
women's underwear or something. They kept mentioning Maria's
underwear in my room and all the porno magazines there.

Angela, my social worker, made a brief speech to the judge, saying
that I had a difficult home life and appeared to be traumatized by
the events, and that she thought that if I got probation she could
put me in a foster home. As she sat down again I looked at the
judge. I didn't think she had made a very big impression after all
the stuff the cops had said.

Finally the sentence was handed down. I wasn't going to jail,
exactly. It was a juvenile correctional facility. Same thing,
really, except they dress it up with fancy words to make it sound
like it's not so bad. Let me tell you, I've seen the insides of
prisons, and they don't get a lot worse than 'The James Brand
Juvenile Correctional Facility'.

***

Chapter Two.

The first few days at Brand were pretty bad. I knew lots of tough
kids from the neighborhood back home, but there were some kids
inside that made them look tame. Part of my problem was that, having
only just turned 14, I was one of the youngest kids inside. Most of
them were 16 or older. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible,
but Brand was small enough that people came looking for me, the new
kid, anyway. The first day I was there a slick looking kid, sleazy
way beyond his 16 years, stopped me after lunch to tell me Nick
Pangianis wanted to see me. I didn't know what that meant, but I was
soon to find out.

After I was inducted into the center they did the usual things;
cutting my hair ultra-short and checking me for lice and diseases
and so on. Then I got read a lecture about the rules and
regulations, most of which just passed in one ear and out the other.
They gave me some clothes to wear, the same standard issue everyone
else got: a couple of white t-shirts, some pale blue cotton shirts
and some dark blue pants along with socks and underwear. They all
had 'Illinois Department of Corrections' printed on them. I'd seen
movies about guys being inducted into the army, and it seemed a lot
like that.

Then they led me inside.

I was put in a two-bed room with a guy about five years older than
me, Steve Hammond. He was pretty tall, well over six feet, and he
was really solid. He looked like he worked out a lot. Despite his
imposing size he didn't seem so bad, really, at least not compared
with the other guys there. He was civilized enough to explain how he
thought things would work, the rules of the cell as it were, but it
was clear he wasn't going to accept any argument from me.

After a brusque opening to our relationship, I decided I like him.
He came from Mississippi, and had a broad accent and a careful way
with his words that relaxed me immediately. I'd only ever heard
someone talk that way on TV before, never in real life, and I kind
of liked it.

The room was nothing special, at least not for a place that I was
going to be spending so much time in. Two of the walls were almost
completely covered with posters, mostly of either the Rolling Stones
or of topless girls. Steve was evidently a Stones fan. The pictures
of the girls were about as risqué as you could get while they were
still wearing panties. Totally nude pictures were forbidden.

Steve motioned to the bottom bunk and I put the blanket the center
had given me on it.

The rooms at Brand weren't totally like a prison cell. They had the
same concrete-block walls, but there were no bars to the corridor,
only solid steel doors that could be locked from the outside. The
windows had bars and mesh on them, and were too high for me to see
much out of. Not that there was much to see around the facility,
just institutional buildings and a flat landscape stretching off
into the distance. There weren't any trees. Inside, the walls were
painted in a pale gray, and there were no decorations other than
those the inmates put up themselves. Inmates were allowed to have a
few personal possessions. Most opted for a radio as the main thing,
and I noticed Steve was lucky enough to have a guitar and a cassette
recorder. Apart from that the place was pretty spartan.

The regime was pretty prison-like, though. We were subject to random
inspections, including in the middle of the night, and we were
confined to our rooms except for showers, meals, exercise time and
classes or workshop. Every so often Grieves and the teachers would
dream up some activities that were supposed to keep our morale up,
which everybody took part in just to get out of their rooms. Meals
were taken in the mess (they used a lot of military terms at Brand)
and there was a strict pecking order that governed where you got to
sit. Nobody knew me those first couple of days and so I sat on my
own, at a table at the front of the room. Otherwise we saw a lot of
the same concrete block walls.

I asked Steve what it meant that Nick Pangianis was looking for me
and Steve told me somewhat cryptically to watch out for myself in
the showers, that all new boys got an initiation. I figured Nick
must be a fag. That's strange, I thought -- at school nobody was
afraid of fags. They were the ones who got beaten up.

I was never really comfortable showering with anyone back then,
mostly because of my size. I was kind of short, still around 5'4",
and pretty thin and weedy. The truth is, I hadn't hit puberty yet,
really. Oh, I got a boner every now and again like every guy, but I
was still mostly hairless, and when I did jerk off nothing came out
yet. I still pretty much looked like a kid, too. Most of the others
at school, and all the guys at Brand, were men, or at least well on
the way to being men. At school I had always tried to be last one in
the showers after gym, just so the other guys wouldn't notice me so
much.

That was my general strategy in life -- just kind of fade into the
background and try not to be noticed. It worked most of my life up
until then. Especially since people were always expecting me to be
like Danny, loud and brash and confident. If they knew Danny they
always got a big surprise when they met me.

None of the guys at Brand knew Danny, of course, so they didn't have
any preconceptions of me. I had decided when I was going in that I
would just play things cool, at least until I found out how the
place worked. But that second day, in the showers, I was new, and I
suppose I was an object of curiosity. There was no possibility of a
later shower -- I was in there with others like it or not. So I
tried to act cool, like I wasn't afraid. Mostly I just tried not to
make eye contact. I turned to the wall, and raised my face to the
stream from the shower. That was probably a mistake, but then again
they'd probably have grabbed me whether I was looking or not. I had
a very bad feeling about what was going through the heads of a
couple of the boys in there, and I didn't need to look at them to
confirm my suspicions.

Two guys wrapped my arms behind my back and marched me to the far
side of the shower area, near the benches were a half-dozen guys
were dressing. They stood me behind a guy who was toweling his
near-shaved head briskly, his back to us. This was Nick Pangianis,
although I didn't know it right away. He turned around and smiled at
me, as though he wanted to put me at ease. The two goons holding my
arms didn't ease up on their grip, though. "Hey, Red," Nick said, in
a deep voice that gave me shivers.

Nick was a big guy, maybe bigger than Steve was, and he looked much
too old to be in a juvenile facility. He sure didn't look like a
fag, I thought to myself. He was a mean-looking son of a bitch, and
his thin smile couldn't hide that. That first day, I could see him
look me over thoroughly as I stood there naked, and he smirked, as
though finding me wanting. Then the goons thrust me to my knees, and
Nick advanced upon me as he began to unwrap the towel around his waist.

I was young, but I wasn't all that naive, and I knew what was
coming. I struggled, breaking my right arm free momentarily and
striking out blindly as Nick dropped his towel and I saw his cock
rising toward me. That was evidently something he hadn't expected,
and he doubled over in pain. Immediately I was hit from behind, and
my face was ground into the concrete floor. I felt a foot strike me
in the side, and then another, and another, and finally another blow
to the back of my head before I lost consciousness.

I woke up in the infirmary. Nobody asked me what had happened, how
it was that I'd suddenly had my nose all banged up or my ribs so
badly bruised. I decided not to volunteer anything. That had always
been the code in our neighborhood. Never Say Anything.

The doctor was a creep, I decided after he had seen me. Not just
ugly and grumpy, but kind of sleazy, too. I didn't like the way he
looked at me, or touched me, when he examined the bruises, and
despite my trepidation about going back out with the rest of the
guys I was relieved when they sent me back to my room after a few days.

"You said no, huh?" Steve said to me when I showed up at the door to
our room. I tried to smile, but it hurt. I told him I didn't want to
talk about it, so we lay on our respective bunks for an hour or so
in silence. It was Sunday evening, and there were no set activities
or chores. After a while, out of curiosity, I started asking Steve
about himself, and he answered most of them, out of boredom I guess.

The question everyone asks inside when he first meets you is "what
did you do?" Kind of like the way people on the outside ask what
kind of job you have soon after they meet you, to get a feel for the
kind of person you are. It's taken for granted most times that
everyone inside is innocent, even though almost nobody is. It's
almost a joke. "I'm in here for murdering my parents, but I didn't
do it," a mousy high-voiced Polish kid told me while we were in the
queue for dinner. Steve was a little different. He was inside
because he had stolen a car one night, and been involved in a
high-speed chase with the cops in which another kid had been killed,
and he'd been convicted of second degree murder as a result. He
freely admitted that he'd done it, and that he was sorry he'd done it.

I told him my story, and that I was innocent, but I suppose he
received this information with the same grain of salt everyone
inside gives 'innocence'.

I was pleased Steve was prepared to talk with me. It was unusual for
an older guy like him to waste time with a kid like me, and I
appreciated the gesture of friendship. "You're okay, Mike," he said.
He didn't need to add "for a kid" -- I knew that was part of it, but
I liked the company anyway. We talked for most of the evening, and I
came to like him more and more. Something in him, maybe the way he
paused to make a point or the twist to his mouth when he was going
to say something funny, reminded me of Danny. I was going to tell
him that before I went to sleep that night, but I thought it would
probably sound kind of sappy, so I shut up.

Next day the incident in the showers was repeated. Nick's goons
grabbed me, and dragged me to him. Once again, he tried to get me to
suck his cock. I refused again, and so I ate concrete a second time.
"You got guts, kid" I heard him say as feet went into my back and
ribs. "You're fuckin' stupid, but you got guts."

After they let me out of the infirmary that time I went back to my
room. I didn't say anything, just went to my bunk and lay down.
After a few minutes I heard Steve sigh and fold the magazine he was
reading, then saw him swing down to take a look at me. "Turn over,"
he said. I stayed put, until I felt his hand at my shoulder,
beginning to turn me anyway. I rolled over to face him. He whistled.
"I don't know if your face can take too much more of this."

"We'll see," I said, with as much conviction as I could muster.

"He only does it once," Steve said.

"Huh?"

"He does it to everyone, once. Then he mostly leaves you alone. It's
not a sex thing really. He has some kid, Cary, takes care of him that
way. It's just his way of letting you know he owns this place."

"He doesn't own me," I said, and rolled over again.

"Suit yourself," Steve said, climbing back onto his bunk. "But he's
gonna keep trying until you let him do it, or until you can beat him
and his goons in a fight. You're an okay looking kid, Mike, you
don't want to screw that up for life."

I lay awake for hours after lights out that night, thinking about
what Steve had said. Perhaps if I did it, just the once ... but
visions of Danny taunted me. I knew what he would have said. It
would be better to be dead than to suck some guy's cock. 'Is that
true, Danny?' I wondered. I thought of Steve. Had he sucked Nick's
cock, just for peace? I was going to ask him, but something made me
hold back. He had been nice to me, before, and that was the first
time anyone at Brand had been nice to me. And I had a good feeling
about Steve. I didn't know whether to trust my feelings, but there
was something about him that was -- good. We had talked for hours
again that evening, and I had felt a real bond with him. It was
almost the same bond I had felt with Danny. No matter what terrible
things either Steve or Danny had done, they both felt like guys I
could trust.

Next morning I was going to skip showers, but Gonzales, the guard,
came looking for me and told me in no uncertain terms to get my butt
in there. As I walked down the corridor I was growing increasingly
nervous, but to my surprise Gonzales followed me in to the showers.

In the showers nothing untoward happened. There was only the sound
of the running water. I could see Nick's goons on the other side of
the room, though there was no sign of Pangianis. They eyed me the
whole time I was in the shower, and when one of them thought
Gonzales wasn't looking he made a motion with his finger across his
larynx, like he was going to cut my throat. I finished my shower in
peace, dressed, and went back to my cell escorted by Gonzales.

"Thanks," I said to him as we walked back, but he just grunted, as
though he could have cared less what happened to me. At the door to
my room he spoke for the first time since the shower. "Downstairs in
five minutes for breakfast."

Steve walked with me downstairs, but separated from me as soon as we
hit the mess hall. "No offence, but I have a regular place," he
said. I knew what he meant from my experience during the first
couple of days at Brand. All the guys were crowded around nineteen
of the tables, with no seats spare. The one table at the front of
the room I had eaten at last time was vacant except for a fat kid
who kept his eyes on his food.

I got in the food line, picked up a tray and was served what passed
for breakfast, and began to make my way back to the table with the
fat kid. I knew I would have to earn a place with anyone else, and I
hadn't had a chance to do that, yet.

I sat and ate breakfast, deliberately avoiding eye contact with
anyone else. I had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach,
but I wasn't sure if it was just the unfamiliarity of the place or
any real threat, so I just focused on the tray in front of me. So
rigorously was I focusing on my food that I didn't notice that half
the hall had emptied out, and I was startled when I noticed two guys
had sat down beside me. Looking up and to my left I could see one of
them was Pangianis. On the other side was Sonny, a stoned-looking
thug of his. The fat kid hurriedly stood up and nervously took his
tray over to the clean-up area. I flicked my eyes toward the serving
area but noticed there was no-one there, and the guard who had been
at the door was occupied talking to three guys about something, his
back to me. Pangianis observed me scoping the room, and smiled. I
did not like his smile.

"Wanna do it here?" he said quietly.

Just by reflex, because the idea was so ridiculous, I said "huh?"

"You heard me, fuck. Get under the table."

"Fuck you," I said.

I waited for the thump, but none came. Instead, he and his goon
grabbed my arms. I was going to cry out, to attract the guard, but
the goon grabbed my mouth as well, and it came out muffled. Then I
felt a strange sensation on my left wrist, a sharp pain that burned,
and then felt it again. Wrestling myself around to the right, I
tried to bite the goon's arm. I felt the same sensation on my right
wrist. What was going on? Were they trying to tie me up? It didn't
make any sense. Eventually I got one of the goon's fingers inside my
mouth, and I bit hard. Really hard. He let go of my arm in surprise,
and took his hand from my mouth. Immediately I lashed out at him
with my right hand. It was hard to get at him, since he was on my
right, but I hit him a glancing blow across the face and he
overturned his chair. I was aware as I hit him that something was
wrong with my arm, and that Pangianis had let go of me as well, but
it didn't stop me. I lashed out with my leg, kicking, then spun
round to hit out at my main oppressor. Pangianis was gone. He was at
least a table length away. Then I saw the guard coming for me, and I
ran toward Pangianis, wanting to hurt him before the guard could
break us apart. Something was wrong with me, I thought dimly as I
started to move. I felt weak, and my arms were wet. Especially the
left one. I have a dim memory of looking down, seeing my left hand
covered in blood, before I passed out within a few feet of Nick
Pangianis.

I woke up in a room that wasn't part of the Brand facility. I knew
that right away. For a start, it was cleaner, and also better
finished. All the walls at Brand were roughly rendered brick, and
these looked like plaster, or at least good quality concrete. There
was a more obvious guide to where I was: the IV dripping into my
left arm.

I lay in bed for a while before I remembered the events that had led
up to where I was. I extracted my left arm from under the quilt and
saw that my wrist was wrapped in a bandage, and further up the arm
from the bandage was a leather cuff and a chain to the side of the
bed. My right arm was bandaged and restrained in the same way. My
face felt kind of numb, but I discovered that I couldn't bring my
hands up far enough to touch it, since the straps restrained my
arms. Running my tongue over my lips I felt a bandage above my upper
lip.

I was still exploring my circumstances when a nurse came in to the
room. "Oh, you're awake," she said.

"Uh huh," I nodded, trying to sit up. It was impossible because I
couldn't move my arms far enough back in the bed. "Can you help me
sit up?"

"You have to stay in the bed until the doctor says you can move,"
she said, but she helped tilt the bed up so I was more or less
sitting. I tried to engage her in conversation about where I was,
and what had happened, but she said, in a friendly way, that I'd
have to wait until the doctor talked to me. "And Mr. Grieves," she said.

I found out who Mr. Grieves was immediately after she left. A tall,
graying and conservatively dressed man walked in to the room. He
looked like he was about to come to the side of the bed, but then he
seemed to change his mind and stood at the foot instead. I was glad
I was sitting up so I could see him properly.

"Good afternoon, Michael. I was hoping to meet you in somewhat
different circumstances." His voice was polished and resonant, like
Charlton Heston's.

I nodded hello, unsure about what he was talking about, but not
getting a good feeling from him.

"I'm John Grieves, Michael. I run James Brand," he said, sensing my
confusion. "Ordinarily I would have met with you on your second day
with us, but you have had a rather, ah, unorthodox few days with us
so far, wouldn't you say?"

"I wouldn't know," I said.

"I like my boys to say 'Sir'," Mr. Grieves said firmly.

I thought about bucking this, but in the circumstances -- what with
hospital and feeling strange and all -- I decided against it. "Yes sir"

"That's good, Michael. Am I going to have a problem with you?"

"Pardon?"

"I am, it seems."

"Pardon, sir," I corrected myself.

"I was just wondering whether I was going to have a problem with
you." His eyes flicked over me as though he was appraising livestock.

"No, sir"

"Well, you're off to a bad start so far," he said. "We don't often
get boys for sex offences, let alone boys your age, and --"

"-- I didn't --"

"-- I don't like people interrupting me" he continued, his mood
souring. "We've never had a boy involved in as many fights as you in
such a short time. You've spent more time in the infirmary than you
have out of it so far."

I said nothing. There didn't seem any point in explaining that I had
nothing to do with Maria's death. Nor that I had never had any
sexual experience at all. Mr. Grieves had made his mind up about me
from reading my file.

Mr. Grieves seemed to weigh my silence and find it wanting. "I can't
allow this behavior at James Brand," he said gravely. "You must
realize that. It disrupts the discipline of the other boys." He
raised his hand as though to forestall another interruption from me.
"Now, I don't care what the reasons for your fighting were, or
whether you were actually trying to kill yourself ... "

What? It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the cuts
Pangianis had made to my wrists. Shit. How could anyone be stupid
enough to think I had been trying to kill myself? I was flabbergasted!

"... But I take a very dim view of sharpened knives and such like,"
he went on. "Your possession of such an implement is, on its own,
sufficient for me to keep you away from the other boys, and keep you
out of the mess hall. You'll eat alone, with plastic implements."

"Sir?" I said timidly.

"What?" he said impatiently.

"I didn't have a knife, sir. I didn't cut myself, someone else cut me."

"We found a knife beneath the table you had been sitting at. Quite
expertly sharpened, I must admit. Who do you think cut you?"

Once again I couldn't say. The code of the neighborhood. Never tell.
Not even on Pangianis. "What about the others?"

"Taylor saw you attack two other boys before you went down, he
didn't know why," Grieves said. "They said they were trying to stop
you hurting yourself"

"It was my first time in the mess hall, sir. Where would I have
gotten the knife?"

He considered this for a few seconds. "You could have had it in the
infirmary. It would probably be easier to have obtained it there. In
any case, it doesn't excuse your behavior in the preceding days."
His mood was even uglier, now that I had questioned his version of
events.

I was screwed. I saw that. He had made up his mind about me, and
changing it was going to take action from me, not words. If I could
ever change it. I looked down at my hands, glumly.

"You weren't feeling remorseful about what you did to that girl?"
Grieves continued.

"I didn't do anything to her." I knew this was the wrong thing to
say but there was no way I was ever going to admit to something as
hideous as that.

"You are clearly a very, very disturbed boy, Michael. On the basis
of your offence alone I would have referred you to the counselor,
but since this attempted suicide and your consistent fighting and
aggressive behavior I'm afraid I'll also be referring you to Dr.
Blaha for regular therapy. You will see him every week, starting
tomorrow."

Almost as an aside, Grieves changed his tone and said lightly "Quite
apart from anything else, it reflects badly upon us to have you look
like this. Imagine if you had a visitor, what they would think to
see you look this way! Of course, I've forbidden you any visitors
for the next three months, as punishment for this."

And then he was gone. I lay back in the bed and thought about where
my life had gone to in the past three months. To shit, I thought. My
life was shit.

The next day I met Dr Blaha for the first time. He swept into the
room soon after breakfast, accompanied by a nurse. "Untie him
immediately," he said brusquely to her, and my spirits improved. At
last, someone who thought I was a human being. But then he turned to
me, and flipped the file he had in his hand briskly through the air,
as though he was about to toss it away.

"You have given a lot of people cause to dislike you," he said to me
severely as the nurse undid the chain on my right arm. He had a
peculiar accent I couldn't put a name to. It wasn't difficult to
understand, but I figured it was something European. "This ..." He
motioned to the file. "This is shocking, I must say. At your age. I
have had some troublesome adolescents referred to me before, but
never one as young as you with such a record, Michael."

The nurse released my other arm and I rubbed my face lightly. I had
a bandage across my nose and on my forehead. It seemed to cover most
of my face. Dr. Blaha seemed distracted by my actions. "No need to
worry about that, I'm sure Dr. Singh did a good job on it." He
turned to the nurse then and lowered his voice. "Would you give us
some privacy, please?"

The nurse left and he continued in a lower voice. "You don't need to
worry about the bandage, the surgeon just fixed your nose and
stitched up the cut above your eye. I'm assured you won't notice
anything after a few weeks." He lowered the bed slightly and pulled
over a chair so we were more or less level as he continued. "I am
Dr. Blaha, I believe Mr. Grieves has spoken to you about me?" I
nodded, and he went on. "I am a psychiatrist, Michael, and I have
been asked by Mr. Grieves to talk with you to see what is at the
heart of your problems."

I didn't say anything, just waited for him to continue. He talked
for a while about his expectations for me, and then warned me
against any uncooperative behavior. "You must understand, Michael,
that although you are only in a juvenile facility, I have the legal
authority to do anything I feel is necessary to rehabilitate you.
Anything. Are you clear on that?"

Again, I didn't say anything, just nodded. I had pretty much made up
my mind that he was going to be no help at all. Untying my hands had
just been a gesture to try to win my confidence -- this guy was a
part of the system that had put me here.

He went on for a long time after that, asking me lots of questions
about my life, about how I felt about girls, lots of other stuff
about how I felt about life in general and about my feelings toward
suicide. I tried to explain that I had not been suicidal, and I
almost told him about Pangianis, but there was something about him
that I didn't trust and I held back.

After Dr. Blaha left I went back to total boredom in the hospital
room. The next day they transferred me back to the infirmary at
Brand, and then a few days after that removed the bandages. They
gave me a mirror, and I could see that although my nose and eyes
were still very swollen they looked like they would heal up without
any scars.

I was given my own room at Brand, and -- as Mr. Grieves had said --
kept entirely separate from everyone else. There were three rooms in
the isolation section but I never saw anyone else in the corridors
in the time I was there, or heard anyone but the guards. I showered
alone in a single stall shower in the block, and had my meals
brought to me in my room. There was a small outside space -- hardly
a courtyard, more like the bottom of an air shaft -- at the end of
the corridor of the isolation section where I was allowed to spend
an hour a day in the open air, although sunshine never seemed to hit
the ground there.

Even though I had only been at Brand a few days, I kind of missed
Steve. He had helped me fit in with a lot of things there and I
missed having someone to talk with to fill in the long days. Grieves
came to see me my first day out of the infirmary and explained that
I would be excluded from the general activities the other boys were
involved in, but that he would expect me to do some reading so I
could keep up with studies when I went back into the general
population at Brand.

The days were very long and boring, so I started reading some of the
books, just out of desperation. I had been neither a good or bad
student when at school -- good because I was reasonably smart I
guess, but bad because I didn't much care about it. Studying was
what the Brady Bunch crowd did. But I got through the books Grieves
left pretty easily. They were just novels and a couple of history
books. There were some textbooks but I didn't pay any attention to
those.

I saw Dr. Blaha a few times in a small room off the infirmary, and
he got me to tell him a lot of details about my past and my family.
He was a strange man. There was something about him that made me
uneasy, although he was always polite with me. At the end of the
second session I had with him I felt somehow dirty, almost like
there was something about him that was rubbing off on me. Perhaps it
was the way he looked at me. I felt like he was looking past me to
someone who wasn't there, even when he looked me straight in the eyes.

Each visit with Dr. Blaha lasted about an hour; one or two ran
longer. Otherwise I only got to see the guards when they woke me,
escorted me to the small shower block in the isolation wing, or
brought me my meals. Each week they sprung a random inspection on
me, looking through my room for drugs or something I guess. I also
saw the guards when I got an hour in the yard by myself every day,
but otherwise it was just me, in that room, by myself.

A few weeks after I was released from hospital one of the guards
came to fetch me to see Grieves. Maybe he had relented, I thought,
and I was going to be allowed to rejoin the rest of the guys. The
idea gave me mixed emotions. I was lonely, but I still hadn't worked
out a way to deal with Pangianis.

It was Dr. Blaha who opened the door to the office. Grieves was
sitting at his desk, but he stood as soon as the guard and I came
in. The atmosphere in the office was bad, gloomy, and I knew
immediately that Grieves hadn't summoned me there to tell me
everything was going to be okay.

"I have bad news," Grieves began.

I don't remember too much past that point. Dr. Blaha said later that
it was because of stress or something. Grieves went on to tell me
that my mother was dead, that my father had finally hit her one too
many times and she had died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.
Dr. Blaha said later that my father's rages had become worse after
Danny had died and I was locked up.

Whatever the truth was, I did not take it well. Though I don't
remember it, I've been told I didn't say anything, just stood there
with my head hung for about two minutes, and then I went berserk,
rampaging across Grieves' office, heading straight for him and
destroying everything on his desk until the guard was able to
restrain me. I had dim memories of it later, when I lay in my room,
but I think that was mostly because I felt sore from the bruises
from where the guard had hit me. As I rubbed my aching arm I thought
again of Mom, and of the way she used to be, when she was happy,
singing along to Dusty Springfield. I knew tough guys didn't cry,
but I couldn't help it then, and I blubbered for at least an hour
while I thought of how life should have been for her.

Dr. Blaha came to my room an hour or two later, and wanted to talk
to me, but I was still in turmoil from what had happened. I was over
my tears, but I wanted to find my Dad, and hurt him, badly. I hadn't
felt this way since Maria had been killed, and now there was the
same small dark hard thing at the bottom of my soul that wanted to
explode outward in retribution for this injustice. My mom had
deserved a better life. I refused to say a word, and eventually,
after a small, ill-tempered lecture from Blaha about needing to
cooperate, he left.

I was called out on the following Monday to see Dr. Blaha again. We
got off to a bad start with the session. I had decided I would start
talking to him, but instead of talking about Mom now he wanted to
ask me questions about Maria and what had happened that night, and
wouldn't believe me when I said I was innocent. Instead, he got off
into a rage about how we could never have a relationship of trust so
long as I could not be truthful, and that it was just my screwed-up
relationship with sex and women that was impeding my therapy.

I couldn't help myself after that. Although I had mostly always been
respectful to adults, I said the same thing I would have said to
anyone who insulted me that way in the old neighborhood -- I told
him to go fuck himself.

Immediately he stopped ranting, and his face took on a calmer but
more calculating look. "If that's the way you want this to be," he
said, and he called for the guard to take me back to my room.

The following day I was led by a guard to the infirmary, where the
nurse took some blood samples. The day after that I went back there
again, only this time Dr. Blaha was there to greet me. "It gives me
no pleasure to do this, Michael, but since you have shown no
willingness to cooperate, and since you are still extremely
aggressive and show some disturbing attitudes so far as sexual
development goes, I have no alternative."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but he went on.

"Drop your pants, please."

Huh? I didn't say anything, but I didn't move, either. This guy was
a shrink, why did he want to look at my butt? When I didn't move the
guard came over and grabbed my wrists behind my back while the nurse
undid my pants. Then the guard forced me over the examination table.
A few moments later I felt a sharp prick as Dr. Blaha jabbed me in
the butt with a needle.

"This is the only alternative I have left to me, Michael. You may
find it slightly extreme, but I am sure it will make the difference
we need to move on."

***

Chapter Three.

The next week was as uneventful as most of my time while I was kept
in isolation. I read, exercised and ate alone. About the only
difference in my life was that I seemed to need a lot more sleep
than usual. I slept most afternoons. I just didn't seem to have any
energy.

At our next meeting Dr. Blaha asked how I was, and was almost
apologetic about having to have me restrained the week before, but I
was still angry with him and wouldn't give him more than yes or no
answers. I still wanted to ask him what it was he'd injected me
with, but I figured -- with the state of our relationship as it was
-- he wouldn't tell me anyway. The way he looked at me gave me the
creeps, and I had a really bad feeling about what was going through
his mind. Trust was not on the cards.

Life proceeded in this manner for some time. Dr. Blaha and I had
standoffish encounters at every meeting, and I was bored most of the
time on my own. I was gradually making my way through the library,
and I was exercising to try to keep myself in shape, but I was still
very tired and finding a lot of things harder going. I figured the
shot he gave me was a tranquilizer, but I was surprised it lasted so
long.

In the third week after Dr. Blaha gave me the shot I noticed my
chest was kind of painful, at least around my nipples. They felt
very painful in the cold air at night and in the morning. At our
next meeting I asked him about my tiredness, but I didn't feel
comfortable about mentioning my chest. "Yes, I would expect you to
feel more tired, it's a side effect of these drugs, and will help to
calm you down," Dr. Blaha said. "I want to make you less aggressive,
and this will help." I got another shot at the end of the session.
This time I just gave in, and didn't need to be restrained. He
seemed mildly pleased.

My tiredness didn't decrease, and nor did the uncomfortable feelings
in my nipples. By about three weeks after that I was beginning to
think there was something wrong with me. There was a definite small
growth under each nipple, and they were puffy and very sensitive to
every touch. The rough texture of my shirts rubbing against them
made any kind of exercise feel very painful.

Gradually Dr. Blaha seemed to thaw, and I suppose I did too. Every
two weeks he gave me another shot at the end of the therapy session,
and I gradually came to accept it. After a few months I had even
come to look forward to the sessions, if only because they got me
out of my room and just being able to walk the corridors to the
session seemed like a pleasure. Dr. Blaha and I had a session
together on my fifteenth birthday, and he was friendly and wished me
well and gave me a small box of chocolates, which he said he had
cleared with Grieves. In return I agreed to tell him a little bit
about my childhood, and he was smiling by the end of the session.

Grieves came to see me later on my birthday, too, and told me that
Dr. Blaha had told him I was "coming along well" and might soon be
allowed to rejoin the rest of the guys at Brand "depending, of
course, on your continued progress." He gave me a small parcel. "I
realize that now that the weather has gotten colder you might need
something more to wear than the shirts you have, I hope these are
alright."

I mumbled a kind of thank you and he left. After he had gone I
opened the parcel. Inside were a couple of soft cotton vests, for
wearing underneath my shirts. They looked kind of thin, which made
me wonder about their value as far as keeping me warm, but I was
glad to have something to keep my nipples from scratching.

After about my eighth or ninth shot I realized with some horror what
was happening to my chest. I was growing breasts. As soon as I made
the connection in my mind it was obvious. At first I was at a loss
to figure out why. Looking at me, it was obvious that the small
swellings on my frame were just like the ones I had been so
intrigued about on Mary Wozecky two years or so ago when she stopped
playing with the boys in the neighborhood. I was mortified. Breasts!

Frankly, 'mortified' doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. My
first thought was -- well, it was more an absence of thought. I was
stunned. My second thought was to try to deny it. But there they
were. It was unmistakable. I thought of the comments I had heard
guys make about breasts, the comments I had heard Danny make. He was
a real tit man. I sank into depression as I wondered about my
manhood, and about what he'd think of me if he could see me now. It
didn't bear thinking about.

Next time I got to request some books I asked for a bunch of medical
reference texts. The library only had about four books like that.
They were all mostly pretty basic biology, but one was a kind of
encyclopedia of medicine, and although it had a lousy index I
skimmed through a lot of it from the beginning, looking for anything
to do with breasts or puberty, until I found a reference to
gyneacomastia. It said this was a condition that a lot of guys got,
especially around puberty, which resulted in them growing breasts.
Most times, it said, the development passed after the initial
hormonal burst that marked puberty, and the guys grew up perfectly
normally. This relaxed me a little bit. I read the entry so many
times for reassurance that I knew it by heart by the time I returned
it to the library.

As my breasts continued to grow I started to be glad I was on my
own. What would the other guys say if they saw me in the showers
now? My breasts were not especially noticeable under my clothing,
but I was very conscious of them, and I knew that they were
unmistakably female. The encyclopedia had said that the condition
was quite common, but I'd never seen anything like this happen to
other guys.

I was also worried about other parts of my body. I seemed to be
putting on some weight, but only on my butt. The tiny mirror stuck
to the wall in my room didn't let me get a decent look at my body,
since I couldn't stand back far enough from it to take in much of
me. All I had to go on was what I could see by looking down at
myself. From that perspective my breasts looked enormous, but I
couldn't really get a good idea about my butt.

The way my body looked was only part of it; the way I felt was more
disturbing. My nipples were ultra-sensitive, way beyond anything I
could have imagined. Sometimes at night I ran my hands over them and
around my budding breasts, and found the sensations excruciating and
yet wonderful. As time went on some of the excruciating element
receded, and all I was left with was a feeling of intense pleasure.
Part of me loved it, but another, maybe dominant, part of me knew
that boys weren't supposed to experience these feelings, and that
probably what I was doing when I handled my breasts was wrong.

My hair also bothered me. It had not been cut since it had been
shorn when I first arrived at Brand, and was now a mid-length shag
beginning to hang in my eyes, and coming in very wavy and even
curly. The red seemed to be deeper in color than it had been when I
was younger, although I might have been imagining that since I had
never had as much of it as this before. Lots of the guys at Brand
had longer hair -- it was a kind of badge of resistance after
everyone's hair was cut so short on arrival -- but I had never had
hair past my ears before. I kept trying to brush it back with my
hands, or comb it into place when it was wet, but whenever I did
that I thought from what little I could see in the little mirror
that it made me look kind of girlish. Not that it mattered much
while I was in isolation, and there wasn't much I could do about it
while I was there anyway.

In the midst of all these other changes there was one compensation.
I had started to develop a small amount of hair around my cock and
balls, and a little in my armpits. It was only fine, and kind of
sparse, but I felt encouraged that my masculinity hadn't completely
gone on hold.

Gonzales got assigned to the isolation wing three days a week about
ten weeks after I was put in. Not that I cared much about the
guards, but at least his was a face I'd seen before I was separated
from everyone else. It turned out he liked to talk, and pretty soon
I knew all about his wife and kids and his mother who lived with
them and his younger brother who was no good and mixed up in a shady
importing business. Hearing about this big Hispanic soap opera
helped to pass the time.

The other two days a week Gonzales worked back in the general area
at Brand, where I'd first met him that time he took me to the
showers, and one day he told me he had a message for me, from Steve.
It wasn't very specific, or if it was Gonzales had forgotten the
exact words, but he passed it on as a sort of general encouragement.

Steve had asked after me, at least. That was nice. It seemed
pathetic to think of a guy I'd only spent a few days with as a good
friend, but really Steve was my only friend in the world, and I
guess you latch onto whatever you find when you're down.

Since Gonzales couldn't remember much more than two or three
sentences at a time the message I sent back to Steve was a short
one, just saying I was okay and would be glad to get out of isolation.

Gradually Gonzales took more and more messages between us, I think
because he liked me. Maybe I was the only person in the world who
would listen to him bitch about his family troubles all the time.
Now it seems kind of hard to believe that someone would confide all
to a fifteen year old boy, but at the time I just went with it.

Whatever it was, Steve and Gonzales and I struck up this weird
slow-motion conversation. "I could get in trouble for doing this"
Gonzales said to me a couple of weeks after the first message. That
was true, because he wasn't supposed to talk to us much. What the
hell, it must have been a really shitty, boring job; he had to talk
to someone. I reassured him, pointing out that I valued the
communication and wasn't likely to complain to anyone.

Out of the blue one day, after I had been listening to him talking
about how his son wasn't doing well at school for about an hour and
just saying uh huh and nodding every now and again, Gonzales said
"You know, Mike, I don't care what you did, you are a better kid
than most of the kids in here -- better than some of the ones
outside, too." Then he seemed to regret saying it immediately, like
he had overstepped he mark, which I guess he had. I changed the
subject for him quickly, since I was embarrassed as all hell anyway.
It was such a strange outburst from a guard at a place like Brand.

The visits to Dr. Blaha continued, and so did the shots. I began to
worry about all the weight I was putting on in my butt. Although I
couldn't see that part of me properly, it was getting more and more
difficult to get my pants on even though my waist hadn't grown much.
My jockey shorts stretched out pretty tight around my butt. Plus the
shots were still making me really tired and I was sleeping way too much.

Dr. Blaha kept telling me he thought we were making good progress,
and that soon I would be able to rejoin the rest of the Brand
community. I didn't get much out of the sessions at all except for a
growing feeling of unease at the way Blaha looked at me as my body
developed. He really gave the creeps, especially at those moments
when I had to drop my pants so he could give me a shot. A couple of
times his hand lingered on my butt, and I was pretty sure he had a
boner whenever he did that. I tried not to let my unease show when
we talked, because I didn't want him to think he was getting to me.
Mostly in our sessions we talked about me, about what it was like
growing up. A couple of times he asked me to talk about Danny, and
that was pretty hard because I cried, and I hated crying in front of
him.

For some reason, I seemed to cry very easily ever since I'd been
seeing Dr. Blaha. I put it down to the shots.

In a couple of sessions Dr. Blaha recorded what I was saying. Once
or twice he played some of our earlier conversations back to me, to
illustrate how he thought I was becoming less aggressive and
hostile. I didn't notice any change in the way I spoke, because I
was always fixated on the way I sounded whenever I heard myself on
tape. I wanted my voice to break so badly.

That didn't seem like it was going to happen anytime soon, though.
My problems with my breasts got worse. They were definitely
noticeable now. They *seemed* huge. I tore up one of the cotton
vests Grieves had given me and used the fabric from it to bind
myself up. Even though there wasn't really anyone except Gonzales
and the other guards to see me, I wasn't comfortable with what had
happened to my body. I especially hated the way they had begun to
jiggle when I moved suddenly. Binding them up at least stopped that.

Bob, an older guard who was rostered on weekends, started giving me
the strangest looks, and even made some creepy comments about me. He
called me 'pussy' from the first day he was assigned to isolation,
and I wasn't sure whether that was just a general term of abuse from
him or something specific to the way I looked that he might have
noticed. I tried to make sure the binding was on extra tight when he
was around.

Mostly it was other guards, but sometimes it would be Gonzales who
would escort me to see Dr. Blaha. Once as we were walking there
Gonzales tried to cheer me up by attempting to imitate the way Blaha
talked. It worked -- there was no way Gonzales's Hispanic speech
patterns could come close to Blaha's strange middle-European accent.

Twelve months after I had been sent to Brand I was still in the
isolation wing. I mentioned this gloomily to Gonzales one afternoon
as we were making the pilgrimage to see Dr. Blaha.

"It's been a long time," he admitted. "Almost as long as Hammond
spent here."

"I didn't know Steve was in isolation," I said to him.

"Oh, yes, twice. They let him out after three months the first time
and he got into trouble again. He went back in for another six
months," said Gonzales. "And then another six months." I was about
to ask what Steve had been sent to isolation for when we arrived at
the door to Blaha's office. Gonzales opened the door for me and I
went in on my own, as I usually did. "He and Pangianis were always
fighting," Gonzales said quietly, in answer to the question I hadn't
asked. "Pangianis spent a year in the wing as well, before that."

Inside the session proceeded badly from the start. Dr. Blaha gave me
the shot at the start of the session instead of the end like he
usually did, which put me in a bad mood. Then right off after that
he started asking me to talk about how I felt about Maria, and
whether I felt any remorse.

Naturally I clammed up. There was no way to respond to those
questions. In the past I would have gone into a rage about it, but
now I just got kind of sad and stayed silent. I wasn't angry any
more -- Blaha's questions seemed more pointless than maddening.

The doctor changed his approach to the discussion. There was one big
barrier that was preventing him from telling Grieves I was coming
around, Blaha ventured. "You still don't trust me," he said.

That was true. I didn't really trust anyone. Blaha thought I didn't
trust him because I wouldn't talk to him about Maria, and that was
true, too. But the reason I wouldn't talk to him about it was that
he didn't believe me when I said I didn't kill her.

"You don't trust me, either," I said.

He weighed this up for a moment. I guess he realized it was true.
"It's not about me trusting you, Michael. It's about working out how
you can survive here without being a danger to others and to
yourself. A big part of that is reconciling you to take
responsibility for what you've done to get yourself sent here."

He paused, and sighed, and looked at me very directly. "Okay,
Michael. Let's try doing this step by step. How are you feeling
these days?"

"I'm okay, I guess"

"You're not as angry as you were?" he continued.

I had just been thinking about that a minute or so earlier, and I
shook my head.

"Good. Well, that's progress. You don't feel these violent rages any
more?"

"I didn't --," I began, but he immediately cut me off.

"-- I don't want to hear excuses today, Michael. Are you feeling
anger now?"

"Uh, no," I admitted. "I mean, I've never --"

"-- Let us stick to me asking questions and you answering. Good. No
rages. That means the therapy is working." He even smiled a little.
"What about your feelings toward girls? Have you been thinking about
girls a lot?"

"Uh, no ... " I realized I hadn't been thinking about them much at
all. Not that I've ever been weirdly obsessed or anything. But it
occurred to me that I hadn't thought about sex lately. I hadn't even
had a boner these last few months. Before I had come to Brand I got
a few, and I thought a lot about Mary Wozecky and even Maria
sometimes when I jerked off at home. Recently I had jerked off a
little bit, but it was while I was playing with my own breasts, not
thinking of Mary's, and most of the time I stayed soft while I was
doing it anyway. What did that mean?

Dr. Blaha was saying something but I hadn't been listening. All of a
sudden I was aware of how my attitudes toward sex had changed in the
time I'd been at Brand. I mean, I still hadn't really reached
puberty according to Danny's measure of it ("once you start
spurting, man, that's it," he had once told me) but I had thought
about sex much more before I was sentenced than I had since. Maybe
it was just that there were no girls around. Yeah, I thought, that
was it.

Dr. Blaha finished saying whatever it was I had ignored and then
looked to me for a response. When I didn't give one he looked at me
kind of strangely. "Take off your clothes," he said.

I hesitated. Dr. Blaha was such a creepy guy, and the look he was
giving me was one of his creepiest. I sat there until he grew
impatient. I could see it was not negotiable, but I was resistant. I
hadn't been naked in front of anyone else since he had begun giving
me the shots. As I sat there, motionless, he started to approach me,
so I quickly stood up and, waving him away, began to undress.

I turned my back to him and undid my shirt. Underneath I had on a
t-shirt as well as a vest, and underneath that was the vest I had
torn up to bind my breasts. Before I took the t-shirt off I undid my
pants and dropped them to the floor. I looked back over my shoulder
to see him watching me intently, and he waved his hand at me to
continue. I pulled the t-shirt over my head, then turned back around
to face him.

"The vest and underwear too, Michael."

I dropped my jockey shorts first, feeling more embarrassed than I
usually did when he gave me the shots. Then, hesitantly, I lifted
the vest over my head and closed my eyes. I was waiting for a
comment about the binding across my chest, but all I heard was a low
"And that as well, thank you" from Blaha. I reached between my
breasts to undo the knot in the material and then I was standing,
naked, in front of him. I folded my arms in front of me, to try to
hide my chest, and then slowly opened my eyes.

Dr. Blaha had moved forward to get a closer look at me, and was
beginning to circle around me. "Mmmm," he said. He said that a lot
when he was pleased. "I must say that the effects are somewhat more
pronounced than I had expected. We might have a problem soon... Take
your arms down please."

Reluctantly I did so, feeling more naked than I ever had before in
front of anyone. I shivered, even though it was not cold in the
room, and I felt my nipples get hard and pointy. I blushed, and
briefly wondered about his comment about having a problem *soon*.

"So, Michael, perhaps you can see that it is sometimes easier just
to -- how do you say it -- go with the flow instead of getting angry."

I had no idea what he was talking about. He picked up a camera and
began to take photographs of me. With a shock I realized that the
small tent in his pants meant that he was turned on by what he saw.
I felt a wave of nausea build.

"Face the door, please," Dr. Blaha continued after he had finished
inspecting me. I turned, and for the first time I saw myself naked
in the full-length mirror attached to the back of the door.

My mind reeled. I looked like a girl. Apart from my cock, I mean. I
looked like a girl maybe a year or so younger than me. I had
breasts, and hips, and a little indentation to my waist, and my arms
and legs were softer and more rounded than they used to be. My nose
looked kind of petite, my lips were fuller than they used to be. My
shaggy hair gave my face a kind of elfin quality, almost... pretty.
A little shock went through me. I looked like, well, like the kind
of girl I used to get knotted up about when I was at school. But I
didn't just look like them in the face; I looked like them almost
all over.

Even the hair around my cock and balls wasn't particularly
masculine; I could see that now. When Danny had reached puberty, he
had developed a lot of hair, and it ran up his belly. Mine looked
more like the patch of darkness that I had seen on the girls in
porno magazines, a little neat dark red triangle, in this case
broken by a small, pathetic looking penis that somehow looked
smaller than it ever had. I thought of those magazines, and of
Danny, and remembered the photograph of the 'chick with a dick' that
Danny had teased me about so much.

Was that what I was, now? Was that why Danny was always laughing at
me in my dreams?

"This was not my main purpose," Dr. Blaha continued, as he began
measuring me around the hips, waist and ... er ... bust. I flinched
when I felt his hands contact my skin. "But it's not entirely
unexpected. As I explained to you when you first began taking them,
it's a side effect of the drugs I gave you. Anti-androgens,
estrogens. We give them to sex offenders these days, to free their
minds from the urges they have. It also has the effect of calming
any other violent urges they have. Usually the side effects of
feminization are not as dramatic as they have been in your case, but
I suppose since you are young... "

I had stopped listening. I hadn't imagined I had looked quite like
this until now. I knew odd things had been happening to my body, and
they had been happening for a long time, but I hadn't realized what
the overall effect would be. Then I realized I was crying.

The way I responded in to the image of myself in the mirror probably
sounds like I'm really stupid or something. I had known that my body
had been changing -- how could I not have known? My breasts were so
obvious. What I hadn't seen before was how completely it had
changed. Naked before the mirror, I finally assembled all those
things I had noticed in the months before into a coherent image of
myself. It wasn't the image I had been expecting, no matter how
often I had worried about the growth of my breasts and butt.

Dr. Blaha wrapped my shirt around me and put his arm around me
gently to lead me back to my seat in front of his desk. I didn't
even flinch when I felt his hand drop from my back to my butt as he
steered me toward the chair, I was so dazed from what I had seen.
Then he returned to his own chair on the other side.

"I'm sorry it's such a shock, Michael... you may remember I said
that you might find the treatment extreme. It has been necessary so
that we could move forward. You can see now that I am prepared to do
whatever it takes to get your cooperation with me. Now that your
violent urges seem to have subsided we can think about returning you
to the main part of the center."

Despite my shock the last part of the sentence penetrated my
sobbing. "Return me to the center?" I could imagine what Pangianis
would think of me now. "I can't..."

Dr. Blaha nodded. "I can see there could be some complications,
Michael, but we will do our best to ensure you are safe. You will
shower separately, and I will get you something to hide your, ah,
breasts, ah, better. Now that you are not as prone to violence
yourself perhaps you will be less inclined to get into trouble."

I shook my head. "He'll kill me," I said desperately.

"Who will, Michael?"

I thought of the code of silence, and then I thought of what lay
ahead for me. I felt lost. No matter what I chose, my life back with
the other guys in Brand was going to be misery. I swallowed, and
said nothing as I went to gather up my clothing.

Blaha let my statement ride but then added to my fears. "Of course,
we will need to continue the treatment for a while," he said. "I
know the side effects are distressing, but you have made excellent
progress, and I don't want to lose that."

"Distressing!" I was astonished that he would consider sending me
back to the rest of Brand, but I was speechless that he wanted me to
continue getting the shots. Was he really so clueless that he didn't
know what would happen to me, or did he still harbor some ill will
towards me?

I briefly thought of fighting with him, but it seemed pointless. He
had Grieves, the guards, the entire institution and even drugs on
his side, and I was at his mercy no matter what I did. Plus he
seemed to have a real bee in his bonnet about me being a
troublemaker already. I slowly dressed, and waited for him to
dismiss me. He was gazing out the window as I was dressing, and then
he turned and smiled.

"You know, Michael, you shouldn't feel so bad about this. The
changes do seem to... well... suit you, and while I'm sure you find
them inconvenient we will make sure you are taken care of." He went
to a cabinet at the side of the room and retrieved a small pack of
tablets, then approached me with one in his upturned palm. "Take
this. I'll see to it you get two every day. It will help."

I looked at him with alarm. What was the pill for? I was already in
enough trouble with the drugs he'd been giving me. What did he mean
by "the changes seem to suit"?

Blaha saw my reluctance and sighed. "It will make you feel better,
Michael. There are no side effects like the shots you've had,
alright?" Reluctantly, I took the pill and swallowed it. "Thank
you," he said. He even smiled. "I'll see you weekly from now on," he
continued. "I think we can make some very good progress from here."

As I stepped into the corridor Gonzales looked at me very strangely,
but I was still confused by the things Blaha had said to me and
didn't pay any attention to the odd expression on his face. Blaha
had known all along that my body would change this way, and yet now
he was going to send me back out with the other guys, who were
certain to kill me. My mind went around and around this in fear,
without seeing any way I could save myself. Such was my distraction
that I didn't notice Gonzales speaking to me, either, until he said
my name more loudly.

"Mike!"

"Uh... huh?"

"You are alright?" Gonzales asked, looking at me solicitously.

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Sorry, I guess I was distracted"

"You are not having the best of times" Gonzales continued. It was
then that I became aware that he was looking at my chest. When
getting dressed in Blaha's office I had forgotten -- for the first
time ever -- to bind myself up. Gonzales noticed that I had caught
him looking at me and glanced away, as I turned bright red.

"No, I am definitely not having the best of times," I said softly.

Neither of us said anything more as he returned me to my room in
isolation. A few hours later he came by with a small parcel from
Doctor Blaha, and we both looked embarrassed when we made eye
contact. I don't know which of us was more embarrassed, really. I
shrugged and Gonzales smiled at me. "It will be alright," he said to
me gently. "I will see to that."

(continued)
 

Distribution: Feel free to archive or otherwise distribute, provided
it (and this preamble) is unedited and no fee is charged for access.
This story may not be distributed from any site that charges money,
is members-only, or uses that ridiculous "adult check" thing (or any
similar system).

All rights reserved by the author, who can be contacted at
[email protected] .

Mike comes to terms with Blaha's therapy and even begins to appreciate the changes. Steve certainly does.
 

Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A.

Chapter Four.

In the package that Blaha had sent me were a few rolls of bandages
and some safety pins to secure them. I didn't need instructions to
tell me what they were for, and as soon as Gonzales left I began to
bind myself up again. The truth is, I felt much more comfortable
with my breasts free, but I didn't want anyone else to discover what
was happening to me and I thought it was better to be safe than very
sorry. Also in the parcel were another vest and a new center
uniform. I tried on the pants first, and immediately noticed that
they fit me a lot better around the butt. The shirt wasn't much
different, I thought.

After dinner Bob came to take me and my meager bundle of belongings
back to the main facility. For once he was polite when he spoke to
me, and although he didn't use my name he didn't call me 'pussy'
like he usually did. Although Bob didn't say anything to confirm it,
I figured that Carlos Gonzales had been true to his word, and had
talked to Bob about what was happening.

I had mixed feelings as Bob led me up the corridor toward the main
wing. Happiness that I would have company again, and fear at what my
new physical status would mean if I was found out. The fear was
completely overwhelmed, though, when I saw he was leading me right
back to my old room with Steve. The guard opened the door and I went
in, immediately disappointed because Steve wasn't in. I slowly
unpacked and then lay on the lower bunk. Each time I thought about
the way I'd looked in that mirror I cried a little, but gradually I
think I wore myself out, and eventually I drifted off to sleep.

I woke up a while later when Steve came back from dinner. He saw me
and broke into a wide grin. "They finally decided you weren't such a
threat to the rest of us, huh?" he teased. I was about to jump up
and give him a hug, I was so pleased to see him, but I restrained
myself.

Why had I wanted to hug him? That was definitely not the way to
approach Steve. Although I always felt better the few times I had
been in his presence, I knew that Steve was a tough guy at Brand who
wasn't given to expressing emotion. Instead, I stayed on my bunk in
the shadow of his bunk above, and he sat on the edge of my mattress
and we talked and talked, catching up on what had been happening.

After a few minutes, though, he stopped talking and looked at me
carefully, squinting as though he couldn't quite make me out in the
shadow. "You look different, kid," he said uncertainly.

"It's the hair," I said immediately, wishing the wall behind me
would dissolve so I could flee. "I haven't had it cut since I've
been in here."

"Yeah, I guess," Steve said, though he seemed unconvinced. A couple
of times through the rest of the evening I caught him scrutinizing
me again, but he tried to pretend he wasn't doing it each time I met
his gaze.

I mentioned to him that I was going to get my hair cut now that I
was out of isolation, but he asked me not to. I thought that was
kind of odd, but he said he thought having it longer suited me and I
should keep it that way. I wasn't sure I wanted to have it really
long, since I'd never liked my hair -- or at least its color --
anyway. But I figured I still had a way to go before it was as long
as a couple of other guys' anyway.

We kept on talking and talking. Even though he was a lot older than
I was Steve seemed to have no problems relating to the stuff I had
to say, which I was glad about. I needed to talk about anything
other than my problems with Blaha. Most of our conversation was
Steve filling me in on other guys who had arrived or left, and most
of the names didn't mean anything to me. After all, I'd only had a
short time in the general population at Brand. Steve had even had a
new cell mate come and go in the time I'd been in isolation, some
jerk he didn't like much named Brian. I had a feeling -- from the
way that Steve described him -- that Steve hadn't made Brian's stay
very enjoyable.

Even though most of the discussion was about people I didn't know,
it was good to have someone to talk to, and I liked listening to
Steve. There was something about the tone of his voice, and his
ready smile, which cheered me up. We continued talking until well
past lights out. I undressed down to my t-shirt, unwilling to take
it and the bandage beneath it off even in the dark.

It was only as I was going to sleep that it occurred to me that the
one person neither of us had mentioned was Pangianis.

Next morning Blaha was true to his word. At breakfast a guard
escorted me to eat, and stood only a few feet from the table where I
sat. As I entered the room, the light conversation that had been
buzzing around stopped completely, as all eyes turned to take me in.
I could see Pangianis and a few of his goons glaring at me, but
there wasn't much they could do. Eventually the conversations
started up again. The guard escorted me back to my room and Steve
joked that I was the most popular person at Brand, just because I
had managed to irritate Pangianis so badly. I wasn't sure whether
getting a psychopath riled was a good thing or a bad thing.

Everyone else had showered before breakfast, but I got mine
afterward when Gonzales arrived to escort me. I stripped off and got
under the water quickly, noticing from the corner of my eye that
Gonzales was having a hard time trying not to stare at me, though he
was trying hard to be discreet. I turned my back to him and finished
rinsing myself off, then toweled myself dry and began dressing,
carefully re-wrapping my bandage. Then we went back to the room.
Neither of us said anything.

The days went on in a similar fashion, one after another. As Dr.
Blaha had promised, the pills did seem to make me feel better, or at
least less anxious about the threat I faced from Pangianis (or
anyone else who found out about my weird new body). Dr. Blaha's
other promises held up, too. I was escorted everywhere by a guard,
almost always Gonzales if he was on duty, and I never showered with
the other guys. Steve started to ask me about this one day, but then
seemed to think the better of it and didn't finish the question.
Every morning I made a point of getting up earlier than Steve so
that I was dressed in more than just my t-shirt and jockey shorts
when he saw me. I was very conscious of the lack of hair on my body,
and didn't want him to see that, and besides I wasn't sure how well
the t-shirt hid the bandage beneath.

Every day that I watched him get up I marveled at the way his body
looked in comparison to mine. He wasn't super-hairy, but there was a
fair bit on his chest, and he had very broad shoulders. Although he
frequently reminded me of Danny in his actions, he was taller and
possessed the kind of good looks that I knew would have prompted the
girls back at the Division Cafe to throw themselves at him. He
seemed relaxed with his movements, unhurried, and I had to admit
that, coupled with his accent and the slow, gentle way he spoke,
there was a lot of appeal to that.

I guess at Brand there was nothing much to hurry to.

Although at first I knew he was watching me like a hawk, each day
that went by I noticed Pangianis seemed to pay less attention to me.
One of his goons hissed when passing Gonzales and me in the
corridor, and another tried to embarrass me by saying "cute" every
day when he passed my table at lunchtime, but the one time anyone
tried to do anything to me Gonzales was onto them like a flash.
Pangianis's offsider Sonny, the one who had helped cut me, came at
me from behind with a sharpened bit of steel he'd gotten from
somewhere as I was walking out of the library. I think another of
the thugs was supposed to distract Gonzales, but something went
wrong in the timing, because as soon as Sonny was within about three
feet of me Gonzales had snapped out a deft kick to Sonny's wrist and
disarmed him before he threw him to the floor and stood on Sonny's
back with one foot.

Sonny did about two months in isolation for that. I wondered whether
he was going to get one of Dr. Blaha's special programs for
aggression too, but unfortunately justice isn't something you often
find in juvenile centers.

Months went by. Each night as I went to bed I thought of all that
had happened to me, all the strange changes that had taken place. It
felt as thought the old me, the one from the old neighborhood, was
slipping away. Back then I was teased for being small, but I knew
who I was, and I got some respect from my friends because I was
tough enough not to take shit from people. Here at Brand I was
taking serious shit from the doctor. As I twisted and turned in bed
some nights I saw Danny's face in my dreams, and each time he was
laughing and jeering at me and calling me a sissy. In the mornings
when I woke after these dreams I usually wanted to die.

Steve kept watching me closely when we were together. At first I was
very self-conscious about it, afraid that he had noticed the bandage
I wore or something else about the changes that had happened to me
since Dr. Blaha's bizarre therapy had begun. Once, not long after
Sonny's attempt on me, everyone was awoken in the middle of the
night for a random search of our rooms. Fortunately it was a while
after the lights came on before the guards got to our room, and I
was able to secure the bandage fairly quickly before Steve dropped
down from his bunk. But I noticed after I rose, in my t-shirt and
underwear, that he eyed my legs strangely. During the search we had
to stand against the wall in the corridor, and after I walked back
into the room ahead of him I realized from the rather startled
expression on his face that he had probably been studying my butt
and legs from behind. I flushed red, but he didn't say anything, and
I tried to pretend it hadn't happened. When in the next few days he
still hadn't said anything I thought maybe I was mistaken, or the
changes weren't as obvious as I had thought. Gradually I relaxed
around him again, and came to accept the way he unconsciously
flicked his eyes over me sometimes as just part of his everyday
behavior. I even began to like it a little bit, but only when I
didn't think too much about what liking it might mean.

My new freedom to mingle with the other inmates at Brand was
constrained by the fact that I always had a guard nearby, which
meant almost all the other guys avoided me like the plague. The
first time I ventured out I was left entirely on my own, and I stood
in the corner of the yard feeling like some kind of leper. The
second time, this effeminate-looking kid who was maybe seventeen
years old approached me. I could see the guard who was escorting me
eye the kid warily as he approached, but since I didn't know who
this fairy was I didn't get my defenses up too much.

"Hi," the fairy said boldly, in a singsong kind of voice.

"Uh, hi," I said, unsure what to make of this kid.

"I'm Cary," he said, putting an emphasis on the second syllable,
stretching it out. Cary. I remembered Steve's comments about Nick
Pangianis's 'partner' of choice. "Cary Philips. Some people call me
Cee."

I knew who some people might have been.

"Mike," I said in return. I didn't proffer a second name.

"You don't look much like a Mike," Cary said.

"Huh?" I didn't know how to respond to that, or if I even wanted to.
There was an awkward silence for a moment.

"Nick just wanted you to know that he didn't know you were with
Hammond," Cary said abruptly. "He doesn't want any trouble."

I neither believed this nor felt inclined to comment on it. Nick
Pangianis had shown every sign of wishing me all the trouble he
could so far. And I was confused. What did "with Hammond" mean? I
didn't see what Steve had to do with any of it.

"Why should I believe him?" I asked.

"Ooh, you are a feisty one, aren't you," Cary said archly. "I'm just
passing the message on. You are with Hammond, aren't you?"

"We're in the same room," I said. Despite my feelings for Steve as a
friend I resented our relationship being portrayed the way Pangianis
and Cary's was.

"Really? Heck, honey, you are missing out big time, then. Steve
Hammond is the only other guy in this place worth pissing on. And
Nick does respect him, you know."

Eventually, after a few half-hearted attempts at conversation, Cary
sighed. "What a pity. I thought you and I could get to be real good
friends." Then he flounced off, swinging his hips as he walked,
conscious of the snickers of some of the kids he passed but
seemingly proud of prompting them. A couple of them glanced at me as
Cary passed them, and I could see I was tarred with the same brush.
That kind of took away any enjoyment I ever had from being outside
after that. When exercise time was called, I started going to the
library instead most days.

I started taking some classes, since Brand required everyone to
continue some study until they were 16, but fortunately Pangianis
and his goons weren't in any of the same groups as me. I don't even
know if Pangianis bothered taking classes since he was older, or if
it even occurred to him that he could easily have got at me there.
Three of the classes I took were with Mr. Danielson, a sour old
bastard who seemed always to be looking at me kind of sleazily. He
gave me the creeps, but even though he bugged me a little I was more
relaxed around him than around Pangianis.

Because I could relax in class I really started to get into some of
my studies. Danny would have laughed at me, called me a brain or
something, but really Brand was such a mind-numbingly boring place
to be that reading almost anything was preferable to just hanging
out in the yard where nobody would talk to me anyway. All the time I
spent in isolation meant that I had already read a lot of stuff that
was set for classes anyway. When I look back on my time there now, I
think my time at Brand had a big impact on the kinds of things I was
interested in. Back at school I had always hated study.

Steve used to kid me from time to time about the stuff I read, which
meant he reminded me even more of Danny. It was exactly the same
kind of thing he would have done. I think Steve was kind of
impressed that I could understand some of the books, in a funny kind
of way, though he would never have said it. He didn't take classes,
since he was old enough to be exempt. Instead he worked out a lot,
and hung out with some other guys when we had yard time. He spent
most of the rest of his free time playing his guitar.

Steve was a great guitarist, I guess because he put in so much
practice. Because of that he didn't get complaints from the other
guys, even though the music carried down the corridor and could be
heard by all. He could play anything, even jazz. Once another guy
tried playing a guitar, too, at the other end of the block, but he
wasn't very good and so everyone started yelling at him to stop
after a short while. Nobody ever asked Steve to stop, and nobody
ever played his radio over the top of his guitar, either. A lot of
evenings he would play and I would listen until the guards called
for lights out.

I think those evenings are some of my favorite memories of my time
at Brand, me laying on my bunk with Steve sitting on the edge of my
mattress playing his guitar. He liked to play a lot of different
stuff, but sometimes he'd bow to a picture of Keith Richards on the
wall and pay mock homage before trying a Stones song. "Greatest
songwriter in the world," he'd say. Even though it was hard to make
some of that music sound interesting when he only had an acoustic
guitar, he was pretty good, especially on some of the slower songs
like 'Wild Horses'. I told him I liked that one, and he played it a
lot after that.

One night I kind of forgot myself and sang along to 'Wild Horses'.
When the song finished he didn't say anything for a few moments, and
that made me very self-conscious. I became aware that there wasn't a
sound anywhere else in the whole block. I blushed a deep crimson,
and then Steve said softly "You sing really beautifully, you know?"

What I was aware of was that my voice hadn't broken -- it had
changed in quality since I'd been at Brand, and become just a little
bit more throaty, but it had hardly dropped in pitch at all, and I
had sung up kind of high in the last chorus. It wasn't really a
sound I wanted the other guys to hear. What an idiot I was.

I rolled over on the bed and put my face in the pillow. Then I felt
Steve's hand on my shoulder. "It's okay," he said. "Really. That was
beautiful. You should sing more."

I turned my head slightly and looked over at him. He had put the
guitar down and moved closer up the bunk to be nearer to me. His
eyes met mine and he reached out a hand and stroked my hair away
from my face. It was a strange and beautiful moment. A tingle went
through me when he touched me. I had never felt anything like it
before. I dropped my eyes from his gaze, and he brushed my hair a
few more times. Then he stood up and walked to the door of our room.
I think he was suddenly embarrassed.

At that moment the bell rang that let us know it was five minutes to
lights out, and he turned and came back and sat on the edge of my
bunk again.

"Mike?" he said. "How old are you now?"

"Fifteen," I said softly. There was something about the way he was
looking at me that made me very self-conscious.

"I'm twenty," Steve said. I knew that. I nodded, and he went on,
hesitantly. "It's funny, you seem kind of older than that in some
ways, but you look younger. Uh, have you... Do you...? Uh..."

I knew what he was searching for. He was trying to find a polite way
to ask me how come I wasn't like the other guys at Brand. Maybe he
wanted to know how come I didn't have any signs of a masculine
puberty yet.

I guess there wasn't a polite way. I reached up to him and put my
finger in front of his lips in a gesture of silence. "You don't want
to know," I said softly.

"Yeah, I do," he said equally quietly. "Uh... don't take this the
wrong way, I like you and all -- you know that, right?" I nodded.
"It's just ... well, you're more like... sometimes you kind of make
me crazy, and I don't know why," he said.

Just then Gonzales opened the door. "Lights out," he said, smiling.
He saw Steve sitting on the edge of my mattress, with me lying down,
and his eyes narrowed. "You okay, Mike?"

"Fine thanks," I called, grateful that the spell between Steve and I
had been broken. I liked Steve a lot, but this kind of conversation
was getting way more intense than we'd ever been before. Steve put
his guitar in its case and Gonzales hit the switch.

I could hear Steve starting to get undressed. There was always a dim
light in our room from the exterior lighting in the yard outside
coming through the small window, so our room was never completely
dark, but I could never see by it until a few minutes after lights
out when my eyes had time to adjust. I started to take off my own
clothes too, confident Steve would be unable to see too much in the
time that it took him to get undressed. I stayed on the bunk to get
undressed, and had to kind of shake my hips a bit to get my pants
down over them while lying down. Then I took off my socks and
unbuttoned my shirt. I thought Steve was just about to climb onto
the bunk above me, but then he seemed to change his mind and he came
and sat on the edge of my bed again. As he was sitting down I
quickly got under the blanket so he wouldn't see too much of me when
his eyes adjusted to the light.

"Sorry about before," he said. "I'm not, uh... " His voice trailed
off as though he was embarrassed and thought better of completing
the sentence.

"It's okay," I said, conscious again in a strange way that he was so
close to me. I was nervous. I guess I should have just shut up then,
but in my zeal to make him feel better I asked, "Why do I make you
crazy?" I already half knew the answer to that, and I really didn't
want to hear him say it, but my nervousness was tinged with an odd
fatalism and I couldn't keep my mouth shut. Embarrassed, I continued
getting ready for bed by taking off my shirt. Now I had only the
t-shirt, jockey shorts and bandage covering me.

"Uh...," Steve began again. It was tragic how inarticulate he could
get when he was nervous, and in my slowly returning awareness of
light I could make out the side of his face, and the slight tilt to
his head which indicated he was very embarrassed. "Have you... have
you ever thought about, you know, with a guy?"

My immediate feeling was revulsion. Ugh! My deepest fear. There was
a long, deep stillness between us, and I thought Steve would just
get up and walk away, since he probably regretted saying that. But
then despite myself I couldn't help smiling. He really was kind of
sweet when he was embarrassed like that. It was strange to hear
someone normally so strong and self-assured make themselves so
vulnerable, and although I wasn't sure how to deal with the question
I understood that by even broaching it Steve was trusting me in a
very special way.

"No way," I said quietly, but I couldn't look at him when I said it.

"I just wondered," he whispered. There are some things you do..."

"You think I'm queer?"

"Maybe not. Sorry, It's just..."

I felt Steve's hand at my neck, gently brushing my hair back again,
and I jumped. Evidently he could see me better than I could see him.
And once again, after the initial terror, the feeling of him
touching me, even in such a seemingly trivial way, was electrifying,
and I was momentarily disoriented by the small buzz that went
through me. When I didn't pull away from his touch, or say anything,
he continued, his voice even softer. "Sometimes I look at you, and I
wonder why I get these feelings. Like, I don't think I'm like that,
you know? This place gets to a lot of people that way, but not me.
But... I don't want to offend you, but the way you move sometimes,
and the way you look when you're sleeping..."

Steve had been watching me sleep? That was news to me. I felt his
hand go down the back of my neck and then his other hand touch my
shoulder. Despite my nervousness I almost wanted to purr. I could
sense him shifting slightly closer to me, and feel his hand moving
toward the small of my back.

"Ah, Steve..." I began.

The hand on my shoulder was immediately withdrawn, as though he
feared from my voice that he'd crossed a line. But at the same time
his other hand had dropped just slightly further down my back, and
his hand made contact with my bandage beneath my t-shirt.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Shit," I said, reality suddenly returning to me. What had I been
thinking? I had been enjoying the way he had been touching me. I
hadn't had another person touch me in such a long time. Maybe I was
a fag after all. Did the pills Dr. Blaha was giving me change that
about me, too? I didn't want to think so, but...

I liked Steve. I liked him a lot. I liked the way it felt when he
touched me. I'd even started to get to like the way he looked at me
sometimes. It made me feel... well, just liked, I guess.

No, I told myself, I wasn't a fag. Neither was Steve. He didn't act
like a fag or anything. I thought we were probably both going to
regret this in the morning. I turned away from him again, and
collapsed down into the bed. In a moment I realized I was crying.

"What?" asked Steve. "What's wrong?" He reached over to touch both
my shoulders again. Despite my misgivings only a moment earlier, I
lay still, wondering how in the world I would explain to him the
full weirdness of what I had become at the hands of Dr. Blaha. I
sensed that the events of the evening had gone far enough that
explaining it to him was somehow inevitable, but I felt a curious
sense of powerlessness. It was almost as though from now on whatever
happened that night was going to be not quite real, and therefore
too hard to deal with consciously. Perhaps it was the sexual charge
that still lay in the air.

Whatever.

While I cried, Steve slowly began to massage my shoulders, and then
gradually to work further down my back to the bandage again. He felt
the bandage once or twice and then reached down the bed to the
bottom of my t-shirt and tried to pull it up. I didn't say anything,
but I shifted slightly to let him. When he saw the bandage he was
briefly solicitous.

"Are you okay?" he asked gently.

When I didn't say anything again he reached for the safety pin I
used to fasten the bandage on my right side and undid it. I felt the
pressures in the bandage begin to release, and then Steve tried to
unwind it around my side. He couldn't do it while I was laying on my
front like that, and I had to stop him.

"Steve. Just wait for a moment, okay?"

I felt him release me and I began to unwind the bandage myself. It
was about eight feet long, so it took a few twists and turns to get
it off while I was lying in bed. Finally I cast it aside and sat up,
facing him. I waited for him to say something, sure that he could
see me properly in the dim light. There was no reaction at all from
him. He seemed stupefied by what he was seeing.

That was the worst response he could have made. I was suddenly
terrified that he hated me because I was a freak. Despite my fears I
had to find out what he thought. After he stayed motionless and
silent for a few seconds more, I gently guided his hand to my left
breast.

"Omigod," Steve said softly. "H-How? I mean, uh..."

"The wonders of medical science, I guess," I whispered. Steve had
moved his hand around my breast so that his thumb was at the edge of
my nipple, which immediately stiffened at his touch. It felt good. A
little pit opened in my stomach, and my insides threatened to tumble
into it in a warm, gooey free-fall. I felt his other hand on my
right breast, doing the same thing. Mmmm. I knew I shouldn't be
doing this, and shouldn't be allowing Steve to do it, but it felt so
good. Much better than when I touched myself. There was something
about Steve's hands, and the attention he was paying to me, that
made this special. Strangely enough, the sensations were nothing
like the ones I used to have when I jacked off. They were spread
more throughout my body. In fact I didn't think I was even a little
bit hard, even though I became aware that I had moaned softly when
he traced his fingers around my breasts.

After a few more minutes of this I found myself laying down fully,
with Steve beside me, running his tongue around my nipples and down
my chest to my belly. He paused, then started flicking his tongue
over me again, beginning up behind my ears and around my neck before
concentrating on my breasts again. The feeling was kind of calming
and exciting at the same time, and I writhed in pleasure. My body
had a motion all its own, and my hips began moving, slowly,
rhythmically as I grasped Steve's shoulders. I moaned again and he
put a hand over my mouth to quiet me. Then, after several more
minutes of touching and kissing me until I was almost becoming
delirious, he rolled me over onto my front. I didn't know what I
needed, I still wasn't hard, but I felt better than I had ever done
even when I was jerking off.

"Sweet Jesus, you're a girl," Steve said softly, wonderingly. "What
the fuck -- "

"-- No. Maybe. I don't know," I said, confusedly. "No, I'm not. Not
a girl."

"Are you? Do you have...?" I still couldn't see him well, since he
was between the light and me, but from his voice I knew what he was
talking about. I felt his hands running down my back, then removing
my underwear. His hand started to go around to my crotch, and it was
then that I reached around and stopped him. That was too much. I
didn't want that. He stopped trying, and then he kissed me some
more. Then I felt him caressing the cheeks of my butt. I heard him
make a small "mmm" noise as he did so, then felt him slipping his
hand between the crack. It was wet, with what seemed like saliva. I
had a momentary flash of panic. This was what fags did, right? The
panic passed in the pleasure as Steve bent down to kiss the small of
my back and then lay himself down again and kissed behind my ears. I
liked the behind the ears thing especially. Then he lay on top of me
more directly, and I felt his hardness laying in the crack of my
ass. He continued to kiss me, and then I felt him put his hand,
coated in saliva again, between my legs. He fingered my hole,
gently. I must have gasped, because he kissed me and told me gently
to relax. Then I could feel him shift his weight, and he was poking
into me.

It hurt, a lot. He felt so big. I felt for sure that he was going to
tear me apart. Again I must have made a noise, because he withdrew
slightly and waited until I had relaxed. Then, in one quick thrust,
Steve was all the way inside me. It hurt in that moment and I
squealed in pain. He put his hand over my mouth again. It hurt *so*
much! But then in a few moments the hurt was replaced with a
different feeling as I felt him moving inside me. He grunted a few
times, in a way that didn't sound like him but which I knew meant he
was enjoying himself. I tried to relax and go with what was
happening, and in a few minutes I felt him spasm inside me, and then
relax on top of me.

For the next half-hour or so after he withdrew Steve caressed me,
and kissed me, and gently played with my breasts, which seemed to
fascinate him like he'd never felt a pair before. We lay together
all through the night, his arm around me, while he slept heavily and
I wondered what all of this meant for the future.

***

Chapter Five.

It was starting to get light outside. I gingerly untangled myself
from Steve and began to wind the bandage around my chest. As I did
so I looked over at the bunk. Steve lay stretched out along it, his
body clearly visible in the slowly brightening room. He really did
have a good physique, I thought. Even though I told myself wasn't
attracted to him that way, I could see that girls would go for it. I
thought back to the events of the night and began fastening the
bandage before I reached for the t-shirt. Then I noticed he had
woken, and was watching me.

"Uh uh," he said softly, shaking his head slightly. "Take it off
again for a minute, just for me."

My first ridiculous impulse was to turn myself away from him so he
couldn't see much of me, but then of course he had a great view of
my butt. I held one hand to block the view of my crotch, and held my
other hand up to the bandage stretched across my chest.

"You look amazing," he said. "Really. I noticed some things about
you, but who'd 've guessed?" His smile got broader. He was very
persuasive when he smiled like that. He sat up in the bed, and
motioned for me to come closer to him. Softly he began to talk to
me, to tell me that although he didn't know why these things had
happened to me, he loved the way I looked and felt. I blushed, and
he reached out for the safety pin and undid it. As he unraveled the
bandage again I stood nervously. Finally it was undone and my
breasts were free.

"So beautiful," he said. "So perfect."

At about that moment the stress of my conflicting emotions got the
better of me, and I began crying.

"Hey," Steve said. "What's the matter? I didn't hurt you or
anything, did I?"

I sat back on the bed and told Steve everything, about how the
events when I first came to Brand got all screwed up and how they,
connected with what had happened to me outside, convinced Grieves
and Blaha that I was a violent and aggressive kid with a problem.
And how Blaha had kept giving me these shots, and now pills as well.

Steve put his arm around me as I cried. After about twenty minutes I
had cried everything out, and I began to dry my eyes.

"So how do you feel about it?" Steve asked. "I mean... don't take
this the wrong way, but you... you look great."

"You just haven't seen a girl in ages," I retorted.

"I was just wondering, like, what it feels like," he said.

"At first I hated it. I hated everything that was happening," I
said. "Steve, I didn't choose this, you know?"

"I know," he said, caressing my shoulder with his hand. "It's kind
of hard to understand, though, you know?"

"Yeah, it's fucking weird," I said bitterly, and then regretted it
when he stiffened a little. "I mean..." I tried to correct myself.
"I just don't know what to think," I said. "Sometimes I just want to
die, sometimes it doesn't seem so bad... I even like some of the
feelings when you... you know."

"So you don't mind?"

"Mind?"

"Last night?"

"No." There. I had said it.

"Good. Now you can bandage yourself back up before the goon comes."

I dressed, and we went about the day in our separate ways as we
usually did. A different guard accompanied me for the first half of
the day, and then I had Gonzales in the afternoon. I kept thinking
he'd notice something different about me. I felt different. Apart
from feeling sore where Steve had been inside me, I also felt much
more conscious of my body than usual. It felt rounder, softer, kind
of ... I allowed myself to think about it. Maybe it felt... sexier.
Was that it? I found myself thinking of Steve, and the way he had
held me and talked to me softly, all through the day. But all
Gonzales seemed to notice was that I was more distracted than usual.

In the afternoon I went out to the exercise yard and stood at the
side, watching Steve and his friends tossing around a baseball. He
grinned at me, and I blushed and turned away. But I stood there a
while longer, watching him. I liked that he looked at me, even in
front of his friends. After a short while I became aware of the
gazes from the other guys, and of the way they looked at Steve as if
to gauge where I stood. It got a little uncomfortable, all that
attention, but Steve kept smiling at me, and as I was walking back
to our room I realized that no matter what I thought, he wasn't
ashamed of me.

That night Steve slept with me again. At first I was awkward. He sat
at the edge of my bed, stroking my hair. He had been playing guitar
again, before lights out. First it was a bitter song I'd never heard
before, something about a woman making a man poor, then some
bluegrass style stuff which I didn't know and he didn't sing to, and
then he played a couple of Stones songs.

He didn't really have a very good voice, but he had a nice
expressive way of singing. The last one he played was a slow song he
said was about someone's wife, Angie. He sang it deep and gravelly,
not at all like Mick Jagger, and I was amazed at how different it
could be. In the last verse I started singing along quietly, and he
stopped, and then he made me sing it from the start.

I was embarrassed, and sang very softly, but it's not a complicated
song to sing and he smiled while I was doing it. I closed my eyes
and sang. It was easier than watching him watch me sing.

As he stroked my hair after lights out he kept singing, softly,
"Angie, Angie, when will those clouds all disappear." He could tell
I was nervous about him touching me again, and he took his time with
me, stroking my shoulders gently and then turning me onto my back
and lifting my t-shirt over my head. He stroked his thumb around my
breasts -- the bit the encyclopedia called the aureolae -- and I
felt a little shiver go through me as my nipples hardened and I felt
my insides go soft. I loved that feeling. It was so strange, so warm
and exciting and yet so soft at the same time, as though my body was
full of energy but somehow not able to let it go. He stopped singing
and bent to lick my nipples, and then kiss my neck and behind my
ears again. I just melted.

This time when he came inside me I was better prepared, and it hurt
less. It was still painful but it didn't feel like I was on fire or
anything. He came after a few minutes again, this time gasping as he
did so and grasping my shoulders so tightly that I noticed the marks
the next day. Afterward I cried a little again, but I don't think
the tears had much to do with shame. I just felt kind of
overwhelmed. Then we lay together for a while again, Steve gently
running one hand over my hip and the other over my cheek.

After a few days I stopped asking myself questions about whether
what Steve and I were doing was right. I felt less self-conscious
about being semi-naked around him. After a couple of weeks maybe I
even got a little bit proud of the way I could distract him just by
beginning to unbutton the top of my shirt. It was just nice to have
his attention, and to feel wanted. I stopped feeling so ashamed of
the way I looked. Without making any conscious decision about it, I
stopped agonizing over whether Steve and I were gay or not.

Instead I enjoyed the things he showed me about myself, and the
pleasure I could give him. I even kind of liked it when he took down
some of the posters of girls on the walls -- it was weird, but I
liked it that he preferred looking at my chest to theirs.

So far as the rest of the guys at Brand were concerned, nothing had
changed, and I still needed protection on a daily basis even though
the threat from Pangianis seemed to have passed. But in our room at
night Steve and I had quite a different life.

It got harder for me to hide things from Dr. Blaha as he got to know
me better. I think he sensed that there was something new happening
in my life on the first visit I had with him after Steve and I got
together, but he didn't say anything and I didn't volunteer. Then,
about five months after that day, I broke down in front of him, and
he asked me directly how I was feeling about the changes to my body now.

I started to put on the same face I'd had with him all long -- it
was an outrage -- but I think he could see that my heart wasn't as
much in it as it had been. Watching me closely, he started to talk
about stopping the shots, and perhaps ordering a mastectomy to stop
me from worrying about my breasts any further. Something about that
gave me a little shiver. I didn't realize it at the time, but much
later I understood I actually liked my breasts, especially since
Steve liked them so much. Anyway, I complained bitterly to Blaha
about what he had done to me, but I think something in my face must
have given him doubts about me. Not that it changed anything. He
kept giving me the shots anyway.

Gonzales was much more clued-up. Whenever he took me anywhere like
the showers or to Blaha's office he would chat to me about his
family and stuff, and gradually I noticed that he was acting kind of
different, maybe gentler around me than he had been. I guess he had
seen me in the showers a few times. He wasn't supposed to look, but
he probably rationalized it like it was for my own protection or
something. Whatever. One day coming back from the showers he stopped
me abruptly in the corridor and said to me "That Hammond. He is good
to you?" When I blushed, he smiled, and then I laughed and he
laughed softly too.

"Not as good as you, my friend"

"Ah. Mike." He seemed to weigh my name for a moment. "It is none of
my business, but... things have changed."

"You could say that, Carlos."

"Can I say, I hope you are happy?"

"You can say that, thank you."

"Because, if it is alright for me to say this, it suits you very well."

"I am still not sure what to think," I said softly.

"You should do whatever feels right for you. For me, I think this is
right for you. But I can see it is hard. But I am not, how can I say
it, I am not prejudiced about this as some others from my country
are. If you were my child, I would say this was okay, because it
suits you so well."

"You are a very good man, Carlos," I said, still unsure what I
thought of all this. "Thanks." I meant what I said, too. He was a
good man. I had nothing to offer him but a friendly ear, but he
stood by me when most other people would have turned away. He made
me feel good about myself when I needed it, and I appreciated it. If
I hadn't thought it would embarrass both of us I would have hugged him.

Gradually I noticed that the other guys at Brand were treating me
differently. I don't know, maybe they'd been doing it for a while
before I became aware of it. My shower schedule had been shifted
back to before breakfast, before everyone else had theirs, so that I
could go to classes, and I noticed that while I was walking back
from my shower a lot of the guys I passed with Gonzales looked at me
very intently. At meals, I noticed a couple of guys watching me as I
walked back to my table. In the library, I noticed the kid who was
in charge flicking his eyes over me, in the same way I'd noticed
Steve doing before we first slept together. My first thought that
time was that the bandage must have come loose or something, but
that wasn't it. I tried to pretend he wasn't doing it, but it gave
me the creeps. Then I figured it was my hair, which was now well and
truly down past my shoulders and getting down my back. I had thought
of cutting it several times, but Steve said he liked it long, so I
hadn't done anything about it. It had kept growing, and now it was
longer than anyone else at Brand wore his.

I caught glimpses of myself in the mirror on the back of Dr. Blaha's
door when I was leaving after each visit. I was getting more and
more used to the way I looked, but after the kid in the library had
been staring at me I stopped at the door and did it more carefully.
There was no doubt about it. I looked completely like a girl. My
breasts were still small, but they were filling out. I even had a
bit of cleavage. And my hips had definitely gotten bigger. I was
getting quite curvy, really. It was so weird. I suddenly realized
that dressing like a guy didn't mean anything at all. No wonder the
guys were starting to stare. Most of them hadn't seen a girl in
months or even years.

I thought of the song Steve had been playing the night before. The
lyrics seemed pretty apt. "Trouble comin' every day."

Dr. Blaha noticed me looking at my reflection. "What are you
thinking, Michael?" he asked me as I was studying my face closely.

"I'm wondering how you thought this was ever going to work," I said
quietly.

"Michael, it has worked very well, so far. You are less aggressive,
and you even seem happier," Dr. Blaha said. "By any objective
standard this has been a profound success."

"But people are going to notice eventually," I said. "I mean ... I
think they have already. How many people in here do you know look
like me?"

"Perhaps they have noticed. What of it?" said Blaha.

I looked at him. Surely this was some kind of bluff on his part? He
couldn't really think that having a girl -- a guy who looked like a
girl -- around a bunch of adolescent males wasn't going to create
trouble. I studied his face carefully. I wondered if I detected a
hint of nervousness in the way he was acting towards me after all
this time. Did he think he had gone too far with me? Was he worried
about what would happen if people found out? I remembered the
erection he tried to conceal when he saw me totally naked, and I
wondered whether this therapy was really one the State would have
approved of. Maybe he was bluffing?

Maybe he was just getting carried away with his own little fetish.
The way he looked at me, the way he touched me sometimes -- there
was no doubt he was turned on by what had happened to me.

I shrugged off the thoughts -- it didn't matter much. So long as I
was at Brand Blaha could do whatever he wanted. It wasn't like there
was anyone who knew me in the outside world who would make a fuss
about what had happened to me.

"I think you're nuts," I said, and turned to go.

"Michael. You can always go back to isolation, any time you choose."

I pondered what Blaha had said as one of the guards took me back to
my room. Was I happier? At first I dismissed the idea out of hand --
how could I be happier when Blaha had turned me into some kind of
chick with a dick? But later that night, as I lay in bed with Steve
spooning me with his body, his hand on my breast, I realized that I
had never, in my whole life, ever felt wanted by anyone the way I
felt wanted by Steve.

As I drifted off to sleep I saw Danny, in a fleeting glimpse, but he
wasn't laughing at me, he was smiling.

Gradually it became obvious in the Brand community that Steve and I
were together, as Cary had said months earlier. I got to start
eating with Steve and his friends, and I guess it was just simple
body language that tipped everyone off, since we obviously shared
each other's space way more than guys at Brand usually did. I was
surprised that it didn't seem to change the attitudes of the other
guys there to Steve. He was a pretty popular guy, but even so I
couldn't help but think that people would give him a hard time about
being a fag. After a few weeks of watching other people, I realized
that people were a little bit afraid of Steve, so maybe that was it.
Anyway, whatever it was, it meant there were now a bunch of other,
older guys, who at least spoke to me when we ate together.

I guess most guys who wind up at Brand aren't too bright. They
mostly get sent there because they've screwed up pretty bad and been
arrested a few too many times. I don't know whether there are very
many smart crooks in the world, but there weren't any in evidence at
Brand.

Anyway, we didn't have a lot to talk about. Most of them seemed
pretty nervous around me, too. I didn't know at the time whether
that was because I was "with" Steve and they were worried about his
reaction, or whether it was just because they thought I was weird.
It didn't worry me. Most of them I didn't like much, anyway.
Especially Travis, this big, dark guy who hung around Steve like a
bad smell. I hated the way he looked at me, like he was undressing
me in his mind. And a few times I heard him talking to some of the
other guys when Steve wasn't listening, and he kept using the word
"she." It took me a while to catch on that he was talking about me.

Steve's best friend was this enormous guy called Leon. I swear he
was maybe three or more times my weight, and most of it looked like
muscle. Him I liked. I knew I made him nervous, but it was kind of
in a good way, the way I made Steve nervous sometimes, like when I
undid the top buttons on my shirt and Steve's train of thought
abruptly stopped. Leon was always trying to feed me at lunch. "You
eat like a bird," he kept saying. The truth was I had discovered
that lately whatever I ate found its way onto my hips. Anyway, Leon
was kind of sweet, even if he wasn't very bright, and I always
enjoyed meals more when he was around. I guess the fact that he
wouldn't hurt a fly meant his sheer size made me feel kind of safe.

Most of the time the guys didn't talk to me that much anyway because
I was still accompanied everywhere by a guard. The surveillance was
beginning to get a bit more relaxed, but they was still always a
guard within twenty or so feet of me most of the time. I got the
impression that there was some stuff being discussed by the guys
that wasn't for my ears, since whenever I approached there was
always an awkward silence followed by some lame attempt at
conversation. So mostly I only spoke to them at meals, when the
guards stood further away.

When Spring approached I started going out into the yard a bit more,
just to feel the sun on my arms and face. I kept the rest of my body
well covered, since I didn't want to start a riot, and I didn't walk
around too much since I knew I attracted attention whenever I did
that. So mostly I just hung around the sunny corner of the yard.
From the other side of the yard Pangianis kept a close eye on me
each day, but then so did Steve and Leon. Each day, independently of
Pangianis, Cary would stand along the fence, watching me, inching
closer and closer as the days went on until he was maybe only 10
feet from me. One day I just turned to him and said "What?"

"What?" He looked puzzled.

"Yeah. What?"

"I don't know what you mean." He had such a prissy way of speaking.
Even though he had a southern kind of accent, like Steve, he managed
to use it in way that just screamed 'fag'.

"Well, you've been hanging around for weeks now, I was just
wondering what you wanted? Got another message from your boyfriend?"

Cary looked hurt, and for some reason that made me feel guilty, even
though I hated him just for knowing Pangianis. "No," he sulked.

"Sorry," I said, and I sat down on a bench and began to draw on the
ground with a stick I'd found. Cary moved closer. From the corner of
my eye I could see Steve, Leon and a Guard stiffen slightly as
though they expected something bad, but I pretended not to notice
Cary standing next to me until he spoke again.

"I thought maybe you and I..." he began.

I looked up questioningly, and this seemed to motivate Cary to sit
down beside me. Then suddenly he was in flood of tears.

I looked away. Jesus. Where had this come from?

On the other side of the yard Pangianis had been watching us, but
when Cary began to cry I saw him turn his back on everyone else in
the yard and begin to walk inside. I looked around helplessly.
Everyone else seemed to be studiously ignoring Cary, who was sobbing
wretchedly beside me. I didn't know what to do. Eventually I reached
over and put my arm around his shoulder. In turn he launched himself
toward my shoulder, still sobbing. "It's okay," I found myself
saying again and again, even though I had no idea what had prompted
all of this. Pangianis, I guessed.

"It's not like I don't try," Cary said, sniffling.

"Yeah, I know," I said soothingly, still wondering what in hell was
going on.

"He just... just... I don't know anymore," and the sobbing started
again.

He. Well, that narrowed it down. Pangianis, clearly. "You shouldn't
let him eat at you like this," I said, still wanting to make a break
and leave Cary to cry hear alone. But, you know, when someone is
really distressed it's hard to treat them badly.

"I know." Sob. More sobbing.

"It's just not worth it, you know?"

"What would you do?" Cary asked, and I realized I was in over my head.

"Maybe you should tell me what happened," I said, and slowly he
dried his tears and commenced telling me.

A new boy had come in three weeks ago, and he was, well, like Cary,
and he was dark and pretty, and Nick had been paying him a *lot* of
attention. The same old stuff. Except it was pretty new to me. I
didn't ever think about gay guys like that much. Anyway, now Cary
was feeling like the jilted wife, and even though I had been rude to
him ever since I'd been at Brand he felt that maybe I would
understand. "Since you and Steve Hammond..." he trailed off.

"Yeah, I guess I know," I said, surprised to hear myself admitting
my relationship with Steve. What the hell, I thought. Everybody
knows anyway.

Nick had organized to have Cary moved out of his room and the new
kid moved in. I didn't know how he could arrange that, but
apparently he had something over one of the administrative staff or
something. So now Cary was almost "out in the street" as it were, in
a cell with some fat kid who wouldn't talk to him. Hardly anybody at
Brand would talk to him, because people still weren't sure if he
'belonged' to Pangianis.

I made lots of sympathetic noises, and we talked a while until it
was time to go inside again. He was really cut up, but he wasn't
self-pitying or anything. Cary wasn't too bad, I decided, once you
got around all the mincing and flouncing and prissiness.

"Thank you," he said as we walked down the corridor flanked by my
ubiquitous guard.

"It's nothing," I said.

"Yes, it is," he said. "You know, most guys, you come to them with a
problem, they want to solve it for you. I knew I could just come
talk to you and we could just, you know, talk, without having to
solve it."

I nodded. "I guess. Some things just can't be solved, you know?"

"Exactly," Cary said. "But it helps to talk about them."

"You take care, Cary," I said when we got to the door of my room.

"I will, honey. You know, call me Cee, okay?"

I nodded uncertainly, and then went inside.

"What was that all about?" Steve said to me as I entered.

"The heartache of love," I said, easing myself onto my bunk.

Steve looked over at me and grinned. "Sheesh! Queens! She's always
been into drama."

I flinched when I heard him say "she," and he noticed.

"You're different," Steve said, his grin gone.

"Uh huh. You got that right," I said coldly.

"No, I meant..." he paused, as though to consider what he did mean,
and then he shrugged. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Is that how you think of me, Steve? Like Cary?" I asked softly,
half-afraid of the answer.

I guess Steve could see he was in dangerous territory, but there was
no going back now. "No," he ventured tentatively. He came and sat
down next to me, and took my chin in his hand. "You're smarter, and
prettier, and... Well, I could never be interested in Cary, but you..."

Later that night, as we were laying together after making love, I
had to continue with my questions. There was some mad whirlpool
pulling me into it, demanding answers to questions that were better
left unanswered.

"Steve?"

"Uh huh."

"Do you think of me as..."

There was a long silence. We both knew the words I hadn't said.

Finally he leant across and kissed me. "I love you for what you are,
you know that."

I couldn't let it alone. "And what is that?" I asked, too afraid to
look at him.

"A beautiful girl. You are, you know." He stroked my breast, and
kissed me again.

I let that remark echo around in my head for a month or so
afterward. Mostly I tried not to think about it too much. I mean, it
was probably easier for Steve to do this stuff with me if he thought
of me as a girl, and I guess the things he most liked about me were
the things like, well, my tits and ass, I guess. Not for nothing had
those posters been on the wall of the room.

Steve had taken to calling me 'Em' instead of 'Mike', which I guess
helped him to forget the inconvenient pieces of my life when he
needed to. Gradually his friends were doing likewise. Something else
Cee and I had in common.

Life went on. The guys talked about whatever it was that they talked
about, and I hung out at the corner of the yard and got some sun. I
started getting kind of bold and rolling up my pants to get some sun
on my legs, even though, being a redhead, I didn't tan much. I only
got an hour or so of sun each day anyway. Cee and I pretty much
staked out that bench as our own, and talked about everything and
nothing. I discovered I really did like him. He was a good judge of
character. He *was* a drama queen, but he didn't have any self-pity
in him, and I admired that since he'd had a pretty shitty life even
before he came to Brand.

Although some Italian guy had been kind of sniffing around, making
it known he was interested, Cee was treating him with contempt,
stringing him along. "Neanderthal," he said to me, "That's his only
defect. No class. A great body, but no class. Me, I like them to
have something between their ears as well as their legs." For some
reason that sent me into a fit of giggling. I tried to suppress
giggling around other people, but I was getting pretty relaxed
around Cee.

Steve and I got closer and closer. I loved the time we spent
together in our room, where -- depending on which guard was on duty
-- I could unbind my chest and let my hair out and just relax. I
loved the way Steve acted towards me, with kindness and
attentiveness and gentleness. A lot of evenings we spent with music.
Steve was *so* into music. He said once to me that even at those
times he never had anything around to play, he would just play in
his head, which was almost as good. He was gradually making me less
self-conscious about my singing, so most nights he would play stuff
and I would sing along, or he would sing and I would do harmonies.
"Honey, you turn me on, I'm a radio," one of the songs went. Steve
wasn't much of a singer himself, but he knew a little bit about it,
and he was a good teacher.

I always wondered what I really sounded like, and one night Steve
recorded me on his cassette player and played it back to me. Wow. I
think it's always weird when you hear the sound of your own voice
from outside your head, but it was even weirder for me, to hear that
singing and then have to wonder about what the other guys in the
place thought of me. I tried to shrug it off, but it was another
thing that reinforced my difference.

I *loved* singing, though, and I was so grateful to Steve for the
musical education. Occasionally I would sing unaccompanied when
Steve was out of our room at workshop or in the shower. Usually I
chose old pop songs with good melodies, the kind of stuff that my
Mom used to sing along to when I was young. "The only boy who could
ever reach me, was the son of a preacher man." I thought of Mom
often, and sometimes when I sang those songs it made me feel a
little bit like she was still with me.

The more time I spent with Steve the more enraptured I got. He could
make me tingle to my feet just by touching me on my neck. We slept
together every night, and made love almost every night, too, except
for a week when I had some kind of flu and then the following week
when Steve caught it, too. If anything the sex after we were both
sick was even better, since Steve was gentler. As we both got to
know each other's bodies better we learned what pleased each of us
most, although I still had some kind of block about Steve touching
my penis or my balls. I think, in retrospect, that my reticence
about that was probably a good thing. Steve wanted to please me, but
I think he mostly liked to think of me as a girl.

My body just continued to do its thing. My tits weren't exactly in
Dolly Parton territory, but they were pretty prominent on my chest
when they weren't taped up, which was the whole time Steve and I
were alone. He just couldn't get enough of them. Even Dr. Blaha
expressed surprise at their continued growth. And when he measured
me on my sixteenth birthday we discovered my hips were bigger than
my bustling. 32 bust, 20 waist, 34 hips, 5'4" tall, 105lbs. He said
he was lowering the dose, but neither of us mentioned anything about
stopping it. By this stage I wasn't sure *what* I wanted. Part of me
still knew it was all just too weird and guys just didn't *do* this
sort of thing. But the other part of me thought of the way Steve
made me feel when he ran his hands over my ass, or my breasts, or
when he kissed me behind the ear.

Dr. Blaha did drop me off the other tablets I was taking, which I
had discovered a few months earlier were Valium. Actually I had been
making some income on the side with those, palming them each morning
and afternoon and selling them to Warren, this weedy looking kid
further down the hall, in return for books he got his mother to send
me. So I was kind of disappointed about that. Still, at least Dr.
Blaha remembered my birthday, and gave me a small volume of poetry.

The real surprises on my sixteenth birthday were some other
presents. Leon gave me a diary, which was sweet. I had no idea how
he got it, but I was very appreciative. I almost kissed him to say
thank you, and I think he knew it, because both of us blushed right
down to our toes and tried to find something else to talk about. Cee
gave me a tortoiseshell clasp and some barrettes for my hair, which
was now about halfway down my back since Steve insisted I shouldn't
cut it. "Your hair is *so* beautiful," Cee said when he gave me the
present. "You should do more with it. Your friend Gonzales helped me
get these," he said, "so I guess it's sort of from him, too."

I wasn't going to wear the clasp around the rest of the guys, since
it was way too girlish no matter *what* they thought of me already.
But apart from my hair being long it was very thick, and I was
grateful to have something to keep it off my face when I was writing
in my room, or when I was trying to play guitar. (Steve had been
teaching me that, too, and surprisingly none of the guys complained
when I practiced).

But nothing really prepared me for the present Steve gave me. Even
he must have had second thoughts about how far he was pushing me,
because he wound up giving me two presents.

The first was pretty tame, and obviously something he organized as
an afterthought. It was the sheet music to an old Gram Parsons
album. "You can sing this stuff now," he said, "and I know you'll be
able to play it soon enough."

Then he produced the real present, and held it out to me
tentatively. I unwrapped the small parcel, and pulled out the contents.

I looked at him, unsure of what to say.

He looked back at me uncertainly, I guess fearing that maybe he'd
made a mistake.

"Steve," I said softly. I didn't know what to think.

"Well, I want to know if they at least fit," he said.

"Turn around" I said. I was till shy about letting him see the front
of me when I undressed -- well, my lower half, anyway. He turned
around, and I undressed. Then I held up the small black items from
the package, and tried to figure out how they worked. The panties
were easy enough, and I pulled them on quickly. Then I had to
readjust myself in them and tuck my penis underneath, since they
didn't quite fit right otherwise. Once I had done that, though, they
fit great. They were much better around my butt than the shorts I
had been wearing.

Then I took a look at the bra. I tried to struggle into it, but the
straps were set too short, and I had to take it off again and adjust
them before trying again. It took a bit of contortion to get it done
up at the back, but it wasn't too hard.

Wow. That felt... weird. Weird but good. Suddenly I understood why
women wore these things. Not that my breasts were sagging. They
weren't big enough for that. It just felt nice to have them
supported a little bit. The bra was a pretty good fit, and I briefly
wondered how Steve had known what sizes to get.

Steve seemed kind of impatient, but I gave him a warning against
turning around too soon. The next item I tried on was the garter
belt. I only knew what it was from seeing all those old Playboy
magazines; otherwise I would never have figured it out. Lastly I
unwrapped the stockings. There was a little diagram on the back of
the pack that explained you had to sit down and adjust them bit by
bit instead of pulling them on, so I did this, all the while telling
Steve to be patient.

Finally I told him softly that I was ready. I threw my hair back
over my shoulders and stood there, very self-consciously, while he
turned around. It was pretty much worth it. He didn't just gawk, he
got positively incoherent. I guess I blushed in response.

"Em." He said, like he was in awe or something. That only made me
more embarrassed. I learned that day that sometimes there are things
more sexy than nakedness (though there's nothing wrong with *that*).

"I guess they fit pretty good," I giggled.

"Em, you're beautiful."

Pretty soon, of course, he had most of the stuff off me again, and
we made love slowly and tenderly until near the end when Steve
seemed to be in some kind of frenzy and was more aggressive and
forceful than usual. I didn't mind. I liked to feel him get kind of
desperate and out of control when he got close to orgasm, and then
to lie next to him while he went through 'le mort petit', as I'd
heard it described in some novel. He had all that strength, and then
so little energy.

That night, as we were mumbling things to one another before sleep,
Steve said something about "When we get to Mississippi," but I
thought he was rambling and I just let it go so we could both sleep.

***

Chapter Six.

The plan would probably have gone better if it hadn't been for me. I
know I screwed with their concentration just by being around. Then
again their plan would never have even existed if it hadn't been for
Pangianis's continued obsession with me, or they would have had to
find some other plan, or something.

I don't know. I guess that even after all these years I still try to
rationalize all that stuff. Personally, I blame Travis, whose dick
was always about forty times the size of his brain.

Whatever. I didn't find out about the whole plan until the night
before, when Steve and I were laying together and he said softly to
me "Em, if you had to take anything from here, what would it be?"

"You" I said immediately.

"No, I meant any *thing*. I hope I'm more than a thing to you."

"Well, it's a nice thing," I said teasingly as I reached down and
tugged at his cock briefly. "But if you mean what would I take for
me? I haven't ever thought about it. I guess the only things I
really want to take out of here when I leave are the birthday
presents I just got. But they'll all be pretty old by the time I'm
out of here. And I don't have anything else"

"Not really," said Steve. "We're out of here tomorrow."

"What?! And who's we?"

"You, me, Travis, Leon, anyone else who can take advantage of the
situation."

"What situation?"

"At breakfast tomorrow morning, I want you to go down to eat as usual."

"Uh huh. So?"

"I want you to act... sort of sexy during breakfast. Get Pangianis
steamed up. At the end of breakfast I want you to take off your
bandage in front of him."

"What?! Are you outta your mind!"

"Not at all. Oh, come on, Em, everyone knows you're different. They
just haven't seen how different."

"You want me to go naked?"

"No, my love, I would never ask you to do that, you know that." He
grasped my nipple in his hand. "But you know, you are very perky
these days, and if you just wore a t-shirt..."

"I'm going to get killed." My mind was flip-flopping between this
preposterous notion and the fact that he had just said the L-word.
My Love. He'd never said that before.

"No you won't. Leon and I will see to that, I promise. On my own
life, I swear we will not let anything happen to you."

"What's going to happen?"

"It's best if you just stay alert and follow my lead. Wear whatever
presents you want. They're all wearable things, aren't they?"

I nodded. "Except the diary Leon gave me, and the book Blaha gave
me. But I can live without books."

"I'll make sure your diary comes with us."

"Steve?"

"Yes, Em?"

"Why? Why are you doing this now? Won't you get out next year? I
mean, you were convicted as a juvenile, like me, right? That means
they can only hold you for another few months, until you turn
twenty-one, right?"

"Yes, my love, that's right."

"So why now. Why not just wait? Isn't this going to make it much worse?"

"Because you, my love, are going to be here for a lot longer than
that. Five more years. You're not going to get any time off for good
behavior or any of that stuff, not after spending so long in
isolation already. After I'm gone, who's going to take care of you?"
He kissed me gently and I snuggled into his shoulder and began to cry.

In the morning my first thought was that it had all been a weird
dream the night before, but Steve was up and organizing things in
the room before I woke. Gonzales came to get me before breakfast,
and I went to the showers with him, worried that Steve's plan was
too adventurous and something would go wrong. I washed my hair, and
pulled it back after I'd towel-dried it. Gonzales commented on it as
we walked back to the room. "Miz Em," he said, and I was surprised
to hear him call me that, too. "Your hair is even longer than my
daughter's. Very nice."

As we were approaching my room I was suddenly torn. I didn't want
anything bad to happen to Gonzales. I didn't want to upset Steve's
plans, but Gonzales had saved my life, and been a good friend, even
if he was a guard. I was going to say something to him, about being
careful, but I realized there was no way to do that. Instead I
stopped and quickly hugged him. He was surprised, but as I turned to
enter our room I could see him smile. "Shower time, Hammond," he
said to Steve before turning back to me. "I'll be back to take you
to breakfast in thirty minutes, Miz Em."

Inside our room after his shower Steve took a long time to get
dressed. As he pulled on his pants I noticed with some unease that
he had found some duct tape and taped a knife to his calf. I never
even knew he had it. It looked like a knife from the mess that had
been sharpened up, and I was reminded of the time Pangianis and
Sonny had cut me with a similar blade. Steve saw me looking, and
smiled that winning smile of his to reassure me. "No, I'm not
planning on using it, Em. It's just for protection, for later."

I didn't want to ask what later was.

I noticed Steve looking pensively at his guitar. Even though it was
just a cheap one, we'd had a lot of good times with it, and I could
tell he was having difficulty leaving it behind. Finally he
shrugged, and left the room.

I dressed, putting on the panties and the garter belt and stockings
under my pants, and stuffing the bra into one pocket. The other
pocket I filled with the clasp and barrettes.

As we walked down to the mess hall I noticed Steve standing near the
door. He pulled Gonzales to the side as we went in and murmured
something, and I saw him slip something into Gonzales's hand at the
same time as the guard's face drained of color. Inside the mess hall
everything was pretty much as normal, except Leon and Travis had
staked out some seats adjacent to Pangianis's table, which was
unusual. We walked over to the seats they had saved, and I saw
Pangianis eyeing me closely as I walked. I deliberately gave my hair
a flick as I sat down, which I knew was a gesture that a lot of guys
found hard to take, and then I looked him in the eyes across the two
tables and smiled at him. He was no pushover and it didn't faze him
in the least. His eyes flicked to Steve and Leon and Travis for a
moment, then he just kept right on looking at me.

As I went to get breakfast I put a little more swing into my hips
than usual. There was something about having that sexy lingerie on
under my clothing that made me feel more provocative. So help me, I
got a little buzz out of acting, well, sexy. There were a few
whistles, and Gonzales and the other guard on duty looked nervous.
As I walked back I could feel Pangianis's eyes -- and the eyes of
every man in the place -- firmly locked on to me, and I played up to
it. I was nervous as hell, if you want to know the truth of it, but
Steve had gone over the instructions again that morning and I knew
what he was aiming for.

I was too nervous to eat, so I played with my hair and waited for
the signal from Steve. Pangianis never took his eyes off me, and I
licked my lips a few times for good measure while looking directly
at him. Then I noticed Gonzales step outside the room briefly, and a
friend of Travis's get the attention of the other guard over at the
serving counter.

There was Steve's signal. I reached under my arm and undid the
safety pin that held my bandage in place. Then I undid one my shirt
buttons, slowly. Pangianis was watching every move, and I could see
there was something about all this that was getting him nervous, or
at least distracted. I took off my shirt, leaving the t-shirt on
underneath. Then I reached up under that and in one smooth motion
removed the bandage, which sprang off now that there was no safety
pin to hold it. My breasts swung free.

I thought Pangianis and Sonny were going to cum there and then.
No-one behind me could tell what I had just done, but the eyes of
the guys in front of me were totally locked on my chest. You'd think
they hadn't seen a woman in years. Well, I guess they hadn't, and
for all that Pangianis seemed to go for boys when there was nothing
else available it was clear he hadn't lost his taste for women. But
he wasn't moving. He was too stunned. Rats. This wasn't part of the
plan.

I reached up and tweaked my nipples, and they got hard right away. I
thought Sonny was going to burst a blood vessel.

It was then that Travis had the inspired idea. At least I thought at
the time it was inspired. He picked up the plastic jug of water on
the table and abruptly threw it all over me, drenching my t-shirt.
It clung to my breasts, and was semi-transparent. My nipples became
even harder with the shock of the cold water, and stuck
provocatively out, clearly visible.

That did it. Nick and Sonny erupted from the table.

"You fucking tease cunt," Pangianis yelled. The guard turned around
to see the two of them flying across the space between the tables,
and ran to try to intercept them. Gonzales was still outside. Leon
and Travis intercepted Pangianis and Sonny and tripped them, and the
guard arrived to hold them down, a foot on Nick's back and a baton
on Sonny's neck. That was when I went into my real act. I stood up
on the table, and turned around.

The room dissolved in total uproar. None of these guys had seen a
woman in years, let alone what seemed to be a young woman in a wet
t-shirt. They started whooping and hollering and stamping on the
floor, and then it was only a matter of time before a few morons at
the side of the room started tearing up the furniture and throwing
it through the window. "Oh, baby!" "Come and get it honey!" "You're
hot!" They were screaming. "She's a he!" one cried, but that seemed
to get lost in everything else and anyway I don't think anyone would
have cared even if they'd thought about it.

The guard holding Pangianis and Sonny looked panicked. He knew he
couldn't let them go, because they'd probably kill him, but he
didn't know how to stop me without doing that. I winked at him as
Steve gave me his hand and I jumped down from the table. The poor
guy looked completely stunned. He hesitated, and Pangianis seized
the moment to twist him down and roll away. The guard reacted
quickly, bringing up his stick as he was going down and striking
Pangianis across the back of the neck. Even in the confusion I could
hear the sound of the stick hitting his neck, and I could see his
head jerk in reflex. He fell to the floor and the guard knelt over
him, stunned, then seized the moment to grab Sonny, who seemed to be
moving in slow motion. Once he had him, he wasn't letting go of him.

Everyone seemed briefly distracted, and then Leon and Steve helped
me through the broken window and the four of us were out, streaming
across the lawn to a truck at the rear of the building. The guard
looked at us helplessly as we were standing in the window, then at
Sonny, and then we were running. I heard the footsteps of some
others, but I didn't look back.

For all its pretensions, Brand was not like an adult jail in terms
of security. We didn't have any towers or anything like that, just a
double security fence with razor wire around the perimeter, and an
armed guard on the front gate. Coupled with all the security on the
building. I guess they just weren't used to juveniles being so
determined. I followed Leon as he scrambled into the back of the
truck. Steve and Travis took the front while a few other people
tried to scramble over the lift on the back. One of them was Cee,
and I helped him up. Another was Warren, the weedy guy I had sold my
Valiums to. There were a couple of others I didn't know well.

I don't know how Steve planned it, but the truck must have had the
keys left in it, because the engine fired up straight away and we
made for the side perimeter fences. There was a lot of scraping and
noise as a fence post was flattened under the truck and the wire
strained and broke, but we just drove straight through them.

The ground was pretty rough outside the fences, because it was all
undeveloped land. I got thrown around the back a lot while we
crossed over it, and Leon reached out to steady me. I grinned at him
as we were flung together by a huge bump, and his arms encircled me.
Then we hit some paved road, and he abruptly released me, turning
bright red as he realized what had happened and a brighter red when
I moved to the other side of the van and he could see my tits
through the still-damp t-shirt. "Ooh!" Cee squealed. "Girl, you sure
have grown up!"

I blushed. I don't know why, after the exhibition I had just put on,
but I was all of a sudden self-conscious. Leon, bless him, seemed to
understand, and he took off his shirt (he had a t-shirt on
underneath) and handed it to me. It smelled a lot of Leon, and I
could have worn it as a dress it was so huge, but I was grateful to
be able to cover myself up while I was stuck in the back of the
truck with all these guys. Especially after what had just happened.

About fifteen minutes down the road the truck slowed and turned and
then stopped, and a few moments later Steve and Travis appeared at
the tailgate. "Okay," Steve said. The rest of you can take the
truck. Anyone know how to drive it?"

One of the guys I didn't know grunted.

"Okay, it's all yours, do whatever you want with it." Steve
continued. "Em, Leon, we're outta here." He helped me down from the
truck and began to walk over to a Malibu parked behind a few trees.
I looked back at the truck. Cee was standing at the top of the
tailgate, looking nervously at the other guys, obviously wondering
what to do next.

I turned to Steve. "Steve."

"Hurry up." he said, as Travis got into the driver's seat of the car.

"Uh, what about Cee?"

"Huh? Oh, shit. Look, the deal is just us four, okay? I said whoever
got out was welcome to seize opportunities, but this isn't one of
them." He kept walking to the car, but I stopped. Eventually he
turned around. "Shit, Em, don't do this to me."

I just stood there. Behind me I heard the truck start up again.
Steve looked angry, then frustrated, and then finally he said "Okay.
Just to the border. That's it."

I turned back to Cee and motioned for him to jump and come with us,
then ran to the car myself. Travis had started the car, but got out
of the driver's seat and stood by the door. "No fuckin' way, man,"
he said to Steve as the truck began to move off.

"Way. Just to the border, that's all."

"I ain't driving *that*."

"You just did. So shut the fuck up and drive some more, Travis,"
Steve said, holding open the door so Cee and I could scramble into
the back seat next to Leon.

It was one tight fit. Leon wasn't built for the back seat, and my
hips seemed to take up more room than they used to. Cee squeezed up
between the window and me and giggled, which made Travis angry. He
shoved the car into gear and we roared off in a shower of stones.
"Fuckin' faggot patrol," he said.

"Shut the fuck up, Travis," said Steve.

"You heard the man," said Cee, I thought a tad unwisely. I looked at
Leon, who shrugged.

We drove for a while in silence. Travis took out his aggression on
the car. I don't know whether it was that, or that he hadn't driven
in a few years, but we took some of the corners pretty wildly and
Steve told him to slow down and stop attracting attention. Then we
were on the interstate and he settled down anyway.

Things got a bit tense for a while when a cop got into the stream of
traffic behind us, but he pulled off a few ramps further along and
everyone sighed audibly. We stayed on the road about three hours,
and then pulled off just over the state line and drove up into the
hills. I didn't know how Travis knew how to get wherever it was we
were headed, but he seemed confident. Around noon we turned off the
narrow blacktop and up a small track to a cabin. Travis turned the
engine off and we all got out of the car and stretched.

It was pretty. The cabin didn't look like much, but it overlooked a
broad, open valley of patchwork fields. There was a shed behind the
cabin, and a water tank, but no sign of electricity or phone or any
other connections. "Whose place is this?" Cee asked.

Travis scowled. He just hated the sound of Cee's voice. He walked up
the steps to the cabin and took a key from above the door, then let
himself in.

"Travis's cousins," Steve said after a few moments. He stretched
some more, then put his arm around me. "Hey, bet you didn't think
we'd make it."

"Yeah, I did," I said, and it was true. I had a lot of faith in Steve.

Leon went for a walk around the back of the cabin, and Cee, Steve
and I walked up the steps and went in. It was dark and musty inside,
and Steve opened a blind and then a window.

Travis was obviously in the only other room, because we could hear
him moving around. In a moment he reappeared, dressed in a pair of
jeans and a plaid shirt. It was kind of startling, since I'd only
ever seen him in Brand issue until now. He look almost friendly,
until I noticed he had was carrying a mean looking gun, some kind of
assault rifle or something, by the stock. He walked across to Steve
and handed him a large envelope, which Steve opened. It was full of
money. It looked like a lot of money, even though it was all
twenties. A twenty bought a lot more back then. Travis played with
the gun for a moment, weighing it in his hands, and then lay it on
the small table near the door.

"Won't be needing that." Steve indicated the gun, as he stashed most
of the money in his wallet and handed what looked like a few hundred
to Leon and Travis.

"I hope not, Steve," Travis said. "But my cousin thought it was a
good idea, and who am I to argue with that kind of generosity?"

Cee and I went to see what was in the other room. There were two
suitcases on top of the only bed, one of them open and filled with
men's clothing. Steve joined us. "I'm afraid we didn't get a chance
to be choosy," he said to me. "So see if any of this fits you.
Travis's cousin didn't want to go shopping for women's clothes."

Cee went out to the porch and I started to strip off. I still had
the panties, garter and stockings on under my pants, and I left them
on. As I straightened up from taking off the pants I felt Steve's
arms go around me. "Mmmm," he said. "Pity we can't stay. That bed
looks pretty good, whaddaya say?" He snuggled his nose in behind my
ear and kissed the back of my neck. I wanted to melt. He cupped my
breasts. "Say, did you remember the bra I bought you?"

"Of course I did," I said, and bent down again to retrieve it from
the pocket of my pants. I straightened up and Steve helped clasp it
behind my back.

"Em, you look so hot," he said. He kissed me some more. "But we
gotta keep moving. Try to find something to wear. We'll buy
something more appropriate later."

I settled on a large man's white shirt. All of the pants were way
too long for me, or too big in the waist, so I settled for the dark
blue pants I'd worn at Brand. I'd long ago figured they were in a
woman's cut anyway, so I figured they looked better. Then I brushed
my hair out and pinned it back with the barrettes. Looking in the
mirror I figured I was pretty safe -- there was no way I looked like
an escapee from a *male* juvenile correctional facility.

The thought suddenly struck me -- I didn't have to do this any more.
I was away from Brand, away from Grieves and Blaha, and I didn't
have to look like a girl if I didn't want to. I clasped my hair
behind me and pulled it back. No joy. Even if I hadn't had the
barrettes in my hair, I still looked like a girl from all the shots
Blaha had been giving me. Then I looked across at Steve and noticed
him watching me. He smiled, and I blushed.

If I didn't look like a girl anymore, would Steve still like me? I
mean, would he still *love* me?

I let go of my hair and walked over to kiss him again. After we'd
snuggled for a minute or two I remembered something that had been
bugging me in the car. "Steve, about Gonzales..."

"Yes."

"Is he going to be in trouble for this morning?"

"Huh?"

"Did you pay him off or something?" I was worried. Carlos was one of
the goons, but he was a nice guy, and I had actually grown fond of him.

"I slipped him some money, yeah. But that was just a parting gift. I
wanted to warn him to be at the back of the room when the shit went
down."

"Do you think they'll suspect him?"

"Doubt it. He was there, and he tried to settle things down, he just
couldn't get through the crowd to where the action was happening,
y'know?"

"Good," I said. "I'm actually going to miss him, Steve."

"Don't go getting all mushy on me about Brand," Steve smiled. He
kissed me again. "We don't have to think about that place any more."

Steve gave me some money "just in case", and I checked my hair again
before we went out onto the porch together. Cee was sitting on the
front steps. "What now?" he said.

"Now we head into town for some supplies, and then we drop you off
at the place of your choice," Steve said.

"I don't really have a place to go," Cee said.

"You should have thought of that before you climbed onto the truck,"
Travis said from the end of the porch.

Steve ignored Travis, and continued. "You should probably try to put
some more distance between yourself and Brand if you can," he said.
"Maybe we can drop you at a bus station or something." He paused.
"In the meantime, there are some clothes inside. See if you can find
something that will fit you. You're gonna stand out like a sore
thumb in those issue clothes."

Cee went inside to change, and Travis moved closer to Steve. "You
know it was a mistake to bring *it* along." he said.

"Well, we did," said Steve evenly. "No point worrying about it now."

"What if it gets caught and gives us away?" Travis said quietly.

"How? I ain't planning on staying here long, you know that" said Steve.

"It ain't *your* cousin's place," said Travis.

"Fair point," Steve said. "But who's to say he'll get caught anyway?
And if he does, what makes you think he'll talk?"

"He's a fag, man. He'll 'fess everything in a minute."

"Knock off the fag shit, okay," Steve said tersely, and Travis
looked guilty for a moment before turning and heading off to find Leon.

That exchange set the tone for our trip into town. We all climbed
back into the Malibu, Travis driving again, and bumped down the road
without saying a word to one another.

Davenport is not a big town, at least not by the standards of where
I grew up. Back then there were maybe 10,000 people, a couple of
cafes, the courthouse and a small library, a few blocks of stores,
but nothing to get excited about. That worried me, because it seemed
to me that any strangers were going to stick out, and five teenagers
in a Malibu with out-of-state plates on it were probably going to be
remembered by the locals. "That's where the bus picks up," Travis
said to Steve as we drove past a run-down looking store. Travis
cruised around the three blocks that made up the downtown area, and
angled the car in to a parking space only a few doors up from one of
the larger stores. Steve stepped out as Travis shut off the engine,
and Leon got out from the seat beside me.

"C'mon, Em," Steve called. "Shopping time." The other guys clambered
out as well, and Travis announced they were headed to get some stuff
from a guy he knew. I looked at Cee, who clearly wanted to come with
us instead of Travis and Leon. I was worried about leaving him alone
with Travis, but I trusted Leon. But Steve had other ideas. "Cee,
you make sure these two stay out of trouble, okay?"

Cee looked doubtful, and Travis looked pissed, but the three of them
crossed the street and entered a hardware store.

Steve and I walked down a few doors until we came to a clothing
store, Wilson's. It was kind of dark inside, and the displays in the
window were all about five years behind the current fashions I'd
seen on the few occasions I watched television, but it was quiet
too. We were the only customers inside, so far as I could tell. At
the back of the store I could see a couple of women unpacking some
clothing and hanging clothes. A bored-looking black girl sat behind
a counter over to the side of the store, reading a magazine. She
hadn't even glanced up as we came in.

"Don't go crazy," Steve said quietly. "Just get something for today
and maybe tomorrow. Whatever you need." He peeled off about three
hundred dollars from a roll of bills he had in his hand and gave
them to me.

"Steve," I began questioningly.

"Never told you my folks had money, did I?" He smiled. "Lots. They
wouldn't give it to me, not after what happened, but they give my
sister anything she asks for. My sister and I get on just fine.
Might as well enjoy it while it lasts."

He walked across to the men's department, at the other side of the
store. I nervously made my way across to the nearest rack of women's
clothing. It was tops, mostly the halter-necked kind although there
were a few sleeved tops with plunging necklines on the rack as well.
I skimmed through a few of them, and then realized that I had no
idea what size I was. What were my measurements the last time I saw
Blaha? I really couldn't remember. I knew the panties I had on were
small, and the bra was a 32b, but what did that mean in these tops?
Mildly panicked, I moved across to another rack, which was full of
skirts. These were marked 6,8,10,12. That was no help, either. I
turned to catch Steve's eye -- not that he'd have been any help --
and was startled to find that the bored sales assistant was standing
right behind me. II jumped.

"Oh, I'm sorry, sugar, I didn't mean to startle you," she said. "Can
I help you with anything?"

I tried to regain my breath. "Uh, I grew... I put on some weight
this year, and I was just wondering..."

"Okay, sugar. Let's see, I think you're a 6 in that skirt you've
got." I realized that in my shock I had pulled a skirt from the rack
as she surprised me. It was short -- it looked very short, in dark
blue cotton with small white flowers on it. It wasn't so bad, except
maybe for the shortness of it. I didn't mind showing off my legs for
Steve, but I'd never worn a skirt before in my life.

"You want to try it on?" she said, holding a skirt. She was only a
couple of years older than I was, I guessed.

"Uh, I guess." I said.

"Well, you might wanna try a different top on to see how it looks.
You're not gonna see any of it under that shirt." She said. "How
'bout this?"

"Uh, maybe," I said. I had no idea how that piece of fabric was
going to cover my chest.

In a few moments I had the skirt, and three tops, and she was
ushering me toward the changing cubicles. I had a moment of panic
that she was going to stay inside with me, but she hung the clothes
up and pulled the door to as she left. "You just call out if you
want something else," she said.

I stripped off my shirt and pants and saw myself in the full-length
mirror for the first time since my last visit to Blaha's office.
With my cock tucked between my legs there was no way anyone could
tell I wasn't a girl. I had never seen myself in a bra before, and I
was amazed at the way it made me look, even though it was too flimsy
to do much in the way of support. I didn't need much support anyway.
But the bra seemed even a little small in the cups for me, since the
flesh of my breasts bulged over just slightly.

I tried on the skirt, and then pulled on one of the tops over my
head. They both fit perfectly. The top was in a purple synthetic
material, pretty much like a t-shirt, except it clung to my body a
lot more, and it had a low neckline that showed the top of my
breasts. As I bent over to pick up another top from the chair in the
room I caught a glimpse in the mirror of my cleavage revealed as I
bent over. I remembered how I used to try to sneak glimpses down the
top of Maria's blouse whenever I thought she wasn't looking.

Maria. As I turned in the mirror to see -- as best I could -- how I
looked from behind, I remembered Maria, and how great she had looked
in just jeans and a t-shirt. Looking at myself I realized that we
had pretty similar figures. She was probably bigger in the bust, but
I was narrower in the waist.

I tried to shake off her memory, and I tried on the other tops. The
second one, in a pale blue, went well with the skirt and was
slightly less revealing. I decided I felt more comfortable in it.

The third top was a halter, and I realized after I put it on that I
wouldn't be able to wear a bra with it because the straps wouldn't
be covered. I took it off again and had just taken off my bra when
the salesgirl knocked on the door and then entered immediately
without waiting for me to say anything.

"How you doin', sugar," she said.

"Okay," I said nervously. No-one except Steve and Blaha and Gonzales
had seen me naked since I had come into Brand. I hadn't been
near-naked in front of a woman since I was eight, when my mother saw
me in the shower. At first I was anxious, but then I relaxed. It
wasn't like she had never seen a pair of breasts, after all, right?
I began to try to do up the halter, but I couldn't get it fastened
in the back.

"Here, let me help you with that," the salesgirl said. "It's easy
once you get the hang of it, but why they didn't put an easier clasp
on it I'll never know." She fastened it and I felt it press my
breasts up higher on my chest, snugly gathered in by the stretchy
fabric. It felt kind of good. I looked in the mirror. The top left
all of my body below my breasts and above the waistline of the skirt
totally bare, and really showed off my slim waistline. My nipples
pushed out against the fabric of the top.

"Maybe you put on weight, sugar, but it's done gone to the right
places," the salesgirl said. "Is that your brother or your boyfriend
out there?"

"Steve? Uh, my boyfriend."

"I figured -- saw you come in together. I think he's gonna love you
in this."

"You think so?"

"Absolutely. Honey, they all gonna love you in that outfit."

"Okay. Thanks." I reached down to the pants and shirt I'd discarded,
then thought better of it. "Say, can you cut the tags off these so I
can wear them out of here?"

"Sure, sugar." She looked with disdain at the clothes I'd worn in.
"But you gonna need some new shoes if you want to wear that."

I looked with dismay at my Brand-issue sneakers. They were
androgynous enough, but they were old and shabby and she was right,
they didn't go with the skirt.

"I guess..."

"There's a store right across the street."

"Yeah..."

"Don't you be worrying about the cost, sugar. I done seen the money
your boyfriend got, he gonna pay for this when he sees you like
that." She said. "What else you need?"

"Uh..." I stopped to think. It was Steve's money, after all.

"Did you like just fall off a bus here or somethin', sugar? I mean,
you got strange clothes on for such a pretty thing."

I tried hard to think clearly. "Uh, yeah... Yeah. I was, I was in a
small accident on my way here to see my cousins, and when they towed
the car we didn't get our bags out, and I had to borrow this from my
cousin Travis." It sounded kind of lame even to me.

"Accident? You mean you don't have anythin'?"

"Not really... I mean, we can get my clothes in a day or so, but
until then I need some things."

Within fifteen minutes she had me in new lingerie, pantyhose, a
denim jacket and a pair of jeans, and so many sweaters and dresses I
had to stop her. Everything I tried on she pronounced perfect, and
after she complimented me on a short yellow sun dress I collapsed on
the chair, laughing. "Don't you be laughing, now" she said. "Looks
like your boyfriend is gonna help pay for my holiday."

We settled on three tops, a sweater, the pair of jeans and the
skirt. And the lingerie and the pantyhose. And the denim jacket. I
wore the jeans and the blue top out of the fitting room, barefoot,
and she began to ring them up on the register. Steve joined me, an
anxious look on his face.

"That took a long time," he said.

"Don't you be giving her a hard time," the salesgirl said. "After
she's been in an accident and all. That'll be three hundred and nine
dollars and eighty eight cents." Steve looked at me, stupefied, and
handed over the cash without a murmur. I had a little explaining to
do when we left the store.

When we got back to the car there was no sign of Travis, Leon or
Cee. At first we were both worried, but there was no sign of
anything untoward, so Steve and I went across the street to the shoe
store. The sales assistant there seemed to get some kind of kick out
of feeling up my feet, which made me giggle and got Steve a little
pissed. We came out of the place with a pair of boots for Steve and
three pairs of shoes for me.

We sat in the car nervously for almost half an hour, expecting at
any minute to be set upon by the local police. Finally the others
showed up. Travis was clearly tanked, carrying a half-empty bottle
of Wild Turkey. Leon might have been drinking too; it was always
hard to tell with him. Cee looked bad. At first I thought maybe he
was drunk, too, but it wasn't that; it was more that he looked pale
and, well, kind of dazed. There was liquor on his breath, but I
didn't think that was the problem. My senses went into overdrive
trying to put together all the ugly emotions that were coming from
the guys

Steve was pretty mad with Travis, but he didn't say anything. That's
how come I knew he was mad. He took the keys from Travis and got
back in the car without saying a word, and the guys meekly got in
and looked suitably chastened. Steve drove over to the supermarket
and he and I got some food while the guys stayed in the car. Then we
all went back to the cabin. Not a word was spoken the whole time we
were in the car.

(continued)

Distribution: Feel free to archive or otherwise distribute, provided
it (and this preamble) is unedited and no fee is charged for access.
This story may not be distributed from any site that charges money,
is members-only, or uses that ridiculous "adult check" thing (or any
similar system).

All rights reserved by the author, who can be contacted at
[email protected] .

Y

After surviving an unpleasant 'incidence' Mike becomes Em and finally Emma Jane as she travels south with Steve and Leon. A brief shopping trip with Steve's sister, Julia, helps her to become comfortable with life outside James Brand.

Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A.

Chapter Seven.

Sometimes I think guys aren't so bright. Oh, they're smart enough
when it comes to physics and engineering and cars and stuff like
that, but they don't know a whole lot about people. I'd only known
Steve a couple of years, but I knew him well enough to know that
when he's pissed, it's best just to leave him alone. Travis had
known Steve a lot longer, but he hadn't learned that yet.

After we arrived back at the cabin Travis broke the silence, "Aw,
shit, man, it's just a little relaxation, y'know?"

Steve turned on him, and said quietly and tersely that Travis was an
idiot. "I don't care what the fuck you want to do, Travis, but I
don't want to go back to Brand in a hurry."

"I haven't had a drink in four years," Travis mumbled.

"So get some stuff, and bring it back here! Jesus. A fuckin' bar!"
Steve hit the table with a resounding thwack and stormed out of the
front door of the cabin.

Everyone lapsed back into silence. I unpacked the stuff from the
supermarket and tried to figure out where the pots and pans were.
There was a single bottled-gas hotplate. I set some stuff in a pot
and tried to cook up a kind of chicken stew kind of thing. Cee
assisted me, wordlessly. After the vegetables were all chopped up
and the chicken was browned and everything was in the pot I went out
onto the porch while it was simmering. Steve was nowhere to be seen.

After a few minutes Cee came outside and sat next to me. Neither of
us said anything for a minute or two, but I could sense he wanted to
tell me something.

"So what happened?" I asked.

"Travis was an asshole," Cee said quietly.

"Yeah, so what else is new?"

"I didn't want to go in, y'know?"

"Yeah"

"There were only two people in there. So we kind of stuck out. I
mean, I guess I stuck out, anyway. Travis ordered some drinks, and I
think the guy was gonna card him, but he let it go. So he and Leon
drank a few, and nobody said anything much. I sat over the other
side of the place. Travis ain't exactly my idea of a good time.
Then, after a few drinks, Travis decides he's gonna buddy up to the
guy at the bar. He hadn't been asking any questions or anything, but
Travis volunteers some story about how he's just in town to visit
his cousin, and the guy behind the bar looks at me and says 'He a
cousin, too?' It got kind of awkward for a moment. Then Leon decides
to go pee, and as soon as he left Travis comes over to me and says
'Hey,' ... " He stopped.

"Hey?"

"Hey pussy." Cee looked away. "Hey Pussy, let me cut your dick off.
That's what you want, isn't it?" He shook his head and looked back
at me. "Real dumb. I didn't wanna hear any more, so I walked over to
the bar, and Travis followed me over, and it was kind of headed for
a scene, y'know?"

"So what happened?"

"Leon came back, and we went to a liquor store for more booze, and
then... then we left."

There was definitely more to the story than this, but I could see
that Cee wasn't going to tell me anything more. At least not right
then. But the three of them must have been very conspicuous. Steve
was right. Travis was an idiot. I hoped that the bartender hadn't
talked to the police or anything.

Something about Cee's story sparked a flash of memory in my head, of
Pangianis's dick coming toward me that first time in the showers at
Brand. I thought I knew what might have happened to Cee. I reached
out and touched his hand, and smiled gently. He flinched at my
touch, and couldn't look me in the eye. I resolved to ask Leon for
his version of events some time soon.

Eventually Cee reached over to me and took my hand back, and held it
in his. I looked over at him.

"Can I ask you something real personal, Em?" he asked.

"Okay."

"You never told me how -- why -- you know, how come you changed."
When I didn't say anything for a moment he obviously thought he'd
hurt me or something, but the truth was I didn't know what to say.
"I'm sorry," he continued, "I didn't mean to pry --"

"-- It's okay," I said. "You're not prying." I turned my head for a
moment and looked out at the valley below the cabin. "I, umm, it's
just, it's kind of complicated to explain, Cee."

"I bet."

"Basically, it started off being Blaha's idea, you know?"

"Uh huh... so does that mean it wasn't always his idea?"

"No, it was always him. It's just..."

"You started to like it, huh?"

I thought about that for a moment. "Well, Steve started to like it,
and I like Steve..."

"Just be sure it's what you want, girl," Cee said. "He's a nice guy.
Hell, I wish he went my way, you know? But -- you know I want you to
be happy."

"I know you do," I said, and I hugged him, tightly. I had grown very
close to Cee while we had been at Brand. After Steve he was probably
the only real friend I had.

Steve walked onto the porch. He didn't say where he'd been, or
whether he'd overheard our conversation, and I didn't ask. We all
went inside, and I served up dinner.

It wasn't great, but it was edible. There was hardly any
conversation, though. We should have all been incredibly happy to be
free from Brand, but instead the events of the afternoon clouded the
meal. I was nervous because Travis kept leering at me, and when I
bent over to serve him the food I could see him looking down my
cleavage. Creepy drunk, I thought. Steve glowered at everyone all
through dinner, and Leon just ate and ate right through the three
servings I gave him.

As he pushed his plate away Steve finally spoke. "Travis, I'm gonna
give you the Malibu, okay? Leon and I are gonna go into town tonight
and get another car."

Travis looked kind of puzzled. "Whaddawe need another car?" he said,
his voice still a little fuzzy from the alcohol.

"We're gonna split up. Me and Em are gonna head south. You can keep
the Malibu and do whatever you want. It's clean, it's not stolen or
anything, so as long as none of the other guys from Brand got the
plates or anything you'll be fine with it."

"I thought we were, you know, like partners or something," Travis
said. He was clearly surprised at Steve's change of plan.

"Yeah, well, I can't take the chance you're gonna do something like
this afternoon again," Steve said. "Tonight Leon and I will get a
local car and drop Cary at the bus station, and then Em and me'll be
moving on."

"Shit, man, this ain't what we planned," Travis whined.

"Yeah. Well, I don't have to give you the car, Travis. Be thankful
for small mercies."

Cee and I cleaned the table. Steve came over to the sink with me and
said quietly "I'm gonna have to go out soon, but it won't be for
long. But I just can't have Cary and Travis together too much
anymore, okay? I know Cary's your friend, but there's just too much
tension. It's time to cut Travis loose, too. That okay with you?"

I nodded. I was kind of surprised to be consulted, since Steve had
planned the whole escape and I was going to go along with whatever
he thought. But I was pleased he at least told me what he was
thinking. We were a partnership. Him and me. A couple.

The guys went and sat out on the porch. I could hear Travis
complaining some more for a short while, but not much of what Steve
was saying.

I looked around the room, which was in pretty bad shape. Apart from
the detritus from dinner, the guys had strewn magazines, clothes, a
few beer cans and even some playing cards around the room in the
short time we'd been there. On the table near the door were Travis's
gun and some ammunition, and on the arm of the couch was the large
knife Steve had taped to his leg earlier in the day.

As we cleaned up, Cee said "Well, I guess it's goodbye for us, girl."

"Yeah, I guess," I said. I didn't flinch when he called me 'girl'. I
guess I was starting to think of myself that way.

Cee went over to the table and scribbled on some paper that Steve
had been drawing on earlier. When he came back, I could see it was
an address and phone number.

"Em, these are some good people I know in Memphis. You get in any
trouble, you head down there and you tell them Cary Philips sent
you, and they'll take care of you," he said.

"What about you?" I asked. "Are you going to go there?"

"No, honey, that's where I grew up. There's too many old memories
there for me. I've got a friend out in San Francisco I'm gonna look
up. I think someone like me can get a little lost in San Francisco,
what do you think?"

Leon and Steve came into the room to fetch their jackets, and Cee
and I hugged and said our farewells. Both of us started to cry, and
Steve and Leon looked at one another and shrugged. Eventually Steve
stepped in to separate us. "I'll be back in about a half hour,
okay," he said.

Then Steve, Leon and Cee were in the car and driving into town. I
waved from the porch as I watched Cee waving sadly back at me from
the back seat of the car.

That left Travis and me. I went back inside to finish cleaning up,
and he followed me. In fact, he kept following me around as I
cleaned up. At first I was just pissed with him, and I thrust a
washcloth into his hand and said, "The pots aren't done yet."

"'S women's work," Travis grunted, thrusting it back at me. I
ignored him, or tried to, and began to scrub the pot myself. I had
left the heat up a little too long, and there was quite a bit of
food cooked hard in the base of the pot.

Travis was standing behind me, just watching me, which was making me
uneasy. "You could do something to help," I said. "Is lighting a
fire men's work?"

"I'm just fine," Travis said, and just stood watching me while I
worked. Eventually, after about another five minutes, he went and
got the Wild Turkey bottle he had been drinking from earlier in the day.

"You sure are a good looking chick," Travis said. I didn't
acknowledge that I'd heard him, but I knew he was looking me over
just from the way my skin was crawling.

"How'd that happen, anyway?" he continued, swigging from the bottle.
When I didn't answer, he went on. "You bein' a chick and all, I
mean... they sure are a good set of titties you got. Ain't no way
you can still be a boy. How'd that happen?"

"Shut up, Travis," I said finally, after he'd continued on to talk
about what a cute ass I had, and how hot I looked in the tight jeans
I was wearing. "If Steve heard you talking like this he'd whup you
good."

"Yeah, well, the thing is," Travis said, walking over to me and
putting his hand on my ass, "Steve's not here right now, is he?"

I froze the minute I felt Travis's hand on me, but then I reached
around to slap it away.

"Oh, you're a feisty one, too. I like that," Travis said, moving his
hand to my shoulder, to turn me around. I shivered. I had never felt
so cold inside. Travis looked me over, and his eyes fixed on my
breasts, which were hugged closely by the blue top I was wearing.
"Damn, but you are a good looking bitch."

"You're drunk, Travis," I said, pulling away from his grasp.

"Yep. I reckon I am." Travis said.

"What's going to happen when I tell Steve about this?" I said.

"Oh, you ain't gonna tell Steve about this," Travis said, putting
down the bottle and grasping both my arms. "You're gonna be worried
about what he'll think about you putting out for me." He twisted one
of my arms behind my back, and then grasped the other and drew it
behind me, too. He could hold both my hands in one of his, I
discovered, but mostly he held them separately, twisting each arm
viciously.

"What? Let me go! You're fucking crazy!" I screamed at him.

"Steve and I been friends for years," Travis continued. "Way before
you arrived. I'm gonna tell him you came onto me, and he's gonna
believe it." He began to twist my arms, and force me to walk toward
the other room. I flailed with my legs as much as I could, and tried
to kick him between the legs, but he twisted my arm further behind
my back until I couldn't stand it any more. "Oh, yeah, he'll believe
me," he said, as though he was trying to convince himself.

"Or maybe I won't tell him anything, if you don't," he added. As I
twisted my head around to see him to try to aim another kick I could
see something positively evil in his eyes.

He took my wrists in one hand, and started playing with my left
breast with his free hand. It was awful. Completely unerotic. There
was nothing in Travis's touch that could excite me, in fact he made
me feel stony cold inside, and hard in my belly, almost exactly the
opposite of how I felt whenever Steve caressed me. In years since
then, I've read books where some people have said that some women
get some kind of erotic kick out of rape, and those kind of books
make me angry. There was always an erotic element whenever Steve
took control in our lovemaking and got forceful and kind
animalistic, but that was *so* different than what I felt with
Travis. It gives me the shivers just thinking about Travis again now.

He drove me into the other room, where the bed was. He looked at the
bed, and then at me, and at the clothes I was wearing. "Hmmm, this
is gonna make for some problems," he said. I was still struggling,
and now I started screaming for Steve. For anyone.

"No one's gonna hear," Travis said. "So you can stop screaming.
Personally, I kind of like a girl who struggles." He pushed me until
I was facing the bed, with him behind me, grasping my hands. I felt
his free hand go to the button on the front of my jeans, and then
begin to unzip them. I struggled and screamed more and more, but the
grip Travis had on my hands made it hard. He pushed both my arms
upward, which forced me to bend down over the bed.

I hated being so weak, so small. He was so much stronger, and there
didn't seem to be anything else I could do. I kept trying to kick
him, or stand on his feet, but he was able to dodge me easily, and
increase the pressure on my arms. Eventually I felt him get the
zipper on my jeans all the way down, and then I felt his hand
reaching inside. He was having trouble, because the jeans were very
tight, and I was struggling as much as I could, and while he had me
bent over like that he couldn't get very far into them. My cock was
tucked back in my panties, so tightly that there was no apparent
bulge in my crotch, and Travis was reaching inside but he couldn't
reach down far enough to feel it from inside the jeans. Whatever he
did feel around my pubic hair seemed to convince him I was a girl.

"I knew it," he grunted, as he tried to pull my jeans further down.
"You are a girl. No way could Steve be a fag." His hand was only a
fraction of an inch from finding out he was wrong. "What I don't get
is how they made you a girl," he mumbled drunkenly as he continued
to struggle with the jeans, trying to get them down over my hips.

At that moment I got one of my arms free, and I lashed out with my
hand toward his face. I could only manage a kind of backhand slap,
but it startled him enough that he let go of me entirely, and I spun
around and hit him, hard, on the side of the head. He staggered
drunkenly and then hit back at me, catching me hard in the shoulder
and spinning me right down onto the bed. I was too weak to hurt him
with my punches, I realized, but I was beyond being rational and I
continued flailing with my arms and legs as much as I could. I was
screaming, screaming harder than I ever had in my life. Travis got
hold of one of my arms again, and then punched me, hard, in the belly.

All the wind went out of me, and I lay on the bed, gasping.

"That fucking hurt, bitch," he said to me, as he tried to pull my
jeans down again. I was still stunned from the blow, and he was
having more success. He rolled me over onto my belly and kept
pulling them, until finally they were off completely.

I heard him unzip his own pants as I lay there, still gasping.
Summoning what little self-control I had left, I made one last
attempt to kick out at him, and I caught him directly in the leg,
just missing his crotch. Not enough to stop him, but enough to slow
him down. He grunted, then rolled me back over. I began flailing
again, my breath partially restored, and he got only a little way
toward removing my panties before he was forced to try to control
me. He pinned my legs by sitting on them, and then tried to take
both my hands in one of his again. My breath returned and I resumed
screaming, pleading, sobbing, and just hoping that someone would
make this stop.

He had just succeeded in getting both my hands in one of his, and
was trying to remove my panties again, when I heard the loudest
sound I have ever heard in my life, and felt wetness all over my
face and legs and back and wherever my skin was bare, and then
Travis slumped on top of me.

I was still struggling, and as soon as Travis went limp I managed to
throw him to one side.

There was a loud thump as he hit the floor, and I looked up to see
Steve standing in the doorway, with Travis's gun in his hand. He
came over to me, and held me tightly. I was still screaming, and
shaking, and nothing could make me stop. Leon came into the room
with the Wild Turkey and made me take a few swigs from the bottle,
and the burning from the liquor, or maybe just the interruption to
swallow, let me stop screaming. Then I realized that Travis had been
drinking from that bottle, and I started sobbing uncontrollably.

Steve told me later that it took them more than two hours to calm
me. Eventually he figured out I wouldn't drink from the bottle
again, and Leon got a glass and they poured the whiskey into me, and
gradually I calmed down to the point where I was only shaking. It
was only around then that I noticed I was totally covered in blood,
and even in bits of flesh.

You ever seen a guy get shot in real life? Up close, I mean? It's
not like the movies. I mean, I didn't really see Travis get shot,
but I saw what happened afterward. The bullet went right through
him, and out the other side, and it took a huge chunk out of him
where it left his body, and bits of that chunk went all over me, and
the bed, and the walls, and, well, everything. It's not like a
bullet makes some nice neat hole or anything.

Steve had been hugging me to try to calm me, and he was covered in
blood, too. Then I realized we were both wearing the new clothes we
had bought that day, and they were ruined, and that made me cry even
more. Go figure. You'd think I'd have felt some relief or something,
from being rescued, but that didn't happen for days.

While Steve was taking care of me, taking me into the main room and
laying me on the couch and trying to sooth me, Leon took Travis's
body outside. Steve told me later that Leon buried Travis in a
shallow grave near the shed out back. Then Leon went to work
cleaning up the mess in the other room, and Steve helped undress me
and wash us both down.

***

Chapter Eight.

Eventually I guess I just got too drunk to stay awake. I have vague
memories of Steve dressing me again, and being carried out to a car,
but that was about it until I woke up next morning, stretched out in
the back seat of the Malibu. Steve was driving; Leon was in the
passenger seat. Dawn was just breaking through the trees at the side
of the highway we were on. My head hurt. Actually, lots of parts of
me hurt. It took me a few moments to figure out what was what, and
then I remembered Travis, and that explained why I hurt. I must have
groaned or something, because Leon turned around to look at me.

"Are you okay?" he asked. I nodded.

"What?" said Steve, who had his eyes on the road. He couldn't see me
in the rear-view mirror while I was laying down.

"I'm fine," I said. "Uh, thank you." Then I immediately knew that
was a lie, and I sat up quickly, rolled down the window, and retched
out the contents of my stomach, mostly over the side of the car.

Steve pulled over to the verge and I continued throwing up, heaving
up everything until I thought I would cough up my actual stomach. I
felt wretched. Steve and Leon watched me, and thoughtfully left me
pretty much to myself. Leon had a flask of water that he let me wash
my mouth out with when he thought I'd finished up. I swished a
mouthful around and spat it out, and then Leon used the remainder to
try to wash off the mess I'd made on the outside of the car. Steve
half-carried me back to the car and we hit the road again.

Leon had his hand on the back of his seat, near Steve's shoulder,
and he reached over to rub my leg reassuringly from time to time. I
tilted my head so I could see out the window. The sky was that funny
color, almost green, that only happens for a few minutes after the
dawn, when the yellow near the horizon meets the blue above that's
still speckled with a couple of stars. The occasional tree branch
overhanging the highway flashed by.

The guys had found a blanket to throw over me, and the heater seemed
like it was on in the car, but I still felt cold inside, the way I'd
felt cold when Travis had touched me. I lay there for an hour,
maybe, watching the sky turn blue and the trees vanish from view as
we hit the plains again, and I thought of Travis, and of the blood,
and then of Maria, and that horrible night years ago. I kept
shaking. I couldn't help myself. Leon kept trying to reassure me,
but there was nothing I could do to stop shaking. "Man, I think she
needs a Doctor or somethin'," he said to Steve.

We stopped at a gas station, and I got out of the car to stretch,
still wrapping the blanket around me even though the day was quickly
getting warmer. When Leon had finished filling the car and Steve had
washed the rest of the vomit off it and paid for the gas I lay
huddled in the back seat with the blanket and tried to sleep. Mostly
I listened to the radio, and to Leon complaining about the
"perfectly good stolen car" he'd had to abandon last night a few
miles from Davenport because they'd taken the Malibu after Travis's
death..

By the time it was near lunch we pulled off the highway and into a
small place that didn't seem to have a name identifying it. There
was a kind of bar and grill sort of place at the far end of town,
and we stopped there to get something to eat.

Inside it was dark, so it took a moment for my eyes to adjust, but I
was glad to see the place was almost deserted. Steve had dressed me
in the blue floral skirt last night, and the purple top with the low
neck, and even though I had the denim jacket on over that I felt
kind of naked. I'd never worn a skirt in public before. I think if I
hadn't been feeling kind of numb from everything that had happened I
would have been even more self-conscious.

We sat down in a booth and a waitress in her late twenties with real
big hair took her time walking over to us. I had never seen hair
that big on a woman in real life -- they just don't wear it like
that up North -- and so I guess I stared for a moment or two too
long. "You 'kay, sugar?" she asked, looking at me strangely.

"Um, maybe you got some aspirin or something?" Leon said. "She's
just got a headache."

"I'll see what I can find out back," the waitress said cheerfully,
and left us with the menus.

"We're not in Kansas any more, Toto," I said. "Or are we, Steve?"

"Alabama."

"Your sister, man, you sure she's gonna be cool?" Leon asked Steve.

"She has been so far," Steve said. "She came through with the money
and the car, didn't she?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I guess, you know, maybe I've been inside too long,"
Leon said.

"Amen to that," Steve said, as the waitress came back.

"I'm not really s'posed to give you these, sugar, so don't you be
telling no-one," the waitress said as she handed me some aspirin and
put some water on the table for each of us. "But y'all not from
'round here, I can see."

"'S right, Ma'am," Steve said.

"Thank you," I said softly as I took the aspirin from her. I was
suddenly conscious of my voice. I knew I looked like a girl, but did
I sound like a girl? I hadn't worried about that, yesterday, but
then I hadn't worried about a lot of things.

"So where y'all from?" the waitress asked Steve.

"Well, I grew up in Jackson, Ma'am, but Emma and Leon here are both
from up North. First time in the South for both of 'em."

"Well, I hope you're showin' them the finer points of our fair
state," she said, warming to Steve. He *was* cute, even if he was at
least five years younger than she was, and he'd disarmed her with a
smile very quickly. She took our orders and fairly swished off.

"Why'd you use our real names, man?" Leon was asking quietly.

"She's not gonna remember," Steve said. "Leon, one thing you gotta
know about things down here, people are real polite to one another.
They pick up real quick on you if you act surly or unfriendly, and
they remember that. You can be a genuine sumbitch, but so long as
you say 'please' and 'thank you' and 'ma'am' and 'sir' a lot, things
go a lot smoother. This ain't Chicago, thank the Lord."

"Yeah, but --"

"Look, it's not like you're Jesse James or anything," Steve said.
"If there was anything in the papers about us escaping, it would
have been up North, not here. You ever seen a newspaper in these
kinds of towns? Real estate news, and stuff about the local school,
and maybe how many arrests for drunkenness the cops made last week.
That's it. I don't think we're famous enough to make television, do
you?"

Leon appeared to relax, since everything Steve was saying made sense.

"As far as I can see," Steve continued, "if we didn't use our real
names, at least our first names, we'd prob'ly get ourselves in
trouble by saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. Just relax, and
enjoy the meal."

Leon and Steve discussed the car, and what they would do with it
when we got to Oxford, where his sister was living while she was
studying at the University. There was still the possibility that one
of the other guys from Brand would blab about the color and model if
they were caught, so keeping it wasn't risk free. On the other hand
it had been purchased legally in Steve's sister's name and it was
worth a lot of money. Selling it was risky, but so was just dumping
it. If they dumped it in Oxford, Steve figured, someone would
eventually notice it, and maybe, even though the escape was three
states away, people would put two and two together. Something in his
reasoning didn't work for me after the way he'd just told us we
should use our real names, but I wasn't thinking real clearly that
day and I didn't pick up on it. Leon figured we should keep it until
we worked out where we were headed after Oxford.

The food arrived, and I ate what I could, which wasn't very much. It
did make me feel a bit better, I thought. The waitress flirted with
Steve, and he flirted just a little with her. If I had been feeling
more alert I might have been jealous.

Leon had ordered a huge amount of food, but when I didn't want to
finish the rest of mine he ate that, too. "You still eat like a
bird, Em," he said, as he always did when he watched me eat.

I was still feeling cold and shivering slightly. The aspirins didn't
seem to do much to change that. And my skin felt kind of clammy. As
I watched Leon and Steve eat I realized I needed to pee, as well.

"'Scuse me guys," I said as I stood up. To my amazement Steve stood
up briefly as I did, and lifted Leon's arm to get him up too. I
stopped. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"A gentleman should always rise when a lady sits or rises," Steve said.

Leon looked at him like he was crazy, but -- through the fog that
still enveloped my brain -- I had to smile. A lady, huh?

It was just as well that he had reminded me, I thought, or I
probably would have gone to the men's room. As it was I felt pretty
awkward opening the door to the ladies, but inside it was no big
deal. Just two stalls. I went in to the closest one, raised my skirt
and sat down.

As I raised my skirt I became aware of a lot of creases in the
material at the back. I had crushed it when I had sat down. It was
fairly thin cotton, so the creases would probably fall out soon
enough, but I realized that I would have to remember to smooth my
skirt under me as I sat down each time, the way girls did. It had
been so long since I'd seen a girl; there were probably a thousand
things I didn't know like that. I hoped I didn't screw up too badly.

I finished peeing and adjusted my skirt and left the stall. Opposite
were a washbasin and a mirror. I studied myself carefully. I sure
did look like shit. I realized I didn't have a purse, or anything,
either. No brush, no lipstick, no nothing. There probably wasn't a
woman alive in this part of the world who would come in here without
her purse, I thought. I was going to have to do something about
that. I tried to untangle my hair with my fingers, and hoped that
when Steve had packed the car last night he'd remembered my
barrettes and comb.

As I walked back to the table I could see the waitress flirting with
Steve again. Oh well. As I got to the table the guys stood again,
only this time more like we were planning on leaving.

"How's your headache, sugar?" the waitress asked me.

"Ah, okay, a little better, I guess," I said. I remembered Steve's
speech about politeness. "Thank you." I paused for a moment, and
then thought about the hair and makeup situation. "Say, ma'am, um...
I don't want to bother you, but I lost my purse last night, and I
need to get some stuff, you know. Is there anywhere in town I could
get, you know..."

Evidently my inarticulateness sent the wrong message, because she
looked at the boys, and then at me, and then she steered me over to
the counter at the far side of the room and retrieved her bag from
beneath it. "I can help you out for the moment," she said.

I was about to refuse, thinking she was going to try passing me off
an old lipstick or something, when she reached in and rustled around
for a moment, then pushed a small, soft object into my hand
surreptitiously so the guys couldn't see it. I looked down, and --
of course -- it was a Tampax. I almost laughed, but luckily in my
dazed state I wasn't in much of a mood for that. I thanked her,
profusely, and put it in the pocket of my jacket and smiled.

"It's okay, honey, I need them aspirin myself every time, too.
There's nowhere here in town I'd recommend," she said. "But Decatur
down the road a ways is a good sized town. You can find the other
things you need there."

I thanked her again, and then Steve and Leon and I left, me feeling
very strange indeed. I didn't need the damned Tampax, but even when
I was out of my head and with ratty hair people definitely thought I
was a girl. No problems there. Tampax!

"What was that all about?" Steve asked as we walked over to the car.
I could see the waitress watching us through the window, and I put
my arm around him briefly as we walked.

"Nothing really," I said. "Just girls' stuff." As I got in the car,
in the back seat this time, I thought to myself it was all going to
be girls' stuff from now on.

***

We did stop, briefly, in Decatur, and I picked up some mascara and a
pale brownish-pink lipstick and some apple-scented shampoo and a
hairbrush from a drugstore, as well as a little red plastic change
purse with daisies on it that just seemed too silly to pass up. I
was still feeling pretty weird, and shivering occasionally, but I
managed to get to the register without passing out or anything. Back
in the car I gave Steve back most of his change except a couple of
quarters and dimes that I put in the change purse.

On the outskirts of Decatur we got more gas, and I went to the
ladies room again while Steve made some phone calls and Leon bought
some whiskey and some beer from the store next to the gas station.
In the ladies room, which wasn't very well lit, I tried the mascara,
which wasn't too hard to figure out, and then the lipstick, and
managed to get it on my lips without going over the edges without
too much trouble. I brushed my hair out enough to get out most of
the tangles, and thought I'd work on it some more while we were on
the road. When I got back to the car Steve looked at me a little
weird, like he was trying to figure out what was different, and then
he smiled and told me I looked much better.

As we got back on the road the boys cracked open a beer each. I was
going to settle for a coke, but Leon thought I should add some
whiskey to it. "Hair of the dog," he laughed. The more Coke I drank
the more whiskey he added, and I got pretty toasted on just that one
can by the time we made it into Mississippi.

It would probably have been a good idea to be sober when I first met
Steve's sister. You know, like meeting your boyfriend's family is
always a big deal, right? I hadn't thought about it until then.
Anyway, we pulled into a funny looking old place which had a sign
out front saying it was a "Sporting Goods Store and Cafe" on the
side road through Abbeville, a small town a few miles North of
Oxford. As soon as Steve turned the engine off a blonde woman maybe
19 years old came barreling out of the front door, and as Steve
opened the car door and straightened up she flung herself upon him.

"Oh! This is great! Oh!" She kept saying, as Leon and I got out of
the car and stood, kind of bemused. "Stevie, Stevie, Oh!" She pulled
away from him, and looked him up and down before hugging him again.
"Oh, you got so *big*."

Eventually they separated again, and Steve turned to me, a huge
smile on his face. "Em, Leon, I want you to meet my sister Julia." I
could see he was really happy, maybe the happiest I'd seen him.

Julia was gorgeous. Really. She was like one of those blonde
goddesses you only ever saw in television commercials, with lightly
tanned skin and enormously long legs and a smile that lit up her
face. There wasn't a whole lot of family resemblance, except maybe
for coloring and something about both of them around the eyes. Julia
was tall, too. I figured at least five-ten, maybe taller. She
towered over me.

"Em? Emma, is it?" She said as she came over to take my hand, and
then she turned to Leon and took his, too. I could see Leon was kind
of dumbstruck by this vision from one of his wet dreams, because he
could barely get a word out. Julia, on the other hand, couldn't stop
talking.

We went into the 'Sporting Goods Store and Cafe', which turned out
to be a pretty standard general store, only with a little eating
area -- 12 stools along a counter -- out the back. We were the only
people there except for a guy in his fifties at the general store
register and a woman near the same age behind the counter of the
cafe. Julia introduced all of us. They were Jesse and Evelyn, and
somehow Julia had become friendly with them since she'd started
studying.

Julia and Steve sat on two stools at the end of the counter, and me
next to Steve, with Leon next to me. Evelyn poured us all some
coffee and -- without asking -- served us all a piece of cobbler.
Then she seemed to deliberately make herself scarce while Steve and
Julia talked.

Julia started off by talking about their parents, who of course knew
Steve had escaped from Brand but didn't know Julia was meeting him.
It seemed that neither she nor Steve had much love for their father,
who I knew had pretty much abandoned Steve when he had been charged.
It was the last in a long line of juvenile offences for Steve, but
it had been while the family had all been away with his father on
business. Their father evidently thought that the shame the case had
bought him with his clients had cost him money, and that had been
worth more to him than his son.

I didn't get all that from the conversation, of course. I had heard
a lot of it from Steve over the time we'd been together, and of
course I believed him, but it was interesting to hear what a low
opinion of her father Julia had as well.

Actually I didn't get too much of the conversation at all. As I
mentioned earlier, I was kind of toasted from the whiskey, so the
coffee was welcome, but I was also feeling kind of strange, the way
I had ever since I had awoken that morning, like everything was a
little distant. I picked at the piece of cobbler, but I couldn't
really eat much, so I gave it to Leon, who as expected demolished it
in seconds.

"Thanks for everything, sis. I really mean it," Steve said. "I don't
want you to get into trouble for all this, so we... well, we'll move
on from here, at least in a day or so."

"Don't be silly," said Julia. "I've got everything completely
organized."

"Yeah, but the police will probably be looking for me to come visit
you sometime --"

"Which is why we're meeting here first, silly. Don't worry, the
police already visited me, and I said I hadn't spoken to you in
years. Nobody knows our family up here in Oxford, Stevie. Don't
worry about anything."

Julia and Steve probably talked non-stop for at least an hour and a
half, and all the time I felt weirder and weirder. She told Steve,
quietly, that Jesse and Evelyn didn't know the family, so as far as
they were concerned he -- in fact all of us -- were perfectly clean
and free.

They kept on talking, and Julia brought us into the conversation as
well, talking about how she'd organized with friends to put us up in
an apartment near hers. The apartment belonged to a professor who
was on sabbatical. She had told her Mom and Dad that her car had
been in an accident and needed repairs, which wasn't true, but they
had given her an additional thousand dollars which she would give to
Steve later that night. She had a friend -- "a sort of boyfriend,
he's cool" -- who was a printmaker and knew a lot about art and
printing and stuff, and he had a little business on the side doing
fake ID's for the freshmen, and she could probably get us something
from him.

She was right. She had thought of just about everything. I was
impressed. Julia was gorgeous, and she was smart and organized, too.
I wondered how many boys' hearts she'd broken since she'd arrived at
Ole Miss, as they called it.

The shadows were lengthening outside, and I was feeling very strange
and lightheaded and cold to my core when Julia finally asked a
question we all should have seen coming. "Okay," she said. "I know
how you and Leon got to be friends, Steve, but how in heck did you
meet Emma in a place like that?"

I don't know what was said after that, because my body chose that
moment to make all my decisions for me, and I passed out and slid
off the stool to the floor with a loud thump.

***

Chapter Nine.

I woke up on a single bed somewhere. I was laying on top of the
crisp white sheets. The smell in the room reminded me a little bit
of the smell of the infirmary at Brand, but there was also a heavy
scent of a flower coming through the open window across the room. It
was still light, but only just. My head hurt, and my body hurt, and
I remembered the whiskey and then thought to myself that I'd been
really stupid to let Leon give me that much. Before last night I'd
never had a drink in my life.

Then I remembered the conversation that had been going on just
before I passed out. Oh! I turned to roll over and put my face in
the pillow, but I must have groaned or something because a moment
later I heard someone come into the room and a male voice I didn't
know, an old man's voice, said "You're awake." It wasn't a question,
more of a statement.

I rolled back and saw a short, almost bald man in his sixties, in a
suit, looking down at me. "Yes," I said. I realized I was still
fully clothed, even though I was still not sure a cotton skirt
qualified as fully clothed.

"I'm Doctor Bagley," he said, in a slow southern way. "You gave your
friends quite a fright I'm afraid."

I tried to sit up, but he firmly put his hand on my shoulder to
restrain me. "You just lie there for a moment and tell me a few
things. First thing, are you pregnant?"

"What?" I responded without thinking.

"It's a reasonable question. A girl your age, travelling with two
older boys. A girl who faints. Are you?"

"No. No." I wondered what to say next. Obviously he hadn't examined me.

"Don't mean to cause you offence. But I had to ask. In the
circumstances," he said. "So when was your last period?"

"What?" I said again without thinking.

"When did you menstruate?"

"Listen, Doctor," I began, wondering how to explain any of my
situation to him.

"Has it been in the last two weeks?" he asked.

"Yes," I said on the spur of the moment.

"Good, then we can rule that out, I think," he said, clearly glad to
be past that line of questioning, although I am sure I was gladder.
"If you don't mind, can I examine you?"

"What?" I said again. I was going to have to come up with some
different responses.

"Can you take off your jacket and top?" he asked.

Oh, that! That I could manage. "Sure, I think so," I said. "But I'll
need to sit up to do it."

He helped me sit up, and then took my jacket from me as I got it
off. I peeled up the pale blue top I was wearing, over my head,
until I was clad only in my underwear and skirt. I was still
shivering, but it wasn't from cold. Part of it was from still
feeling strange, but mostly it was from being nearly naked in front
of a strange man, even if he was a Doctor.

"Where did those bruises come from?" he asked. I looked down, and I
could see that my arms were badly bruised where Travis had held
them, and that my shoulder was an ugly black and yellow color where
he had hit me. It was a good thing I had worn the jacket all day, I
thought to myself.

I didn't respond to his question at all because I couldn't think of
what to say. As soon as I thought about Travis I started to shake.
Dr. Bagley seemed to notice, and although I got the feeling he was
about to press me for an answer he thought better of it and shook
his head. He had me sit on the side of the bed, and then he
approached me with a stethoscope. He listened to me breath, then he
took my pulse. "Well that's better'n it was an hour ago," he said.
Eventually he told me I could put my top back on, and then he took
blood pressure readings. He looked in my ears, then in my eyes with
a small light, and then had me do some exercises with my eyes
following his fingers and stuff like that.

Without saying anything to me, he went to the door and opened it,
and in a moment Steve and Julia entered. "Has she had any... any
surprises today?" Dr. Bagley asked them, as though he wasn't sure he
was going to get a straight answer. "Apart from drinking, I mean."

"Uh..." Steve looked at me, then at Julia, then at the Doctor and
back at me. "Uh, she was, uh... attacked by someone last night."
Julia looked startled, but the Doctor just nodded. "Uh... Leon and
me, we got him off her, but he hit her a few times, I think."

"Indeed he did, young man. That's not something I approve of,
although there's some in these parts will say a woman sometimes asks
for it."

"She wasn't asking for it," Steve said. "Trust me, I saw her."

"Is the man who did this... What happened to him?" the Doctor asked.

"I'd rather not say, sir," Steve said awkwardly.

"It was not you, now?"

"No!" I interrupted, trying to stand up. "No!" I lost my balance and
Steve sprang forward and caught me and laid me back on the bed.
"No!" I said once more as firmly as I could. I reached out for Steve
and he sat on the bed next to me and put his hand on my arm.

"Well, I think her reaction answers that question for us, young man.
Is this man that attacked her likely to be a threat to her in the
future?" Dr. Bagley asked.

"I think I can fairly say there's no chance of that, sir," Steve
said. "Leon and me, well... besides, sir, it was almost a thousand
miles from here."

Julia came to stand at the side of the bed, too, and began to stroke
my forehead gently and arrange my hair on the pillow. It felt nice.

"I think, nevertheless, that in these cases the police should be
notified. And I think a proper pelvic exam in these cases --"

"No," I said again, though not as forcefully. I tried to sit up to
look Dr. Bagley in the eye, but Steve held me back and instead the
Doctor came over to look at me more closely.

"No, I don't want the police. Steve and Leon taught him a lesson," I
said to Dr. Bagley. "Thank you," I said to Steve. I turned back to
the Doctor. "I feel kind of strange, but I'd really just as soon
forget this, if you don't mind. Nothing... nothing really happened.
Steve stopped him before he had a chance to..."

The Doctor looked at Steve, and then back at me, and then back at
Steve again.

"Nevertheless, she's still in some state of shock. Giving her hard
liquor was very dangerous in those circumstances."

"I'm sorry about that, sir. We were just trying to, you know, calm her."

"There are other ways to do that, which I trust y'all will observe
in the future. Young man, you seem to have been quite gallant, and
I'm sorry about my earlier question to you. But I must insist that
if you are going to take it upon yourself to rescue these...
distressed damsels, that y'all do the right think and get them to a
doctor before you head for the nearest liquor store."

'Distressed damsels'. I reminded Julia of that phrase a few days
later and we had a good chuckle. Seriously, parts of the South have
a real charm, and their own compensations, but there are some very
old-fashioned things about life there -- or at least there were
twenty years ago.

Steve and Julia managed to get me out of Dr.Bagley's surgery without
any further examinations. Julia didn't know that I had a better
reason to avoid a pelvic exam than the usual aversion, I thought,
but I was grateful that she was so supportive. Dr. Bagley knew
Julia, and seemed to trust her more than Steve, and he made her
promise to take care of me for the next few days. Because of that I
found myself travelling to Oxford in Julia's little English sports
car, while Steve and Leon followed behind.

We stopped at the apartment that Julia had organized, and at her
request I stayed in Julia's car while the guys unloaded what few
possessions we had into the building. I wasn't feeling physically as
bad as I had been earlier. Dr. Bagley had given me a shot (in the
butt, but he hadn't seemed to notice anything unusual) and some
tablets, and although they made me feel kind of distanced from the
world I wasn't any worse than I had been earlier.

The apartment was in the attic of an old, once grand timber home
that had a huge tree in the yard that gave off the same heavy scent
I had noticed outside at Dr. Bagley's. "It's Magnolia," Steve said
when I asked him about it as he came to kiss me goodnight. He went
to kiss me the way we normally would, but there was something wrong
with me -- I don't know exactly how to describe the feeling, but
somehow I was kind of turned off by him. I loved him, I was sure of
that. I just didn't want a guy being intimate with me right now. Not
even Steve.

It upset me. I think maybe it upset me more than it upset Steve. We
kissed, but it wasn't good. I turned away and Julia helped me back
into her car.

Julia and I drove to her place, and she helped me up the stairs. Her
roommate was stretched out on the couch when I came in, and she
stood up as soon as she saw Julia had someone with her. She was a
tall girl, taller even than Julia, and I felt like I was in the
presence of giants. She wore no makeup, and had her black hair cut
short in a mannish kind of cut that wasn't very common back in those
days in the South. It showed off the elegant planes of her
cheekbones. She smiled broadly and reached out to shake my hand,
just like a guy would.

"Emma, Priscilla Arsenault." Julia said. Pris, this is Emma...
Y'know, I don't know your second name."

"Boyle," I said after a moment's hesitation. I had actually
discussed that name with Dr. Blaha, years ago, when he kept
referring to be my old surname. I told Dr. Blaha that I didn't want
anything to do with my father's name, and that I'd start using my
mother's maiden name whenever I left Brand. That was a silly thing
to have told him, I guess, since if he wanted to find me it would
make it easier, but I really didn't want to use the surname I'd been
born with, ever again. It was kind of ironic in the circumstances,
using my mother's name, since I couldn't use my male Christian name
any more either.

Julia told Pris, who hated her own Christian name and hissed at
Julia whenever Julia called her "Priscilla," that I was her
brother's friend -- I noted that she didn't say "girlfriend" -- and
that some bozo had tried to rape me the previous night and so I was
going to stay with her for a day or so.

"Good idea," Pris said. "Keep away from men for a while. Emma, I try
to stay away from them as much as possible."

"First thing's first," Julia said, in one of those tones I'd already
recognized meant she was ready to organize things. "A shower, I think."

Mmmm. That sounded good to me. "Thanks. It's been a long drive, and..."

"You don't have to tell me about feeling dirty after a guy has
touched you," Pris said. "C'mon, I'll get you a towel."

"I'll take care of her, Pris," Julia said, in a friendly tone but
one that indicated she was firm on the matter.

Julia steered me to the bathroom. "Okay," she said, closing the
door. "I'll get you a robe, and some underwear. You're what, a six?"

"Eight," I said. I was pleased I knew the sizes so well.

"Okay. Well, there's some shampoo on the window ledge there, and --"

"Rats. I bought some shampoo today, but I left all my things with
Steve and Leon."

"It's okay, we'll get them tomorrow." She left, and I began
undressing. I pulled off my jacket and then the top and the skirt,
and hung them on the end of the towel rack. I was still in my bra
and panties when Julia came back in without knocking, carrying a
robe and a pair of panties. I turned, startled, and she stopped, and
stared at me.

"Steve said..." she began, and then petered out. "You're..."

"Steve *told* you?!" I practically shrieked.

"Well, he told me... but you're not, I mean, you're real..." She was
blushing. "I expected, you know, I'm sorry..."

"What did Steve tell you, exactly?" I asked, my heart sinking. How
could Steve betray me to someone? Even if she was his sister? I felt
like I wanted to dissolve into the floor.

"He said -- you know, when I asked how he had met you, and you
passed out?"

I nodded.

"He told me that you were at Brand because you were a boy."

A tear escaped from my right eye, followed by another from my left.
Was I some kind of freak if everyone knew about me?

"But you're not -- I mean, those are real, right?" Julia was looking
at my breasts. Then she looked down at my crotch again. "You sure
don't look like a boy."

"Is that why you followed me in here? To find out?" I asked.

"Well, you know, I didn't believe you could be. You sure didn't look
like a boy with your clothes on."

"Julia, I think I should leave," I said, reaching for my skirt again.

"No. No. I'm sorry. It's just... why would Steve say that?"

"I don't know," I said. "Did he say anything else about us?"

"Us?" She repeated. "You mean, you and him?"

"That's what I mean." My tears were flowing more freely now.

"Oh, god," she said. "I should have figured *that* out."

She hung the robe and panties on a hook on the door, and opened it
as though she was going to leave.

"Listen, Emma?"

"Yes?" I said.

"It's okay with me. Honestly. I wouldn't have asked you to stay if
it wasn't. I'm just stupid sometimes. And Steve probably didn't want
to tell me about the two of you yet."

"But he's your brother, and I... I'm..." I began to sob, and Julia
came over to me and put her arms around me. I only came up to her
shoulders, but it felt nice. I cried, and cried, and she rubbed my
back, and eventually I relaxed.

"It's okay. Let it out," she said. She rubbed my back for a few
minutes more as I cried, and then stepped away from me for a moment
to turn the shower on. Then she turned back to me, and reached
behind me to undo my bra. My breasts sprung free. They were a little
marked from the lines of the bra since I'd had it on so long.

"You're very beautiful, did you know that?" she said softly. "I can
see why Steve would think so."

I sniffled. I didn't feel beautiful. Steve had made me feel
beautiful, but now I felt like... like a freak.

"Do you want to take those off --" she indicated my panties -- "or
do you want me to help with that too?"

I turned away from her, as I would have from Steve, and stepped out
of my panties, then stepped into the shower with my back to Julia.

"You take a good long time and scrub yourself clean," Julia said.

I didn't hear her leave, but I gradually realized I was in the
bathroom alone.

I washed my hair, and soaped myself more thoroughly than I ever had
before. I wanted to wash the past few days off me. I would have
liked to have washed years away, but soap and water only does so
much. My tears got lost in the rest of the water, and I stood
directly under the shower fitting with the water hitting the top of
my head and sending my hair straight down, over my face and
shoulders and breasts.

Eventually I felt the water begin to run a little cold. My hands
were all pruned up. Pris came to the door of the bathroom just as I
turned off the water. "Emma, are you okay in there, honey?"

"I'm fine, thank you," I called back.

I toweled myself softly and slowly, and then put on the panties
Julia had provided, which were a little large but not too much so. I
tucked myself back in them, and reflected that if I was a boy I
wasn't much of one these days.

I reached for the robe, which was a plain white toweling one with
pink piping on the collar and sleeves. It was too large, and reached
right to the tops of my feet, but it felt good and once I tied it
with the belt it seemed like it wouldn't come adrift too easily.
Then I tried wrapping my hair in the towel and throwing it back up
over my head, the way I had seen women on television do it. It took
a few tries, but eventually I figured out how to wrap it over my
forehead and twist my hair in it so it stayed put.

Tentatively I went back to the living room.

Julia made me up a bed on the couch while Pris made me some tea. I'd
never drunk tea before. Mom and Dad had been coffee drinkers, and at
Brand I'd stuck to coffee for some reason. I liked tea, I decided.
Pris couldn't believe I'd never had it before. "Where *are* you
from?" she asked jokingly.

Julia hugged me again as she sat down on the bed next to me. "I'm
sorry if I said the wrong thing, Emma."

I tried to make light of the situation, but I was still a little out
of it, even if I did feel *so* much better for having cried. I don't
know if I was too coherent, but pretty soon we were talking about
other things. Mostly about Oxford, and the life of a single college
girl. "Meat City," Pris called it, referring to the emphasis the
University of Mississippi put on its football team. She and Julia
were not especially impressed with most of the boys on the team. "Is
there any one of them hasn't asked you out yet, Jules?" Pris asked.

Pris was not the kind of girl who got asked out a lot, it seemed. At
least not by boys she deemed worthy. "I have this problem," she
said. "I'm only interested in guys who are taller than I am, and at
least as smart. The basketball team is taller, but, you know..." she
shrugged and raised her hands in frustration. "Jocks." She laughed
heartily.

We talked for about two hours. Pris made a chicken salad, which I
picked at a little bit, and then the three of us watched television.
I hadn't seen much television while I was at Brand, because I had
been in isolation for so long and I would rather listen to Steve
play guitar than watch most of it, but it was nice to lay on the bed
that Julia had made, with Pris on one side of me, and Julia on the
other. They told me the next day that I fell asleep on Julia's
shoulder, but I don't remember anything beyond watching a movie with
Jill Clayburgh and Peter Falk in it and crying again.

I woke up to hear Pris in the kitchen, singing softly to herself as
she made some coffee. I discovered that at some time in the previous
night she or Julia -- I was guessing it was Julia -- had given me a
nightgown to wear. "Hey, Emma, how you doin' this morning?" she said
cheerily.

I thought for a moment, and realized that I felt a little better. I
had stopped shaking at some stage yesterday, and I didn't have the
hangover from the whiskey anymore. I said as much to Pris, and she
poured me coffee, and we sat at the table and talked a while about
trivia. At one point in the conversation I found myself thinking
that she was such an easy person to talk to, but that talking with
her was such a different experience than I'd had with all the guys
at Brand.

Julia, it seemed, had left the house already. Pris wasn't sure where
she had gone, only that she'd be back before ten. "I have a class
then." she said, "and we didn't want to leave you on your own."

Sure enough, at about 9.30 Julia came back, with Steve. I was so
happy to see him I think I was a little rude to Julia and Pris. He
hugged me, but there was something wrong, something different in the
hug. Maybe he was feeling awkward after the way we had kissed, or
maybe it was me, still uncomfortable with being intimate with a guy
since Travis...

Pris went off to class, and Julia and Steve and I sat at the table.
Julia had organized for Steve to get ID and other essentials today,
so it wasn't long before he had to leave again, with the address she
had given him and a few hundred dollars in cash. As he left he
kissed me, but again it felt... I felt somehow empty afterward. I
didn't know why.

Then Julia and I sat at the table and had the discussion we might
have had the night before if I had been more together. I started at
the very beginning. The real beginning, with the fact that I was
innocent. I don't know if she believed that or not, but I hoped she
did, and I continued. I didn't know how much her brother had told
her about life at Brand, but it turned out to be not very much,
because she was aghast at learning about Pangianis. When I began to
tell her about my trips to the infirmary, and then solitary, and Dr.
Blaha, she reached across the table, and took my hand. I could see
she was upset for me. I wasn't sure whether to tell her that Steve
had fought it out with Pangianis, and done a lot of time in solitary
too, but eventually that came out as well.

"Why did they make you into a girl?" She asked.

I shrugged. "Some new therapy, I think. They were convinced I was
aggressive, and a sex fiend or something."

"I'm sure it's illegal," she said.

"I think when you're a minor that they can do anything they like," I
said.

"How... How do you feel about it?" Julia asked.

"At first... At first I hated it. Sometimes there are moments when I
still do." I paused and thought of the past year with Steve. "But
then there are some things that weren't so bad, you know? Like, do
you like the way your body feels?"

"I haven't thought too much about it," Julia said.

"I -- you know, I would have been embarrassed to admit this even a
few months ago -- but once the doctor talked about giving me a
mastectomy, and I just, you know...?" I trailed off, and Julia
nodded. "It gave me the creeps, really," I continued.

"So you like being a girl." It was a statement.

"I think so. I'm not sure I know very much about it, really..."

"Well, you do it pretty well," Julia said.

"I think that's just the way I look... You know, I still don't know
how I didn't just freeze up that time in Davenport buying clothes. I
don't really know anything about being a girl -- in the real world,
you know? If I hadn't been... so out of it yesterday... I'm still
waiting, you know, for reality to come up and bite me and tell me
that this is all just impossible."

"Would you want to go back to being a boy?"

"I... I don't know." I realized with a start that it was true. I
didn't know. I had been outraged with Dr. Blaha for so long, but
then there was Steve... And the way I looked now... I shook my head.
"I don't even know if that's possible."

There was an awkward pause, and I tried to get back to the story.
"Anyway. Then they finally let me out of solitary, and then I guess
it was just a matter of time before Steve found out."

"You were pretty lucky they put you with Steve," Julia remarked.

"I think they knew they might have problems if they put me with
anyone else," I said. "like maybe a riot. Steve is -- was -- pretty
respected at Brand."

"And when Steve found out, you started to...?"Julia hesitated.

"Sleep together? Yes. He was the first person -- I don't know if I
should tell you this, you're his sister -- he was the first person
who really cared about me, you know?"

"I think so."

We talked for a while longer about how difficult it was to disguise
the changes to my body while I was at Brand, and how my new "assets"
had been an integral part of Steve's breakout plan.

"I must admit that seeing you, and hearing this, explains a lot,
Emma," Julia said. "When Steve first sent me a message saying that
he needed money and a car and all that, I didn't understand, because
I knew Steve only had a year to go before he would get out. But he
told me this morning it was because of you. I didn't understand,
fully, what he meant, then. I think I do now."

"I worry that he's made things very difficult for himself," I said.

"Well, yes. And no. Yes, if he gets caught it will probably mean an
extension of his sentence, he says. But he hated it at Brand, and he
felt that he would always have a stigma hanging over him even after
he got out if he stayed. Then he killed Travis --"

"-- You know about that?"

"He told me this morning. I kind of worked it out listening to his
conversation with Dr. Bagley yesterday, but not all of it. In normal
circumstances I doubt any court would convict him, considering what
Travis was doing. But that would mean explaining you, and your
relationship to Steve. And our parents... Let's just say our family
life is far from perfect, Emma. In many ways Steve is better off
trying to start a new life, as a new person."

"Can you do that?"

"He seems to think so. That's why he's off seeing some people today.
Pete -- my boyfriend -- is going to do him a fake ID. I don't know
what he's planning to do about social security number so he can
work, but Pete seems to think there's a way around all that."

It was after noon by the time I had finished telling Julia about
everything that had happened since I entered Brand, and she had told
me a little about their family. I already knew some of that from
Steve, but I knew that some reciprocal listening would be
appreciated and I was feeling more comfortable with Julia the more
she confided in me.

Julia and Steve's father was a prominent businessman in Mississippi.
Most of his money came from his own father, but that didn't stop him
from being one of those hard-hearted sons-of-bitches who thought
everyone who wasn't rich had only themselves to blame. He was a hard
man, who cared a great deal about reputation, and he abandoned Steve
when Steve was charged. He still lavished money on Julia, but he was
constantly trying to introduce her to the sons of businessmen he was
doing deals with -- or worse, the businessmen themselves.

According to Steve, Mrs. Hammond was an alcoholic before he went
into Brand, and Julia told me that her drinking hadn't diminished at
all in the years since. "Of course," she added, "that might be
because Daddy's gone got himself a real-live Barbie Doll, which
Momma pretends not to know about."

Julia had been very close to Steve as a child, and in their early
teen years, before Steve went to Brand, they had become even closer
as the full horror of their parents' marriage sunk in. Julia told me
she would do anything at all for Steve, and I believed her.

When she noticed the time she put on her 'organized' tone of voice
again and told me we were going shopping together. "I warn you," she
said. "Oxford is not exactly the fashion capital of Mississippi. But
we have to get you some more clothes. You sure aren't going to fit
into most of mine, or Pris's."

But first I had to get dressed. Julia had gone over to the apartment where
Steve and Leon were staying and retrieved the few clothes I had.
Since the blue top had been ruined (and buried) when Travis was
killed, the only clean top I had left was the halter-top. "Pretty
daring," said Julia. I felt kind of self-conscious in it, and said
so, but I didn't have a whole lot of choices, really. She ironed the
skirt I had been wearing yesterday, and I wore that as well. Then
she showed me how to style my hair without having to wet it first,
using a curling wand to put some ringlets down the front of my
otherwise only mildly wavy hair. She stepped back to consider the
results.

"Sometime today we are gonna get you a hairstyle, too," she said.
"You have beautiful hair, Emma, but am I right in thinking that
hairstyles were not a big item where you were?"

"Uh... does it look that bad?"

"No, honey, but it's a bit flower-child, you know? Things have moved
on since the sixties."

We drove through town slowly. I still wasn't used to seeing so many
people, or to being outside without a fence around me. And I still
wasn't used to wearing a skirt. After I got into the car Julia told
me I had to learn to get in differently next time, otherwise I was
going to give a lot of guys a look at the tops of my legs or worse.
She made me do it again until I got it right by sitting down and
then turning in the seat to face forward. Then I had to remember to
untwist the skirt from underneath me, so I didn't crease it again.

Oxford didn't have a mall back then. The town had that old-style
"village square" kind of feel people pine for these days. We parked
on the street in the square, and Julia led me through a selection of
stores she deemed worthy, starting with the town's only department
store.

Wow, Julia could stop those guys in their tracks. She was far too
classy-looking for them to even think about cat calls or whistles or
anything as crass as that, but there was no denying that every time
we came out of a store onto the street that every male within
eyeshot locked onto her. She was gorgeous, and she knew it and
wasn't embarrassed by it the way some more insecure women are. I was
amazed to look at the expressions on the faces of the guys we
passed, though.

Being out with Julia was good for me. I was too young for most of
the guys to be interested in me anyway, but next to Julia I might as
well have been invisible. Which was good, since it stopped me being
self-conscious about the way I was dressed.

"Anything that takes your fancy, honey" Julia said to me when I
asked her what we were going to buy. "Daddy lets me use his card any
time I want. He gets worried that maybe I'm not 'keeping up
appearances', as he puts it, if I haven't been shopping for clothes
at least once every month. He's not going to know whether they're
for you or for me. And besides, I may buy something for myself
anyway. We'll see."

We shopped, and we shopped. Well, as much as you can shop in Oxford.
I was impressed by Julia's attitude to the whole thing. She would
walk into a shop and somehow know exactly where to find a perfect
skirt or blouse right away. At first I thought it must be because
she shopped there a lot, but nobody seemed to recognize her, so I
wasn't sure about that.

We bought a few things for me. I was kind of embarrassed to have
Julia come into the change room with me at first, but she didn't
seem to think anything of it, and gradually I got used to it. It was
good having her assistance, because she knew much more about women's
clothing than me and was able to recognize whether it was a bad cut
instead of the wrong size.

We had a late lunch in a little cafe just off the square. I had
noticed the day before that southern food seemed to have all sorts
of weird names I'd never come across before, but Julia just ordered
salads for both of us, which made my confusion about what a hush
puppy was, moot.

Over lunch Julia talked some more about her childhood with Steve,
and about how much she had missed having her brother around while
she finished school. Steve had been a rebellious kid, Julia said,
and her parents hadn't known how to deal with that. They thought
that giving him money, or fancy stuff like a trail bike, would settle
him down, but, well -- and here Julia spread her arms in a gesture
of bewilderment -- they didn't see that Steve was pissed with them,
and with the world, and that he wasn't going to settle down and
become a businessman like his father. Steve, Julia confessed to me,
had always wanted to be a professional musician. In Junior High,
before he went into Brand, he had formed a band with some friends.
"They were pretty good," she said "for a bunch of fourteen year olds."

We finished lunch and Julia took me across to Dauvergne's, the
beauty parlor. I was nervous as all hell. I'd never been inside a
beauty parlor in my life, but as a kid I had walked past the one on
Halsted Street near our apartment and smelt all the smells coming
from it, and seen those big hair dryers, like astronauts' helmets.
It all seemed very arcane and not entirely pleasant.

Julia didn't seem to notice my hesitation as she guided me gently
through the front door.

A woman in her mid-twenties approached us and smiled. "Hello, Julia,
back so soon? A special occasion, perhaps?"

"No, Helen," Julia answered. "I want you to meet my cousin, Emma
Jane," she said, indicating me. 'Emma *Jane*', I thought. Heck, why
not? I hadn't even thought of a second name.

"Pleased to meet you, Emma," Helen said. "Are you visiting, or are
you planning on stayin' here in Oxford?"

I wondered how she knew I wasn't from around here. I hadn't opened
my mouth yet. Surely it wasn't that obvious I was a stranger to
these parts.

"Emma's visiting for a while, Helen. Though she may stay. Her
parents passed away recently." Julia sure was slick with the
explanations, I thought.

Helen was very solicitous after hearing that my folks were dead. It
was almost true, I thought. Mom was dead. Dad was in prison and I
wished he was dead. Julia had an uncanny knack for describing things
the way they should have been rather than the way they were.

Helen took me over to a chair and introduced me to Marie, the
stylist who would cut my hair. The three of them conferred on
appropriate styles, ignoring me completely. I was going to protest,
when I realized that having Julia take care of this aspect of my
appearance was probably a good idea. After all, she'd had years of
experience as a girl, and I'd had... well, I wasn't sure whether my
experience in Brand counted as boy or girl experience.

Looking around the salon, I just hoped they weren't going to make me
look too... Southern. That big hair stuff still had me freaked. The
three other customers in there were all older than me, and all in
various stages of getting a "big do." I was relieved when I heard
Julia say "no perming." I didn't exactly know what a perm was, but I
was sure I probably wouldn't like it. "She isn't going to be able to
take care of a perm." Julia continued. "And anyway I think her hair
has enough of a natural wave in it."

"I've still got a little more shopping to do, honey," Julia said to
me. "I'll be back later to pick you up, and then perhaps we can look
at some new shoes for you."

As Julia left I caught one or two fragments of her conversation with
Marie. She made a comment like "Her momma never did teach her how to
look proper." I was embarrassed. Even though it was true, it was
misleading.

Marie came back over after Julia left and began to run her fingers
through my hair. "You sure have nice healthy hair, sugar," she said
to me. "Y'all understand what we were just discussin'?"

"Not really," I admitted.

"This the first time you ever bin in a salon?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Is it that obvious?"

"It's okay, sugar, we're gonna take real good care of you. You'd be
surprised how many girls from some of the towns near here only get
to a salon once a year or so. Then there's them like Julia, who
can't get enough of our place." She smiled. Then she went on to
describe what she was going to do with my hair. She got about
halfway through and I must have looked concerned, because she
stopped and said "Is there somethin' wrong?"

"My boyfriend..." I began.

"Yes, sugar?"

"He likes my hair long," I said.

"Oh, don't you worry about that," Marie said. " I ain't gonna take
anythin' much off the length. I'm just gonna give it some shape and
trim up the ends."

I was led over to the shampoo basin, even though I'd only washed my
hair the previous night, and Helen massaged my scalp while she
cleaned and conditioned my hair. Then I was led back to the chair
and Marie went to work cutting it while it was still wet. She
trimmed the front and a little on the sides, and I could see that
she was giving me bangs. She trimmed small amounts from various
parts of my head and commenced a kind of twenty questions thing
while she was cutting, asking where I was from, what I was doing in
school, what I was going to do, did I have any family besides Julia.

I was pretty nervous answering most of those questions, since I
hadn't quite caught all that Julia had said to her before she left,
and anyway some of them were just plain hard. I told her I was from
Indiana, which wasn't true but was close enough to fit my accent.
But I didn't know what to say about school. I think she took my
inarticulate response to that question as disinterest, though. "I
was never any good at school either, honey," she said.

The family question was pretty easy, really. "No-one left," I said.
"All dead, except for my cousins" That was true enough again, as
true as it needed to be.

"No sisters, huh?" Marie asked.

"No, how'd you guess?" I asked. She shrugged, then took to drying my
hair off with a round stiff brush and a large hand-held hair dryer.
That pretty much took care of any remaining conversational
possibilities.

When she had finished I was pretty amazed. I don't want to sound
big-headed or anything, but Marie had really done a good job. My
hair looked full, and silky, and it framed my face and made me look
-- well, cuter. There was still enough guy left in me to know what a
cute girl looked like, and even though I have never much liked my
hair color or complexion much I had to admit that I looked as good
as any red-haired girl I'd ever seen before. I smiled.

"I'm glad you like it, sugar."

Marie showed me how to blow-dry it myself without damaging my hair.
Because Julia still wasn't back and she didn't have any other
clients, she spent some time showing me a few other things I could
do with it, like put it up in a twist behind my head, and then how
to brush it without tearing at it and taking the curl out of it or
frizzing it. "Your hair has a very beautiful natural wave, Emma,"
she said. "Most girls spend a fortune to get hair like that."

Finally Julia returned and settled up the account. I said goodbye to
Marie and Helen, who both admonished me to come back and have myself
attended to more often than once a year. Then Julia and I went a few
doors down to a shoe store, and we both tried on about ten pairs
each. I couldn't believe how demanding Julia was, sending the sales
assistant back and forth searching for different colors and never
quite seeming satisfied. Nonetheless we left with five pairs, three
for me and two for her. I got a pair of black sling backs with a
small heel, some white strappy sandals with a two inch heel that I
thought was more than I could deal with and some dark green pumps
with a small bow on the front and a three inch heel that I thought
were going to kill me for sure.

As we drove home I realized that I was exhausted just from the
shopping. Julia and I dumped all the parcels on the floor near the
coffee table and I made some tea for both of us while she went to
the bathroom.

"Julia," I said when she had sat back down on the couch and I had
passed her tea to her, "Thank you so much for everything today."

"It's nothin', Emma," she said. "It's not really my money, you know.
I'm just glad to see you looking happier. I'm truly sorry about last
night --"

"-- You don't need to apologize again, Julia," I said. "I mean, he's
your brother, you've every right to be worried about who he's
involved with."

"Well, I am still sorry, honey. After all that's happened to you
these past few days..."

I was still for a moment, remembering Travis suddenly. Julia must
have seen my thoughts on my face, because she immediately tried to
change the subject and cheer me up. She talked about the nightlife
in Oxford, such as it was, and how best to avoid the "meat markets"
that the football players inhabited.

"I'm way underage, Julia," I said. I don't think I'll be hanging out
in too many bars, anyway."

"Shoot, Emma, there's ways around that for a girl pretty as you,"
she said.

"Emma Jane," I corrected her, and we both laughed.

"I ain't legal either, but my I.D. says I am," Julia continued.
"Heck, girl, this is a college town. The bars'd go bust quicker than
a minute if the students couldn't drink."

Pris came in soon after that, and I was required to model everything
we'd bought that day. It wasn't until I started taking everything
out of its wrapping and bags that I understood just how much money
Julia must have spent on me that day. "God, Julia, this is just too
much!" I said.

"You want to be careful how you say 'God' in these parts," Pris
warned me. "The only thing more important than religion round here
is football."

The last bag I found was one I didn't remember seeing at all. Inside
was something wrapped in tissue paper. "This must be yours," I said
to Julia, offering it to her.

"No, honey, it's yours. It's sort of a present for my brother,
really." I opened the parcel and discovered some lingerie. Apart
from two very pretty lace bras and matching panties, there was an
all-in-one thing that had little shoestring straps and a catch in
the crotch. It was made of beautiful dark green lace except for a
small panel at the bottom to allow for the fastenings.

I looked up at Julia, unsure of how exactly I was supposed to wear this.

"It's called a teddy," Julia said. You can wear it under a dress,
like that green one we bought today, or you can wear it when you and
Steve are alone."

"Grrr," said Pris, teasingly. "I can guarantee you'll get a response
from anyone in that."

I dressed in a dark green wrap dress that went well with the teddy
and that Julia told me was just right with my hair.

Around seven Steve came in with Leon. As soon as he saw me he did a
kind of double take, then did it again for laughs. I went over and
kissed him, and he hugged me. It felt better. Still not exactly
right, but better than it had been that morning, when there had been
something really wrong.

I'm sure it was some kind of pre-planned thing, that Pris and Julia
and Leon all went off together to get takeout for dinner. That left
Steve and me alone in the apartment. He hugged me again. He must
have noticed something himself. "Em, Em," he whispered in my ear.
"It's okay."

I separated from him and looked at him. "Steve..."

"Yes"

"Steve, do you... do you still..." I didn't know exactly what I was
searching for, but everything just felt so hollow.

"Do I still what, Em?" he said gently.

"You still want me, after all that's happened?"

"Oh, Em!" He hugged me to him more tightly. "Shhhh."

"It's just, you know, Travis, and everything," I began to sob again.
"I just feel so, dirty, you know?"

"Em, my love." There, he said it again. In spite of everything that
had happened, I still loved him more than I could say. "Em, you have
nothing to feel dirty about. You're the best thing that's ever
happened to me."

I stopped crying and stepped back from him and undid the tie that
held the front of my dress closed.

"You still like me?"

He reached out and touched his hand to my face and ran his fingers
down to the top of the teddy where it sat just above my nipples.
"Em, you're the most beautiful woman I know...." I could see desire
in his eyes as his fingers traced the top of the teddy. His voice
was soft and soothing and his touch was making me tingle. "You have
no idea how beautiful, do you?"

"I want you inside me, Steve."

Within about twenty seconds he had me naked and straddled over a
chair. There was a brief moment when I was slightly freaked,
remembering Travis and the events of a few nights earlier, but Steve
was nibbling on my neck as he bent over me, and nuzzling my ear and
telling me how much he'd missed me, and how beautiful my ass was. As
he came into me I forgot all about Travis, at least for the moment,
and after the initial pain I began to enjoy the way he filled me so
completely again.

(continued)

Distribution: Feel free to archive or otherwise distribute, provided
it (and this preamble) is unedited and no fee is charged for access.
This story may not be distributed from any site that charges money,
is members-only, or uses that ridiculous "adult check" thing (or any
similar system).

Emma becomes a permanent resident in Julia and Pris' apartment, but finds relationships becoming more confused ... and the music goes on.

Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A .

Chapter Ten.

The next few days went quickly, although it wasn't as though I had
much to do. Julia took the Malibu down to Jackson and sold it
without any difficulty. She gave the cash to Steve but he took me
aside and asked me to hold onto it. "I still have the money Julia
gave me," he said. "You should keep this for yourself. I have a
feeling you'll be better with it than I will."

Julia and Pris decided that I should continue staying with them for
a while, although I desperately wanted to be sleeping with Steve. He
and I were having sex practically every minute we were alone
together, which was at least once a day and sometimes more often,
but -- well, I missed just being with him. We had been together so
closely, for so long, that it seemed incredibly strange to be
spending the nights apart, and I fretted as I tried to get to sleep
in my bed on the fold-out couch.

I had other things to worry about apart from missing Steve. He and
Leon seemed to have something going on, some kind of business they
were involved in that they didn't want to tell me about, and I was
worried about that, since I was sure it was probably illegal. They
hadn't said anything, but there was that sense I had about them that
told me that something was going on. I didn't know quite what it
was, but I didn't like it anyway. Wasn't Steve trying to get a new
identity and make a fresh start? Why jeopardize that?

Pris told me the real reason she and Julia felt I should stay with
them was the possibility of attracting attention. The apartment
Steve and Leon were staying in was above the home of a rather
straight-laced Baptist couple, and Julia and Pris worried that a
girl shacked up with two boys would bring attention from them. I
could visit Steve, but it wouldn't do to be living there with him. I
wondered why Julia hadn't thought of that earlier, when she had
arranged the place for Steve, but I didn't dwell on it. Maybe she
hadn't known I was coming too.

Of course she hadn't known. That's why she was so surprised at the cafe.

The longer I stayed in Mississippi, the more I realized that the
girls did the right thing not letting me stay with Steve. Oxford is
about as liberal a place as exists in the South, but even there, the
idea of two young people cohabiting outside of marriage was looked
upon ... Let's just say that Steve and I would have become a focus
of attention at a time we were trying to keep a low profile.

The plus side of living with Julia and Pris was that I learned a
lot. I might have looked like a girl, but I had never had much of a
chance to hang out with girls before, and the more I did the more I
realized that there is so much more to being a girl than just the
way you look. Girls do everything differently than boys. Well, maybe
not everything. I had noticed that Pris wasn't your typical southern
girl. In fact she was pretty much a tomboy, if you can still be a
tomboy and have a startlingly attractive figure.

So I hung out with the two women, and watched, and learned. When
Julia and I were alone she coached me in a few things, like some of
my gestures. Even though I had been at Brand for a long time, Julia
thought I seemed to have a lot of pretty naturally feminine
gestures, and this surprised me, because I couldn't figure out how,
in the midst of such an awful, masculine place, I could have picked
those up. "Maybe you always had them," Julia said. I thought maybe
she was putting me on, but she seemed very genuine.

Julia didn't seem to study much at all. At least, she hardly ever
seemed to go to classes. A couple of times I saw her reading some
books, but it didn't seem like she was paying a whole lot of
attention to her studies. Most of that first week she and I sat
around the living room in the apartment, and she showed me how to do
stuff like braid my hair, and apply eyeshadow, and paint my
toenails, and stuff that seemed silly and superficial to me but
which I found I kind of enjoyed. She said she did, too. "Emma, I
always wanted a baby sister. Do you mind?"

I still didn't know how much Pris knew about me. At first I figured
she knew everything, since that first night I had been in the
apartment Julia had been so weirded out by me. But as the days went
by I started to wonder if maybe Julia hadn't kept my secret from
Pris. There were a couple of things she said that just didn't make
any sense if she knew. For example, she got her period about three
days after I got there, and it seemed just the most natural thing
for her to ask me whether it was as bad for me and didn't I hate it
as much. I blushed and didn't know how to respond. I settled for
making her a cup of tea and we sat on the couch together and talked
about her childhood.

I liked Pris. She was a real no-nonsense kind of girl. I got the
feeling that some of her seemingly straightforward manner was really
a way of gliding over intimacy with people, but in so many other
ways she was so giving and warm that I felt very comfortable with
her anyway.

On the fourth day I was there I got to meet Julia's boyfriend, Pete,
the one who was the artist. He seemed like a pretty clean-cut guy
for an artist, I thought, as we were introduced. I had been
expecting some kind of wild man with long hair and dirty clothes,
but Pete was clean and trim and good-looking. From some of the
remarks he made in conversation he seemed like he might be kind of
wild underneath, though. He and Julia went out for dinner and Pris
and I hung out together and watched TV until Steve came over, and
then Pris excused herself and went to her room and Steve and I made
love on the couch as quietly and discreetly as possible.

When the weekend came Steve and I spent all day Saturday together,
on our own. Steve borrowed Julia's car and we drove out to a pretty
place on the river out of town a ways. We had a light picnic lunch,
and a few beers, and some sweet, slow, gentle sex that went for
hours and hours. I was worried at first that someone would see us,
because even though the spot was isolated it wasn't very well
screened by trees or anything. But Steve just had that way of
touching me and I forgot my inhibitions quickly. I sound like such
an easy lay, but that day with Steve was very special. We were free,
and in love, and Steve made me feel like I was the most beautiful
woman in the world. At least he kept telling me that, and I think
after a while I started to think it might just possibly be true. He
could be *very* persuasive.

On the way back to Oxford around dusk we stopped back in at the cafe
in Abbeville where we had first met Julia. Jesse and Evelyn, the
folks that ran the place, remembered me. "It's not every day a young
lady collapses in our store," Jesse said gravely, before Evelyn
admonished him and served us both up a piece of pie. We stayed a
while and chatted with them. They had lived in the area for years
and knew everyone there was to know, and Jesse enjoyed entertaining
us with stories about some of the more eccentric characters they had
met.

Evelyn had managed to talk Steve into another piece of pie when a
couple in their early-twenties came in and Steve spent a long time
talking to them about the local music scene. Their names were Brett
and Lisa Page. Lisa was warm and friendly and although Brett was
kind of quiet he seemed like a nice enough guy. She was quiet and
blonde and pretty in that overdone Southern way, but there was
something in her eyes that told me she could be tough when she
needed to be. He was thin and dark and energetic, with hands that
windmilled around to make a point. They had been living in Abbeville
for a couple of years after Brett's uncle died and left him a
house, they had come to Abbeville to take care of his estate.
They had liked the place so much they had stayed. Lisa taught
elementary school in Oxford, and Brett worked as a linesman for the
phone company.

It turned out that Brett was something of a musician himself.
"Nothin' serious," he said. Mostly he jammed with friends. He and
Steve talked about bands that were playing locally, and where to go
to hear some good sounds. "Y'all are welcome to come 'round tomorrow
and hang out with me and the boys," he said to Steve.

"I don't have a guitar right now," Steve said.

"Heck, Brett's got three," Lisa said. "I can't see as how he can
play all of them at once."

So on Sunday afternoon Steve and I showed up at Elroy's, a joint out
on the road to Tupelo. Brett and his friends formed a kind of
unofficial house band there, filling in on nights that Elroy
couldn't book someone. Since Elroy didn't make a whole lot of money,
Lisa told me later, that was nearly every Friday night. Saturday
nights Elroy got a minor 'name' band in. He let the guys practice
there all they wanted whenever the joint wasn't open.

Brett's band was a five piece outfit: guitar, that was Brett; bass,
Jim; keyboards, Rick; drums, Bo; and Jeff on trumpet when he
bothered to show up, which Lisa said was about once a month. It was
an odd combination of talent, to say the least. They'd never thought
to give themselves a name -- people referred to them generically, as
'The House Band'.

I was kind of nervous when we first entered Elroy's. I hadn't known
whether it was a good idea to go with Steve, but I always liked to
hear him play, and I wanted to spend more time with him because we
had seen so little of each other while I was staying at Julia's.

As we walked in and I could see Brett smile and walk over to shake
Steve's hand, I could see the other guys' eyes giving me the once
over. They weren't exactly predatory, but I still wasn't completely
used to having men look me over in that way. It gave me a strange
feeling in my stomach whenever I saw that kind of look from a guy. I
wished Julia was there -- then they would have ignored me and stared
at her instead.

I was the only girlfriend there, as it turned out. I had hoped that
Lisa would show up with Brett, but apparently she didn't even go to
the gigs very often anymore. So I sat over at the side of the bar,
and watched and listened as Brett's band went through a raggedy
version of 'Skinny Legs and All'.

They were terrible. But they were terrible in a good way. They each
had a lot of enthusiasm, and Brett had a good technique, but it was
like they were playing in separate bands. Rick and Jeff seemed to
want to give the song the R&B treatment it needed, but Jim and Brett
seemed to think they were playing straight rock and roll or maybe
something that hadn't been invented yet.

Brett could sing pretty well, though. At least better than Steve.
Steve was clearly a better guitarist, but he didn't have any range
in his voice. He could do blues okay. Brett's timing probably wasn't
as good, but he had a voice that was suited to a much broader range
of material.

Brett wanted Steve to play with them straight away, but Steve
demurred, saying he wanted to listen to them for a while since it
had been a long time since he'd played with other people.
Fortunately nobody questioned why that was the case.

The guys played a few more songs, mostly old R&B standards, with a
country-style song I didn't know thrown in for good measure. They
were better on the country stuff, I thought, except that Jeff sat
there like a shag on a rock while they played it because there
didn't seem to be a way to work a trumpet into a country piece like
that.

"How 'bout you join in, Steve," Brett said.

"What are y'all up for next?" Steve asked, as he picked up a guitar
and plugged in to an amp. But Brett had already begun the opening
notes to 'Sin City,' and everyone picked it up right away. Except
for Jeff. There's no place you could fit a trumpet in 'Sin City,'
either.

I'd really like to be able to say that Steve's influence on the band
lifted them to new heights, but the truth was that they were all
pretty much still doing their own thing instead of acting like a
band, and it came out in an unholy mess. Their enthusiasm and
obvious enjoyment made it a much more pleasant experience to watch
than to listen to. They completely messed up 'Steady Rollin' Man'
and a few blues-tinged numbers I didn't know. Then they played some
more modern stuff, including a Bruce Springsteen song that took me
by surprise because I hadn't figured they would be into that sound.

After a few more songs the guys took a break and opened up a few
beers, and Steve kept picking away add odd fragments of music while
they all shot the breeze about a bunch of stuff I wasn't much
interested in. Fortunately I had found a year old copy of 'Rolling
Stone' tucked behind the curtain that hung behind the "stage," so I
had something to read.

When Steve started playing 'One Hundred Years From Now' the
conversation ceased and Brett joined in. The country flavor of the
song suited them much better, and then all of them went back to
playing for a while, sticking mostly to country-tinged numbers.
After about another hour of playing they broke up. Rick and Jeff
left, and the others went out on the porch of the bar and sat
drinking a few more brews.

Once they were out of there I walked over to the acoustic guitar
that Brett had standing to one side and picked it up myself. It had
been a few weeks since I had done any practice at all, and I didn't
want to get too rusty since I was really glad Steve had been
teaching me.

After about ten minutes Steve came back inside. I think he was
probably feeling guilty for having ignored me for so long. He
listened to me pick my way through some fairly simple tunes, and
then sat down next to me. "So what'd you think?"

I smiled at him and raised my eyebrows. "Well, it looked like you
were all having a good time, I guess..."

He smiled back. "Yeah. well, it was fun." Then he reached for the
guitar I was holding and began to play one of the songs the two of
us most loved, 'Ain't No Sunshine.' What a great song. He played,
and we both started singing, and I decided to harmonize over his
voice, and it was great. We moved straight into the next song, one
that Steve had written himself when we were at Brand, and then
another and another. At the end of the fourth song Brett, Bo and Jim
came back in, but instead of joining in they listened and watched
and sucked on their brews. I immediately got kind of nervous about
them listening to me singing, and my voice wavered and I quit.

"No, no, keep going," Brett said. "That was great."

"Uh, no, thanks," I said, beginning to stand up.

"Really, Emma," Jim chimed in. "That was fantastic. Steve didn't
tell us you could sing like that."

"See?" Steve said to me softly. "What'd I tell you?"

"I... um... I don't sing in front of people," I said to everyone in
general.

"Hell, honey, we ain't people. We's just some bums in a band," Bo
said, smiling.

"Sing something else," Brett suggested.

"I'm kind of nervous," I said.

"Take your time, then. Whenever you feel comfortable."

I looked at Steve, who was still sitting down on the edge of the
stage with the guitar in his hands. He smiled at me and nodded.

I looked at the other guys, who were watching me expectantly.

"I'll sing if you guys are playing too," I said. That way we could
all make fools of ourselves.

The guys came over to the gear and Steve played a few bars of a song
he knew I liked, "American Girl," which was fast and loose and hard
to think too much about. It was a good choice. I got right into it
quickly.

"And if she had to die trying she,

had one little promise

she was gonna ke-ee-ee-eep,

oh yeah, alright,

take it easy baby,

make it last all night."

It turned out that Brett had grown up with one of the guys from
Mudcrutch, Tom Petty's first band, and he knew most of Petty's stuff
very well. They all joined in on the line "make it last all night"
and we finished the song smiling and laughing. We did a couple of
Petty's other songs, and then we did some Stones covers, some Neil
Young, and some more recent stuff. Then I suggested a song that the
guys had heard but hadn't played, 'Mohammed's Radio.' It's not a
really difficult song musically, but you need to get the timing
right when you sing it or it sounds bland. I had practiced it a bit
these last few weeks with Steve in the little time we hadn't devoted
to sex.

"Dang, girl, Linda Ronstadt'd be pissed if she heard you do that so
well," Bo smiled after we finished it. I liked Bo. I knew he was
just being nice, but nice guys are hard to dislike.

Steve suggested we do a quieter number he knew I also liked, and
then another. I could tell he was trying to bring my singing to the
fore, but I was much more relaxed now and I wasn't worried about
embarrassing myself in front of the guys.

We tried some pop -- including Alex Chilton's 'September Gurls,'
which must be one of the best pop songs ever written, even if it
really needed another girl to harmonize with me. Then we finished up
by trying to do Van Morrison's 'Sweet Thing.' It was way beyond any
of us. I couldn't remember all the words, and Jim and Bo couldn't
get the timing right. It was fun, but we were going to need to
practice that one to pull it off.

"That one's for another day," Brett said as we finished our ragged
attempt.

"Sure 'nuff," said a voice from the back of the bar.

"Hi Elroy," Brett said. "Didn't hear you come in."

A tall, craggy giant of a guy in his early fifties came into the
light. "Oh, I bin here a while. Girl," he said, turning to me, "you
sure do have a pretty voice."

I blushed, and shuffled, and looked over at Steve.

"Can sing, too," said Elroy. "I liked the faster numbers, myself.
Ain't too many girls with a sweet voice like yours can pull off a
rock song."

"I, uh, I guess I had a good teacher," I said, indicating Steve.

"I reckon you did. Brett, ain't you gonna introduce me to these
young people?"

Brett did the introductions. I thought to myself as he was doing it
that an awful lot of people were being introduced to us by our real
names, which seemed kind of stupid since Steve had an alias worked
out, and although my name wasn't the one I was born with it could be
traced by Grieves pretty easily.

Elroy wanted to hear us play some more. "Just you two," he said,
indicating Steve and myself. Steve and I both looked over at Brett
and the other guys, to see if they were offended we were going to be
singled out, but it seemed that they all kind of looked to Elroy as
'the boss' and deferred to him.

I was nervous again, and Elroy got a little impatient. "Just sing
something you like," he said. So we did a soft, gentle song to start
with, 'The Face of Appalachia,' which was lyrical and sweet and gave
me good opportunity to show off my range and for Steve to show off
his skills as a guitarist.

When we finished the guys all made polite noises but it seemed
obvious they were waiting for more, so after a brief conference we
did another song Steve had written, which felt good.

"When the chips are down

I'll still be around

No matter what

These walls here won't be stopping me

When the chips are down"

Steve had written several songs with me in mind, and while we were
going through that one I forgot where we were and what we were doing
and scrunched my eyes up tight and thought of how we'd made love the
night after he'd first played it to me and we'd practiced it.
Everything flowed smoothly and I just let myself go with the song. I
was thinking about Steve and sex and all the other things the song
was about, and -- although I didn't realize it until I finished --
my nipples got hard and I felt that same feeling I always felt when
he took me in his arms and kissed me.

Music is interesting like that. When it's really good, that is. When
it sends shivers up your spine and makes you go all gooey inside.
Even rock songs can do that to me; at least they could do that then.

When we finished there was a silence and I remembered where we were.
Slowly I opened my eyes and noticed the guys standing at the side of
the bar still watching us. Then Elroy began to clap and the other
guys joined in. I blushed bright red and turned back around to
Steve, who hugged me and guided me off the stage. Brett clapped him
on the back and complimented him on the song, and on his playing.

"Dang, girl, how'd you get to sing like that so young?" Bo said, and
I blushed again. It was nice that these guys liked to hear me,
because I liked to sing, but until now it had always been a private
thing between Steve and me, and I wasn't used to the praise. Jeff
handed me a beer and I took a quick swig from the bottle, then another.

I was saved from further embarrassment when Brett took Steve back to
the gear and got him to work through a few of the changes he'd rung
in the last song, so the focus went off me for a while. Jim and Bo
started rolling cables.

Elroy talked to me a while about where I was from as the boys packed
up the equipment. I tried to give mostly non-committal answers, and
asked him a lot of stuff about himself to divert attention. He was a
pretty nice guy. I was getting the feeling that most of the folks
I'd meet in Mississippi were more relaxed than the people I'd grown
up with. I learned that Elroy was a musician, too, and pretty easy
with a range of instruments. He'd played with some pretty big names
when he was younger, even with Elvis once.

Elroy had bought the bar after the settlement from a car accident.
He indicated a long scar on the side of his face "That's how I came
by this, too." He changed the subject back to music and we talked
for a while longer about that. Then the two of us fell silent and
watched as the guys came back in and removed the last of the stuff.

"You old enough to be drinkin' that beer on my premises?" Elroy
asked me in a friendly voice to break the silence. He had a really
nice fatherly kind of manner -- like I'd imagined fathers should be,
not like my father was.

"I guess not," I said, guiltily.

"That's alright, we're not open." He had a twinkle in his eye and I
could see he was just winding me up.

The guys came over to where Elroy and I were sitting. "Brett, I'd
like a word with you for a moment," Elroy said.

"Sure thing," Brett said, and the two of them went into the small
office at the back of the bar. The guys and I sat and had a beer
together and talked about the other places in the district that had
decent music. There sure seemed to be a lot of places to play. That
might sound kind of obvious, but this was back when disco was
killing live music at places on the coasts, and I had thought it
might have made an impact in Mississippi, too. If it had, it wasn't
a big one.

Eventually Brett and Elroy came out of the office. Brett asked Steve
if he could have his phone number to call him next time they were
jamming. We all said our goodbyes and went out into the night.

***

Chapter Eleven.

Brett called Steve the next day and asked him whether we'd like to
play with them on Friday night at Elroy's. Elroy had pretty much
insisted on it, Brett admitted.

Steve told me later he was hesitant at first, mostly because we
hadn't put in any *real* practice on Sunday, so he asked Brett to
read him their song list. Since the band played all cover material
it would be pretty easy for Steve and me to brush up on the songs
before then. We were both still worried, though.

I was nervous as all heck. For one thing, I didn't know whether I
was going to be singing harmonies or lead on any of the songs. Steve
hadn't asked Brett about that when they had their conversation, and
I gave him a lot of grief over it.

"Em, I'm sorry, okay? I can't be any sorrier," Steve said.

'Well, you can just call Brett back and see whether we can get
together before Friday to find out."

"I don't have his number. He called me," he said sheepishly.

I was pretty pissed with Steve and he knew it, and he wisely made
himself scarce Tuesday night. Julia was out with Pete and Pris and I
had the house to ourselves. We prepared a light dinner together and
Pris even opened a bottle of wine. Over dinner I told her about the
session at Elroy's and the forthcoming gig, and she promised to come
along to offer some moral support.

After dinner the two of us sat on the couch and watched some
television while we finished the entire bottle of wine. I got up to
go to the bathroom and realized I was unsteady on my feet. "Cheap
drunk." I said, and we both giggled.

When I came back Pris was spread out on the couch, but she put her
feet down and sat up straight as I approached. When I sat down she
put her arm around me. At first I was kind of startled, but nothing
else happened. We sat there watching television, and I put my head
on her shoulder. It was pretty nice, if you want to know the truth
of it. I hadn't ever been that close to a woman who wasn't my
mother. When the movie finished she gave me a kiss goodnight on the
cheek and she went to bed.

By Thursday I was still anxious about Friday night, but I had given
up trying to stay pissed with Steve. Whatever it was he and Leon had
been getting up to during the days, Steve didn't have anything
planned that day, so I went over to his apartment and we made love
for most of the day, before he took me out to dinner that evening.
After I let him kiss me and begin to fondle my breasts I wasn't
angry with him at all.

Steve was kind of cagey about what he did when we weren't together,
but a large part of his time on the evenings he wasn't with me
seemed to be spent searching out music. He was very enthusiastic
about some of the stuff he had heard at little holes in the wall
here and there. Mississippi is the kind of place you can find some
startling blues in little cinder block shacks with no windows, he
said. "It's the real thing, Em. God, it makes you feel so alive.
Although they look at you awful funny if you're a white boy in
places like that," he added.

On Friday Pris and I went shopping in Oxford. I had one thing I
wanted to buy for Steve, and she said she wanted to do some window
shopping for other stuff. Our first stop was the music store
downtown. I had the money from the sale of the Malibu, and I wanted
to get Steve a guitar of his own. He could use Brett's Stratocaster
on stage most of the time, but I wanted to get him a good acoustic
guitar that he could play when we were together. Of course he could
use it on stage too, but I thought if it as a kind of intimate
present between us. The time we had spent playing and singing at
Brand was incredibly intimate, and I missed hearing Steve play when
we were alone together.

I didn't know much about guitars at all, but the guy who ran the
store was pretty helpful and surprisingly candid about his stock.
His name was Levon, and he told us he was pleased to have two pretty
girls in his store and he'd knock ten percent off right away if it
meant we'd be coming back in more often. Coming from anyone else
that might have sounded sleazy, but Levon was a wiry old guy with a
great smile and a good line in bad jokes and Pris and I laughed and
joked with him as he demonstrated various guitars to us. He was a
pretty mean guitar player himself.

I settled on a vintage Gibson 12 string that had a beautiful warm
sound. Levon sang its praises very loudly, complaining because
Gibson had stopped making 12 strings altogether. When he played it I
was sold. It was more expensive than a lot of the other guitars
there but I knew how much Steve needed a guitar and I wanted to get
something he would like. Anyway it wasn't even half as expensive as
some of the guitars there. I knew if we kept playing with the band
that Steve would have to get a really good guitar, and I guessed
some of the money from the Malibu should be set aside for that, too.

Levon made a couple of sweet remarks about my dedication to Steve
and said he'd like to hear the guy who was lucky enough to have
pretty girlfriends buying good guitars for him, and I blushed.
Because I'd let slip about being in a band Levon asked me about it,
and it turned out he knew Brett and Jim pretty well. I guess owning
the only music store in town meant he got to meet most local
musicians. We talked for a long time about the kind of music we
liked, and Levon had me try out another guitar myself and sing few
bars of one of the Neil Young songs I'd learned at Brand. He loved
my singing, which made me feel good. "Emma, I'll definitely be out
there to see you tonight."

The rest of the shopping trip with Pris was low-key, but fun.
Neither of us had any money to spend on clothes, so the rest of our
shopping was very different than the time I had been out with Julia,
but we had a good time all the same. Pris was a real down to earth
kind of girl. I started to think of her as a real friend.

When Friday evening came I didn't know what to wear. I tried on
about ten things and none of them seemed right. I still wasn't too
sure about what the right thing was to wear to any given occasion. I
said as much to Julia, and she reassured me. "Emma, every girl I
know spends forever thinking about what she's going to wear on a big
occasion, like a date or something."

We settled on a basic black shift dress. I thought maybe a dress was
going overboard for a place like Elroy's, but Pris said it made me
look more grown up than pants and a top. Anyway, it was a very
simple style, so it wasn't like I seemed overdressed or anything. I
was more worried about the shoes I was wearing, the black sling backs
that I'd bought on that first shopping trip with Julia. They only
had a two inch heel, but even that seemed like a lot to stand up in
all night.

Julia's boyfriend Pete offered to drive us all out to Elroy's in his
Microbus. We all got together an hour before it was time to leave,
and as we were walking out the door he pressed a small envelope into
my hand. Inside the bus I opened it. Inside was a driver's license
in the name of Emma Donaldson. It was hard to see how good it was by
the streetlights as we drove through Oxford, but it seemed like it
must have taken an awful lot of work, and I was very grateful to him.

Pete took me aside as I alighted from the van outside Elroy's. "That
was the best I could do, Emma."

"It looks great, Pete. Thanks." I looked across at Julia, who was
smiling, and then stretched up to give him a kiss. Pete seemed kind
of awkward about it, but I thought at the time that maybe that was
just because he had to bend over so I could reach his cheek.

"What was that all about?" Pris asked me as I walked over to where
she and Julia were standing. I suddenly thought that if Pris wasn't
in on my past I couldn't really explain fully what Pete had done for me.

"Fake ID," I said, hoping Pete had also changed the date on the
license -- I hadn't been able to see by the streetlights yet.

"Cool," Pris said, and she turned to Julia "Hey, if we get some
makeup on her, I bet we can take her out anywhere."

We went in through the back door to Elroy's, along a hallway and
into a small none-too-clean room that was reserved for whatever band
was performing. Bo called it a green room for reasons I didn't
understand at the time -- I found out later that's what television
people call backstage rooms where artists congregate before shows.
This one was painted pale blue and was barely big enough for ten
people to stand in, let alone sit. I had a feeling it had been a
storeroom in a former life.

As soon as we walked in -- make that squeezed in -- I could feel Bo
and Jim almost undressing me with their eyes, and I wished I had
worn pants instead of the dress. But Bo was smiling his gentle
relaxed smile and I knew that he was no threat to me, and Jim smiled
and turned away when I met his gaze so I knew I didn't have anything
to worry about from him tonight either. Besides, I could see their
eyes bug out when they saw Julia and I knew I wouldn't be foremost
on their minds.

Steve kissed me hello, and then Brett introduced Julia, Pete, Pris
and I to two guys I hadn't met before, Dave and Wendy. Wendy's real
name was Wendell, and he was maybe the least androgynous guy I'd
ever seen after Leon, but he didn't seem to mind being called that
so I didn't laugh. He wasn't as solid as Leon, but he was at least 2
inches taller. He reminded me of that actor who played the bad guy
in 'Urban Cowboy', Scott Glenn. He had a weather-beaten, craggy
looking face and a lean, tough looking physique. Wendy was going to
be mixing for us tonight, Brett explained, and Dave was going to sit
in for Rick on keyboards, since Rick had come down with the flu.
Jeff had opted out for the night, but apparently that wasn't unusual.

We all exchanged hellos and Steve introduced Julia and Pete and Pris
and Leon. I tugged at Steve's arm and pointed to the guitar case
that I'd placed beside the door as we came in. "What?" Steve said.
"Whose is that?"

"It's yours," I said.

He loved it. I knew he would. He was cross with me for spending the
money, but he knew I knew how much music meant to him. After he'd
taken it out of the case and played a little and retuned it and then
set it aside he grasped me to him and lifted me off my feet. "I love
you, Em," he said as he held my face level with his and kissed me. I
was giddy from the experience. He was so strong, and I felt so small
when he did that. He set me down again and we kissed the way we
normally did, with me on my toes reaching up to him. Then we
remembered we were in a crowded room and I blushed and we separated.
Everyone was smiling at us.

Pete and Julia and Pris and Leon excused themselves and went into
the bar to wait for our performance. Julia gave me a kiss for good
luck and Leon even gave me a little squeeze on the shoulder just
before he left.

In a sudden rush of panic I suddenly thought that the reason Pete
was embarrassed when I kissed him to say thanks was that he knew
about me. Julia must have told him something to get him to make me
up a fake ID, right? My face burned as I wondered what he must have
thought about me.

I opened my purse to retrieve the envelope Pete had pressed into my
hand and looked at the ID. Pete had given me a totally different
birthday. According to the license I was nineteen. That was odd --
it wouldn't get me a drink in any bars. The name on the license was
Emma Donaldson. He had changed my name, too.

Brett and Steve looked over the playlist and the guys discussed a
couple of things to do with ending a few songs. I looked it over and
saw, with relief, that I knew all the songs on it, and none of them
seemed very complicated. As I learned later, the Friday night
audience at Elroy's wasn't there to think too much -- basically they
wanted to dance, drink, and hopefully fuck when they got home. If
the music was good while any of that happened it was considered a bonus.

Then it was time to go on. No sound check, nothing. Brett reassured
me as we walked out that he and the guys had played here so often
that they didn't need to do sound checks, but I wasn't convinced. I
was worried about more than the music, though. Even though I had
begun to become used to people around Oxford treating me like a
girl, and I had even come to enjoy hanging out with Pris and Julia
as 'one of the girls', I was still terrified about appearing in
front of a bunch of total strangers in a dress.

The emptiness of the place reassured me. It was only 8.00pm, and
there were less than three dozen people in the place. None of them
paid us any attention at all as we walked up to the stage area. I
could see Julia, Pete and Pris standing over at the bar. Pete raised
his beer in a mock toast as a show of support. I smiled back,
nervously. If he knew about me then he sure was being a nice guy
about it. Julia gave me a "thumbs up" signal and Pris smiled.

Once on the small stage the guys plugged in their various
instruments and Brett and Steve plucked a couple of notes while Jim
ran through a bass riff and Bo thumped around on the drums once or
twice. I just stood there feeling awkward. Then Steve began to pick
out the opening notes and Brett stood up to the microphone and began
the first line of our set. "Ooh Las Vegas, ain't no place for a poor
boy like me..."

The first half of our performance that night wasn't a complete
debacle, but it was close. The reason we were terrible was pretty
obvious -- no practice. I started off singing harmonies, but Wendy
didn't have any proper levels for my voice, so it took him a couple
of songs to get that right, and he seemed to have trouble getting
the cheap desk to deliver enough of the vocals to stay above the
guitars. That was made doubly difficult because Steve and Brett were
supposed to be swapping off on guitar, but since they hadn't spent
enough time together the result was confusion, and the two of them
seemed to be playing over each other more than with one another. My
harmonies with Brett were terrible, too. A couple of songs on the
list seemed like they were 'girl' songs -- I don't exactly know how
to describe why I felt like that except to say that I was surprised
to hear Brett trying to do a slow number like 'Dark End of the
Street'. I thought when I saw a few of them on the list that it
meant that Brett wanted me to sing lead and he would do harmonies,
but instead he just sang right along the whole song. Whenever I
tried to harmonize above his voice on those songs he would just
follow me right along -- which sounded *disgusting*. We stunk up the
place unbelievably bad.

At least it wasn't too crowded. There was a feeble smattering of
applause after each song from a couple of people who were either
tone deaf or unbelievably polite.

We took a break after an hour or so and went backstage. Nobody said
anything at all. Steve and Jim went straight to the ice bucket in
the corner where Elroy had thoughtfully provided a couple of beers,
and we all sat down and looked around awkwardly at anything except
each other. Jim passed the beers around, and I went to the ice and
used some of it to wipe over my neck and shoulders. It was hot out
there. We didn't have much in the way of lights, but it was hot all
the same.

After about ten minutes Elroy came in. We all looked guiltily at the
floor as he walked over to the ice bucket and checked to see how
much beer was left. "I thought since you was all playing so loose
out there maybe you'd bin drinkin' more than you should," he said to
Brett.

We all continued to look at the floor. "Shoot," Elroy said. "This is
s'posed to be fun, you morons. T'aint nuclear physics. Anyone'd
think someone had died up there on that stage for all the fun you
looked like you were having."

"We should have practiced more," I said guiltily.

"That's as may be," Elroy said. "But it's too late for that now. God
save us, if you're gonna be that bad out there with your second set
maybe it'd be best if you just called it a night."

"We'll work it out, Elroy," Jim said. "We're just not used to
playing together. Me an' Steve, I mean. And Emma."

"I can see that," Elroy said. "So why don't you play what you know?"

"We don't know much. I mean, we haven't practiced much," Steve said.

"Well, I heard you play at least a dozen songs last Sunday. Y'all
seemed to enjoy yourselves then," Elroy responded. "Why don't you
just play those?"

"All of them?" Steve asked.

"All of 'em. That should fill up at least an hour set."

"But, you know, the other day we finished up with just Steve and
me," I said.

"Ain't nothin' wrong with that. Is there Bo?" Elroy said, looking
for some support.

Bo looked surprised. "Uh, no. No. Fine with me."

"Brett?" Elroy asked.

"Fine." He didn't seem too concerned, which surprised me since Elroy
seemed to be taking over his band.

I must have looked doubtful, because after looking at me for a few
moments Elroy sighed and asked Brett for a copy of the song list for
the second set. He studied it for a few moments, probably listening
to the songs in his head as he read them.

"Okay. Emma," he said. "I heard you do some Warren Zevon the other
day, that 'Mohammed's Radio' song. You know the words to 'Lawyers
Guns And Money'?"

I nodded.

"Well, y'all can make that your second-last song, after you 'n Steve
have done your quiet stuff. The boys here were playing it a couple
of weeks ago so they won't have any trouble with it, but it'll be
more interesting with you out front. Then you can close by singing
backup for Brett on 'Albuquerque'. You up for that?"

"I guess so," I said. "Brett, is that okay?"

I should have realized that Elroy really ran things around here, but
I felt bad about muscling in on Brett's status as the lead singer.
Having Brett sing lead on our final number seemed like a good idea.

"Sure thing, Emma," Brett said. He seemed genuine. "Heck, I'd much
rather listen to you sing than me, any time."

"That's settled, then," Elroy said firmly. "Shoot, Brett, when I
suggested you get Emma and Steve here to play with you I didn't mean
you should just tuck them away on the sidelines, okay?"

"Yeah, Elroy. I know."

"That's m'boy," Elroy said, clapping Brett on the back. Everyone was
all smiles now. Elroy cracked open one of the beers and passed it to
Bo before repeating the gesture with everyone else, and we all
downed the beer quickly to try to relieve whatever tension remained.

When we went back out I was surprised to see that the size of the
crowd had grown. The place wasn't anywhere near full, but all the
tables were taken and all of the bar was blocked up with guys
leaning against it.

"Well, at least most of these people weren't here for the last set,"
Brett mumbled as we walked out.

"With any luck they'll be drunk," Bo grunted.

We stepped up to the tiny stage and in a few moments Steve was
ringing out the opening notes of 'American Girl'. I stepped up to
the mic and let myself go. "She was an American girl, raised on
promises, she couldn't help thinking that there, was a little more
life somewhere else..."

After we'd ripped through about five songs we were all feeling
*much* better. We even got some pretty good applause. Steve and Bo
were grinning madly, and even Brett was smiling when he didn't have
his face screwed up thinking about what he was doing. Everything
came together, and suddenly Brett and I knew, just knew, who should
carry the main melody and who the harmonies, and we swapped off on
three more songs before Brett told me to take over completely. After
Julia and Pete made the first move a few other people had come up
front to dance, and I could see a couple of the guys at the bar
tapping their hands on the bar. Pris was over at the side near one
of the speakers, singing along with me on most of the songs, though
of course nobody could hear her above the racket we made.

Soon enough it was time for Steve and I to do 'our quiet stuff' as
Elroy had called it. Bo stayed behind to add some very light
percussion, but Brett and Rick headed over to the bar to get a beer.
Without the mad rush of all the guitars I felt kind of nervous
again, and I closed my eyes for a moment to block out everything
before I started singing one of the songs Steve had written when we
were in Brand together. Bo had heard it when we played it on Sunday,
and he laid down a sympathetic gentle brush.

The audience got really quiet and I tried to concentrate on what I
was doing instead of thinking about everything that was going on
around me. As I had on Sunday, I tried to think about the time Steve
had first played the song to me, and about the wild, unbelievable
sex after that, and the way his hands had felt as they ran over my
breasts...

We finished the song, and there was a horrible moment of silence.
They hated it. I thought the audience had hated it. But then they
erupted in applause and I opened my eyes and everyone was looking at
me like I was -- it's hard to explain what it's like when an
audience likes you, but when they *really* like you there's this
feeling you get that's not just about the applause and the noise and
all that. There's some mysterious connection between you and the
audience.

I looked across at Steve and he was still smiling. Before the
applause had even begun to die down he started the first few notes
of our second song together.

The rest of the set passed incredibly quickly. After Steve, Bo and I
had done some slow numbers Brett and Rick came back and we rocked
out with 'Lawyers Guns and Money' and a final slow, poignant version
of Neil Young's 'Albuquerque'. Then we were offstage and back in the
pale blue "green" room. The audience wouldn't stop. They kept
yelling and clapping and whistling, and after thirty seconds they
were still at it.

"Fuck, man, they want a freakin' *encore*," Bo said wonderingly. The
guys all stood looking at one another as though this was the first
time that had ever happened. I found out later it was only the
second in the whole time they'd been playing together.

"Let's do it!" Brett said, and we all walked back out to even more
applause.

"Hey, guys," Steve said. "Wanna do me a favor? Just follow me for a
moment."

They all looked at him dubiously, but when he started in on a
distinctive opening riff they all smiled and joined in. I just stood
there and smiled and danced, since there wasn't a lot for me to do
on such a ripped up version of 'Purple Haze', but Steve had the time
of his life. It was a really dumb song to play after all the rock
and country numbers we had played throughout the evening, but people
seemed to like the contrast and everyone was smiling.

Except for Steve, but he looked more interesting. Wow. He looked so
sexy up there with his face all scrunched up, looking like he did
sometimes when we made love face to face and I put my feet up on his
shoulders and he exploded inside me in a scary, lose-everything kind
of way. I looked over at Pris, and saw her grinning wildly. She
winked at me and looked back at Steve.

They finished 'Purple Haze' and the audience still wanted more. We
did the old Zombies song 'She's Not There' and they still cheered
for more even after we screwed it up pretty badly. We went into a
small huddle trying to figure out what we could do that we all knew.
Before the applause died down Brett made an off-the-wall suggestion
that everyone agreed to instantly, and so we closed the show with
the old Buddy Holly song "Well Alright." It was a good choice.

"Well alright so I've been foolish,

Well alright let people know

About the dreams and wishes you wish

All alone when the lights are low."

In the green room I hugged Steve, and then Bo and Brett and Rick as
well. We were all grinning our heads off. Elroy came back and he was
grinning from ear to ear too. "*That* was more like it," he yelled.
"Best dang Friday night we've had in years." I gave him a hug for
good measure. He seemed to like that.

After we had wound down with a beer we all went back into the bar.
The crowd had thinned out since we had stopped playing. Pris was
over at the side of the bar talking with a some people I didn't know
but who seemed to know her well. Leon was standing with Pete and
Julia, and Steve introduced them all to Elroy. A table over at the
side of the bar had become vacant and we all went to sit there. I'd
been standing up in these two inch heels for most of the night so I
was glad to rest my legs. Everyone made polite noises about our
performance, and Elroy got everyone a round of drinks, including me.

As the drinks arrived I whispered to Julia. "I have to talk to you!"
We excused ourselves to go to the ladies room.

"What is it?" Julia said as soon as we were inside.

I looked around to see whether anyone else was in the room. "You
told Pete about me?"

"No! No. Of course not!" Julia seemed offended.

"So why did he make me the ID?"

"Because I asked him to," Julia said. I had no doubt of Julia's
powers of persuasion, especially when used on a man. "He makes a lot
of IDs."

"So he doesn't know?"

"No. Why would he?"

"Well, why didn't he make me older?"

"Pardon?"

"I can't use this for ID in bars -- it says I'm only nineteen."

"We didn't think we could convince anyone you were twenty-one, Emma."

"What's the use of it, then?"

"Do you have any other ID at all?"

"Uh, no, I guess not."

"We thought it might be a good idea if you did."

That made sense. "Why did he change my name?"

"What's it say?"

I handed her the license and she looked it over in the dim light.
"Hmmm," she said. "I don't know the answer to that, you'll have to
ask him."

"Okay, sorry. I'm grateful and all, Julia. I was just kind of
freaked out that maybe you..."

"Emma... I'm not going to tell anyone."

"I know," I said, feeling guilty for having doubted her. "I'm sorry.
I'm just kind of nervous about tonight, I guess."

Back at the table Brett had joined in the conversation and I sat
down with Julia on one side of me and Steve on the other and all of
a sudden I felt really good about life. Here I was, with a good
friend and a great boyfriend and people seemed to like me. Life sure
had been a whole lot worse. Then Brett took Steve and me aside and
gave us each twelve dollars, which was our share of the Band's
earnings for the night. "Whoo hoo! We get paid!" Steve said to
Brett. "Man, I don't want to tell Elroy, but you know I'd do this
for free."

Pris came over to tell Julia and me that she was going to get a ride
with some friends, and Leon drove home with a girl he met and so
Steve and I got a lift back with Julia and Pete in the Microbus. The
night was bright and clear and we sat close in the back and looked
out at the stars. Steve had one hand on my breast and was lightly
stroking it most of the way home as he nuzzled my ear and the back
of my neck with his mouth. By the time we got there I was so aroused
I could barely wait for Pete and Julia to disappear into her room
before I threw myself at my man.

***

Chapter Twelve.

In the next few weeks we managed to fit in some practice every
Sunday so we had a more robust set of songs for the Friday night
gigs. At Brett's suggestion we started including more of Steve's
original stuff. "That's what really makes the audience go for us,
man," Brett said one day during practice. "Cover bands are
everywhere, you know, but if we have good original material it makes
us... special." We kept the quiet numbers Steve had written
especially for me, but Steve contributed a few hard rocking numbers
that needed the full band and he and Brett collaborated on a few
songs that had more of a pop feel. Brett was getting influenced by
some of the English music that was just beginning to become popular
-- stuff like the Buzzcocks and Nick Lowe. It made for an odd mix
with some of the looser, more blues tinged rock we played, but we
were certainly developing a distinctive sound.

When we had first begun playing together I was singing backup for
Brett, but now every new song we performed had me up front with the
guys backing me.

The second Friday night at Elroy's went better than the first, and
the following week Elroy arranged for us to do a Saturday night gig
at a bar down in Jackson. It meant we had to drive for hours to get
there, and Pete volunteered to take our gear in his Microbus with
Julia and Pris, who wanted to come along to see us play again. Wendy
and Rick took Wendy's near-new Ford pickup while Leon drove the rest
of us crammed into an old Chevy Biscayne he'd picked up somewhere.
"Did he steal it?" I whispered to Steve when I first saw the car.
Leon heard me and grinned and reassured me it was perfectly legal
even though he'd bought it in a false name. I wondered where he got
the money to buy it from, and then realized I probably didn't want
to know.

After a stop for gas on the trip down I swapped with Pris and rode
with Pete and Julia in the Microbus. I wanted to find out why he had
used a different name on the drivers license he had made for me. I
wasn't sure how to get around to asking about it, because I was
still afraid that he knew the real reason I needed the fake ID, but
Pete brought it up himself. We were listening to some really weird
music on his tape deck -- some of it was Frank Zappa and some was
Captain Beefheart -- and when I confessed that I had never heard
anything like it Pete started to tell me all this stuff about
alternative lifestyles. I didn't know what that had to do with Frank
Zappa, but Pete started off on a tear about his feelings about the
world, and about the need to subvert 'the system'. He said he was an
anarchist. I had that mixed up for a few moments with the
antichrist, and Pete laughed hysterically and said that in
Mississippi they might just as well be the same thing so far as most
of the population was concerned. He had to explain anarchy to me. I
thought it sounded kind of unworkable, but I kept my opinion to
myself. I wondered what Julia thought, but she wasn't venturing any
opinions.

I told Pete he looked like a pretty straight guy for an anarchist,
and he said that looking straight was just another way of messing
with people's expectations. "People expect artists to look wild," he
said, "so where's the fun in that? I'm thinking of getting back to
button down collars and buzz cuts to really make a statement. You
know, the astronaut look. The artist as astronaut." He mused on that
a while as Frank Zappa sang a song about molesting young girls.

Eventually Pete got around to the subject of fake ID's, and said
that he did them to help screw with the system. "Yours is a beauty,"
he said. "It's fake, but it's real." I asked him what he meant and
he said he had taken the name from a dead girl, "just about the only
other Emma I ever came across, I reckon." I told him I felt kind of
weird, using the name and license of a dead girl, but he said it was
only the name and details he had used -- the license was something
he had whipped up. "I like to think of all this the way Dali did,"
he said. "He goes around signing his name on all the forgeries of
his work, so that no-one can tell the forgeries from the real thing,
and all the dealers get confused. This is just IDs, but I figure if
everyone has multiple IDs then it's harder for the system to put us
all in neat little holes."

Pete was a stranger guy than I had imagined, and I wondered what
Julia saw in him apart from his good looks. She laughed, and seemed
to treat his ideas as some kind of entertainment. Maybe she liked
him because he represented everything her Dad was against. Who
knows? It seemed clear from our discussions, though, that he had no
idea about my past, and he didn't seem especially interested. That
was cool with me.

When we got to Jackson we did a sound check. While we were setting
up Brett said we had to think of a name for the band. That was
*hard*. 'The House Band at Elroy's' wasn't going to cut it in
Jackson. The guys all started throwing out really asinine
suggestions that sounded more like names for jet fighters than rock
bands, and I gave each of them the withering raspberry they
deserved, until that became more annoying than the dumb names they
were coming up with. Brett tried variations on the name 'House',
none of which were too successful. Bo was being kind of sweet and
suggested that since I was such a big draw with the crowds the name
should have something to do with me. Blondie was just beginning to
break on the US charts and he was searching for something to do with
my hair. Somehow red hair didn't quite lend itself to appropriation
as easily. Jim suggested Red House, as a kind of combination of the
two ideas. At that moment a fire truck passed on the street, and
Brett and Bo said simultaneously "Firehouse". Everyone mulled it
over and agreed it had the right kind of ring to it.

The Jackson show went well -- the audience loved us and we were
approached after the show by a guy who said he was a writer working
for Billboard. We started buying the magazine after that but didn't
see anything about the show or about Firehouse. Maybe he was a
bullshit artist.

It wasn't until we'd been playing a few weeks that I figured it was
much more sensible to choose one or two outfits just for playing,
and keep my other clothes separate. Spending that much time in smoky
bars, under hot lights, meant that I had to wash the clothes I wore
on stage every day, and the constant washing took its toll on them.
My main outfit became a pair of jeans, a black halter top covered in
shiny black beads and a black suede jacket, although the jacket came
off pretty quick after the first two or three numbers. At first I
was kind of reluctant to wear the halter top, because I couldn't
wear a bra with it, but Julia talked me into it. "Em, honey, you
sure as heck get their attention in that!"

"I don't want them looking at my tits, I want them to be paying
attention to the music," I said irritably. I had been getting
irritable a lot in the past few weeks, for no good reason.

"We'll they'll be listening, too, but it doesn't hurt to be a hot
looking singer," she smiled.

I looked at myself in the halter and I had to admit I didn't look
too bad, really. Even though my breasts weren't huge, the top
brought them together with quite a lot of cleavage and the shiny
black beads shimmered as I moved. The beads helped, I decided. You
couldn't see my nipples under them. It was going to need to be
hand washed after every performance, though.

"I feel kind of naked wearing it," I said. "But I guess I feel kind
of naked on stage all the time, so what the heck."

Steve loved it, of course. He loved anything that showed my breasts off.

***

I missed Cee. I guess we had gotten much closer at Brand than I had
realized, and although I couldn't stand him at first we had become
very firm friends after Pangianis had dumped him. There was stuff we
could talk about when we were together that I couldn't tell *anyone*
else, not even Steve. I had no way of knowing if he had made it to
California, or if I'd ever see him again. I still had the names of
his friends in Memphis, though.

After we played Jackson Leon told Steve he thought he'd better be
moving on, too. Steve was disappointed, because he and Leon had been
close for a long time, but Leon didn't really fit in around Oxford
and he needed to find a way to make some money soon.

In the meantime the shows at Elroy's kept getting better and better,
and the crowds got bigger and more enthusiastic. Julia was right
about guys wanting to see me. Brett and Steve and Jim developed
little fan clubs of women who hung around after the shows wanting to
talk to them (poor Bo and Rick and Jeff didn't get much attention),
but I was slowly becoming the big draw card so far as our
performance went, even if I do say so myself. It was most evident in
our quieter numbers, which were pretty intense. The amazing thing
was that nobody, I mean nobody, thought of talking while I was
singing those quiet songs. You have to know the Mississippi bar
scene to know how unusual that was. People stopped and paid
attention. It was scary, but I have to admit I liked it.

Guys occasionally tried to hit on me after shows, and so I took to
being more open about my relationship with Steve while I was on
stage, to try to give them the hint. Oddly enough that didn't deter
the guys, but several women commented that they thought our act was
wonderful because it was obvious the two of us were in love and they
thought that made the passion in the songs come through more strongly.

It might have been obvious to them but I was starting to get worried
about Steve. He seemed distant several times when we went out
together in the evenings, and one evening he was an hour late. I
didn't want to intrude into his life too much, but I worried about
whatever it was that he was doing during the day. One evening after
we had made love I tried to ask him what was going on, but he shied
away from the subject.

It wasn't money that was bothering him; at least it didn't seem to
be. We didn't make much from the gigs at Elroy's after the band's
money was split six ways, but Steve always seemed to have cash
whenever we went out. I figured Julia was slipping him a share of
the allowance she got from their parents. Then again, when I asked
Steve when he could get another place so that the two of us could
live together he told me he couldn't afford it yet, and I had to be
patient a while longer. Elroy offered me a job cleaning the bar a
couple of days a week while the guy who usually did it was off with
a broken leg and after I sorted out a lift over there, with one of
Brett's linesman friends who went to Tupelo three times a week, I
got a little cash from the cleaning to help us by too.

For a brief time I worried that perhaps Steve had met another woman
and that was the reason for his occasional moods with me. After all,
I thought to myself, when we had first begun being intimate I was
the nearest thing to a girl around. Now he was surrounded by women,
why would he settle for me?

Every time I got really concerned about him and began to think that
things might be over Steve would bounce back cheerfully and my fears
would be assuaged. When he was feeling good he lavished attention on
me, and praise, too. The one time I mentioned my fears about not
being enough for him any more he put his finger to my lips to stop
me speaking. "Emma, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever
met. Ever," he said. "There won't ever be anyone else."

How I wanted to believe him.

***

After one of our practice jams on a Sunday Elroy and I were sitting
at the bar and he was joking about our performance, which had been
sloppy. The guys were packing away the gear. Elroy suddenly turned
serious and started talking to me about a career in music. "Em, you
have a great voice, and you're getting better and better at using it."

"Thanks."

"You've really turned Brett and the boys around."

"Well, I don't think it was just me. I just sing, you know?"

"Steve is great with a guitar. There's no doubt about that. But
these guys are just good ol' boys who like music. They needed
someone to get behind to become a band."

"Maybe."

"I know what I'm talking about, Emma. This band is really happening
now. I think we can book you on a road tour."

"Don't you want us to play here?"

"Emma honey, I'll be the happiest man in the world each time you
grace the stage here, you know that. But you have talent, girl. You
were a hit down in Jackson, and you need to be playing lots of
places. You guys could go places."

"Thanks for getting us the Jackson thing."

"My pleasure. I wish I could get you more, you know. Management's
not really my thing, though. Y'all need someone with more contacts.
If you're interested I'll see what I can do."

"Elroy, thanks for everything." I leaned over and gave him a kiss on
the cheek. "Really. I still can't believe people want to pay to let
us do this."

"Emma, honey, you have no idea of how much people will pay when they
realize how good you are. Just try to keep ol' Elroy in mind when
you're rich and famous, okay?"

The guys bought their girlfriends and wives to our performance the
following Friday, which was a rare thing. Each of our shows was more
popular than the last, and people were jammed out into the parking
lot out front trying to get in. The police showed up around eight,
before we went on, and Elroy had to go out front and pacify them
because it was illegal for people to be drinking outside the
premises but there was no way they could all fit inside.

Fortunately the police never came inside, and we didn't know they'd
been in the parking lot until after they left. Steve went white when
it was mentioned later, and I wondered what would have happened if
they had come into the "green" room while we were there. Were they
still looking for us in Oxford?

After the show Elroy brought a young guy back to the green room, and
introduced him as Ray Curran. He was short and weedy looking and
wearing a black suit jacket over a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. He
didn't look like much at all, but Elroy clapped him on the back and
said to us "I want y'all to listen to what Ray has to say. He's done
a power of good for a lot of people in this business, and I think
y'all will be interested in his ideas."

I didn't pay as much attention to Ray as I should have, because I
was concerned about Elroy. There was something bothering him that he
was trying to suppress. I wondered whether it was something to do
with the cops. He caught me looking at him and he averted his eyes
and I made a note to myself to talk to him soon.

Ray began haltingly to describe some of the bands he had worked
with. None of the names meant much to me but I could see Brett and
Steve and the boys recognized them. He told us he liked the show
he'd just seen. "Do you have more original material?"

"We've been working on it," Brett said. "Steve'n'me have a few new
songs we haven't worked into the sets yet."

"Well, if you think you can include more original material and fewer
covers, I'd like to see about booking you guys a few places. If
that's alright with you."

We all retreated to the bar, and over beers Ray outlined what he
thought he could offer us if he was our manager. It all sounded
great, but somehow I couldn't get myself enthused. I listened to Ray
talking about taking us on the road, and into the studio, and it all
sounded like -- it sounded like some of the stories I had heard at
Brand, the kind of stories the guys told one another about what they
were going to do when they got out. I could see Lisa and some of the
other girlfriends were taking Roy with a grain of salt too.

Eventually I excused myself from the table and went over to Elroy's
office, where he was counting the night's takings. "Elroy?"

He looked up from the cash. "Yes, Emma?"

"I guess since you introduced him to us that you think Ray is okay,
huh?"

He smiled. "I guess so."

"He seems to think we're going to be the next big thing."

"Welcome to the music business, honey. All managers say stuff like
that. Heck, I got promised a number one record by my manager back
when I was Steve's age."

"Really? What happened?"

"What happened is I can't sing. Never could. Seemed like a minor
impediment to my manager."

"Elroy?"

"Hmmm?"

"Do we need a manager? I mean, can't we just keep playing here?"

"Sure you can, Em. If that's what you want, I'm honored. And I've
gotta say, business is booming thanks to you guys. I make more on a
Friday now than on Saturday, and I have some big names playing here
Saturdays. I think you can do better than this place, though."

We had a another drink together and Elroy turned all sentimental on
me, and then, as our conversation progressed, almost moody. I asked
him what was wrong and at first he was reticent.

"Is it something to do with the cops who were here earlier?"

"The cops? No, Emma, nothing like that. Those guys are alright."

Elroy could see I was still curious about what was bothering him,
and he sighed deeply and then opened the drawer to his desk and
retrieved a photograph. In the photograph a younger Elroy, sans
scar, was standing with his arm around a petite blonde woman. A
red-haired girl about ten years old stood in front of them. It was
clearly a family portrait.

"Eight years ago today," Elroy said. "It's not your fault, Emma, but
sometimes you remind me a lot of her, and since she would have been
around your age by now... sometimes I look at you and..." He shook
his head sadly.

"I'm sorry, Elroy." I walked over beside his chair and put my hand
on his shoulder. He put his own hand up to grasp mine and hold it to
him and we stayed like that for a good ten minutes before I bent
down and kissed him on the cheek and went back out to join Steve and
the boys while he resumed counting the money.

When I got back to the table Ray had left, and the guys were
discussing his ideas heatedly. Brett and Bo obviously thought he was
great, Jim, Rick and Jeff weren't so sure. As usual, Steve was
holding back from talking until everyone else had their say. The
heart of the discussion was whether or not everyone wanted to get
serious about the band. Brett and Bo were all for total commitment.
Lisa wasn't sure how Brett could fit in his job and more time with
the band, and the other girlfriends echoed her thoughts. Jim kept
repeating that he had a family to support, and Rick, after seeing
his girlfriend Jenny's reaction, said over and over that there was
no way he was giving up his day job. Jim and Rick were both adamant
that the band was fine as it was, that playing Friday nights at
Elroy's was as far into the music business as they wanted to get.
Unstated in their objections to taking on more gigs was the idea
that Steve and I had somehow hijacked the band when Elroy got us to
join -- but even though it was never said aloud the sentiment was
definitely lurking beneath the surface of the discussion. I'm sure
it was a big influence on Jeff.

Elroy closed the place up and gave us our share of the take and we
continued the discussion in the green room, without the wives and
girlfriends, as we began to stow away the gear. Eventually Steve
spoke up with a compromise. Over the next few months Ray would book
us occasional gigs, no more than a half-day's drive away. If they
worked well we could think about doing a road trip for a couple of
weeks after that, and see whether or not we had any appeal to
audiences beyond the Ole Miss frat crowd. Brett, Jim and Rick all
had holidays due from work, and Bo, Steve and I were currently
unemployed. If the others could be convinced to take their holidays
in the same two week period we could spend it on the road as part of
a test to see how viable a full-time commitment to music could be.

Jeff said no right away. He thought the band was headed in the wrong
direction, and he thought it was probably time for him to go his own
way if this was what everyone wanted to do. I felt a little sympathy
for him when nobody tried to persuade him to stay, but then he'd
never played big part in the band and he missed most of our practice
sessions.

I was surprised when Jim and Rick agreed to the plan, but I think
maybe Jeff leaving crystallized things in their minds. This wasn't
going to be like Brett's old gang just hanging out at Elroy's. Ray
was going to try to take us to a wider audience, and it seemed all
of a sudden like an all-or-nothing proposition. There was always the
chance to go back to the way things were, but would we know whether
we were really up to it unless we tried?

After the gear was packed away everyone gathered outside the front
door and the deal was done. It was a trial arrangement for six
months. Over the next few weeks we would play gigs in the major
cities within three or four hours drive, and then if that worked out
in about four months we would go on a road trip for two weeks, with
Brett, Jim and Rick taking leave from their jobs. Before then Steve
and Brett would finish a few more songs they were working on and Ray
would get us some studio time. Ray would get paid ten percent of
whatever we earned, but we would have to pay for posters and the
studio and all the costs of going on the road.

If the whole thing was a miserable failure after the first few gigs
we would ditch Ray and come back to Elroy's every Friday night. We
would still play there anyway, except for our time away on the road
trip.

All the guys shook hands on it. I noticed Lisa and Jenny, Rick's
girlfriend, looked unhappy about the arrangement, but I suppose they
were mollified by the fact that it was all a trial. We said our
goodnights and Steve and I got into the car with Leon to drive home.
Just as Leon started the engine I remembered something I had to do,
and I asked them to wait. I ran back inside through the back door,
and found Elroy still sitting in the office. He still had the
photograph of his family on the desk. He looked surprised to see me,
and stood up. "What's up, Em?" he asked. I didn't say anything, but
I went up to him and hugged him tightly. When I finished the hug I
made him bend down, and then I kissed him on the cheek.

"I know nothing's going to bring them back, Elroy, but if it's any
consolation, there's still a lot of people who love you," I said.

He looked at me and I could see him fight back a tear. I stretched
up to kiss him on the cheek again and then went out to the waiting
car to go back to Julia's.

***

True to his word, Ray organized us a gig in Memphis for two weeks
time, in a big place, with second billing. Getting any sort of
billing at all seemed like a bit of a coup, since we were unknown in
Memphis, although I found out later that we got the slot because
another band backed out late.

Ray also booked us some studio time. Brett and Steve had spent a lot
of their free time writing, and Steve and I worked on two songs
together as well. I liked working on songs with Steve. It reminded
me of our time at Brand together, and although I had hated being at
Brand I thought of that period as the one in which Steve and I had
been closest.

Julia was spending a lot of time with Pete, and so there were quite
a few nights when Pris and I had the apartment to ourselves. I was
getting to like Pris more and more. We did lots of dumb stuff
together, like listening to really sad songs and crying our eyes
out, and telling each other scary stories late at night and doing
stupid quizzes in Cosmo. When I mentioned one night that I had never
had much practice dancing, Pris and I practiced for hours and hours.

Pris started teaching me to cook, too. After just a couple of nights
I took on most of the cooking duties. I liked it. It made me feel
like I was at least partially giving something back to Julia and
Pris for having me there.

Steve's moodiness increased in frequency, and a couple of nights he
never even called to let me know what was going on. I called him a
lot, and it seemed to me at one point that I was the one doing all
the work in the relationship. But the next time I saw him he
reassured me that he loved me, and apologized for neglecting me.
"There's just some stuff going on," he said. He wouldn't elaborate.
I didn't really understand it since we had lived together for years
at Brand and he hadn't been at all moody then, but I didn't push the
matter. Then, the very next night when he had said he would call to
arrange to take me to dinner, I didn't hear anything from him at
all. I called his place at 7.00pm and there was no-one home. At
first I was worried, but then I just became pissed at him. He'd been
all talk, lately. We hadn't even been having sex as often as we used to.

I was angry and sad and I just wanted to mope around the apartment,
but Pris dragged me along to a party that one of the fraternities
was having. I was reticent about going, because I hadn't mentioned
it to Steve and I hadn't been out a lot socially without him, but
Pris said if I wouldn't go with her she wouldn't go at all. So I
gave in. She helped me do my makeup, and the way it worked out she
said it looked like I was older. I wore a coffee-colored silk blouse
and a black skirt and Pris lent me some jewelry.

At first I was intimidated at the party. It was being held in the
garden of the Frat house, and there was a live band as well as a DJ
to cater to the disco crowd. Everyone else there seemed very
sophisticated -- well, except for the guys on the football team, who
lived up to the stories I had heard Julia and Pris tell. Most of the
people there seemed like they came from well-to-do families, and all
the women were much better dressed than I would have expected
college students to be. They weren't dressed up, but you could tell
their clothes were expensive.

Pris hung close by me for an hour or so but eventually we got
separated and I found myself hemmed in almost immediately by a cute
guy named Wiley who had a voice just like Steve's and a smooth
southern accent to match Steve's too. Wiley was even taller than
Steve, and had dark hair, and although he wasn't quite as good
looking as Steve his manner suggested gentleness and courtesy even
though his eyes suggested he'd like to undress me. I was getting
used to guys looking at me like that, and I liked him in spite of
it. Early in our conversation I dropped the hint that I was attached
to another guy, but that didn't faze Wiley at all. "Is he here?" he
asked, and when I admitted Steve wasn't he simply said "Dumb guy,
letting such a beautiful girl out alone."

We danced, and I drank way too much of the sweet-tasting and very
alcoholic stuff they were calling 'punch' that night. I didn't think
much of the band, and I told Wiley so. He seemed to find that very
amusing. After one long slow close dance Wiley guided me off to a
dark corner of the garden. Uh oh, I thought. I was drunk as can be,
and he knew it, but he was a perfect gentleman. There was a brick
retaining wall there about four feet high, and he picked me up
around my waist and sat me on it so our faces were almost level.
"There, that's better," he said. "You have a pretty face, Emma, but
you are a tiny little thing, aren't you?"

"I'm not that short," I protested. "It's just that you're enormous.
Are you on the basketball team?" I asked. He was definitely tall enough.

He shook his head. "Football."

"I've been warned about guys like you," I said.

He smiled. "Emma, I'm sure everything you've heard is true. But I'm
more interested in hearing about you."

I blushed. I hadn't had much experience with guys apart from Steve.
It was strange to be getting this attention. I felt guilty, as
though I was somehow betraying Steve just by talking to Wiley, but I
liked being with him, and I liked the way he looked at me.

I made up some stuff about having come to Oxford to visit a friend.
That was sort of true. I didn't mention she was my boyfriend's
sister. I told Wiley about "Firehouse" and then he understood my
criticism of the band at the party -- he had smiled because
according to his friend the band at the party was just a bunch of
frat boys who got together to play,, and Wiley thought they sucked
too. "Maybe they can book your band to play next time," he smiled.
"I sure would like to hear you sing, Emma."

I wasn't very comfortable talking about myself and so I steered the
conversation toward Wiley. He was studying engineering in Atlanta,
following in his father's footsteps to take over the family
business. He had come to Oxford with a friend, just for the ride,
and was headed home in three days time. From his comments I gathered
that his family had money, but he wasn't boastful about it. The more
I listened to him talk the more I liked him. He was softly-spoken
and courteous and not at all like I'd imagined from the stories Pris
and Julia had told me about football players. Maybe Atlanta football
players were better than Mississippi ones, I thought.

"What are you studying?" Wiley asked.

I was embarrassed, and it must have showed. "I haven't had a whole
lot of school, Wiley" I said.

He seemed surprised, but it didn't diminish his interest in me.
"Why's that, Emma? You seem smart enough."

"Family stuff. You don't really want to know."

"Yeah, I do."

"No, you don't," I said firmly. He didn't push the issue. Instead he
asked me about the music I liked. It turned out we had similar
tastes. I wouldn't have picked him for a fan of women
singer-songwriters. Somehow that didn't go together in my head with
the stuff that football players were supposed to like. Wiley sure
was an interesting set of puzzles.

At around 1.00am Pris reappeared to tell me she was heading home.
After all the alcohol I'd consumed I was almost tempted to tell her
to go on ahead, since I was having such a good time with Wiley, and
I briefly toyed with the idea of doing something to make Steve
jealous, but that wouldn't have been fair to either Steve or Wiley.

As I began to say goodbye to Wiley, Pris walked back into the house
to give us some space. I reminded myself through the fog of alcohol
that there was no point encouraging Wiley anyway. What would he have
thought if he knew the truth about me? Encouraging him might lead to
some unpleasantness for both of us. Anyway, he was only in town for
a couple of days.

Good sense prevailed, but he must have noticed my change in mood as
I reminded myself I wasn't enough of a woman for a guy like him.
"Hey, Emma, what's wrong?" he asked.

"'S nothing," I said. "I'm okay. Too much to drink, I think."

"Want me to take you home instead?"

"No, Pris is ready to go, and ... I don't think it would be right,
Wiley."

"You're kind of old fashioned, aren't you?"

"No! I just..."

"It's okay, Emma. I like it. So many girls I meet, you know,
they're..." He evidently thought better of trashing the other women
in his life. "Could I call you sometime, Emma?" Wiley asked.

"Wiley," I said gently, "I did tell you there was someone else."

"Yes, Emma, but I'm a persistent guy, And you're the most beautiful
girl I've ever seen" He smiled.

I blushed. I had to admit I liked Wiley, and he made me feel
wonderful. "I'm flattered, but no, thank you."

"But I'm only here for a few days."

"All the more reason to say no," I smiled.

"I'm also not very smart when it comes to women," he said jokingly.

I didn't believe that for a moment, but I nodded. "You need to
concentrate on the available ones."

He smiled, and scribbled his own number on a scrap of paper. "If you
ever change your mind, Emma... You should come to Atlanta some time."

I accepted the paper and smiled back, then went to find Pris.

When we got back Julia was already home, asleep. Pris and I tiptoed
around the apartment, trying to be quiet until I tripped over one of
Julia's shoes and knocked over a chair. "OOoow!" I hissed, and Pris
cracked up. I hit my shin on the chair as I knocked it and I hopped
around until Pris led me over to the couch. "A little too much
punch." I muttered.

"Are you okay?" Pris put her arm around me and guided me down to
sit. She was still laughing.

"'S not funny," I grumbled.

"I'm sorry," she cackled. "It *looked* funny."

The two of us collapsed back onto the couch. Pris kept her arm
around me. It felt good.

"He's such a bastard, Pris," I said.

"Ah, but he's a handsome bastard, Em. And you do love him, I know that."

"I thought of going home with Wiley tonight, just to teach him a
lesson."

"Well, you made the right choice."

"Pris?"

"Yes, Em?"

"How come you didn't go home with anyone?"

"Pardon?"

I was drunk enough to be rude. "You're a good looking girl, and that
guy I saw you talking to tonight seemed keen enough. You saving
yourself for marriage?"

Pris smiled. "Just haven't met the right person, I guess." She
reflected for a moment. "Or the people I'm interested in are the
wrong people." She mussed my hair. "Stand up and we'll get the bed out."

We dragged the bed out and made it. I had a lot of trouble with the
bedding because the alcohol was really getting to me. As we finished
I stumbled again and Pris grabbed my arm to steady me. "Thanks," I
said, and I hugged her. She felt good. She was so soft, so different
to hugging Steve, and she smelled good, too. Not better than Steve,
just very different. I took a half step back and looked up at her.
She smiled down at me. My thoughts were kind of confused, but I
can't pretend I didn't know what was happening. I hugged her again,
then lifted my head and kissed her on the cheek. She went to
disengage but instead I guided her head with my hand and kissed her
on the lips instead. She kissed me back. It was lovely. She tasted
sweet and clean, and although it felt very different than anything I
had ever felt before I enjoyed it.

Pris broke the kiss off before I did. "You're drunk," she said.

"Yes," I said evenly. "Guilty. So what?"

She looked at me uncertainly and kissed me again. I liked it a lot.

I don't want to sound like a total idiot, but as all of this went on
I was behaving like one. Honestly, it sounds unbelievable, but over
the weeks I had been living with Pris and Julia I had started to
think of myself as a girl. Apart from the times that I felt
inadequate with Steve, I never thought about myself in a guy way,
and since I never had any erections any more the way my genitals
looked didn't mean much to me. In the alcohol and the excitement, I
honestly had forgotten that I had anything to hide from Pris. When
she kissed me again, my brain suddenly started working and I
realized what would happen if all these nice things continued.

I sat down on the bed abruptly, and she sat down next to me. "Are
you okay?" she asked.

"Yes. I'm just not very smart."

Pris seemed confused. "Emma, I --"

I hugged her again. "Pris, you're great. I really like you. I'm
sorry I kissed you."

"Well, I'm not," Pris said. "I enjoyed it, if you want to know the
truth."

"So did I," I said. "But I need to think about... things. Is that
alright?" I straightened up and looked her in the eye.

"Of course," she said, as she pushed my hair back from my face.
"It's okay, Emma. You don't have anything to be worried about." She
clasped my hand in hers.

"Thanks, Pris."

"Sometime when you're not drunk maybe we should have a talk."

"Okay"

"In the meantime you *are* drunk, so what say we put you to bed,
huh?" She smiled.

"Okay. I need to pee first, okay?"

I went off to the bathroom and stripped off and changed after I'd
peed and brushed my teeth. I was pretty unsteady on my feet. I put
on a large football top that Julia had given to me a few weeks
earlier to use as a nightgown and went back to the living room. Pris
helped me into the bed and then tucked me in, and bent down to kiss
me goodnight, on the lips. I wriggled in the bed. I liked it. She
broke off with a grin. "Well then, Miss Sobriety, I'll see you in
the morning."

She left and turned out the light, and I felt the room spin a few
times before I got to sleep that night.

Steve came over early the next day and was bright and charming and
tried to get me to go out with him. I was dark and surly and
hungover and said no. Pris was terrific, and let everything that had
happened the night before pass without comment. It took the rest of
the day before I felt well enough to leave the apartment, and
fortunately Steve was still in good form that evening. We had dinner
in a little cafe, and made love in the apartment while Pris and
Julia were out with friends.

The next evening I managed to get Julia and Pris together to discuss
something that had been bothering me. We sat around the table with a
pot of tea I had made. "I need to get another place to live," I
began tentatively as I poured for the three of us.

"Why?" Julia asked.

"Well... doesn't it bug you that your living room is a bedroom now?"

"Nope," Julia said. "Not at all. I won't pre-empt whatever Pris
wants to say, but I like having you here."

"But you must want to be able to use the space, you know, as a
living room."

"Not really, Emma. If I want to be alone with Pete I'll go to his
place."

"What about you, Pris?" I asked.

"Emma honey, you're no imposition at all. Hell, I'd be offended if
you left us."

"But..."

"Do you want more privacy?" Julia asked me. "Is it too difficult for
you this way?"

"No, no, that's not it. You guys are great, you know that."

"Emma," Pris said seriously. "We like having you around. If you want
a room of your own maybe we should all look for a bigger place."

"No. I'm sorry. I just thought --"

"-- Is it because you want to live with Steve?" Julia asked. "You
know, Emma, we discussed that, and it's really --"

"-- No. Yes. Maybe that's part of it, but it's not most of it. I
guess I just feel guilty. You guys have been so good to me."

"I think we've gotten a lot more than we've given," Pris said.

"Yeah," Julia smiled. "Where else could I find such a cool little
sister."

I was momentarily overcome, and had to blink back some tears. These
women were so good to me. "I'm not sure I deserve all this," I said
hesitantly. Then the tears did flow. Julia reached across to take my
hand. I tried to smile through the tears but I couldn't cope with
the idea that there were people other than Steve who really did like
having me around. I hadn't had a woman in my life that I could talk
to since Mom, and I realized as I cried that it meant so much to me
to be accepted by other women now.

"Well, that's settled I think, Julia," Pris said as she stood up.
"We need to get a place with space for the three of us," Pris said.

She walked around behind my chair and began to rub my shoulders.
"Ooh, honey, you need to relax. Don't you go getting in a knot
worrying about what might offend Julia and me. We'll tell you if
you're bugging us, don't you worry about that.

"In the meantime, you *are* a part of this household and I won't
hear any more talk about you leaving because of us. If you ever want
to leave it should be because you want to for yourself, not because
you think you're some stupid inconvenience."

I looked up over my shoulder at her. It didn't feel right that she
was so good to me and she didn't even know I wasn't really a girl.
But it didn't seem like the right time to go into that. I dried my
eyes and stood and hugged her, and then Julia, and no more was said
about me moving out.

(continued)

Distribution: Feel free to archive or otherwise distribute, provided
it (and this preamble) is unedited and no fee is charged for access.
This story may not be distributed from any site that charges money,
is members-only, or uses that ridiculous "adult check" thing (or any
similar system).

Firehouse on the road at last. Emma learns that sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll has three elements — not all of them are always fun.

Wild Horses

A novel, based on a true story

by Rebecca A.

Chapter Thirteen.

We got into Memphis at 2.00pm and found the motel where we were
staying. Then we went to do a sound check over at the bar we were
playing that evening. We'd finished by 4.30, and as we weren't due
to go on until 10.00 we had some free time. Everyone went to do
their own thing. The guys all had people they wanted to see and
Steve -- who seemed to be in one of his moods -- said he wanted to
go off by himself. I was secretly glad since I, too, wanted to pursue
some private business. I took the number Cee had given me for his
friends in Memphis and dialed it. A man's voice answered and I asked
for Vanessa. She came to the phone and I introduced myself as a
friend of Cary's, and said he had told me to look her up if ever I
was in Memphis.

"Do you have some time to meet for coffee?" I asked.

"The heck with coffee, honey, let's find some place we can get a drink."

Vanessa suggested we meet in the bar of the Peabody Hotel. It was a
very grand looking place. When I entered the hotel in the early
evening it appeared there was a ball or function of some kind taking
place elsewhere in the hotel, as the lobby was full of men in
tuxedos and women in elaborate evening gowns. The lobby itself was a
grand two-story affair with a fountain and large overstuffed
furniture. I was dressed in a simple dark green dress and my black
sling-backs and as I walked through to the bar I felt plain and
strangely unfeminine amongst such finery. Then I noticed a bunch of
ducks in the fountain, and I was reassured. They were real, live
ducks, quacking and splashing. I smiled. It was hard to feel like
you were weird when there were ducks living in the hotel. The
Peabody seemed like it had character.

At the bar I ordered a lime and soda and waited for Vanessa. I had
told her on the phone how to recognize me, but she had given me no
clues about herself, and I eyed all the women in the place to see
whether she might have missed me come in. I was the only
unaccompanied woman in the bar, and definitely the only one under
thirty, so there seemed little chance of that. I took the copy of
'The Dice Man' that Rick had lent me from the mesh shoulder bag I
was carrying and began reading it. I had just read the first line
and realized it began with a story about rape when I saw Vanessa in
the margins of my vision.

I knew it was her before I saw her clearly. She swept in and made a
beeline for me. Wow. She was *huge*. At least six feet tall, maybe
more. At least as tall as Pris. And big with it. When she spoke her
drawl was pronounced, even for Memphis. "Emmmm-ahhh!" she oozed. She
had blonde hair -- make that platinum blonde -- piled high on her
head and a black wrap-over dress that barely contained her
extraordinary breasts. Her face was round and fleshy, and she had
the beginnings of crows feet beginning to mark her otherwise creamy
skin. It was hard to guess her age. Her voice was quite deep, and on
the phone had suggested she was older, but she seemed no more than
35 to me in the flesh. She was smiling, and she had her arms open as
though she expected me to stand up and be swallowed up in them. "I'm
sooo sorry to have kept you waiting!"

I said hello and she sat and ordered a vodka and tonic. "None of
that Scandinavian crap daaahling" she insisted to the Bartender
before turning to appraise me. "Emma, you look just diviiiiine."

For some reason I blushed. "Thank you for meeting me."

"I could hardly wait," Vanessa breathed. "Dear, Cary Philips is like
my own child. I was so, so heartbroken to lose him when they... when
he was involved in that unfortunate business."

"Have you heard from him?"

"I had a postcard --"

"-- From San Francisco? Is he okay?"

"-- And a letter. Yes, they were, and yes, he is."

"That's good to hear."

"He's a sweet boy."

"Do you have an address where I can write to him?"

"I'm afraid not." Her vodka arrived and she drank a large mouthful
right off.

"Oh."

My face must have fallen, because Vanessa immediately tried to
reassure me. "But I'm sure he'll write again. Emma, if I understand
it he's not really at liberty to tell anyone where he is. Do you
know anything about that?"

I briefly considered how much I would have to tell Vanessa. Since
she couldn't help me locate Cee I wasn't sure I needed to tell her
anything.

"Tell me, Emma, how is it you came to meet him?" She continued.

I knew we would get to this at some point if I pressed her for
information, but now I was on the spot. Cee had said she was a good
friend, so...

"We met when he was at Brand."

"Inside?"

I nodded. I suddenly found it difficult to meet her eyes.

"Were you doing volunteer work or such?"

I was still staring at my hands in my lap. "No ma'am. I was an inmate."

Vanessa didn't say anything for a long, long time. I figured she was
either puzzled, or shocked, and eventually I looked up at her to
find out which. She didn't seem to be either. Instead she had a
small smile on her face. "I knew that, Emma," she said gently.

Now it was my turn to be puzzled.

"Cary mentioned in his letter that you might contact me if you
needed help. Pardon me for intruding on your life, but I had to know
if you were going to be honest with me."

"I uh... I don't need help. I was just trying to find a way to reach
Cee -- Cary."

"Cary thought there would be things you would need."

"No. No, I can't think of anything."

"Would you like... would you be willing to tell me how you came to
be at that place?"

I sat awkwardly for a moment. Vanessa gestured to attract the
barman's attention. "Sugar, we could do with two more Vodka's. We'll
take them over there." She indicated a table at the far end of the
bar, away from other people. I could see the bartender was thinking
of protesting to Vanessa about serving liquor to someone my age, but
she gave him a look that evidently made him rethink.

We went over to the table. I felt more like a freak than ever as I
walked. I hated it when people knew about my odd situation. I felt
so self-conscious. I made sure I smoothed my dress under me as I sat
and I crossed my legs and offered her a weak smile.

"Start at the beginning, sugar," Vanessa said as the bartender set
our vodkas down on the table and left. So I did. I abbreviated all
the stuff about my innocence. Something I couldn't put my finger on
about Vanessa suggested to me that she had seen more of the world
than I had, and I figured she would draw her own conclusions about
whether I was or wasn't a good person based on more than any story I
could tell. During the course of the telling I became slightly
emotional once or twice, which might have been due to my memories or
the two additional vodkas Vanessa ordered, or perhaps a little bit
of both.

I finished the story at the point at which I'd last seen Cary, in
the back seat of the Malibu bumping down the track from the cabin
where Travis was now buried. I didn't feel the need to tell Vanessa
anything beyond that.

"Are you happy, Emma?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Please, call me Vanessa. Good. I'm surprised. Not many boys would
have dealt well with what you've been through. There must have been
something in you?"

I shrugged. I wasn't defensive about my masculinity any longer. I
didn't even think of myself as having any masculinity any more, and
I said as much to Vanessa.

"Pardon me for asking, sugar, but is that all you?" She waved a hand
at me to indicate my body, and I blushed for some reason -- it was
strange to be embarrassed about that after everything I'd just told her.

"Yes ma'am."

"Vanessa, please. The gods have been kind to you, haven't they?
You're a beautiful woman, Emma." I blushed again. "I really can't
pick anything about you that would give you away at all. So tell me,
sugar, what are your plans for the future?"

"I don't know, ma -- Vanessa. I guess I'm just happy ..."

"Do you want more?"

"More?"

"Do you want... do you want to become a woman?"

"How?" I genuinely didn't understand.

"Surgery, sugar."

"They can do that?"

"You really haven't been out in the world much, have you? What have
you been doing for hormones?"

I confessed that I hadn't had any at all since the last shot Blaha
had given me nearly six months earlier. Vanessa seemed concerned,
and grilled me about my feelings, and suddenly some of my unease in
the previous weeks seemed to make some sense to me. My old male self
was starting to come back as the hormones Blaha had given me faded.
I wondered what would happen if it continued. Would I become more
like a guy, and less like a girl? Would I wind up looking like a
girl, or like a guy with tits? What would happen to Steve and me if
I started looking less like a girl?

I had just started getting used to being a girl, and I was happy. I
didn't know whether I could be anything else, now. Being a guy just
seemed so... it seemed so completely different to who I felt
comfortable being. So... other.

Vanessa seemed to read my mind, and she told me she shared my concerns.

"Thanks, I think," I said.

"Emma, do you trust me?" Vanessa asked.

"Pardon?"

"Do you trust me?"

I paused for thought. "You're a friend of Cary's, so..." I shrugged.

"Do you have any money with you?"

"Some," I said. "I think sixty dollars." In fact I had almost a
hundred that Julia had thrust at me before we had come to Memphis,
but I didn't want to reveal that.

"Good." She downed the rest of her drink and motioned for me to do
the same. "Come with me, then, dear."

We took a cab, down south on Second Street, past Beale Street which
seemed like it was being torn apart building by building, and on a
couple of blocks into a neighborhood that looked the worse for wear
for different reasons. Most of the people on the streets were
colored, and the houses were different, but I had a feeling that in
lots of other ways it wasn't too different from the neighborhood I
had grown up in. People here were doing it hard, and always would.

We stopped at a two-storey place with an old ornate porch. The
flaking paint on the building was so old that its weathered gray
color was indistinguishable from the bare timber patches. "I'll need
forty dollars, Emma," Vanessa said.

I was going to ask her what it was for but something in her face
told me that just by being in the cab outside this place I had
already forfeited a large amount of whatever rights to control I
had. I was pretty buzzed from the vodka anyway. I reached into my
purse and gave Vanessa forty dollars, and she indicated that I
should pay the cab as well. I sighed and dug into my purse again as
Vanessa consigned the forty dollars to an envelope she extracted
from her own purse.

A group of black men were slouched around the door to the building.
They reluctantly shifted their hips as we approached so we could
squeeze past them into the hallway beyond. Vanessa knocked on a door
and after a few seconds we were admitted. Inside it was so dark I
couldn't see anything for a few moments, but I was aware of others
in the room and I could almost feel their eyes sizing me up.
Eventually some dark faces took shape in the gloom, and in the light
from a television set at the far end of the room I saw a pale
skinned figure observing us.

"You a pretty one, girl," the figure said. I recognized the voice as
the man who had answered the phone when I first rang Vanessa, but
something about that voice didn't quite ring true with the mass of
the figure it was coming from.

"Hush now," said Vanessa. "Girls, this is Emma. She's a friend of
Cary's, and y'all know how I feel about Cary, so I want you to make
Emma feel real welcome." She turned to me and indicated a chair
beside a dark skinned girl next to me. "Sit down, honey, and I'll be
right back." She disappeared into a room beyond the television set
and I heard her begin to say something to someone inside before she
closed the door.

I sat awkwardly, still nervous at being the center of attention.
Everyone in the room was staring at me, and at first I averted my
eyes and looked at the floor in front of me. When I flicked my eyes
back up at the girl sitting opposite me she was still looking at me,
and I blushed and studied my hands for a moment. In the quick
glimpse I had got I had noticed her heavily made-up eyes and short
red dress, and my impression was that she was very possibly a
working girl. Another quick glance up and a nervous smile at her
confirmed my opinion. She gave only the most imperceptible smile in
return, and met my gaze confidently. The woman next to her was
older, but similarly attired and made up. Was this some kind of
brothel? I wondered.

The male voice from the end of the room said something I didn't
catch, and the women laughed. I instinctively felt it was a comment
about me, and I blushed. There was something odd about the laughter
of the girl next to me, and I turned to look at her. Although the
only light in the room was the television I found I could make out
her features much better now, and to my shock I noticed that even
with her coffee-colored skin she seemed to have noticeable beard
shadow. She was a guy. Maybe. I didn't want to stare so I looked
away, back at the girl opposite me. She seemed normal enough.

"Where you from, girl?" the man at the end of the room asked. I
realized now what had seemed incongruous -- the voice belonged to
someone who looked extremely androgynous.

"She lives in Mississippi, Delia," Vanessa said as she opened the
door. "Not that it means anything to you. Emma, would you like to
come in?"

I stood up and followed Vanessa into the next room. It was slightly
brighter than the one I'd just come from, but only just, lighted by
a single desk lamp that shone directly downward. There was a figure
on the other side of a large wooden desk, visible only in the light
that reflected off the dark, worn leather inlay on the desk top,
which is to say hardly visible at all. Vanessa guided me to one of
two chairs in front of the desk and we both sat down.

"Lester, this is Emma Boyle. Emma, Dr. Lester Savage," Vanessa said.

"Charmed, m'dear," the barely visible Dr. Savage said. I could see
that he was white, and that he was fat. A pint bottle of whiskey,
three-quarters empty, sat on the edge of the desk not far from the
Doctor's right hand. "I understand you are having some women's
problems."

That was one way to explain it, I thought. Dr. Savage asked me a
couple of questions about my health. I felt awkward about even being
in the office with him, especially since I had quickly guessed the
nature of part of his practice from the women in the room outside,
but his inquiries were brief and pointed, and a few moments later he
had scrawled a prescription and passed it across the desk. Then he
asked me to undress and lie on the examination table that was barely
visible in the gloom over at the side of the office. I looked at
Vanessa and she nodded.

I undressed down to my bra and panties and lay on the table as the
Doctor lumbered to his feet and went to the other side of the office
and unlocked a small cabinet. He took out some packages and
unwrapped them as I looked to the ceiling and tried not to be
fearful. My mind was full of the possible consequences of being
examined in what was clearly an unhygienic environment. He lumbered
towards me and I stiffened. "Lie on your side," he commanded, and I
complied and waited for his sweaty fleshy touch. Instead I felt a
quick swab on my thigh and then the jab of a hypodermic, followed by
some pain as a thick substance was injected into my muscle. He
finished the injection, swabbed me again and then told me to get
dressed. As soon as I was decent, before I had the chance to sit
down, he told me he would provide the prescription by mail every two
months, and that under no circumstances was I to relate the details
of what had just transpired to anyone so long as he was alive.
Vanessa slid the envelope across the desk to the Doctor and then
stood and led me out of the office.

Out on the street we had to walk to the end of the street to a
busier road to hail a cab. I kept rubbing my thigh where Doctor
Savage had jabbed it. It had been a while since I had received a
shot like that, and Blaha had always given them to me in the butt,
which didn't hurt quite so much. Vanessa noticed me rubbing and
smiled. "At least it will keep you looking pretty, sugar."

We took a cab to another house in a slightly more upscale
neighborhood. By more upscale I mean the windows in the houses all
had glass in them -- otherwise there wasn't a whole heap of
difference. We walked up a flight of stairs to a large apartment in
a run-down building. The place looked totally different inside,
clean and bright and well-maintained, although I noticed an
electrical outlet was taped to the wall in the small kitchen off the
hallway. "Welcome to my place," Vanessa said cheerfully. "Make
yourself at home, sugar." She pulled some papers from the top of the
refrigerator and passed them to me. "You might be interested in
these while I make us a drink."

I begged off the drink, explaining that I had to go on at ten.

"You're a little short to be doing the clubs, aren't you sugar?"
Vanessa asked.

"What's height got to do with it?" I asked, puzzled.

"Most of the owners hereabouts, they like their girls a little taller."

I honestly didn't understand what she was getting at for a moment,
and then I wondered whether I should be insulted. "Vanessa," I said
gently, "I *sing*. I'm not a dancer or anything."

"You sing?" I could tell by the inflection in her voice that she
still thought my singing was part of a sex act or a strip show.

"Rock and Roll, R&B," I said. "I'm in a band." I reached into my
purse and extracted a flyer for the trip that Ray had given me at
the sound check. "Firehouse."

"Oh, my lord!" she said as she finally understood, and then she
laughed. "What must you think of me, child!"

"It's okay, really. But I'll stick to water if that's okay with you.
The vodka has already been a bit much."

"Heavens, sugar," she said, looking at the flyer and handing me a
glass of water. "You do this for a *living*?"

"It's not much of one," I admitted. "But we're just starting out,
really. If you want to come tonight I'll put your name on the door."

We went into the living room and I looked at the papers she had
handed me. There was a postcard from Cee, and a letter which ran to
almost four pages. Reading it didn't add much to the details that
Vanessa had told me, but it was nice to see Cary's thoughts on San
Francisco and his feelings about being away from Brand. Both were
overwhelmingly positive, which was hardly surprising. As Vanessa had
said, there was a brief mention of me in the postcard, and then a
much longer description of my situation in the letter. 'I believe Em
will need help soon,' Cee had written, 'and I hope you'll do
everything for her as you would for me. She was my best -- my only
-- friend in that horrible place and she deserves only good things.'

I sat in the living room missing Cee more than ever. I was glad he
was enjoying California, but I wished I was with him.

I probed Vanessa about Doctor Savage's, and the 'girls' in the room
outside his office. "How did you know about a place like that,
Vanessa?" I asked. I idly wondered whether she was a real girl.
After all, she was so tall, and her voice was quite deep. But her
breasts were so large, and her mannerisms seemed very feminine.

"It's okay, sugar, I'm all girl, if that's what you're wondering.
Born and raised that way. I'm a kind of aunt to most of them I
suppose, and a few of the gay boys working the bars. Most of them
don't have anyone else, so I take care of them."

"Take care of them?"

"A little money when times are tough; a lot of love because times
are always tough." She drained her glass again. I hadn't seen her
pour them and I suspected that hers contained vodka.

"But why?" I asked. "You don't... please pardon me if I'm being
rude, but you don't seem to have a lot of money to go around."

"Oh, I have money, sugar. I'm very careful with it, is all." I
remembered that I had paid for the cabs -- but then I had told
Vanessa I had money.

"As to why," she continued, "I don't rightly know. I suppose I have
a kind of natural resistance to the forces that make everyone walk
the narrow path, Emma. There's a lot of love in the people society
casts out, but very few get to see it."

Vanessa had a soul as big as her body. Maybe bigger.

I asked about the room at Doctor Savage's again. Why were all the
girls sitting there? Were they waiting for appointments? Had I
jumped a queue? Vanessa explained that they lived there, in the
other rooms aside from Savage's office. "He's a harmless old fool
who's obsessed by boys in dresses but incapable of doing anything
about it since he made friends with the bottle," Vanessa said. "He
doesn't have any other practice these days, and the girls take care
of him in return for medical services rendered. So long as he treats
them well he gets a place to live and he gets to keep his license."

We sat and discussed the Memphis 'scene', which involved a
substantial number of drag queens and transsexuals. Vanessa
explained the difference to me, and then we got into more personal
discussions as she asked me again about my future and then told me
about the various surgical options open to me if I decided I wanted
to go "all the way". She was a treasure trove of information.

When I left at 9.15pm I felt refreshed. Although surgery had never
been on my mind before, the other issues were the sorts of things I
had sometimes discussed with Cary, and even though Vanessa was very
different to Cary I felt better about having talked about my
specific problems with her. They weren't the sorts of things that I
could mention to Julia and I was always afraid to raise them with
Steve for fear of how he might begin to think of me.

The gig went well, *really well*, and the crowd cried for more. The
only difficult moments were before the show, when Steve seemed
uncharacteristically subdued and pallid and I worried that he might
be getting sick, and after the show when Vanessa and the person
named Delia came backstage and Delia's appearance made the rest of
the band nervous. Embarrassed, I hustled the two of them off for a
drink out front before the bar closed. They had loved the show, and
loved my singing, and I found Delia a most intriguing androgyne,
with features neither entirely female nor male which drew very odd
glances from some of the other patrons of the bar, and disturbed me
more than I admitted. Her appearance settled one thing in my mind,
though: Steve definitely didn't like being reminded of my in-between
state. He'd been as disturbed as the other guys in the band when
Delia was introduced.

***

We'd been playing to packed houses for months now in Tupelo, and Ray
had found us more gigs in Jackson, Knoxville and Nashville that had
gone over well. He organized some time for us in a small studio back
in Memphis. We went up there on the weekend and laid down ten songs
in the two days. Being in the studio was interesting, but it was
really pretty hard work. You lay down the tracks separately and
combine them in the mix, and it's hard to sound spontaneous and
fresh after you've sung the same verse four or five times. I wanted
to take a look around the town but there really wasn't any time
because we worked so hard all day and were all exhausted by the time
we finished.

The engineer who worked on our songs was a cheerful Greek guy named
Con who was very patient with us and our naivete about the recording
process. He had done some work with Alex Chilton, which blew Brett
away because we all thought Alex's records with his band Big Star
were fantastic. We stayed late on the Saturday night to record
'September Gurls' in a rough single take as a kind of homage.

Everyone tried their best and Con was a lot of fun to work with, but
in the end neither Brett nor Steve was totally happy with the way
the songs sounded. It wasn't really very surprising that they
sounded rough considering how much stuff we'd tried to record in one
weekend! Steve was unhappy with a couple of his solos and Brett
thought the overall sound was too muddy. He wanted my vocals to
stand out more in he mix. I was flattered, and I was impressed, too.
As a singer himself I expected him to want more of his own
performances in our recordings, but he was genuinely interested in
us succeeding as a band.

During the following week we met up with Ray in Oxford, and he
listened to our complaints and then arranged for Steve and I to redo
our parts on a couple of tracks the next Saturday, with another
engineer doing the mixing. Steve and Brett thought the mix was much
better and we ironed out one or two things in my performance that
had worried me too. Of course going back into the studio cost us a
lot of money, but Ray was supportive and told us we'd get it back
eventually in record sales and increased crowds.

Ray rush-pressed an EP of four of the songs from our studio
sessions. It contained a song that Steve and Brett had written
together, one that Brett had written alone, one that Steve had
written alone, and one that Steve had written with me while we were
at Brand together, 'No Questions'. Ray said he needed the EP for
distribution to radio stations where we were touring. He also got
Pete the anarchist to take some photographs of us performing at
Elroy's that he could use for publicity.

It cost more than seven hundred dollars for the studio time and the
record and the distribution, but everyone kicked in money. I think
Julia put up Steve's share. Elroy said he'd put in mine. I tried to
protest but I really didn't have any other way of paying. Elroy was
a sweetheart. I promised him I would pay him back. I don't think he
believed it, but I meant what I said.

When Ray gave us the record we all went over to Lisa and Brett's
house and played it about thirty times until nobody could bear to
hear it again. Except Bo, who kept playing it over and over again
until people begged for mercy. A few weeks later he was *still*
playing it.

Our shows featured only original material now, except for encores
which were always covers. Our choice of songs to cover was eclectic,
to say the least. Brett was well and truly into a Britpop 'punk'
phase, while Steve was much more into R&B and my own tastes were
slightly more folky. Rick liked any song that gave him a chance to
show off on keyboards, Bo liked flat out Rock and Roll and Jim was
leaning into a kind of Jazz Fusion, of all things. We usually did at
least two songs for an encore, and sometimes more if it was a really
good night.

Four months had gone by since our deal with Ray had begun, and it
was time for us to go on the road. Our first stop was probably the
toughest town we were going to play the whole tour -- a huge gig, to
more than 3,000 people, back in Memphis. Ray told us it was going to
be okay, but I paid more attention to Elroy's comments. "If they
like you in Memphis you'll find acceptance everywhere, but if they
hate you..." he said. Seeing that I was worried he tried to reassure
me. "'S alright, Emma, they're gonna love you, you know that."

***

Although most of the guys in Firehouse had been in other bands
before none of them had ever played a really big house, and none of
us really had any idea of what to expect. We loaded everything we
had into two vehicles, a van Rick had borrowed from a friend, and
Wendy's pickup which held most of the gear. I never really figured
out what Wendy did for a living besides hang out with us, but
whatever it was he could afford a nice truck and he was able to just
up and leave to come with us.

We all gathered at Brett and Lisa's to pack everything into the van
and the truck. Everyone was acting like we were going to be gone for
months instead of two weeks. Elroy showed up and gave us a couple of
six packs for the journey, and I gave him a big thank-you hug and
told him we'd send postcards. I think he was almost as excited for
me as I was. Julia and Pris said farewell and Pris reminded me with
a smile that going on the road trip did not mean I was moving out.

***

>From Memphis we went to Jonesboro, and then down to Little Rock. At
first being on the road was fun. When the Memphis show went over
well we felt good, and they liked us in Jonesboro, too, even though
it was a small gig by comparison. In the weeks before we went on the
road we had been practicing a lot, and some of the new songs Steve
and Brett had written were really fantastic. Everyone felt great.
What's better than playing good music and making people feel good
with it?

By the third day we were all getting irritable with one another. We
had all stayed up late after playing in Jonesboro, drinking and
joking around. We had never performed more than two nights in a row
before, and driving between cities was really pretty boring,
although we had the constant schizophrenic accompaniment of Iggy Pop
and Townes Van Zandt alternating on the cassette player so there was
always something to listen to. It wasn't difficult work -- each day
we didn't get up until at least 9.00am, and that was usually only
because we had to be out of the motel rooms. We were staying in the
cheapest places we could find, places where the walls were thin and
the mattresses were rotten and the plumbing was shot. We tried to be
in our rooms as little as possible. Steve and I had a room to
ourselves, but Rick and Bo and Brett and Jim doubled up to save
money. Three hotel rooms were eating into our earnings anyway, and
when gas and food and booze were included we didn't make much out of
most of the shows.

In Little Rock, our third stop, we were part of a double bill with a
band called Sons of the Railroad, who were more hard rocking than we
were and came from some town I'd never heard of in East Texas. We
played first, and then hung around while they played. I got carded,
of all things, and asked to leave the bar area, even though the
barman had seen me on stage only an hour earlier. It was only 10.30pm
and we didn't want to leave. We had all planned to go back to the
motel together at the end of the night and Rick and Brett were
nowhere to be seen and Jim was dancing with a girl, so Steve and me
and Bo and a blonde girl he had met went backstage to the band room
to wait for them. We all sat around the room and the girl passed
around a flask of whiskey she had.

"This is Maggie," Bo said to us. "Maggie, this here's Emma and Steve."

The girl nodded. "You guys were great tonight. Really."

There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say to that. It was nice to
get the praise, but kind of awkward. "Thanks," said Steve, affecting
an oh-so-cool air. I couldn't believe the expression on his face and
laughed.

"Here, man, you look like you need to relax and deflate your ego,"
Bo said jokingly. He had some grass and he rolled a joint and passed
it over to Steve, and we all laughed kind of nervously. Steve took a
hit from it and passed it on to me. I looked at him uncertainly. I'd
never tried it before, and I didn't smoke tobacco. He looked at me
like I was a child, and so I took it and inhaled and then
immediately coughed and spluttered and dropped the joint.

"Sorry!" I said.

The girl, Maggie, picked it up from the floor and took a hit from it
like she'd been doing it for years. I felt like such an idiot. She
passed it on to Bo with an approving nod, and then it came around
again. This time I waved it off. "I don't think I'm made for it," I
said. I didn't care if Steve thought I was uncool for not wanting to
get stoned.

Maggie was alright. She was not an especially beautiful girl; her
skin was pockmarked from a difficult adolescence and her thighs were
quite large, but she had a good heart, an open face and a ready
laugh, and that seemed to make her more attractive than most of the
other women Bo brought backstage after our gigs. I thought at first
that Bo had just hit on her out of the blue after our set, because
the guys in the band were always making jokes about Bo being such a
ladies man. I remembered an old off-color joke Steve had told me
about drummers when we first joined the band. But it turned out
Maggie was an old friend of Bo's. They went to high school together
in Texarkana. She hadn't known he was playing tonight, but had been
in the bar and had recognized him. They were both glad to get
somewhere quieter to talk, and I thought they deserved some privacy,
but Maggie was a real live wire who crackled with jokes and talk and
liked to have an audience. She had lost her job clerking at a local
business the week before when the old accountant who ran it upped
and died, and she was looking to move on out of the area, she said.

After the joint was finished Bo rolled another, and then another,
and I think the three of them were pretty stoned by the end of the
third one. I felt kind of out of things. Later that night when we
all went back to the motel -- Maggie accompanied Bo, I noticed --
Steve was very distant again, and he barely acknowledged me before
he hit the bed and slept.

Next morning he was much more cheerful, and we made love after we
woke. We lay together afterward and I stroked the hairs on Steve's
arm as I lay my head on his chest. I liked Steve's hairiness. I
don't know whether I liked it just on its own, or because it
reminded me of how different the two of us were and that made me
feel just a little more feminine. Maybe it was a bit of both. I was
stroking his arm, and he was running his fingers over my neck, when
I noticed there was a lot of bruising around the inside of his elbow.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Hmmm? What?" Steve said.

"Your arm. What did you do to it?"

"Huh? Oh, I don't know."

I let the subject go at the time, but I should have known what it
meant. I got out of bed and went to the bathroom instead. When we
checked out Bo announced we needed to swing by Maggie's place to
pick up some stuff -- she was going to come on the road with us. I
thought it was interesting that someone would make such a snap
decision and just up and leave pretty much everything she had for a
week or more, but I was also glad to have another girl riding along
with us, even if it did get kind of cramped in Rick's borrowed van.
Even though we had been away from Oxford for only a few days, I
found I missed having women around. The guys were nice enough, but
somehow I just didn't fit in with guys anymore. If I ever had, I
thought.

Our tour called for us to swing across through Texas, and into New
Mexico, then back into Southern Texas and then into Louisiana. After
that it was along the coast and up toward Atlanta taking in most of
the major cities along the way. After Atlanta we had Gadsden and
Birmingham and then we were back in Oxford. I had never even seen
the ocean, so I was looking forward to the coast part of the trip.

I had discovered that washing clothes on the road was impracticable
most of the time, and so I'd had to wear a variety of things
on stage, from my green dress, in a place that looked better than
most in Austin, to just plain t-shirt and jeans in a rough looking
place in Alexandria. Mostly it didn't seem to matter much. As Julia
had predicted, people liked to look at me and the first part of our
shows always went better when I dressed up than when I wore
t-shirts, but once we got to the part of our second set everyone
called 'the quiet songs', the ones that Steve had written for me
specially, the atmosphere in every room we played changed and got
really intense. As we performed in front of different audiences I
got more comfortable with myself on stage and Brett and Steve and I
even worked out some on stage banter between songs that the crowd
seemed to like. Everywhere we went people thought we were great, and
we actually sold a lot of the EP's that Ray had given us. After we
did the show in Baton Rouge a guy from one of the local radio
stations came up and asked us to do an interview with him, and he
made us a feature of his next show. Ray was ecstatic, and ordered
more records.

I was beginning to warm to Ray. At first I had dismissed all his
talk about big success and records and all that, but I had to hand
it to him: he worked hard. Every gig he had ever set up for us had
been in a good, well-run place that could pull a crowd, and on the
road trip every place we went he had already sent records on ahead
to the local radio stations and followed up with phone calls to make
sure they would play them. He had a network of people in most of the
towns we went to who put up posters promoting our shows and got
articles placed in the local paper. Whenever we got into town Ray
would visit the local record store to see whether they would stock
the record. We weren't the only band he managed, but it seemed like
he gave us all his attention.

Our first single broke in Dallas -- Ray had taken the song from the
EP that Steve had written with me, 'No Questions', and done a
separate pressing of it backed with our cover of 'September Gurls',
and some DJ there just wigged out on it and convinced the program
director to put it on high rotation. Within a week it seemed like it
had rippled out from there. By the time we got to Louisiana it was
getting nation-wide airplay, our gigs were selling out, and scungy
journalists started calling our motel rooms. Ray flew down to Baton
Rouge to be with us, and begin to plan putting an album together.

I noticed that all the guys smoked dope, and there was a lot handed
around. I was kind of curious about it -- I don't want you to think
I was some kind of ultra-straight kid who was morally opposed to it
or anything, and I sure didn't want the guys to think that. But I
had never smoked tobacco, and after that time with Maggie and Bo I
thought I couldn't smoke anything. Steve tried to teach me, but it
didn't work. I just coughed and spluttered and everyone laughed at
me. So I was the only one who didn't get stoned most nights.

We were in the van just outside Mobile, joking about the amount Bo
had drunk the night before, when a cop pulled the van over. Rick was
driving and Ray was in the front seat beside him, and Steve, Bo,
Brett and I were in back. Wendy and Jim were in the pickup and kept
on going after we got pulled over. I didn't know what was happening
at first -- Rick said "Shit" and began to pull over and I thought
something was wrong with the van.

"It's cool," Ray said. "Bo, make sure your stash is hidden away
somewhere safe."

"What's up, man?" Bo said.

"Cop," Rick said dejectedly.

I felt, more than saw, Steve stiffen in the seat beside me. I took
his hand and squeezed it. "It's okay," I said. "Everything will be
okay." I don't know why I said that but it was probably to reassure
myself as much as Steve.

Rick stopped the van and turned off the engine. A few moments later
the cop walked along the side of the van and appeared at Rick's
window. He was tall and thin and hard looking. "See your license?"
the cop said. Rick handed it over. "Registration?" the cop said.

Rick got it from the glove compartment. "It's not my van. It belongs
to a friend." I looked over at Steve. He looked like a caged animal.
I could see his muscles flexing as he considered leaping from the
van and running.

"Good friend, lettin' you drive it this far," the cop said. "Know
why I stopped you, son?"

"No, sir." Rick said.

"You got some wire" -- he said it 'wayuh' --"hangin' from the back
of your van. It's draggin' behind you."

"Oh. Thanks," Rick said. "Mind if I get out and look?"

The cop nodded his assent. Ray and Rick both got out and went around
the back of the van. The cop peered in past Rick to try to get a
look inside as they opened the back door. He was looking straight at
Steve. I could sense Steve's body go rigid.

"Damn," Ray said. Sure enough a lead had flopped out of one of the
boxes in back of the van, and whoever had packed it had shut the van
door without noticing it hanging out. The plug on the end of the
lead was ruined. "Well, thanks for letting us know, officer."

The cop looked away from Steve and I could feel the tension ease
slightly.

"Musicians, huh?" the cop said, peering at some of the gear in the back.

Ray couldn't resist handing him a handbill for the trip with the
dates for the tour.

"Firehouse. That's easy to remember." He folded the handbill and put
it in his pocket. "Well, y'all enjoy your stay. And pack your load
better next time."

Ray closed up the back and he and Rick got back in the van as the
cop drove on. "Jesus," said Bo as Rick started the van, "*Now* I
could use a drink."

I noticed Maggie was staring at Steve strangely as we drove off. Had
she noticed anything unusual about his behavior?

We got into Mobile early in the afternoon and did our sound check
quickly. Wendy was getting practiced at our setups and was able to
do everything much quicker these days. Then we went to the motel to
check in. Afterward the guys and Maggie wanted to get out and look
around, but I was feeling tired, and thought I'd lie down for a
while before dinner. I fell asleep for an hour and woke up around dusk.

I suppose I shouldn't have pried. I should have left well enough
alone. Steve's guitar case was lying in the corner of the room, and
I was bored, and I went over to pick up the Gibson to try to play a
few of the songs we had been working on. I picked it up from the
case and carried it over to the bed, where I sat on the end and
strummed a couple of chords, thinking about the opening to 'Nowhere
I Could Go', a song Steve and Jim had written together that Steve
had been trying to teach me to play. The guitar didn't sound right,
but it wasn't the tuning. I held it up and heard something moving
inside it, and when I turned it over a small plastic bag with a tiny
amount of white powder in it fell out.

Ohhhh, Steve... My heart fell to the floor along with the bag.

It was almost 7.30pm when Steve returned to the motel. We were due
to go on at 8.00pm. I had found the syringes he used in his shower
bag with his razor, and I was waiting for him, sitting on the end of
the bed with the guitar lying beside me and a syringe and the bag of
heroin in my lap. As soon as Steve opened the door to the motel room
he saw me, and his face fell. Neither of us said anything for a few
moments. I guess my face was saying "Well?" and I didn't have to.

"Em... " He didn't know what to say, and he threw his hands up. He
walked over to his duffel bag and extracted a shirt from it, then
peeled off the t-shirt he was wearing to change. When I saw his
naked torso I started to notice the signs I should have picked up on
earlier. There were bruises on both his arms, and his once muscular
chest had lost some definition. He didn't look too bad, but if I had
been paying more attention I should have noticed him getting run
down. Well, I had noticed him looking pale and stuff, but I hadn't
thought about heroin.

"You're not going to say anything?" I said finally.

"What do you want me to say?" He said as he pulled on the shirt and
began to button it up. "Sorry? I don't think that's really it, do you?"

"Steve... Why?"

"Why not?" He shrugged again. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, Em."

That hurt. That he couldn't talk to me. That he thought I wouldn't
understand. That really hurt. I tried to hold it back but a tear ran
down my face.

"I *don't* understand, but maybe if you talked to me more..."

"That's the problem, Emma, alright? I don't want to talk to anyone.
Okay?"

"Steve..." I got up and walked over to him. I wanted to hug him, but
he turned away.

"Not now, Em. We're gonna be late for the gig."

"Fuck the gig!" I said, really crying now.

"Oh, shit," he said wearily. "Look, can we not do this now? Please?"

"Steve, I --

"I mean it, Emma. You know why I didn't tell you? Because I didn't
want any of your 'we can work it out' stuff, alright? That's not
what it's about. Just let's forget about it now and we'll talk about
it later." He brushed past me and scooped up the smack from where
I'd left it on the bed, then went into the bathroom and closed the door.

He was right. I didn't want to do this now. I went outside and got
into Wendy's pickup to go with him to the bar. A few moments later
most of the other guys came out and got into the van, and then
Maggie joined me in the pickup.

"What's the matter, honey?" She said when she saw my tear-stained face.

"Steve," was all I could say. She put her arm around me and I sobbed
for a few moments.

"He was acting kind of strange this afternoon when that cop stopped
us," Maggie said. "Is he in any trouble, Emma?"

I lifted my head from her shoulder. "What do you mean?"

She looked embarrassed. "Sorry, it's none of my business, right? It
was just... he looked like he was hiding something. Has he been
hurting you?"

"No," I said, wiping my nose. "No. He's just... I don't know what to
think, Maggie. I just wish he'd talk to me about stuff, you know?"

"He's a guy, Emma. Haven't you worked all that out yet? Guys never
talk about stuff that's important. Not unless they're about to die
or somethin'."

"Maybe."

"Don't push him, just let him talk to you in his own time," she
said. Then she laughed. "Hah! Here's me givin' you advice. I'm
practically the winner of the Elizabeth Taylor award for stable
relationships! Emma, ignore everything I say, okay? I want you to
promise me you'll ignore any advice I offer you."

"I promise," I said, and smiled. Maggie was a good tonic. I was
still hurting inside but it was hard to stay upset around her for
very long. Wendy came out and got in the driver's seat and we headed
off to the gig, and Maggie did her best to put my mind on other things.

***

At the bar Steve and I didn't speak to one another. The guys were
all looking at us like they were afraid to say anything. I think
that was sensible.

We played like shit that night. I was all messed up emotionally and
my sinuses were all blocked up from crying. I think Steve had shot
up before we left the motel now that he didn't need to hide it from
me. His guitar changes were sloppy and although I managed to sing on
key I couldn't put any feeling into the songs.

During the break between our sets Steve and I couldn't even bring
ourselves to look at one another. "For god's sake!" Brett said. "I
don't know what it is, but can't you two make up?"

"I don't know, Brett. Why don't you ask Steve?" I said. I felt lost
and alone, caught up in swirling waters that were taking me in
directions I didn't understand.

After we finished the show Steve left on his own. The others looked
at me like there was an explanation I should give, but I burst into
tears and crumpled into a little ball on the floor. Bo and Maggie
pulled me up and hugged me, and Ray told them to take me back to the
motel. I was really upset. The stress of the day was getting to me.
Ray tried to get me to take a pill he had, but I hissed "No drugs!"
at him and he recoiled like I'd bitten him.

When I woke up next morning Steve was lying on the bed next to me,
still in his clothes. I looked at his face while he was sleeping.
God, I loved him more than I could say, but I was so worried for
him, and I was still hurt from last night. I couldn't believe he
felt he couldn't talk to me. I felt so much for Steve there was
nothing I wouldn't tell him. Why didn't he feel the same way?

When I reflected on this later I saw that what I thought wasn't
really truthful. There were many things I hid from Steve or tried
not to remind him of, like the male parts of me, the way I worried
about our future and the way I felt about not being enough of a
woman for him. I hid those things from him because I didn't want to
worry him. Maybe he thought he was protecting me, too.

I got up and took a shower and washed my hair. My hair was halfway
down the middle of my back and in need of another trim, and it
needed a lot of shampoo and conditioner each time I washed it. I
felt better after the shower, but I still felt numb inside. I combed
my hair out carefully and blotted the excess water from it and
thought of how happy Steve had been in those first weeks after I had
revealed my secret to him at Brand and we had made love several
times a night. With a tear in my eye I reflected that since we had
been out of Brand things hadn't been quite so good, what with Travis
and then Steve's moods and now the drugs. I thought on it and
realized that Steve's moods were probably related to the drugs
rather than anything I had done, unless he was taking drugs because
of something to do with me. I shook my head as though to clear the
thoughts from it. How the hell did I know what Steve thought or felt
when he wouldn't talk to me?

When I came back out into the motel room Steve was awake and sitting
on the edge of the bed., and he watched me as I walked across to my
bag and selected some clothes for the day. When I dropped my towel I
faced away from him, as I always did when I dressed, and I pulled up
my panties and tucked myself back in them and then reached for my bra.

"Em, I'm sorry," Steve said. I turned to face him. "About last
night, I mean."

I thought that was all I needed to hear and I turned to look at him.
In the subdued light through the crack between the curtains I could
see his blue eyes, shadowed with dark rings beneath them from lack
of sleep and who knows what else. I knew he meant the apology
sincerely, and I crossed the floor to him and sat on his lap. He
cupped my left breast in his hand. I lay my head against his. We sat
with our arms around each other for a few minutes, not saying
anything, just feeling closeness with each other.

Eventually there was the issue of Steve's drug use to consider. I
didn't quite know how to bring it up, and Steve seemed to sense that
I wanted to say something but couldn't. "It will all be okay, Em, I
promise," he said. "I can keep it under control."

I didn't really believe that but I didn't want to fight with him.
Instead I lay down on the bed and he lay next to me and touched me,
so gently, on the face and neck and breasts. I felt those familiar
butterflies running through my insides in a soft fluttering as my
body responded to his touch.

We touched each other slowly and softly and sweetly as though we
were discovering each other for the first time, both afraid but
entranced by one another. He was hard, and I ran my fingers lightly
up and down the length of his cock as he stroked his fingers up my
belly and over my breasts and neck to my mouth. Then he bent over me
and started kissing my neck, and my breasts, and my stomach, and
then the insides of my thighs. I tried to give his cock more
attention but he pushed me back on the bed and continued to stroke
me and kiss me, and then nibble on my nipples until I thought my
insides were going to melt. Whenever he did those things to my
breasts I felt the sensations somewhere deep inside me, in a way
that went right to my core, and it was beautiful and scary all at
the same time -- scary because it felt like if I gave in to the
blissful sensations my body would melt away, dissolve away, and
never come back. I felt warm and soft and pliable, and gradually I
became aware that I was moving my hips, needing him, wanting him in
me to respond to those movements. After who knows how long he paused
in his kissing and nibbling and stroking and rolled me onto my front
and pulled my panties down. He took a pillow from the top of the bed
and thrust it under my hips, and then I felt him apply some
lubricant to me and then position his cock at my opening while he
put his hands under me to touch my breasts. In a moment he was
inside me, in a quick thrust that made me cry out because it hurt,
but then the hurt turned into something different, an overwhelming
satisfaction, and he was moving in me and I was moving my hips in
return and he felt so good and I felt warm all over and tingling
sensations in my nipples and crotch and then it was even more
intense and I thought I wouldn't be able to bear his fingers on my
nipples a moment longer and his cock felt like it would break me in
two and then he found a spot inside me that sent me into spasms of
pain and ecstasy and confusion and then again, more ecstasy, I
needed him so badly, I wanted it never to end, never, and he thrust
into me harder and stronger and we had never ever fucked like this,
slow but strong and I kept spasming until I was weak and moaning and
I thought I was going to lose myself forever. And then I did, there
was no me, there was just us, just Steve and me as one and I had no
thoughts, just sensations over and over and stronger and wider
through my whole body radiating out from my belly but up through my
arms and legs and then back again, my *whole* body, my fingertips,
and I was hot and confused because there wasn't only me, there was
us, and then his breathing changed and we were fucking more quickly,
urgently and there was a grunting noise coming from one of us and
some moaning from the other and then Steve came inside me with a
gasp, and it was him and me again and he thrust six, eight, twelve
times into me and collapsed on top of me. I could hear his breathing
next to my ear and he whispered my name, "Emma, Emma... Emma."

***

Chapter Fourteen

During the next few days Steve and I maintained a different kind of
relationship than we had before I discovered the heroin. In some
ways we were even closer, but in others... I think I had lost some
of the respect I had for him. Before, he was invincible.
Afterward... I couldn't understand why he felt that way; why he felt
so bad about himself that he needed it.

I was sure Steve was still shooting up. Whenever we got into town he
would disappear for a few hours, and he always looked distant and
dull when he showed up to play. After that bad night in Mobile his
performance improved, though -- in fact in Columbus, two nights
later, he put in one of the best sets I'd ever heard him play. After
the show he left alone, without talking to anyone. I went back to
the motel with Wendy, Bo and Maggie. "Great show," Bo said, "but
this ain't what I signed up for, y'know?" I nodded sadly.

The next morning I woke to find Steve laying on the bed next to me
again, and he apologized once more.

I looked deep into his eyes.

"Steve, what is it you want?"

"I don't know, Em," he whispered. "I don't know."

"Is there something I can do to help?"

He didn't say anything. We both lay together for about five minutes
without saying anything at all. Then he turned his head back to look
at me and said quietly "You don't know what it's like. You should
try it."

I didn't see how both of us developing a drug problem was going to
help us. "I don't think so, Steve."

"Just once, Em. Then you'll know why."

I didn't want to lecture him. I knew that wasn't the way to bring us
back together. Steve wasn't going to give it up just because I said
so, and I knew from watching him in the preceding few days that if I
made him choose between me and the drugs I'd lose. Not at first -- I
hoped that initially he would choose me --but one day I'd find
another needle. I ran my hand over the stubble on his cheek. His
skin was dry and dull-looking.

"When did you start?" I asked.

"Uh... the first time was about a week after we arrived in Oxford.
Leon and me were out at a place over to the west, listening to some
wild music, and we hung out with the guys playing it later on, and
they offered it and, you know... it was alright."

"Leon was doing it too?"

"He decided he didn't want to keep on doing it. I think he thought
he liked it too much."

"Was he right?" I wished Leon had stayed. He had been good for Steve.

Steve shrugged.

"Who do you get it from?" I asked.

"All over. It's not hard, Em."

"You've been buying it in places we've toured?"

He nodded. "I scored some in Memphis, and Austin, and Mobile."

That gave me something else to worry about. I would always wonder
whether he was going to get arrested for heroin when he went out. It
wasn't enough that he was a wanted escapee, now he was a drug addict
too. There had been very little in the plastic bag when I had found
it in Mobile, and I guessed that he would need to get more soon.

"You said you could keep it under control, but that's not true, is
it, Steve?"

"Emma, you know you mean everything to me. I wish... I wish you
could understand this."

We hit the road to Atlanta. Although our shows had been great since
the debacle at Mobile, the atmosphere in the van was bad. No-one
felt much like talking, except Maggie who kept trying to cheer
everyone up without much success. When 'No Questions' came on the
radio as we were driving into Atlanta nobody smiled, and Brett
turned the volume down on the pretext of asking for directions and
not being able to hear Bo's reply. At the venue Steve bailed on us
as soon as the sound check was over, as usual, and I went back with
Maggie to the cheap motel we'd checked into earlier.

I called the apartment in Oxford. Pris answered, sounding cheerful.
It was great to hear her voice. She was on her own because Julia and
Pete had gone to Jackson for the weekend with some friends. "It's
kind of quiet without you," she said. I didn't want to tell her
about Steve and the drugs over the phone, so I talked about the
shows we'd done and she told me about the events of her week. I was
suddenly lonely and wishing I was back in Oxford. After I finished
talking to Pris I rang Elroy and felt even more homesick. He told me
he was missing me, too. We talked for about ten minutes until my
supply of dimes was used up.

I was still musing over what to do about Steve, and so Maggie tried
to divert me by steering me into a co-operative beauty session. We
spent the late afternoon in my motel room painting each other's
nails and fooling with our hair. I touched up the roots of Maggie's
hair -- which wasn't naturally blonde at all -- using a bleaching
kit we picked up at a drugstore around the corner, and she helped me
put mine in rollers and then style it with lots more body.

Steve still wasn't back at the motel at 7.00pm, when we were due to
head off to the gig, so we all waited, and waited next to the van in
the parking lot. Brett was really pissed at him for being late.

At 7.45 Steve finally showed up, completely stoned. Whatever Brett
was planning to say to him never came out, since it was obvious that
arguing with Steve while he was in that state would be fruitless. We
got to the venue at 8.30 and went on for our first set at 9.00. The
place was cavernous, maybe the biggest bar I'd ever seen, but it was
packed with college kids who gave us a huge welcome when we took the
stage.

I never really understood how Steve could play so well while he was
so out of it, but he could. If anything he played even better when
he was stoned. Perhaps he wasn't great in a technical sense, but
when he was stoned the feeling that he put into the music was
extraordinary. It was like he was feeling the music as much as
playing it.

The rest of us were just as good that night. Whether we all fed off
Steve or just finally learned to put our differences aside and
really play as a band, everyone came together for three really
powerful sets of music. We did an encore, and then we were out of
original material and so for the second encore we did a high-octane
frenetic version of one of Brett's recent discoveries, Pete
Shelley's 'Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've)' with
him out front and me backing and then closed with me doing a rather
melancholy version of an obscure song we'd practiced at the sound
check the past three days, 'Junk Man'. It was a song I'd liked a lot
since I'd heard Pris playing it in the apartment a few weeks
earlier, but now there was an ironic tinge to the words.

"Southside girls they told me

That you were hot as fire

And I remember every word you said

When you told me I'd get burned

I said don't worry baby

I'll just live and learn

I should have listened to the junk man"

When you're on stage under lights it's hard to see past the first row
or two of people in front of you unless the bar is very well lit
too. Most of them aren't. You can see thirty or so faces, and
between songs you can occasionally hear louder people further back,
but mostly you're only aware of the people on stage with you. You get
almost all of your feedback from the crowd at the end of each song.
With the exception of the Mobile show, the applause had been getting
better and better every night we'd been on the road, and in Atlanta
that night the crowd stomped and hooted for more for a full three
minutes after our third encore.

Because we couldn't see, or hear above the ruckus, we didn't know
when we finished the encore that the police had entered the bar, and
so we all went backstage unaware of any problem. Once we got into
the room set aside for us I could see as soon as Steve laid his
guitar down that he was about to head out into the night again, and
I went over to him and put my arms around him. "Stay with me
tonight," I said softly.

He looked at me and I could see he was momentarily torn, but I knew
I'd lose and was a fool for trying. "I'll only be a little while,
Em, I won't be late." He pulled away from my arms and walked out of
the room and out the back door. Bo looked at me and shrugged, then
passed me a beer.

About 30 seconds after Steve had left the cops showed up at the door
to the room. I was busy helping Rick with some cables and didn't
notice them at first. It was only when I became aware that everyone
else in the room had stopped moving that I looked up. There were two
of them, a man and a woman, both in plain clothes, both holding
badges up for us to see. The guy was probably in charge, because he
spoke first.

"Looking for Steve Hammond," he said to Brett, who was closest to him.

Brett looked over at me and then at the rest of us before he looked
back at the cops. None of us knew what to do. Finally I spoke up.
"You just missed him." I nodded toward the corridor that led to the
back door.

At that moment we heard a loud cracking sound outside through the
small barred window in the room that opened onto the parking lot. My
heart went into my throat. I recognized the sound, even though it
was further away than the last time I had heard it. It was a
gunshot. The male cop ran toward the back door and the policewoman
drew her gun and pointed it at us one by one.

I felt the beginnings of panic.

None of us moved. It wasn't just because of the gun pointed at us;
we were all hanging on the next sounds. From the bar there was the
dull thump of some canned music that management had put on after we
finished playing, but we were waiting to hear what was going on
outside. In a few seconds we heard shouting, it sounded like the
cop, and then we heard a siren, briefly. It seemed like it was right
below the window. Then some more, indistinct shouting, and then just
the dull thump thump of the bass from the music in the bar.

The policewoman broke us from our freeze. "You all in the band?"

Brett spoke up this time. "Yes ma'am."

"'Cept Maggie and Wendy," Bo said, indicating them with a nod of his
head. "They work behind the scenes." That wasn't quite true in
Maggie's case, but it was the shortest way to explain their involvement.

"Would you mind not pointing that thing at me?" Jim asked the
policewoman. She showed no sign of lowering the gun. She didn't look
much older than any of us, I reflected. She was nervous, and her
nervousness while armed was making us all nervous. We all looked at
one another uncertainly.

In a few moments the male cop came back to the door, looking flushed
and sweaty, accompanied by two uniformed cops. "Okay, everyone, up
against the wall,' he yelled. "Arms on the wall, legs apart!"

There was shouted chorus of complaint from everyone except me. I
knew how this worked from my time at Brand.

"I said up against the wall, people!" One of the uniformed cops
grabbed Brett's shoulder and muscled him toward the wall, then
forced his hands upward. The rest of us reluctantly followed suit.
The policewoman came over to Maggie and began to frisk her roughly.
I figured she'd probably get to me next. I could hear the other cops
patting the guys down. My panic was increasing as I was wondering
what the shot meant, worrying about where Steve was, and feeling sick.

Bo gave voice to all our thoughts. "What happened outside?"

"Your friend just shot a cop," the male plainclothes policeman said
with venom. At that point all my senses failed me and I hit the floor.

***

I came to with four people standing over me: the two plainclothes
police, Bo and Maggie. It took me a little while to focus enough to
make out their faces, and a little longer to realize where I was and
what had happened.

"Are you alright?" The policewoman asked me.

Steve shot a cop? It didn't make any sense. Steve never carried a
gun. The only time I'd ever seen him anywhere near one was in the
cabin when he shot Travis, and those were exceptional circumstances.
I couldn't imagine what he'd want a gun for.

"Emma?" It was Maggie asking this time.

I blinked a couple of times and tried to sit up. Whoa. Slowly, I
thought to myself as my head spun again for a moment.

"Are you okay?" Maggie asked again.

"Yes. Yeah... Yes, I think so. What happened?" My head hurt. I must
have hit it on a nearby chair when I went down.

"You passed out, Em," Bo said. In the background I could hear the
other cops taking names and addresses from Jim, Rick and Brett.

"No... no, I mean what happened to Steve?"

"Munsey, call for another ambulance," the female cop said. "We need
to get her checked out."

"No ambulance," I said. "I'll be okay. What happened to Steve?"

"I don't know yet," she admitted. She mouthed 'do it' to one of the
uniformed cops. "I was in here with you. The report back was that
your friend shot a cop in the parking lot."

"Steve would never do that," I said. I looked around for the male
plainclothes cop but he had left the room. "Please can you find out --"

"-- What's your name?" she interrupted.

"Emma Donaldson," I said. I was sharp enough to remember that the
license Pete had given me said 'Donaldson' instead of Boyle. I
noticed Bo look at me strangely, though. He only knew my surname as
Boyle.

"What's your relationship to Steve Hammond?" she gave me her hand
and helped pull me up to rest in one of the room's few chairs.

"He's my boyfriend," I said. "Can you find out what's happened to
him?" I wondered whether he really had shot a cop. It didn't make
any sense. Had the cop busted him for heroin possession? Or was it
something to do with Brand?

My head hurt.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Nineteen."

"You don't look it."

"Yeah, that's what everyone says."

"Lean over," the Policewoman continued. "It'll help keep the blood
to your brain."

I put my head down. The uniformed cops had finished taking names and
addresses, and there was relative quiet in the room. Outside I could
hear car doors slamming and many voices, all too low to be
understood above the bass from the music next door. Even with my
head down I felt dizzy, and sick. I thought of Steve on stage just
twenty minutes ago, and I raised my head again to argue with the
policewoman and find out what had happened. As soon as my head came
above my shoulders I knew I wasn't in a fit state to argue with
anyone. My head swam and I felt sick. I felt a dull ache inside me,
in that part of my belly that Steve had made feel so good so many
times. There was a sharper pain on the back of my head, but it
didn't hurt in the same deep way that my insides did.

"We'd like you all to come down to the station to make statements,"
I heard the policewoman say to the others before she turned back to
me and said "I'm still going to have a doctor look at you."

"I'll go with her," I heard Maggie say. "If that's all right. You
can ask me questions there, right?"

"What about our stuff?" Brett asked. I could tell he was still
pissed from being frisked. I realized they hadn't frisked me yet,
unless it was when I was unconscious. Maybe they had, and that was
why the policewoman wanted me to see a doctor. I wondered what she
thought if she knew my secret. I wondered whether the others knew
now too. Bo and Maggie had seemed concerned when they were leaning
over me, so it seemed unlikely, but... None of this was making a lot
of sense to me. What had happened to Steve? I needed to know before
I could think properly about anything else. I began to weep,
noiselessly.

"Your stuff will be locked up, here. We may need to search this room
anyway," the policewoman said as though she was only just thinking
of the possibility.

"We don't have to go to the station, do we?" Rick said. His voice
also indicated he was hostile after being frisked. "I mean, if
you're not charging us with anything."

"Is there something we should be charging you with?" One of the
uniformed cops said darkly.

The police began hustling the guys out of the room. "I'm gonna stay
with Emma," Maggie said to Bo. To the policewoman, she said "Where
will you send her?"

The policewoman shrugged. "Probably Northside."

"Can you go there after the police station?" Maggie asked Bo. "I
think we'll be there a while." I felt her hand on my shoulder. I
idly wondered why she thought we'd be a while.

The guys left with the uniformed cops and about five minutes later
two paramedics arrived to take me to hospital. Before we left I was
able to raise my head, and I saw the policewoman talking to the male
plainclothes cop in the corridor. I tried to hear what they were
saying but it was difficult

"Are you in any pain?" one of the paramedics asked me as he took my
pulse. I was puzzled at all the attention. All I really wanted to
know was what had happened to Steve. Was he alright? I still felt
sick, and my head hurt, but none of that meant anything until I knew
whether or not Steve was okay. He injected something into my arm.

"It's not her fault if she has lousy taste in men," I overheard the
policewoman say in a brief break in the music from the bar. The
guy's reply was lost as the next song began.

Whatever the paramedic gave me began to kick in, and the rest of the
night became a bit of a blur. I remember the back of the ambulance
was crowded. I was lying down on one side of the compartment. The
paramedic was next to my head on the other side, and next to him
near my arm was Maggie who was holding my hand. At the rear near my
feet was the policewoman. She kept trying to ask me questions. I
don't remember what I answered. I remember Maggie was great.

The policewoman told me Steve was uninjured but had been arrested.
More than that she either didn't know or didn't want to say.

We arrived at the hospital I was put on a gurney and wheeled into a
little cubicle with a bed in it, and various doctors and nurses
asked me questions. Maggie answered a lot of them. I had to answer
the dumb ones, like where was I and what day was it and who was the
President, and then they did stuff like stroke the bottom of my foot
with something sharp, apparently to test my reflexes. Eventually a
doctor started poking around at the back of my head. From his
questions and comments I realized that I had a large gash at the
back of my head where I had hit it on a metal chair as I fainted.
That explained why my head hurt so much. I hadn't bled too badly,
but they wanted to make sure I was okay. The doctor was finding it
hard to see the wound through all my hair.

"You're not going to cut my hair, are you?" All of a sudden I was
overcome with paranoia about that. I thought that if my hair was cut
I might look more like a boy, even though I knew that was unlikely
from my own experiments tying it back.

"I don't think we'll need to do that," the doctor reassured me. "I
can see it now." He wiped the wound with something and made some 'Uh
huh' noises, and then told me I could sit back against the pillow again.

"I don't think it's as bad as it looks," he said. ."But we'll do
some x-rays to be sure. Are you pregnant?" He asked. When I didn't
say anything, he said "What's wrong?". I looked past him at the
Policewoman and Maggie, and he took the hint and asked them to leave
the cubicle for a few minutes. Then he asked me the same kinds of
questions Dr. Bagley had asked me back in Mississippi. I wondered if
he was going to want to do a pelvic exam. I figured the answer was
no, so I pretended everything was normal, and didn't tell him the
truth about my body. He seemed to accept my answers. I guess he had
no reason to doubt them.

Then the Doctor had me shunted off to x-ray while the policewoman
asked Maggie a lot of questions about Steve. By the time I got back
Bo was there, along with Brett and Wendy.

"You okay, kiddo?" Brett asked.

"Yeah, I guess. Do you know how Steve is?"

"He's in a shitload of trouble, Emma." Brett looked. "I can't
believe that he did it, but..." he glanced at the policewoman, who
was still sitting at the other side of the cubicle. I think he
realized we couldn't really talk about Steve with her present.

"You guys are all okay, though?"

"Yeah," Bo said. "They just asked us a bunch of questions, like how
long had we known Steve, that sort of thing."

"That's good," I said. "I was worried about Steve, but I was worried
about you guys, too."

"Em, do you have the number for his sister? We should, you know, get
him a lawyer and stuff," Brett said.

I gave Brett the number. "I don't know if Julia... Um, Julia has
money, but not a lot of her own. And Steve didn't exactly see eye to
eye with his Dad, you know?" I looked at the policewoman, unsure of
whether I should say anything more. "Give her a call. No, no, wait."
Maybe it was the drugs and all, but I had forgotten about my phone
conversation with Pris momentarily. "She's away for the weekend. Um,
can you, can you phone Pris instead? She might know how to get
Julia. Tell her I'll call her as soon as I can, okay?"

Maggie and the guys left, and it was just the policewoman and me in
the cubicle. "Now that you're more lucid," she said, "perhaps we can
go over a few more things."

"Are you going to arrest me?" I asked.

"I don't think so. Have you done anything wrong?"

"No," I answered truthfully. If she had asked me if I'd done
anything illegal, I might have thought about a different response.
But I had done nothing wrong.

"How long have you known Steve"

So much for being truthful. From her comments and questions I was
beginning to think she didn't know about my time at Brand. Maybe she
didn't know about Steve's time there either. Of course, it would
only be a matter of time until they found out about Steve's record.
I wondered if he would say anything about me.

"About six months," I lied.

"Has he ever been in trouble before?"

I didn't know if I should continue to answer her questions, because
I knew that if my story was in any way different to Steve's they
would use my deception against him. "I don't think --"

"Emma, I'm just trying to help," she said.

She had been pretty nice so far. That was pretty remarkable since
Steve was accused of shooting a cop. I'd heard that when people do
that the cops usually go crazy in revenge, Maybe it was because she
was kind of young for a cop.

On the other hand I didn't think for a moment that me speaking up
would help Steve. Fortunately at that moment the Doctor returned.

"I don't think I should say anything until I talk to a lawyer, you
know? I don't want to get Steve into trouble," I said to the
policewoman.

Her eyes narrowed and I wondered whether my stance would make her
look more closely into my own background. But after trying one more
time to get my cooperation she gave up. She turned to the Doctor
"Are you going to keep her all night?"

"I think so," he said. "Just for observation."

She left, and then the Doctor left. An orderly came and wheeled my
gurney up to a ward with three other women in it, and then a nurse
came and gave me a pill. I lay there worrying about Steve and
wondering what was going to happen until the pill kicked in and I slept.

***

The next morning a nurse woke me at about 7.00am. I guess people get
woken up early in hospitals. She looked at my chart, and then at my
head, and told me the doctor would come to see me later in the
morning. At 8.30am she came to give me a message. "A guy who says
he's your boyfriend's lawyer called. That make sense to you?" I
nodded. She gave me a slip of paper with a name and number on it.

I got up and showered and tried to fix my hair as best I could. My
scalp was very tender and it hurt to brush my hair much, so I tried
to untangle it but I left it loose and a little untidy. Pris would
have called the look I wound up with 'bedroom hair,' I thought. I
wondered if she had managed to talk to Julia yet. My mascara had run
in all the trauma of the night before and I had slept without
cleaning my makeup off, so I looked a fright. I cleaned off my face
as best I could and then dressed and sat on the bed to await the
doctor. The woman in the bed next to me struck up a conversation
with me and offered to let me use some of the cleanser and
moisturizer she had in her cosmetic case, and that made me feel a
lot better.

At about 10.00am a couple of doctors I hadn't seen before came by
and inspected my head and announced I could be discharged, and by
11.00am I was outside, under the covered entry to the hospital,
wondering what to do next. As I stood by the door a drunk wandered
up to me. He looked like he hadn't washed in years. "Aaarrrrr," he
slurred. He didn't look very old, perhaps only thirty-five, although
it was hard to see his face under his wild mane of dirty hair. I
wondered what had happened to him to reduce him to this. A security
guard and someone in a white medical-type coat moved toward us and
took one of his arms each.

"Stupid cops," the drunk muttered.

"Can I help you?" the medical guy said.

"Need to see a Doctor." As he said this he raised his face, and
looked straight into my eyes. For a drunk, his gaze was quite
disturbing. His eyes, I realized with a start, looked just like
Steve's when he was high.

"What's the problem."

"Need to see a Doctor," the bum repeated. He was still staring at
me. I turned away.

Yeah, buddy, everybody wants to see the Doctor," the security guard
said.

"Your name is?" the medical guy asked.

"Jesus Christ," the bum said coolly.

"Ah, yes, we've been expecting you." The Security guard turned to me
and smiled. "Sorry about that, Miss." As they led him away he called
out something about salvation to me but I could only make out that word.

I was shaken by the way the bum had stared at me, and I went back
into the lobby of the hospital and sat down for a moment. After a
few moments I got up and tried calling the motel to talk with Brett,
but the guy at reception told me that everyone in our group had
checked out already. I was stunned. We were supposed to be staying
in Atlanta for two nights. Why would they check out early when we
still had another show to do tonight? I guessed the show was off
because of Steve. But I was surprised that they had left without
letting me know. I understood that they might have been upset about
Steve, but I wondered what I had said or done to make them so angry
with me that they'd leave me behind.

I asked if they had paid for our room and the guy on the phone
seemed surprised and said no. I figured that made sense, since Steve
and I had always paid for our own room and the guy in the motel
probably thought we were still in bed. He seemed alarmed that I was
phoning and asking these questions -- he probably thought I was
going to skip off without paying. I reassured him that I would come
back. "My stuff's still there, and my boyfriend's still here," I said.

Then I phoned the number on the message the nurse had given me. A
kid answered the phone. I guessed it was the lawyer's home number.
"May I speak with David Breslin?" I asked. I could hear footsteps
thudding on a wooden floor as the kid ran off to get him, and a few
moments later David Breslin came to the phone.

"I'm Emma Donaldson," I said. "I got a message you called."

"Thanks for calling back, Emma," he said. "I need to talk to you
about Steve."

"Is he alright? Where is he? What's going to happen to him?"

"Can we meet?"

"This morning? Sure," I said. I had nowhere else to go except back
to the motel. "Is Steve okay?"

"Steve is fine. Are you still at the hospital?"

I said yes, and he asked me to meet him at a coffee shop a few
blocks down the road in 30 minutes. "I think I'll recognize you from
Steve's description of you," he said.

I hung up the phone and walked down the road to the coffee shop. It
was developing into another warm day, and I had to take my jacket
off. I felt kind of conspicuous walking along the street, because I
still had on the clothes from the show the night before, and going
braless in the black halter top wasn't something I had ever done
during the day before. A couple of guys in a passing car yelled
something at me and I knew it was a comment on my breasts, or maybe
my ass in the tight jeans I was wearing, and I noticed that the men
I passed as I was walking all looked at my chest instead of my face,
but there wasn't anything I could do about the way I looked until I
got back to the motel.

The coffee shop had a dozen or so tables and was fairly busy for a
Saturday morning. I ordered some juice and a danish and sat to wait
for the lawyer. A guy at the neighboring table was reading the
'Journal-Constitution'. There was a paper stand outside and I went
and bought one and returned to the table. On page 5 there was an
article about the shooting, and it named the cop, Anthony Figueroa,
and Steve Hammond "musician and heroin addict". It made me
depressed. Here it was in black and white. The article was short on
details, but it said that the police had visited the bar looking for
Steve. "Hammond had recently escaped from a juvenile detention
center, but was recognized by a sharp-eyed highway patrolman who
stopped a vehicle he was in some days earlier... " The article said.
"As Hammond fled the bar there was a scuffle with Officer Figueroa,
and Hammond allegedly shot Figueroa with the officer's own gun."

The radio that was playing in the cafe had just begun the opening
bars of 'No Questions' when I heard a voice. "You're Emma Donaldson,
right?"

I looked up. A sandy-haired guy in his early thirties wearing jeans
and a plaid shirt was standing at the other side of the table. He
didn't look much like a lawyer, I thought. More the kind of guy
who'd mow lawns. He had a friendly look on his face, and a charm in
his voice that was different to Steve's but still kind of disarming.

I nodded agreement.

"I'm David Breslin, Emma."

"Uh huh. Hi. How is Steve?"

"He's fine. The cops were pretty rough on him, but he's okay now. I
got to see him late last night. He asked me to meet with you."

"He's not hurt or anything?"

"No, he's fine. Not exactly happy, but that's understandable. He's
in a cell by himself."

"What's going to happen to him, Mr.. ah... Breslin?"

"Call me David, please Emma. I can't really say until I know some
more about what's going on. I've talked to Steve. He's told me a
great deal. Now I need to talk to some of the other people who were
with him in recent weeks. You are his girlfriend, right?"

I nodded again. Stay calm, be nice, I thought.

"Well, we need somewhere private to talk," he said. "I would have
suggested that we meet at my office but I live close by and I
thought it was silly for both of us to travel downtown. Do you have
somewhere you need to be after this? Maybe I could drive you there
and we could talk in the car."

"Uh, I'd *really* like to go back to the hotel and get changed," I
said. "If that's okay."

I felt awkward about getting into a car with a strange man, but he
was Steve's lawyer and I figured I could trust him. We walked out
onto the street and he guided me to his battered old Mercedes. I
think I had been expecting him to have a newer car since he was a
lawyer, but Public Defenders don't make a lot of money. He was a
gentleman, though, and he opened the door for me and closed it after
I was seated. I discovered I liked it. I liked it that he had done
that, even though it was such a trivial thing. I leant over to the
driver's side and popped up the lock so he could get in easier. He
smiled.

I gave him the address of the motel. I realized that I had no real
idea how to get there, and that I had put myself completely at this
guy's mercy, and would have to trust that he was taking me to the
motel instead of someplace private where he could do terrible things
to me... I looked over at his face. He didn't look like the serial
killer type. As though I knew what serial killers looked like.

"Well, Emma, I'd like you to start from the beginning. Where did you
meet Steve?"

I looked at him uncertainly. Where should I begin? I still hadn't
worked out why nobody had come after me. And I was still shaken up
from the events of the previous night.

I wondered what Steve had told him, and whether he knew the *truth*
about me.

I supposed he noticed my hesitation, because he continued. "Emma,
you don't have to worry about Steve. I'm his lawyer; I'm here to
defend him. I won't be trying to trick you into anything." He turned
away from the road for a moment and smiled again. "Now the police,
and the district attorney, they'll be trying to trick you."

"I figured that already."

"Yeah." He returned his attention to the road. "They're usually not
that subtle."

"What about me?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, what if what I say gets me in trouble?"

He seemed genuinely puzzled. "There aren't any charges against you,
Emma."

"Might there be?"

"Are you worried about something?"

"I don't know whether I should say anything."

"Emma, I'm only trying to help Steve."

"If you're my lawyer, then anything I say to you can't be passed on
to anyone else, can it?"

"That's true Emma. But only if I'm your lawyer."

I considered this for a moment. "Will you be my lawyer?"

"I don't think so, Emma. I'm a public defender. I get assigned to
cases. Even if I could, well... I don't know what your concerns are,
but whoever represents you should be independent. If you think
there's any chance they might come after you... I don't know why
they would, but if they do, for some reason, then you need to get
someone independent."

I suppose I looked depressed. I looked down at my knees.

"I can't afford a lawyer, anyway," I said glumly.

"Will you tell me your version of last night's events anyway?
Anything you say to me is probably going to be useless in court
anyway. Even if I wanted to repeat it, it would only count as
hearsay unless you said it again in court."

He seemed trustworthy, but I decided to err on the side of caution,
and not give away anything that the guys wouldn't have already told
the cops. I recounted what I'd heard outside in the parking lot --
the sirens, the shouting, the shots. There really wasn't a whole lot
to tell. I hadn't seen anything -- none of us had.

"How did you and Steve meet?"

Here was the time to see whether Steve had told him everything. I
decided to lie. "Music stuff, you know..."

"Uh huh. And this was, ah...?"

"About three months ago, when he got out of Brand."

"So you know about that."

"We don't have many secrets, really."

Breslin was a nice guy, but I didn't think Steve was going to do too
well with him. He seemed dedicated -- here he was turning up to meet
me on a Saturday morning -- but the case seemed pretty difficult. At
least he knew that. "I won't kid you, Emma, being charged with
shooting a cop is about as serious as it gets," he said. "Plus he
has a record already, and..." He let the sentence trail off. He
didn't need to emphasize the problems.

We drove for about 35 minutes until we arrived back at the motel. As
the day was wearing on I was feeling worse and worse. My mind
already knew that Steve's situation was hopeless, but my heart
wasn't ready to take on that burden yet. We sat in the car outside
the motel room as David asked me a few more questions. We discussed
Steve's drug use, and his behavior in the weeks leading up to the
shooting. "Can you put me in touch with the other band members?"

"I would, but I don't know where they are," I admitted. I was still
hurt that they had checked out of the motel without calling me, and
it probably showed in my voice. "I think they've probably gone back
to Mississippi."

"They left without you?" he asked.

"Yes... I honestly don't know..." I was close to tears. I tried to
pull myself together and show some control. "I'm sorry I can't be
more helpful," I said formally. "Can I see Steve?"

"He's not allowed any visitors right now, Emma," David said gently.
"Just me."

"Can you at least give him a message for me?"

"Sure," he said.

I thought for a moment. There were so many things I want to say to
Steve. I remembered the conversations we had conducted using Carlos
Gonzales as our intermediary. Breslin was unlikely to remember much
at all with everything else that was on his mind. Keep it simple, I
told myself. "Tell him 'Wild Horses'," I said.

"Wild Horses?" He seemed puzzled.

"Couldn't drag me away," I finished. "He'll know what it means."

"Okay." He looked doubtful. "Anything else?"

"Can you get something to him?"

"He can't really have any possessions until they move him to prison
to await trial. That will happen later on today. I can get something
to him then. What did you have in mind"

"A guitar," I said. "Music keeps him going."

I gave David the number of the motel and scribbled Julia's number
back in Oxford down as well. "I don't know when I'll be back there.
In the meantime I'll probably be here. Can you let me know when
Steve will be allowed visitors?"

"I'll see what I can find out, Emma." He paused. "Are you going to
be okay here?"

"I think so," I said. I really had no idea what I was going to do,
but I didn't want to burden him with anything more than Steve's
problems.

He gave me his business card and scrawled his home number on the
reverse. "If you think of anything else you want to say, or if you
need anything, give me a call, okay?"

"Thanks," I said as I got out of the car. I watched him drive off
with a heavy heart. He was Steve's best hope, and while he was a
nice guy I didn't think nice was going to cut it in the courts.

***

I went into the motel reception area, depressed as hell. I called
Pris, but the phone just rang off. I stood in the reception area and
held the handset in my hands, trying to work out what to do. Most of
what I owned was in the room two hundred feet away, but that wasn't
so important, really. I stood there, confused. I had no place to go,
except maybe back to Oxford. I wasn't sure I could afford to pay for
the motel room if I stayed, but I couldn't think of anything else to
do. I wanted to see Steve, and I couldn't do that in Oxford.

Eventually I rang Elroy.

"How you doin' honey?" he said as soon as he heard my voice. "Brett
called, told me what happened. Is Steve okay? Is there anyone you
want me to call?"

I wanted to stay calm, but hearing Elroy's voice made me suddenly
emotional. Damned hormones or something. I broke down in tears and
it took him a few minutes to get anything coherent out of me.
"Elroy, it's just terrible, they're going to throw the book at Steve
and the cops were really horrible to him the guys have just left me
and I need a lawyer and I can't afford it and --"

"Slow down, honey. Now, why do *you* need a lawyer?"

Silence.

"Where are you?"

"I'm at the motel."

"The one y'all were in yesterday?"

"Yes. I didn't know where else to go, and my stuff was still here
and I had to get it anyway and..."

"Have any money?"

"Uh, no, not really," I said sheepishly.

"What do you mean, the guys just left you?"

"They checked out of the motel and... well, I don't know where
they've gone, Elroy."

"They were supposed to collect you from the hospital," Elroy said.
"I spoke to Brett this morning and he said they were going over to
get you and bring you home."

"Well, I didn't see them."

"I expect they'll be looking for you over there. Okay. Back to this
business of the lawyer. What's Steve's lawyer like?'

"He's the public defender or whatever they're called. He seems okay,
so far."

"What did he tell you?"

"He can't tell how it's going to turn out yet, but it doesn't look
really good."

"What about you? Why do you need a lawyer? Did you do anything last
night? Are you doin' drugs, girl?"

"No! No, it's... Elroy, I can't tell you. I'm sorry. I just needed
someone to talk to. But you're right, I can't burden you with this --"

"-- What do you mean, 'you're right' and 'burden'? Emma, my dear, I
care about you, y'know. I know I come over all gruff sometimes, but
that's just an act. Whatever it is that's wrong, you know it won't
change the way I think about you. You're just about the sweetest
girl I know, and --"

I hung up.

I felt really guilty doing it, but I couldn't even begin to explain
to Elroy what my fear about my own situation was. I wished Julia or
Pris would answer the phone. I tried their number one more time,
without success.

I stumbled back to the room, and lay down on the bed. Around seven I
tried Julia and Pris again. No luck. I didn't feel at all like
eating, so I popped a Valium and lay down. My head was full of
images of Steve, and the cops, and the bum that morning and his
terrifying eyes. Jesus Christ, salvation. I remembered Steve's eyes
the last time I saw them when we came offstage the night before, all
dull and scary. Eventually the Valium kicked in and I went to sleep,
a dull uneasy sleep filled with hospitals, the guards at Brand, Bo
and Maggie, unseen gunshots and a wild eyed man who claimed he was
Jesus Christ.

(continued)

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