“Don’t tell me you haven’t been watching me, Wally,” Jon Carlyle whispered.

I nodded because he had me pinned against the cinder block wall separating the school itself from the basketball courts behind the gym and I didn’t want to piss him off. The wall kept balls from bouncing between the temporary classrooms set up in what used to be the teacher’s parking lot at White River Unified High School and it kept me from getting away.

I didn’t know what the heck he was talking about. Watching him? Well, he was certainly noticeable. Nearly six feet tall, a sophomore on the JV football team, with wavy-curly blond hair and bright blue eyes. And muscles, lots of muscles. So yeah, I might have been looking at him, sometimes. I’m an artist, or I want to be one, so I look at stuff.

“You’re queer, ain’t ya, Wally?” Jon demanded.

I didn’t think I was so I shook my head, no, hoping it wouldn’t make him angry. If he wasn’t already angry, it was hard to tell. Maybe he sneered like that because his face hurt.

Jon laughed at me, nodding in answer to his own question. Then he grabbed my chin and forced me to nod, too. “Yeah, you’re queer, Wally. You know it. I know it, the whole school knows it.”

I swallowed hard. If everyone thought that, it would be hard to change their minds. If even just Jon thought that, it might be just as hard to change his.

I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t queer. I mean, how are you supposed to know these things? I was a freshman at the same high school as Jon, but I was only thirteen because years ago, I skipped second grade. I’d been aware of the difference between boys and girls my whole life though it had only seemed important, other than what games you played in gym, in the last year or so. I hadn’t sorted it all out yet.

I was immature and so was Jon but in different ways. I didn’t know for sure I wasn’t queer because the question hadn’t really occurred to me before. I sure hoped I wasn’t queer.

I squirmed against the concrete wall, trying to get free but it wasn’t happening.

“I want you to come to football practice after school,” said Jon. “Come sit in the bleachers and watch us play. We’ll be having intrasquad scrimmages.” I had no idea what that meant. “You’re gonna be there and watch us, ain’cha, Wally?”

I nodded again. Anything to keep him from pounding me into the wall.

He shook me. “Don’t just nod like a dummy, say that you’ll be there!”

“I’ll be there, Jon,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.” I smiled at him the way you might smile at a bear you unexpectedly found in your closet.

He let me go and took half a step back. “You can bring your homework or one of your sketch pads. I know you like to drawr.” That’s how he pronounced it, like it ended in an r. Well, so did half the school and nearly everyone over the age of forty in White River; the local accent owed a lot to the original settlers from Southern and Midwestern states.

“Um,” I said, trying to sound intelligent.

Jon smiled at me, almost as if he liked me. “Don’t forget, we start practice last period, so when you get out of class, come straight to the field. We’ll play till five tonight.” He turned to go but looked back. “See ya, Wally,” he said.

“See ya,” I replied. What. The. Hell?

One thing. This was nineteen sixty-four. Being queer wasn’t a lifestyle choice or something you were born with; in some parts of the country, it was a death sentence.

I sure hoped I wasn’t queer.

* * *

David San Juan and Alex Bradley met me as I rounded the end of the barrier between the classrooms and the gym.

“What the heck did he want?” asked Davy. They’d seen Jon Carlyle pin me against the wall and had ducked out of sight themselves. In high school, there are the predators and the prey and they knew which they were.

“I dunno,” I said. “I think he maybe likes my sister or something.”

“Your sister’s pretty hot,” said Alex.

I made a noise, not wanting to agree to that. Hayley’s just my sister and I never think of her as anything but someone to annoy or be annoyed by.

But now I wondered. This had to have something to do with her; she was a cheerleader, Jon was a football player, they must know each other.

I turned left when Davy and Alex went straight toward our next class. “Gonna go ask Hayley something,” I said.

“Don’t be late to Mrs. Huston’s class, Wally,” Davy warned. Always the worrier. I waved him off and headed toward where Hayley had her locker.

I didn’t ask Alex and Davy if I were queer. Maybe Hayley would know.

* * *

I found my sister near her locker. She had first lunch and I had second so I couldn’t look her up then. Beginning of fifth period was right after lunch for me but between classes for her.

“Hayley!” I called to her. She was with her friends, so she basically ignored me.

I walked right up to her and nodded to the other members of the popular sophomore crowd she hung with. They ignored me, too.

“Hayley,” I said again, standing right in front of her and waving a hand.

She sighed. “What is it, Wally?”

“You know a guy on the JV squad named Jon?”

She started walking away and I followed. “Of course I do,” she said. “I’m on the JV cheer team. Jon Carlyle, you mean? Or maybe John Dumont? Except they call him, Johnny?”

“Yeah, Carlyle, big blond guy,” I said. “You know him?”

We were at the back of the group of her friends now and she glared at me. “Yeah? So?”

“Uh, uh….” I couldn’t think of what I’d wanted to ask.

“Wally, I have to get to class.” She speeded up to rejoin her group.

“Do you like him? Does he like you?” I managed, hurrying to keep up.

“Like?” She grinned suddenly. “He’s kind of cute and I think I’ve seen him watching me.” She tossed her hair. “Goodbye, Wally,” she said, following another sophomore into a classroom.

I stopped, then turned and hurried toward my own fifth-period class. Maybe that explained it. There’s a thing, see.

Hayley and I are two years apart in age but we both have light brown hair and blue eyes, kind of round faces and we’re both skinny, though she insists she’s just slender. She’s taller than me by a couple of inches but other than clothes and hair length, we look a lot alike. Besides being different genders, that is.

Was Jon so hung up on my sister as to want…. I didn’t know what he wanted. I couldn’t untangle it at all.

One thing, I didn’t think it would be smart to be at football practice after school today.

I barely made it to my fifth-period class, History, on time. I slid into my seat behind Alex just before Mrs. Huston started roll call.

“Walker Dark,” she called.

“Present,” I said. After that, I tried to pay attention in class. One thing always amazed me, how boring school could be, even on subjects I personally found very interesting. Mrs. Huston had a knack for reducing the most exciting times in history to a list of dates, names and places.

Another thing, people have been telling me since kindergarten just how smart I am but what do they know?

* * *

I couldn’t be that smart because there I sat in the bleachers after class, reading some of my homework and watching football practice. Jon was one of the bigger players and wore number 23 with his name above the number on the back. Our team name is the Lobos, and our colors are black, white and gold, though the practice jerseys are gray and brown.

It looked like his job was to protect Thomas Tuttle, the quarterback, wearing number 11, or to carry the ball if they handed it off to him. On one play, he ran with the ball right up the middle of the field, through the defending squad, shaking off a couple of guys who tried to grab him and he scored a field goal. No, a touchdown. A field goal is when they kick it.

It was just practice and didn’t count, but it was pretty exciting even so. I’d been standing up to watch when he broke free of the defenders and made his run. I sat down quickly when I realized I had been jumping up and down and giggling. I’ve always hated giggling.

In another field nearby, behind the visitor's bleachers, I could see the cheer squads practicing. The town is only about 14,000, but White River is a big school because it’s also the high school for several smaller towns nearby. That’s why it has Unified in the name.

There are five cheer squads. Varsity Cheerleaders who do the acrobatic stuff and jump and urge everyone to scream. Varsity Songleaders who sing and dance and lead the crowd in songs. J.V. squads the same for the Junior Varsity. And one Frosh Cheer squad with a song section. Each squad is six to ten girls, except the J.V and Varsity cheer squads each have one or two boys to be anchors and tossers for the power play formations.

I watched the coaches criticize everyone for their performance on that last play. Jon had his helmet off and I could see him grinning. Evidently, he had done well and wasn’t getting chewed out like the others seemed to be. I found myself smiling.

At about 4:45 by my watch, the coaches sent everyone to run a lap around the field, and when they finished, they headed directly for the gym. Except Jon. Instead, he came over to the bleachers and yelled up at me. “C’mon down, Wally. Come to the locker room with me. There’s something you’ll wanna see.”

“I…” I tried to reply but he had turned and run off with the others before I could think of what to say. One of the coaches was motioning to me, so I did go on down.

Coach Lamont was a big guy with his hair cut like he’d just got out of the Marines. “You’re Wally Dark, ain’cha?” he asked.

“Uh, yes, sir,” I said.

He nodded as if that were settled. “Jon says you want to be the towel boy for the JV team.”

“What!”

“Go on,” he said. He flipped a key to me. “Key to the towel locker, go in and give the guys each one towel as they come out of the showers. Keep a count of how many you give out, there’s a clipboard hanging on the inside of the door to write the number down.”

“I…. Who? Me?” I know my voice squeaked. I had almost fumbled catching the towel room key and felt a bit overloaded with new information.

“Go ahead, Wally,” he said. “They’ll be annoyed if you’re not there with nice fresh towels when they finish showering. Trot to it.”

Confused, I started toward the gym but I wasn’t moving fast enough for the coach. He came up behind me and yelled, “I said, trot to it!”

I trotted on into the gym, holding my books close to my chest so I wouldn’t drop them. What next? I wondered.

 

 
I trotted on into the gym and headed for the locker room, one end of which was used for the school athletic teams, closer to the showers and with larger lockers. I stopped at my own locker near the doors to stuff my books in on top of my gym clothes. It took me two tries to get the combination right; I remembered the numbers fine but my hands were shaking.

I tried to think about the playing I’d seen, all the guys rushing around and shoving one another. I hadn’t taken a sketch pad with me into the bleachers because I’ve had bad experiences with people ripping up my sketches. Mentally, though, I had filled several pages with drawings. Or drawrings to use the local pronunciation. I tried to concentrate on what sort of action poses and details I might use when I got home, or in art class tomorrow.

It wasn’t working, though. I kept anticipating what I would be seeing when I got to the gym. The reality after I pried open the heavy side door to the locker room turned out not to be too different from what I had imagined. After all, I’d been taking high school gym for a couple of months now; there couldn’t be too many surprises.

WRUHS is a big school and there must have been close to a thousand lockers in the smelly, echoing chamber just on the boys’ side of the gym. Most of the lockers for gym clothes were about one foot square with one taller locker for street clothes for every eight or ten small ones. Down near the showers were still larger lockers for athletes who needed a place to keep their team uniforms and game equipment.

The jock end of the concrete space had twenty or thirty now naked or nearly naked guys horsing around and shouting insults at each other. Put down humor is common in high school but the football players can sound a lot more vicious about it than my bookworm friends.

The door to the towel closet was in the same wall as the opening to the showers, kind of in a corner where there might be fewer drafts and less traffic congestion. I sort of sneaked up on it, moving along the edges and avoiding the aisles between lockers where the guys were pulling off their uniforms and collecting soap and shampoos and stuff before heading to the showers.

Another coach, Mr. Gordon stood by the hall to the showers. He looked bored. Shorter than Coach Lamont but heavier, he had the build of a wrestler rather than a runner. He nodded at me as I unlocked the towel room which had a split, Dutch-type, door.

“You’re Wally, ain’cha?” said Coach Gordon. “Gonna be the new towel boy.”

I didn’t say anything since he didn’t seem to expect a reply.

The key unlocked the lower half of the door and I slipped under the upper half and then unlatched it from inside. The space measured about six by ten feet, lined on two walls with shelves of freshly laundered towels. It smelled clean except that two canvas-and-frame bins took up about half of the floor space and reeked of feet and sweat and soap. One of the bins was full of dirty towels and the other half-full.

“Stay behind the door and hand towels out when the guys come out of the shower. One towel to a customer,” said Gordon. “And push that half-empty bin out here for them to throw their towels in when they leave. Nobody should leave without returning a towel.”

“Huh?” I said. How would I stop them?

“There’s a clipboard hanging on the back of the door to keep track of how many towels you give out and how many you get back,” said the coach.

I found it, but I didn’t get to ask any more questions because the first guys were coming out of the showers, naked and dripping wet.

“Hey, Wally,” said Thomas Tuttle who had been beating me up almost once a week since third grade. “Gimme a towel.” Thom-Thom sounded almost friendly. He was the starting quarterback for the JV team, as tall as Jon with long, sorta stringy arms. He was even smiling and not in that evil way that meant he was gonna give me a head rub or something.

I gave him a towel, and the next guy and the next and the one after that and so on. Most of them called me by name, and I tried to look only at their faces and hands and not at what they had between their legs.

One thing they all had there was hair, and mostly lots of it. Myself, I barely had any hair there and that only in the last six months or so. Puberty had only recently become more than a myth to me, and I still didn’t know what I really thought about the process.

For the first ten guys or so, I think I mostly kept my eyes on their faces. I was keeping count of the towels I handed out, like Coach had told me to. This was easier than it sounds because they came in stacks of ten, each stack crosswise to the towels under it. But the twelfth guy was Jon Carlyle.

“Get a good look, Wally!” he said, standing legs apart and arms held open wide wearing nothing but a chunky gold pinkie ring on his left hand.

I couldn’t help it. I did take a look. He was pretty impressive down there. In fact, he was pretty impressive all over. Not the tallest or heaviest guy on the team but he had plenty of muscle in the right places. Only fifteen and nearly six feet tall with that triangular shape like they try to put on the cover of all the magazines.

“Towel,” I said, and I threw one in his face.

He caught it, laughed, and trotted off toward his locker. I watched the muscles in his butt cheeks work as he moved until someone else asked for a towel.

After that, it seemed harder to keep my eyes on the faces of the guys coming up to my little window. I started throwing the towels at them, so they had to pay attention and maybe not notice where I was looking. But more often than not I ended up throwing at their crotches which most of them seemed to think was funny.

Sometimes a towel landed on the floor. Coach Gordon noticed this and told me to knock off throwing the towels, just hand them over. This meant the jocks had to get closer for me to give them a towel and that meant getting an even better look at their equipment.

The variation down there surprised me. Not just size but shape and color and whether guys were circumcised or not. Long ones, thin ones, short ones, wide ones. Some had balls held tight to the shaft; some had balls that hung down like oranges in a Christmas stocking. Most of them had some hair, but a lot of them had really bushy crotches.

I started to feel a bit odd. The air in the room felt close and humid from the showers. The smell of soap and sweat and wet concrete seemed to fill my head. My pants felt tight and I didn’t want to think about that.

I threw one last towel at Toby Underwood, a big fat boy whose equipment was almost hidden by his stomach. He grinned and pranced away with his towel, stopping once to wag his wide butt at me. Nearby guys laughed, and I would have blushed if my face could have turned any redder.

The locker room had one of those big institutional clocks and ten minutes after I arrived, the rush from the lockers had ended with Toby and jocks began leaving the gym in their street clothes. It being early October in the Big Valley, the weather had cooled off, and most of the guys were in long pants with sweaters or jackets, but a few had put on shorts and t-shirt afterschool clothes, carrying their school togs home in paper bags.

And all of them were tossing towels into the towel bin I was supposed to be responsible for counting. I wrote down the total of outgoing towels quickly under the column for JV and started keeping track of towels going into the dirty bin. What was I supposed to do if the numbers didn’t match? A few of the guys threw their towels right at me, and I swatted the damp, stinky rags into the bin using my clipboard.

Jon sauntered up, looking pleased with himself. He had on the same black jeans, white shirt and Lobos jacket he’d been wearing before, and he filled them out at least as well as anyone else in the school. I smiled at him a bit shakily.

“You finished yet, Wally?” he asked.

“I think I’m supposed to wait till all the towels come back,” I said.

“You know, everyone is done with their towels; you can go around and collect them instead of waiting for them to bring them to you.”

“Good idea,” I said. “Twenty-nine towels have come back, so there are still nine of them out there.”

“Go get ‘em, Wally,” said Jon. “I’ll guard the bin for you to count any towels anyone tries to sneak back with.” His grin got wider and he winked.

I almost tripped over one of the benches, walking sideways while looking back at Jon.

“Careful,” he said, still grinning.

“Yeah, huh,” I said.

It didn’t take me long to find eight of the towels, some of them on the floor and most of them without a person in sight to accuse of not having returned their towel. I used one of the cleaner towels to pick up the ones that had been stepped on or seemed to be totally soaked. But Toby Underwood, fully dressed, was using the ninth towel to shine his shoes.

“I need that to put in the bin so I can go,” I said.

“Yeah, how ‘bout that?” he said.

Toby always had been an ass. He was only a freshman, like me, but he was playing on the JV team because of his size. Certainly not due to his speed or smarts.

“C’mon, Toby,” I said, knowing it was coming out in a whine. “Gimme the towel so I can go.”

He sneered. “Where you gonna go, queer boy? Somewhere you can suck your boyfriend’s cock in private?”

I stared at him.

“Yeah, ol’ Jon’s got the hots for your sister, but he’ll settle for you. I bet your mouth is fuckin’ softer than hers anyway.”

I clenched my teeth. “Gimme the towel, you’re done with it!”

He spun the damp cloth into the traditional locker room weapon, grinning at me. “I’ll give it to you, you fuckin’ fairy!”

He snapped the rattail at my face and I jumped back, squealing even though I hated that.

Suddenly Jon was there.

We were the last three students in the gym; the coaches were in their offices. They would come if I screamed, I knew that. I wanted to scream but I put a hand over my mouth so I wouldn’t.

Toby dropped the towel on the bench, smiling. He was actually bigger than Jon, I realized. Though a lot of his mass was fat, he stood an inch or so taller, too. “Gotta defend your girlfriend,” he sneered.

“Get the towel, Wally,” said Jon. I snagged it and went around him to dump towels in the bin.

While I recorded the number of towels returned, I heard Jon say, “Anytime, any place but not here and now, Underwood. We fight at school, we’ll both get kicked off the team.”

I couldn’t see them, but the big empty locker room was quiet enough to hear. “Is she any good?” Toby asked. “Or don’t you even know? She’s probably like her sister and won’t put out either.”

“Saturday afternoon,” said Jon. “Empty field behind K-Mart. Bring friends to carry you away.”

“If she does it, that makes you a queer, too. Carlyle,” said Toby and his voice had a whiney edge like he was afraid he might have gone too far.

I didn’t listen to anymore; I ran to my locker at the other end of the room to get my books and go home.

 

  
Jon found me still trying to get my locker open. I couldn’t seem to stop the dial on the right numbers.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“No," I said, wiping my eyes. "I can’t get this lock to work.”

“Let me,” he offered.

I stepped out of the way, and he put his own books and bag on the bench and took the lock in his hand. “Numbers?” he asked and I told him.

He opened the locker easily and pulled everything out. I picked out my books and started to put the other stuff back in, my sneakers, gym shorts, t-shirt and jock strap.

“Take that all home too,” he said.

“I’ve… What?”

He took the t-shirt, used the arms to tie the neck hole closed then stuffed the other things, including the lock, inside and tied the tail closed too. He put it inside the bag he’d been carrying and put my books on top of his. “C’mon,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

“A ride?” I asked, but I followed him out the back door of the gym annex toward the student parking lot. “You’ve got a car? I’m not going to ride on a bike with all this stuff.”

“I’ve got a car,” he said.

We crossed the intramural basketball courts, through the fence around the parked cars toward a red and white Ford coupe. “How do you have a car? You’re only fifteen, too young for a driver’s license.”

“I’ve got a license,” he said without any other explanation. He unlocked the passenger door, pushed the seat forward and dumped everything he was carrying in the back seat. The front seat plopped back into place and he told me, “Get in.”

Jon’s dad was old, a retired professor from UCLA who sometimes went off to give lectures in faraway places like Greece or India. Jon’s mother had been one of the wartime girl pilots in the Army Air Corps and still had a plane parked at the county airport. She was a local, born right in White River and sort of famous. Both of them were rich from rich families, so they could probably buy Jon a car and somehow get him a license even though he wasn’t sixteen yet.

I got in and reached across to the driver’s side to unlock the door for him as he went around the car. He slid in and grinned across at me. “Wanna burger? Cecil’s or the Frosty?”

“I should get home,” I said. “Mom has probably got dinner waiting for me. Us, my sister….” I trailed off.

He kept grinning at me as he twisted the key and the engine hummed instead of roared. “Your mom’s a bit flakey, probably out messing with her pots and stuff,” he said. Mom was a sculptor and had a kiln in our backyard. “I know you and Hayley have to get your own dinners most of the time.”

He was right but I didn’t tell him so. I kind of resented people knowing how unreliable my mom could be. She loved us and spent every penny that our dad sent her on us every month, nothing for herself. But when she got involved in some clay project, she could forget to eat sometimes for days at a time. Hayley and I took care of her as much as she did us.

So I didn’t say anything at all as we pulled out of the parking lot, turning east on Elmer Avenue which would go right by Cecil’s Drive-In and was the opposite way to taking me home.

“Frosty,” I finally said just before we got to Cecil’s. “I guess.” Frosty Snowcream was on the other side of town, past the downtown area just off of the highway.

He nodded. “Good choice. Better shakes.”

“Cecil’s has better fries,” I commented as we passed the place.

“Eh,” he said. “For fries, you can’t beat McDonald’s.” We passed the McDonald’s, too, new in town just last year. He drove like he’d been doing it for years, no kids’ stuff of speeding or showing off.

“Are you going to fight Toby?” I asked.

He shrugged. “We’ll probably just yell and take a couple of swings at each other. Guy stuff.” He grinned across at me again. “You want me to beat him up for you?”

“No!” I said. “What if he doesn’t show up?”

“He’ll be there. I’ll be there. Half the school will probably be there.” He turned at Main Street heading south. The lights were with us all the way. “You’re going to be there.”

I shook my head. “I d'wanna.”

“You’ll be there,” he said again. I knew I would be, too, but I didn’t know quite why.

We passed the big hardware store that Thomas Tuttle’s family owned. Jon turned left, cutting across the corner of Tuttle’s parking lot to come up on the Frosty from the alley. He pulled into one of the drive-in bays and shut off the engine.

The only carhop working on Wednesday night left the walk-up window and started toward us on her roller skates. Wearing the red and white uniform dress with the silvery tiara perched in her hair, she sailed up to Jon’s window just as he rolled it down.

“Heya,” she said, smiling in at him. Her name tag read Princess Jenny. The carhops at the Frosty were all called Snow Princesses.

“Looking good, Princess,” Jon said. “That’s a cute outfit on you.”

She made her dimples show. “Eh. It’s kind of cold in the evenings, you wanna know the truth. What’ll you have?”

“Western double-double, large vanilla shake for me. Small burger, no cheese, no onion, no pickle and a Neapolitan shake for Wally.”

“Small shake?” she asked, looking at me.

I nodded. It was exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t think of how Jon would have known.

Princess Jenny squatted slightly to get a better look past Jon at me. “Hey, Wally,” she cooed.

I remembered her now; Jenny Duckworth had been my babysitter once or twice a few years before. She lived one street over from me. “Hey, Ducky,” I said.

Jon laughed and Jenny skated away to put in our order. “You and Ducky have something going?” he asked.

“Five years ago, she used to watch Hayley and me when Mom went into Bakers for clay and stuff.” Mom was a potter and sculptor when she didn’t have to take a typing job to make the house payment. Sometimes she went out of town to sell stuff or put things in a show somewhere, too. “Jenny’s like nineteen.”

“Way old for either of us,” he said. “Fills that dress nicely, though.”

“She’s okay,” I agreed.

He looked at the ring on his left pinkie for a bit before speaking. “You ever think that maybe you should have been a girl?” he asked.

I shook my head. The question disturbed me enough I thought about getting out of the car and trying to hoof it home. I watched him carefully, but he wasn't even looking at me.

The ring seemed to fascinate him. He smiled. “I know what your middle name is.”

“Don’t!” I said. I didn’t like anyone knowing that either. Dad was Canadian, born in England and they had funny ideas about what made a good name for a boy. Bad enough that my first name was Walker instead of something more normal like Walter.

He didn’t say anything for a bit, playing with the ring now, twisting it around. It had a tiny bright stone, like a diamond chip. “Did you enjoy being towel boy and looking at all the naked guys?” he finally asked with another smile.

I squirmed a bit, turning away. “It just seemed wrong,” I said.

“Coach added you to the team roster. That’s when I found out your middle name. You’ll be waterboy down on the field during games, too. And you can get a JV letter at the end of the year, to go on your class sweater or jacket.” He turned a bit to look at me, putting his left hand in the window. “We’ll go to the office tomorrow and swap your classes around so you can take athletics last period, like all the other jocks.” He grinned.

“Huh?” I said. “I’ve got shop last period now.” I hated shop. Well, woodworking wasn’t bad and drafting sounded interesting. The way it worked was you did something in each of the different shops for nine weeks at a time. In a month more, we’d be done with woodworking and start on metal shop which I was dreading. It seemed dirty and dangerous.

But the biggest trouble was the bullies in the class. They hated me, and I had never figured out why. Shop was even worse than P.E.

“You could swap it with whenever you have gym class now. Or take something else,” Jon suggested.

I shook my head. “Shop is required for freshman boys.”

He laughed. “Maybe we can get you into Home Ec instead.” The required freshman class for girls.

I know I blushed but Jenny arrived just then with our burgers and shakes. She fastened the tray to the window and took the money from Jon, all the while flirting in a joking manner with him. “Keep the change,” he told her.

When she skated away, Jon handed me my shake which I put on the floor and then my burger and some napkins. “She thinks I’m just a kid,” he said, not complaining, just commenting. He laughed and shook his head, glancing at his ring.

We started eating. The burgers smelled so good that I had to swallow a mouthful of saliva first. And they were good but kind of wet which is why I always asked for no pickle at the Frosty. Jon attacked his like he was starving. It was enormous, two big patties of meat, two slices of cheese, with tomato, onions, lettuce and BBQ sauce. Even the bun was bigger than the one on my burger.

Jon finished his burger before I did mine and started on his shake. In between slurps, he asked me, “You ever kiss a girl, Wally?”

I shook my head and swallowed. “Well, I think Alice Starkey kissed me back when we were in first grade.”

“You ever kiss a boy?”

I just shook my head.

He laughed and made more noises with his shake. He looked at the ring he was wearing again and used his thumb to turn it so the little stone caught the light. “You ever want to kiss a boy?” he asked, not quite looking at me.

I didn’t answer, not even to shake my head. I finished my burger and picked up my shake from the floor. He held out a bag for me to put the burger wrapper in along with his trash and I did so. The Neapolitan shake was good; they always put it together right at the Frosty, with the vanilla on the bottom, strawberry in the middle and chocolate on top.

Jon finished his shake and stared off into the weeds behind the drive-in for a bit. He played with his ring some more and he seemed to be saying something under his breath, something I couldn’t hear.

“Did you ever like a…, someone, anyone, enough that you wanted to kiss them?” he asked. “Girl or boy,” he added.

I shook my head hard. I didn’t like the question at all.

He went back to looking at his ring and I finished off my shake, that last slurp being all three flavors at once, all mixed together. I loved that. I put the empty cup and the last napkin into the bag Jon held out again. “Thank you for the burger and shake,” I said politely. I didn’t offer to pay him back and he didn’t ask. Maybe he knew I didn't have any money.

He grinned at me but his eyes looked worried, as if he were the one who felt shy.

The sun was going down behind the mountains, almost straight out along Tenth Avenue going west. Dust in the air made it all gold and red and magenta. Behind the building of the drive-in, a block away, you could hear the traffic on Highway 99. Above, the sky looked almost green-bronze before it started darkening to indigo and purple.

“Here,” said Jon.

I took what he held out to me and looked at it. It seemed to be the ring he had been playing with but with a glance I saw that he still wore his. This one looked a little smaller and thinner and had a rose-colored stone instead of a white one.

He started the car and flashed the lights for Princess Jenny to come get the tray on the window. She skated over and he said something to her but I didn’t hear what. Then he rolled the window up and backed out of the bay, turning on his headlights, too. We started down the alley, not back to Main Street but east. I didn’t know where we would be going that way. Jon and I both lived on the west edge of town, past the high school.

“That’s for you. I want you to wear it,” he said. Meaning the ring.

I started to say I couldn’t take it; it looked expensive. Made of gold with a gemstone a dark rose color, I couldn’t imagine how much it cost.

“Put it on the long finger on your left hand,” he said and I did so. It fit perfectly and I wondered if I could ever get it off. I felt a little strange after putting it on, as if something about me and the world had changed.

“What?” I said to Jon.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think they’re magic.”

 

  
“What do you mean, magic?” I asked, but the hair on my neck was already standing up.

Jon shrugged, pulling to a stop at a corner. Now I knew where we were going, the downtown mall.

“After I found the ring, things have been different,” he said. “I know if someone’s lying about stuff, sometimes I know what they are going to say. Well, sort of.” When the light changed, he pulled across the street and into the mall parking lot from the back side.

He drove around the end of the mall and parked close to the side entrance to Penney’s Department Store. “I seem to be able to talk people into things easier. And I swear, I’m faster and stronger than I was before. Coach says he’s beginning to think I should be playing for the varsity.”

“Huh,” I said. Neither of us made a move to get out of the car. “Where did you find them?”

“Them?” He frowned. “I only found the one.” He held up his hand, showing the thicker band on his pinkie, the one with a white stone. “It fell out of a box of stuff Dad sent back from Turkey.”

I looked down at my hand where I wore a similar ring on the long finger of my left hand. “Where did this one come from?”

Jon nodded. “See, now, that’s why I really started thinking about magic.”

I stared at him but he didn’t continue, he just sat there looking out at the Penney’s entrance with an expression like it hurt him to think. People were going in and out but not that many of them. It was after six so the store might be closing soon.

“Jon!” I said, holding my hand up. “Where did this ring come from?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was thinking I would like to have something to give you, you know, like more than a burger and a shake and I had that ring in my hand, so I gave it to you.” He blinked.

“But where did you get it?” I asked.

“I just told you,” he said. “It was in my hand; I don’t know where it came from.”

He stared at me. I think I had left my mouth open. “Doo-doo, doo-doo, right?” he said.

I nodded. It was definitely Twilight Zone time. I closed my mouth.

“It’s been getting weirder for months,” said Jon. “Like you?”

“Me? I’m not weird,” I said.

“I had to find out,” he said.

“Find out what?”

“If you were queer. I thought you might be….” He trailed off.

“Are you queer?” I asked.

He shook his head violently and turned away. “I don’t even know anymore.” He sounded stunned.

Neither of us said anything for awhile, just staring at the people going in and out of Penney’s.

Jon stirred himself after a while and reached behind him for his wallet. Pulling it out he said to me, “You better go in now; I think they close at seven or seven thirty.”

“Go in?” I said.

He nodded, handing me a twenty dollar bill. “That should be enough?”

“Enough for what? You’re not making sense.”

“Enough to buy what you need. You’ll know what it is….” He trailed off, pressing the note into my hands.

“What!?” I glared at the money then at him. “I’ll know what?”

“What to buy,” he said, sounding a little desperate. “Go ahead, go.”

He pushed on me and I opened the car door on my side, confused and a little afraid. “Can’t you tell me what it is I’m supposed to buy?”

“If I told you, then you’d buy that and we still wouldn’t know. Not for sure.”

He pushed on me again and I stepped out of the car. “I’m supposed to read your mind?”

“Something like that,” he said.

I stood there for a moment more staring at him.

He blinked. “Wally.”

I scowled at him.

“Wally, did you get a hard-on watching the guys in gym?” he asked.

I hadn’t expected that question. “Uh…. Not really. I mean, I dunno?”

He smiled but I wasn’t sure it was a nice smile. “Go ahead, go into Penney’s and buy something. Some things, maybe. Things you want and need. You’ll know.” He reached across the seat to pull the door closed when I stepped back.

I stuck the twenty into my pocket, I didn’t really have a wallet and headed toward the door to the department store. No one paid any attention to me. I glanced at the ring I was now wearing and realized that it was kind of girly looking, not at all like the heavy masculine ring Jon wore.

I frowned as I pulled the door open and went inside. Jon wanted me to buy something girly, I felt sure of it. Something that only a girl would want or need. He didn’t have to tell me, I knew. Why was he doing this? And how did I know?

I looked at the ring again. Magic?

The side door of Penney’s opened into the appliance section. Big stuff like TVs and refrigerators on one side, small stuff like toasters and mixers on the other. I wandered through. Towels and bedding toward the front of the store, camping stuff and luggage toward the back. Nothing suggested itself.

I sort of dreaded finding out what I was going to buy but I couldn’t stop looking. It was like the compulsion I had felt about going to football practice. I wanted to do it—but I didn’t want to want it; if that makes any sense at all.

More leather goods, including wallets and purses. I wanted a purse suddenly. I wanted it because I hated carrying stuff in my pockets. I felt my face turning red with embarrassment, but—a guy could buy a purse for his mother or sister or girlfriend? Couldn’t he?

With that thought, the urge to buy a purse faded a bit. Not girly enough? I realized that I was going to have to buy something no guy would want to buy. Something a person wouldn’t buy as a gift.

Shoes. Dresses. Cosmetics. Perfume. Things that were girly but could still be bought as gifts. My face was turning red again. Lingerie. Panties. Bras. Girdles. Stockings. Fancy stuff you could buy for someone else but everyday things?

“What are you doing to me, Jon?” I muttered

A display set up in the middle of one aisle held panties with a sign that said 39 cents or less. I glanced around. No one was looking at me but anything I bought would have to be taken to a register.

How would I know what size to buy? An image came to mind, shopping with Hayley in the summer, she was checking out with underwear for both of us. Boy’s size M, women’s size S. Or was that a 5? I blinked.

Panties. I picked through the bin; some were marked with numbers and some with letters. I knew I wasn’t as big in the butt as Hayley so I picked out some size 4s. All of them plain but pink, rose or lavender and one pair that was white but trimmed with flowers. My face was still red and I could hear myself breathing.

How many did I need? I wondered. Eight, I decided, one a day for a week and one for washday. They were so soft, so silky. I knew they would feel nice against my skin….

Oh shit. If I was thinking about washing them, I was thinking about wearing them. I realized I would be wearing these panties. Jon would want me to, and I would want to do it, wouldn’t I? I wasn’t sure how or why but I knew it was so.

What was going on?

I glared at the ring.

Magic. Magic is going to get me killed if I wear panties to school. I sighed.

Eight pair made a bit of a handful, but the total for buying them would be less than three dollars. I should get something else and I needed some way to carry the— the panties while I shopped. I struggled very hard not to burst into hysterical giggling.

I succeeded. No one was paying any attention to me but if I fell down in the floor with a fit they probably would.

Both hands full of panties, I went back over to the purse display and picked out a large one, cloth, decorated with roses with a strap and gold fittings. It was full of paper, but I stuffed the panties in too and left the clasp open so no one would think I was trying to steal it. There was a matching billfold, and I put that in too. Total price still less than eight or nine dollars.

I could get more.

I tried to imagine myself carrying a purse, keeping my stuff in one. I had always hated using pockets. But I didn’t have to imagine as I put my arm through the strap and headed back toward lingerie.

A bra. I needed a bra. And, and stockings, I decided.

I didn’t know anything about how bras were sized, so I picked out a small one, a 28AA looked to be the smallest. I got that one in plain white with a rose right at the point of cleavage. Which I had none of.

If Smokey the Bear had seen me walking through a forest with my burning face, he would have dumped a bucket of water on my head and beat me to death with his shovel.

Stockings. Except here in Penney’s they called them hosiery. There were two kinds, nylons and pantyhose. Nylons were two pair for $1 and pantyhose were $2 a pair. I picked the nylons because that was what my mom and sister wore.

I’d need something to hold them up. Right next to the hosiery, they were having a sale on girdles, buy one get one half off. I resisted the mental image of a half-off girdle and put two of the smallest size in my impromptu shopping bag.

My stomach full of butterflies, I started toward the checkout. I knew I was still under $18 so I dropped a bottle of rose sparkle nail polish for 29 cents, nail polish remover for 10 cents and a manicure kit with clippers and files for 25 cents into the bag, too.

I didn’t want to speak to the cashier or have her speak to me, so I just walked up and put the overfull purse along with the twenty dollar bill on the counter. She rang me up; it came to $18.75 with tax.

Then she smiled at me and spoke. I almost dodged.

“You spent more than five dollars in the women’s department," she said. "You get your choice of our free gift-with-purchase.” She waved at a display next to the cashier.

Stunned, I made a quick choice, the bath sachet with cologne. I didn't even know what a bath sachet was. She put everything into a heavy paper store bag with twine handles and handed me my change. “Thank you for shopping at Penney’s, miss,” she said. “Come back soon.” She smiled.

Miss. She called me miss? Did she really think I was a girl or was she being sarcastic? White River sarcasm was not usually that subtle. And she had smiled.

I didn’t think I looked like a girl, even if I did need a haircut but maybe I looked like a girl who dressed as a boy? Not that uncommon around here, in the little farming communities nearby, especially.

I must have staggered out of the store without realizing it because there was the car with Jon standing beside it holding the passenger door open for me.

I slid into the seat and put the bag on the floor in front of me and Jon closed the door, grinning in at me. Then he ran around to the driver’s side and got in. “Can I see what you got?”

I stared at him. Was he asking?

“Please?” he added. And politely. Up till now, he’d been ordering me around and I had done everything he told me to. Had something changed?

I decided to press my luck and shook my head. “Not here. Can you take me home? Alex and David were supposed to tell my mom I’d be late but I don’t know if they did.”

“It’s getting late,” he agreed. “Sun went down while you were inside.” He started the car up, flicked on his headlights, and pulled through the space ahead of us to join a line exiting the parking lot. “I’ll take you straight home if you promise to give me a fashion show.” He grinned sideways.

I laughed. Okay, I know I giggled, but I couldn’t help it. “All I bought was underwear.”

He laughed too. “I can’t wait,” he said.

 

 
We took the long way home, going all the way out to the west side of town before turning back north. My neighborhood was closer to the school, but we looped by the airport, and Jon pointed at a blue-and-white plane parked among the smaller aircraft.

“That’s my mom’s Skylane,” he said. “It will carry six if two of them are small.” He grinned. “I’m too big to fit into the back now so if the whole family flies, one of my sisters has to sit in the kiddie seats. Both of them if Lauren’s husband, Doyle, is with us.” He laughed.

“Huh,” I said. I tried to memorize the shape of the plane as we passed it, I wanted to draw it later. I have a pretty good memory for anything I see, sort of what is sometimes called a photographic memory. I can even remember how a printed page looks and read it later.

He pointed to a private lane heading toward some ranch-style buildings. “That’s our house out there. The ranch belongs to Mom’s brother, Uncle Pete but he leases it to a big company to manage the land. We’ve got horses and animals, and an emergency private airstrip.”

I had known the Carlyles were well-off and Jon’s uncle, Pete Harkins, was on the city council, but I had never really seen any of their stuff.

“You should come out and see the horses, go for a ride. You like horses, don’t you?”

Up until that moment, I had regarded such beasts as dangerous animals that belonged to someone else, but suddenly the idea of riding one sounded intriguing. “I guess so,” I hedged. “I’ve never really been around them.”

He shrugged. “They’re kind of cool. All of ours are retired cowponies, smart and well-mannered. My sisters were both into horses big for awhile.”

“You have two sisters?” I asked.

“Uh huh,” he said. “Lauran is 23, the eldest, she’s married and lives in Bakersfield now with Doyle who works for one of the oil companies; they’re trying to have a kid. Marigold is 19, going to Berkeley to study cultural anthropology.” He made a face. “She wants to be a professor like Dad only not the kind that digs in dirt all over the world.”

I thought of something. “Is your dad back from, you said Turkey? Did you ask him about the ring you found?”

Jon grinned at me a bit ruefully. “He was back for a few weeks, but he’s gone again, this time to Iran, or Persia as he calls it. And I forgot to ask him while he was here. It’s always busy when he’s home, and school was just starting. He’ll be back for Thanksgiving.” He paused. “If we decide to ask him.”

“We?” I sounded squeaky.

“Well, you’ve got a ring too, now.”

“I duwanna talk to your Dad about this stuff.”

“Y’know, neither do I,” he admitted.

We turned on County Line Road and drove past the K-Mart where the fight Saturday was supposed to take place. The part of town north of the road, including the big store and the Carl’s Jr. in its parking lot were in Tulare County instead of Kern County, but it didn’t make any difference unless you were paying property tax or something. The kids north of the line even went to the high school in White River rather than go twenty miles to the nearest high school in Tulare.

Jon didn’t even glance at the field where he was supposed to meet Toby Underwood to defend me. Thinking of that gave me goosebumps. I put a hand over my mouth and glanced at Jon sideways.

“What?” he asked.

“Not what. Why?” I said. “Why are you doing this? I mean even without the ring and whatever it does, ‘the power to cloud minds’ or whatever—even without that you could probably have any girl at school as your girlfriend. At least freshman or sophomore. You’ve got looks, money, you’re a sports hero, you’ve got a car! Why me?”

“I dunno,” he said. “Especially since I’m not queer. I mean, boys do nothing for me.” He turned and looked directly at me for a moment. “Except you.”

My face turned hot again but maybe I was getting used to it cause I went right ahead asking questions. “Is it the ring?”

He shrugged. “Part of it maybe. But Wally, you remember when you skipped a grade?”

“Huh? Yeah?” One of the worst things life had ever done to me. Until now.

“That’s when I first noticed you. And there was just something. We were both little kids, but up until then I kinda had a crush on your sister. And I–I got confused.”

This wasn’t blushing or goosebumping information; this was more in the nature of hair-raising. “You had a crush on me? When I was seven and you were nine?”

“No,” he said. “Not really. Not until September when you started high school. And that was after I got the ring so maybe it did have something to do with it.” He turned the car on Rancho Portero Drive, the entrance to our subdivision.

“But you dated Hayley right around then,” I protested.

“Couple times,” he said. “We didn’t hit it off. I—I kept thinking…about…. I think I was just dating her to get a better look at you.”

“Huh?” You could have hit me in the face with a live lobster, and I would have been less surprised. I mean, a lobster in Kern County?

He kept talking. “I started noticing. You carried your books like a girl. You sat down like a girl. You talk like a girl, walk like a girl, laugh like a girl. At least it seems so to me.”

Embarrassing as that description was, I’d been told all those things before, going back to kindergarten, even. I was never aware of it until someone pointed it out and I didn’t seem to be able to do anything about it. And I had tried. But the beatings continued and morale failed to improve.

He didn’t look at me at all as he said, “So I had to find out, were you at all into boys?” He turned onto my street. “I’m sorry I called you queer. I don’t think you’re queer anymore. Girls can’t be queer, can they?” He stopped the car in front of my house.

I started to get out, to get away.

He put a hand up. “Wait. I’ll get the door for you.”

I waited. Not wanting to, but doing it and feeling a sort of warm appreciation of him doing something for me. He held a hand out for me after opening the door and I took it and stood up, then he reached in and got the bag which he handed to me and my books from the backseat that he kept for himself.

And all the while we were grinning at each other like fools.

“Have you been here before?” I asked as we walked toward the front door.

“Once,” he said. “I came here for Hayley’s twelfth birthday party.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering. “You brought her some souvenir from Disneyland.”

The front door wasn’t locked so we walked right in, Jon holding the door for me again. I could see lights on in Mom’s workshop out back but the rest of the house was dark.

Two steps down the hall and I opened my door and flicked on the light. My room was the front one, next to the living room, what was called the den in most floor plans. Meaning it didn’t have a built-in closet, I had to make do with a freestanding cupboard thing and an open rack for hanging stuff. A lowboy chest of drawers, my drawing table/desk, a chair and a single bed filled up most of the rest of the room.

Jon followed me in but stopped in the doorway. “Can I see what you bought?” he asked again.

I dumped the Penney’s bag on the bed. Looking at all the girly stuff, I blushed and when I glanced at Jon, he was blushing too.

“Wow,” he said. Then he grinned. “I like the purse; you should carry that to school tomorrow.”

“Yeah, if I want to get killed,” I said.

Jon glanced around. “I feel odd, being in your room with underwear on the bed.”

I laughed. “You feel odd.”

“Were you going to try some of it on, to show me?”

I fidgeted. One part of me definitely wanted to and another part dreaded it.

He fidgeted, too, putting my books on the drawing table, looking at the Lego sculpture of King Kong I had made on top of my lowboy. “That’s cool,” he said.

We stared at each other. He looked at the stuff on the bed. “You’ve got a bra there.”

When I looked at him after he said that, he appeared to be sweating. I giggled nervously.

He started toward the door. “Uh, uh,” he stammered. “Put some of that on, like one of each thing? And, um I’m going to see what your mom is working on.”

I nodded at him as he left. I felt relieved and oppressed at the same time. Now I knew what to do but the idea of doing it made me feel cold in the middle.

The phone rang. I heard Jon open the sliding glass door to the back patio but he called out. “You can answer that,” before he went outside and closed the door behind him.

I hurried into the kitchen where the wall phone hung between the refrigerator and the door to the little utility room. When I answered, Hayley replied, “Oh, good. You’re home. I’m over at Donna’s; we’re doing homework. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. Tell Mom I ate dinner,” she said all in a rush. “Maybe you should check on her to see that she’s eaten something.”

“Okay,” I said and she hung up. I could hear giggles in the background, so homework was not that high on the agenda. Nobody laughs at a History paper that’s due on Friday.

I went back to my room and began taking off clothes. My hands were not trembling which seemed odd. Down to my skin, I tried to look at myself in a mirror but the small one above my lowboy didn’t show much.

I picked out a pair of panties and put them on, enjoying the cool softness. But of course they didn’t fit right. I didn’t have a lot down there but what I did have made lumps that were just wrong.

I put my penis between my legs, sort of bent backward, and tried to hold it there by squeezing my thighs together. When I did that, my testicles slipped up inside me, something I hadn’t been aware they could do. The arrangement looked right from the front but was unstable and as soon as I moved, it all came undone.

But it gave me an idea. I put one of the girdles on over the panties, re-arranged things and snugged it all tight. My maleness was completely concealed, up inside my abdomen or between my legs pointing backward. It felt odd but sort of right.

I needed to see this. Hayley wouldn’t be back for hours, Mom and Jon were in the converted garage she used as a studio and workroom. I left my room and went down the hall to the bathroom I shared with Hayley. A full-length mirror hung on the inner side of the door and I examined my reflection.

I held one arm across my chest and messed with my hair with the other one. I didn’t look like a boy at all.

Back down the hall to my room. With a little fumbling, I got the bra on. The cups seemed empty, so I stuffed each one with two pair of panties. Then I put on the hose and used the built-in garter snaps or whatever they’re called in the girdle to hold the stockings up. That took longer than you would suppose because I had no idea how to put them on and had to figure out how the garters worked.

Back to the bathroom mirror. Now I really, really looked like a girl. My hair was too short, even if a bit shaggy, but was also cut wrong, so I looked like a girl with a boy’s haircut. But Jon was going to…. What would Jon do if—when he saw me like this? Tingles ran all over me thinking about that.

I dashed back to my room in stocking feet to put my own clothes back on over my girly underwear.

 

 
I got dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing. My pants fit differently. My waist was pinched in by the girdle, and I had nothing between my legs—plus the silkiness of the stockings I was wearing all added up to strangeness. A thrilling strangeness in a very odd way.

My shirt didn’t hang right either, the bra made bulges that pulled on my buttons and the band seemed to have pushed flesh up into my armpit. Maybe I wasn’t wearing it right. I tried tugging and pushing at things, but nothing moved that much.

I put on socks over the stockings and then my shoes, but it felt as if my feet had shrunk. That wasn’t possible, was it?

I added a windbreaker to hide the lumps on my chest, October in White River is mild but it can get chilly at night and lots of people wore sweaters or jackets, even in the daytime.

I checked how I looked in the mirror again. Different somehow. Maybe it was just my expression, excited, worried, distracted. Something. My eyes seemed too bright, shining in my face like I was expecting Christmas.

The ring I wore seemed to shine, too. I stared at the rose-colored stone for as much as a minute. It seemed almost hypnotic, and I felt calmer and more certain of myself afterwards.

Before I left the bathroom, I messed with my hair a bit using Hayley’s brush she had left there. It probably didn’t make much difference but I felt better about how I looked after arranging the loose curls around my face.

I headed out the back door to Mom’s studio. The night smelled of dust and plants and animals, like it always did, with a hint of hot clay. The big kiln sitting on a pad away from the buildings, with its pipes and vents sticking out in all directions, loomed in the corner of the yard but Mom had not fired it up in several days.

Lights were on in the converted standalone garage and I knew Jon and Mom were in there because I could hear their voices. When I got closer, I could see them through the window in the door, standing around the small kiln, peering inside.

It took a lot less time and gas to fire the 0.8 cu.ft. one than the 4 cu.ft. hog in the back yard which usually got used only when Mom had a contract for a lot of pieces or something too big to fit in the small one. She had names for both kilns, some of them not printable, but the little one was usually called Kitty and the big one, Klyde.

I paused for a moment to take in the colors of the evening. It wasn’t quite dark yet, the western sky burning gold and purple and red. Whatever else you could say about our Kern County dust, it made for spectacular sunsets.

Luchador, the old, nearly blind Labrador retriever that almost always lay across the doorway of whatever room Mom was in thumped his tail as I stepped over him. When I opened the door, Mom and Jon both looked around.

“Hayley?” said Mom. “Oh, no, it’s Walker. I was just showing Jonathon here the little dragon babies you designed and I made and fired.”

“This is really cute,” said Jon, holding up one of them. He glanced at me sideways; his expression meant something different and he looked away quickly.

“They’re not dragons, Mom, they’re gargoyles,” I said. My voice came out sounding a bit high and I cleared my throat. “That one’s Binky,” I added.

“Gargoyles? Is that why it seems to be looking down at something?” asked Jon, holding Binky up above his head. The little figure was about four inches tall and six long, including his tail. He sat there in Jon’s hand, holding one foot in his paw, with the thumb on the other fist in his mouth, and peering at something clearly below and a distance away. Mom’s sculpting gave all her figurines even more character than I designed into my drawings.

“Here’s another from the latest batch I fired,” said Mom.

“That’s Shelly,” I said, still sounding more soprano than usual. I cleared my throat again.

Jon laughed. “It’s hatching out of an egg!”

“Uh-huh,” I said, pulling the other two in the set out. “This is Oopsie,” head on floor, face frowning sideways with tail in air. “And this is Snookum,” lying on its back, eyes half closed, hands and feet waving, tail curled to one side.

Jon laughed again. “You just want to give that one a tummy rub!” He glanced at me again. Did he blush? Did I?

“Mom fires up two or three sets when we have orders for them,” I squeaked then coughed.

“Get a drink of water,” Mom pointed at the cooler in the corner opposite the little kiln. “I sell to gift shops and stationery stores all over the state. I call them ‘Dragonets’ and people buy the heck out of them. If I say ‘Gargoyles’ they look at me funny.” She laughed.

I took a paper cup and filled it from the dispenser. “I’ve got two new designs,” I said, still squeaky. “But I haven’t got names for them. One is holding a rattle behind its back and smiling like it’s up to something and the other is playing peek-a-boo.”

Jon grinned. “I want to see them. Have you got the drawings here?”

“Uh, they’re in my room.” My heart thumped. It sounded so loud, I was surprised that no one looked to see where the noise was coming from.

Mom waved at us. “Go ahead kids; there’s stuff I want to do to start another burn tomorrow night. Glaze these and some bowls. Kitty needs to cool for another day.” Meaning the small kiln. “Oh, have you eaten?”

I nodded on my way out. “Have you?”

She looked thoughtful. “You know, I don’t think I have.” Her stomach growled as punctuation.

Jon and I stepped over Luchador. The dog raised his head to look at Jon, wagged once and lay back down. I turned to warn Mom, “If you’re not inside eating in fifteen minutes, I’m going to bring you a sandwich.”

“Give me half an hour to get something done, will you?” she complained. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Your mom is a hoot,” said Jon as we walked back to the house.

“Like I said before, she’ll forget to eat if you don’t remind her. Sleep, too, I’ll have to be sure she goes to bed instead of working in the shop all night.”

It seemed natural as anything to pause and let Jon open the heavy glass door for me. It made me tingle, though.

The house had that quiet that meant no one was home. On a fall evening, as it gets darker earlier and earlier, there’s no more empty sound. “Hayley won’t be home for at least another hour,” I said. “Hf,” I added, trying to clear my throat and sound normal.

He closed the door behind us. “That’s good. And stop that hacking and sniffing, I like how your voice sounds. I was thinking about telling you to practice sounding more like a girl and you came in talking like that and it’s really cute.”

“I sound like a little girl,” I complained, turning on the light in the kitchen. I could see Jon grinning at me. “You were just thinking at me?” Scary thought, he could influence what I did by just thinking about me? Did I want him thinking about me?

“Uh huh.” He glanced at his ring. “You’re wearing the stuff you bought under your clothes?”

I nodded, noticing that there suddenly seemed to be less oxygen in the air.

“Let’s go to your room and you can show me,” he said, reaching out and taking my hand.

I thought for a moment that I couldn’t breathe, he hadn’t really touched me before except to give me the ring and when he helped me out of the car. I got my breath back with a sigh as he led me to my room.

Once inside, he closed the door behind us and sat on the tall chair in front of my drawing table. “What—,” he began, but I pulled off my windbreaker and half-turned so he could see the shape of my bra under my shirt. He gulped and said, “Take off all of your boy clothes.”

I did so. Slowly, watching his face. First I kicked off my shoes and toed off my socks and held my feet up to show him I was wearing stockings. He made a noise, a funny little sound like “urk.” I smiled.

My shirt had buttons down the front and I undid them one at a time then pulled the tail out of my jeans. I stopped for a moment before opening the shirt so he could see my bra and the bare skin of my tummy. I closed the shirt then opened it again, wider. Then I put my arms back and let my shirt fall on the floor behind me. The top of my girdle showed above the waistband of my jeans.

I felt dreamlike, as if I were floating in some misty world. Jon looked like he had forgotten to breathe, too. I undid the snaps of my pants and slowly pushed them down over my hips. I let them fall around my ankles and stepped out of them, moving closer to him. I put my arms up, hands near my chin, elbows at my waist. I looked up at him wearing only my bra and girdle with stockings attached to the built-in garters.

“Wuh,” he said.

“Uh-huh?” I answered.

He looked as if he were about to do something else but instead, he took a step backward. “I can’t call you that name anymore,” he said.

I blinked. Did he mean Wally?

“I know your middle name.” He’d mentioned that before. Normally I didn’t like anyone to know but just then I waited for him to say it.

“Evelyn,” he whispered. It’s pronounced EEV-lin for a boy in England where my father was born but Jon said it like a girl’s name, EHV-uh-luhn.

I shivered. I turned partly away from him, arching my back.

“Evie,” he said, making it EEV-ee.

He reached out and touched my face with a fingertip. “Your name is Evelyn.” The ring he wore on that hand gleamed, the white stone catching my eye. “I’m going to call you Evie.”

I nodded. I had a girl’s name now. I leaned toward him, I wanted something more but he pulled his hand back and stepped away.

“I can’t….” he began but he didn’t finish that. “You don’t want anyone to call you that other name, anymore. You want to be called Evelyn. Or Evie when I say it.”

I felt something change inside me. I had never liked the name Wally and now, I hated it.