What if something you had always believed turned out not to be true?

 

I guess it started on that hiking trip up on Mt. Picacho in the late summer of 1979. Pete and I had wandered off from the Ranger-led group of younger kids being shown bluebells and chipmunks, distracted by a row of stones with peculiar holes in them.

“The Ranger said this is where they ground their acorns to eat, right in these granite bowls they made in the stones,” I said.

“Uh, huh,” said Pete. “Something boring like that.”

“Boring,” I said. “Heh. Yeah.” Well, I thought it was interesting, but Pete was already moving up the mountain along a narrow trail between the boulders. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “Just somewhere there isn’t some grown-up telling us what to do.”

We were eleven, or I was, my birthday less than a month ago, but in another month or two, Pete would be twelve. Before that, though, we were due to start the sixth grade back home in Presley, the little desert town where our fathers worked for the same big rancher, Mr. Fordyce.

My dad, Leland Jane, was a bookkeeper but Pete’s dad, Jonas Hunt, was a horsebreaker and rode broncs in the rodeo. Mr. Fordyce sponsored all of us kids to this camping trip, which I guess was pretty nice of him. My older brothers had not come because they both had summer jobs and worked on Saturdays, and besides, it was mostly designed for younger kids. Maybe, really, even younger than Pete and me.

“Audie,” Pete called from where he had disappeared into the greenery. “I found a cave.”

“There might be snakes,” I said already looking on the ground for anything slithering toward me.

“There are no snakes,” Pete insisted. “C’mon, this is a lot more interesting than following a bunch of little kids around.”

Reluctantly, I pushed through the wall of brush, keeping an eye on my feet, the nearly imaginary trail, and any hypothetical snakes.

The cave wasn’t that big, maybe fifteen feet deep and half that wide, but in the afternoon on the north side of the mountain, it was pretty dark inside. A glow near the back seemed to come from a patch moss or fungus or something.

We stared.

“You ever see anything like it?” Pete asked.

“Nuh, uh,” I said. It was a blob about two feet by three feet, halfway back on one wall of the cave and it glowed with a faint yellow-orange light.

Even such a wonder bored Pete quickly, and he wandered deeper into the cave to examine the back wall. I finally got up enough nerve to investigate the glowing mass closer in and even touch one corner of it which felt, not slimy like I expected, but furry.

A bit of it stuck to my finger and I tried to wipe it off on the rock, then my pants, but it left a slightly glowing patch of skin on my fingertip. I stared at it, thinking all sorts of ridiculous and alarming things.

Pete distracted me before I panicked by calling from the entrance of the cave. “The Ranger isn’t looking for us, so we can go back to camp and say we lost him when we stopped to look at the stone bowls.”

“Okay,” I followed him back down the hill toward the campground. I knew why he really wanted to go back early. Daphne Ross was the oldest of us camping trip kids at fifteen. Tall and willowy, she had straight brown hair down to her waist and just about the bluest eyes ever. And Pete had a crush on her.

I grinned. I couldn’t tease Pete about her because you didn’t tease Pete, he might get mad and punch you. But I could laugh privately. Neither Pete nor I are tall, I’m shorter, but Daphne is at least six inches taller than him. It’s ridiculous when he follows her around.

But Daphne had not gone on the Ranger-led tour; she had stayed behind with the grown-ups to help prepare for heading back down the hill to Presley. So Pete had figured out an excuse to come back early. Angie Morales, another older girl who had stayed behind, too, traded winks and grins with me while we watched Pete follow Daphne around like a spaniel with a tennis ball hoping someone might want a game of fetch.

But a few minutes later, I started feeling ill, and by five that afternoon, they had me in an ambulance for a ride to University Hospital Emergency in San Diego. I had a temperature of 104°F, was covered in ice packs, and kept babbling about orange buffalo or something. I don’t remember any of it.

***

I woke up three days later in the middle of the night, hungry, thirsty, and cranky as all get out. They had tubes going in and out in places you don’t want them putting tubes. My mom was there and managed to keep me calm while they unhooked me enough to give me water to drink and gelatin to eat.

I took a nap after a couple of doctors had a look at me and they removed more tubes. After I woke up again, they brought me some oatmeal, and Mom sat beside me while I ate.

“We were so worried about you, Audie,” she said.

I didn’t stop eating, but I managed to say, “I know. I’m sorry.”

She laughed and tousled my hair. My new hair. All the old brown hair had fallen out, and my head was covered in new blond fuzz which fascinated the doctors because it was growing ten times faster than hair usually grew.

I’d lost a layer of skin all over my body too. It just peeled off like snakeskin, leaving tender red skin underneath. Mom told me about that, I hadn’t been awake for the grosser parts. My finger and toenails were growing back just as fast as my hair because I had lost them too, and my skin was back to a normal pink.

I hadn’t been a particularly big kid, average but skinny, and I had lost about ten pounds during what the doctors called “the crisis.” They had to call it that because they had no idea what exactly it was. Some fast-moving infection that didn’t show up on any of their tests and cleared up as quickly as it had appeared. One medical mystery, that’s me.

They asked me a lot of questions, but I didn’t have any answers either. I did tell them about touching the fungus or whatever it was. They seem to dismiss that, but they did say they sent the Rangers up to get a sample of the blob. I didn’t hear anything more about it until much later.

They wanted to keep me another week, but after two more days, my folks signed me out because it was obvious that the only thing wrong with me was that I was hungry all the time.

Everything tasted good, except meat, I ate very little of that. But eggs, milk and cheese with all kinds of fruit and veggies disappeared when I was near them. Not that I ate big meals, not so much at one time, but lots of little snacks. This continued for several weeks and was still going on when it came near to time for school to start.

My hair and nails had slowed down to growing at a reasonable pace, and my new hair had come in curly and dark blond, several shades lighter than it had been. Mom said it looked the same color as it had when I was a little kid, before I started school.

Also, I’d grown nearly two inches in height and put on all the weight I had lost and more by then. Which led to another doctor visit two Fridays before school started on a Tuesday, and my learning a new word.

Dr. Greeter looked like Santa’s skinny brother and had been the family doctor in Presley since before I was born. He had me strip off and put on one of those silly back to front gowns while he examined me all over.

After listening to my heart, he asked, “Is your chest tender, Audie?”

“Huh, yeah, yes, sir,” I said. “It’s like, uh, wearing a shirt irritates my, uh, my nipples.” I blushed.

“Uh, huh,” he nodded. He didn’t seem overly concerned, and I had only noticed this happening in the last week or so. My skin had been more sensitive all over since “the crisis,” which is how I thought of it too, after the doctors in San Diego all calling it that.

Then he reached down and took a sort of soft grip on my crotch. “Cough,” he said.

Talk about embarrassing, my mom was in the room though she had her back turned. I coughed.

“Hmm,” he said. He shifted his grip. “Again?”

I coughed again. He didn’t seem satisfied. He had me sit higher up on the examining table with my legs spread wide while he put his head down there and poked and prodded and pulled things. It didn’t hurt, but it was uncomfortable and embarrassing as all get out.

“Audie,” he said, sounding serious. “You appear to have two undescended testicles.”

“Huh?” I said. “You mean my balls?”

He nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching a bit. “Yes, they aren’t where they’re supposed to be at your age. Normally, a boy’s testicles descend while he’s still a baby or even before birth. Yours haven’t.”

“But,” Mom and I both said something at once. It turned out that we both remembered me having testicles in the regular place and when Dr. Greeter looked back through my chart, he had noted descended testicles in checkups going back to when I was just two years old and even up to my Little League examination earlier in the year.

You want to talk about embarrassing, try to imagine having your mom hunting around your groin, looking for your balls that aren’t there.

It was Mom who finally asked what I was thinking. “Did they shrivel up during the fever?”

“I don’t know, we need x-rays, maybe an ultrasound,” said the doctor.

* * *

It got confusing after that. A week later, at the local hospital after getting x-rays and ultrasound, and watching doctors talk about me in voices too low for me to hear, I sat in an office and looked at backlit images of my groin.

I had a new doctor, Dr. Newhouse, Beth Newhouse, the first lady doctor I had ever had, examine me. I was dressed in my jeans and short-sleeve shirt again, and Dr. Newhouse was showing me the images of the ultrasound I had had.

“That’s your uterus, and those are your ovaries, and this is your vagina,” she said, “though it’s blocked because your labia are fused together. These soft tissues don’t show up on x-rays without some contrast medium.”

“And this?” I pointed at what was clearly my dick, my penis.

But no. “That is your clitoris. It’s a bit overdeveloped, and the urethra extends almost to the very end, so it resembles a small penis.”

I seemed to be sitting down though I knew I had been standing up only a moment before. Of course, only that morning, I had known I was a boy.

“I’m a girl?” I said, a bit squeaky.

“Yes, dear, you are. One with a correctable medical condition called pseudo-hermaphroditism.” There was the new word.

“What about my testicles?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Other than some probably erroneous medical records, there’s no evidence you ever had real testicles. They may have been just some form of fatty nodule that have since disappeared. Didn’t you lose a lot of weight recently?”

I nodded. “But I’ve gotten even more back,” I said.

She shrugged, managing to look sympathetic while at the same time, she dismissed my concern. “They’re not coming back. And from the evidence of your breasts, you are beginning to develop as a young lady.”

“Oh, my God!” I said. It was true. Even just over the few days since my last examination, the growth of my chest was noticeable.

My outburst hadn’t gone unnoticed either. “Audie!” Mom scolded me.

I looked at her sideways. After two older boys, I knew that she had really hoped for a girl when I was born. Well, she had finally gotten her wish, eleven years later.

But she wasn’t gloating. She looked worried. “Can… can she be normal?” she asked.

She!? Meaning me!

Dr. Newhouse nodded. “Surgery can fix appearances down there, serious surgery but not major. And there’s no real hurry; you have time to discuss and plan it. Though I would suggest that sooner is better than later.”

She seemed to consider something before continuing directly to me. “Within six months, more or less, you are going to experience menarche — the beginning of your menstrual periods. Since there is no opening for the discharge, this could present some problems. If you have a heavy flow, the bloating and pressure could be severe before your body can reabsorb the discharge.”

“Huh?” I said. That went by entirely too fast—and too weird!—for me to take it all in.

“We might have to operate to relieve the pressure, better to do it sooner than letting it come to that,” she amplified.

It didn’t sound at all pleasant. I stammered some, trying to ask more questions and the doctor tried to help, explaining that menstruation prepared the uterus for pregnancy and was part of the natural cycle of being female.

The more she said, the more confused and stressed I felt. I didn’t know who I really was anymore. I looked at Mom, hoping for some clarity.

But Mom had found another thing to worry about. “What on earth are we going to say to your father?”

“I don’t know,” I said, annoyed. I said the first thing that came to my mind. “I’m a boy, and I want to stay a boy. Can’t you get rid of the girl bits instead?” I asked the doctor.

Dr. Newhouse looked concerned. “That wouldn’t make you a boy, dear. Not really a boy. You could never be a father, for example. But if you let us help you develop as a girl, you could be a mother. I’m almost sure of that.”

Stunned, I didn’t know what to say. I looked at mom, and she smiled at me. Okay, now maybe she was gloating a little.

***

Someone had called Dad, and he came down to the hospital and went into a conference room with Mom and Doctor Newhouse. I sat at the other end of a long table and let them talk and show Dad the ultrasound evidence without me.

He looked over several times, obviously baffled. His expression reminded me of Grandpa’s story about how amazed everyone was when he was a kid, and one of the family’s cows produced a two-headed calf. “Shoeless, sockless, and mouth open wide enough you could see his gizzard.”

I didn’t know how I felt. Dr. Newhouse had shown me another test they had done on a scraping of tissue from inside my mouth. He explained it, too. If you put a certain stain on female cells, they develop a little black dot in the middle of them called a Barr body. That’s the curled up second X-chromosome that boys don’t have. I was a girl right down to my cells.

If I’m a girl, then it’s all right to cry, I told myself. So I did, a little. Then I got up and found some tissue and blew my nose. What the heck did I know about being a girl? I didn’t even have any sisters, and while Mom and I were closer than she was with my brothers, that was because I was the youngest, not because I was girly or something. Heck, Mom wasn’t that girly herself, she could ride and rope as well as any hand on the ranch ‘cept maybe the very best of them.

I thought of sports and school. I thought of my best friend, Pete. What would Pete say if I told him I had been a girl all along? I felt my face getting red.

They finished talking at the other end of the table. Dad stood and came to my end. He looked down at me. “I’m sorry, punkin,” he said. “We didn’t know.”

He hadn’t called me ‘punkin’ since I started school, but he called Mom that, now and then.

I sighed. At least he hadn’t called me princess. I stood up and let him hug me and I hugged back. We weren’t a terrifically huggy family, but it was nice.

“You think I should…,” I tried to ask.

Dad smiled down at me. “You take the cards you’re dealt and see what you can make out of them, honey. I think you’ll be all right as a girl. Your mom was more of a tomboy when she was little than you are.”

Mom grinned and pulled me into a hug, also. “I was. I had two older brothers, too, just like you,” she said.

I thought of my brothers, Morgan and Lee Jr., and almost said a bad word out loud. They were going to laugh themselves sick, the morons.

What if you weren't the person you had always thought you were?

 

We'd had several appointments over the last few days, but the final consultation was early Saturday morning, the week following Labor Day. At about eleven a.m., I followed my folks out to the parking lot, still stunned by what I had learned about myself.

We talked about it before we started for home. My parents seemed to be into it in a way I would never have expected. Had they always wanted a daughter? Had I been a great disappointment?

I tried to feel them out about me staying a boy. But they were intrigued by the other option.

Surprisingly, it was my dad who made the first open suggestion. "Perhaps you should give it a try? See how life as a girl might be before you make any permanent decisions."

"I don't know a thing about how to be a girl," I protested.

"You know more than you think you know," Mom said. "Should we talk about picking a new name for you?"

"How about Andrew?" I suggested. "I've always wished my name was Andrew."

"Andrew?" She sounded startled.

I did not explode yelling at her. "Mom, I already have a girl's name! I've been fighting since kindergarten about it. Audrey Jane? Is that a boy's name?" I don't know how I wasn't shouting.

"Well, Jane is your last name. Good old famous British last name, Jane's Fighting Ships and all that. And Audrey is after Audrey Murphy, the war hero and movie star."

"Mom, his name was Audie, not Audrey. I looked it up."

"But anyway, I was talking about your middle name—Michael. That's not a girl's name. How about Michelle?"

I shook my head, not willing to participate in this.

"Madeline," she said. "I remember, that was going to be your name if you were a girl, Madeline Audrey. You know, your grandfather's middle name was Audrey, too. We can get your birth certificate changed, the doctor says."

"Let's not!" I yelped.

"Don't raise your voice," Mom warned.

"Yes, ma'am, sorry."

"Shouting isn't very ladylike."

"Mom!"

"Now I'm teasing you, dear. Shouting isn't polite for anyone."

"I'm not much in the mood to be teased," I said. I tried to look grumpy, but Dad kiboshed that.

"Don't pout, Punkin," he said.

* * *

Since Dad and Mom had again come in separate vehicles, we split up for the trip home. I rode with Mom in the big sedan with Dad following in his pickup. The hospital was miles from the Fordyce ranch compound where we lived, and we had a bit of city and suburbs to drive through before we even got to the road leading to Presley.

We traveled in silence for a bit until Mom said as we passed a mall, "We should go shopping."

"No. I am definitely not in the mood for shopping. Especially not shopping for girl's clothes which is what you're talking about."

"No dresses, no skirts. No ribbons or lace or ruffles. Nothing pink. But you can hardly give being a girl a try if all your clothes are boy stuff." She turned in at the mall entrance. "And school starts next week; you will need clothes. You can wear some of your boy stuff but…."

Stunned by the implication, I said nothing at all. Would I be going to school as a girl? When had I agreed to this crazy "try it for a while" plan?

I looked back to see Dad follow us into the parking lot. He pulled up alongside, and they had a conversation with the windows rolled down. Mom told him the shopping plan, and he said he would go home and take Lee Jr and Morgan, my brothers, out for pizza. And let them in on the new family secret.

"Ay, caramba," I said. "Do you have to tell them?"

"Don't whine," said Dad. "Left to you, you'd never tell them, would you?"

I mumbled something, but he pretended not to hear. The mention of pizza, however, made my stomach protest. I was still eating like I had a tapeworm or something and I hadn't had anything in almost five hours.

We entered through the food court end of the mall and got cheap Chinese from Eddie's, chicken chow mein with eggrolls and dipping sauce on the side. I got an extra eggroll.

Then we headed toward Penneys. "We should get your hair done," Mom said as we passed the salon.

"It's too short," I said.

"No, it's not, it's almost four inches, all over. Long enough to have a more feminine style than just a raggedy mess like it is."

"Mom, please, no, not today."

"Okay," she said, relenting. Then we passed an earring kiosk with a sign that said free piercing. Her eyes lit up.

"Just no," I said, trying not to shout.

Mom looked at me as if I had disappointed her, and I didn't get any new holes in my head right then.

Soon enough, we were in the girls' department at Penney's. First, Mom picked out some plain white cotton panties. The idea of wearing them made me feel squirmy, but I realized now was not the time or place to protest.

I'd missed my chance when I hadn't run away in the parking lot. I was going to have to give living as a girl a try, or my parents were not going to give up.

In the jeans section, we found a handy sign showing how to buy boys' jeans in girls' sizes. That wasn't what we were there for, but it gave us a clue as to what sizes to look at in the girls' department. She picked up two pair of girl's jeans. I put one of them back. "No pink," I said.

"They're not pink," she said.

"Pink stitching counts."

"How about these?" she said, holding up a pair. They had gold stitching, but the stitches made a heart outline on the rear pockets. I shook my head, but she put them in the pile anyway.

She picked out four tops, one red, one green, one blue, and one lavender. They weren't terribly girly, but they had little teddy bears where an alligator might have been. I gritted my teeth but said nothing.

"Now you have to go try them on," Mom said.

"What? I can't…"

"We don't know your sizes, honey, you've been growing so fast. I just guessed."

She went into the girls' changing rooms with me, and no one said a word. When I was down to my briefs, she opened the package of panties and handed one to me. I didn't fight over it but stripped off right in front of her and slipped them on. I tucked poor, little, lying mister backward and the panties fit like I'd always worn them.

Both pairs of jeans fit, though they fit differently. The pair with hearts on the ass were supposedly boy-cut—apparently meaning they fit at the hips instead of the waist. I kept them on and wore the blue top, even though I noticed that the teddy bear had a pink bowtie.

Everything fit, Mom's a wonder with sizes. She took my old boy clothes and wrapped them up, stuffing the pants and shorts into the shirt. "You'll just wear what you have on out," she said, removing tags and holding them.

I stood in front of the mirror. It wasn't all that obvious that I was wearing girls clothes. I still looked like a boy to me. Maybe a boy with slightly fruity taste in clothing.

"You're adorable," Mom said, and I blushed.

We left the dressing rooms, and Mom paid for everything and got it all, except what I was wearing, put into bags and stapled closed with the receipts. Then we headed to the shoe aisle.

"I'll let you pick out whatever shoes you want, honey. As long as they're girls' shoes, you can go as butch as you like." She giggled. Butch? I hadn't heard the expression before, but it was obvious what it meant.

"Okay," I said, grateful for a small concession and figuring I would choose some basic sneakers and be done.

"I'll be picking up some other things you may need," she said, heading off to the leather goods. "Like a billfold instead of just stuffing your money in a pocket."

"Nothing pink," I reminded her. "And no more hearts or teddy bears."

She giggled and disappeared. I realized that I had to set firm guidelines on this trying something out idea. Mom would keep moving the goalposts otherwise.

After looking at a hundred pairs of sneaks, I settled on plain white girls' low-tops, buying them just a little bit on the big side. I didn't realize until I was lacing them up that the strings had a rainbow sheen to them. Always some little girly touch, I thought, but they didn't look at all bad.

For some reason, my mood had improved, and I was even smiling. I've always liked getting new shoes, I guess. Feeling a bit more optimistic, I put my old shoes in the new box and went looking for Mom so she could pay for them.

She was already checking out when I found her, so I just added the box to her pile and told the clerk that I was wearing the shoes already. I waited to see if she reacted to me dressed up as a girl, but she didn't seem to notice.

Had my life always been like this and I just hadn't noticed? Even with my short hair was no one going to assume I was a boy? I had longer hair earlier in the summer, before The Crisis, would people have accepted me as either a boy or girl even easier then?

I didn't know. I couldn't know, but it did make me uneasy and went a ways toward ruining the brighter mood that new shoes had helped me reach.

The shopping had taken less time than I would have thought. We went out through the food court, and I got a small dipped cone because an hour and a half of shopping had made me hungry again. I took plenty of napkins to protect my new clothes at Mom's urging.

When we got home, I went straight to my room with Mom following me. Dad was already there, looking at my posters. The Millennium Falcon on one wall facing off against Star Trek: The Movie (which hadn't even come out yet) on the other wall and another smaller poster of Nolan Ryan of the Angels. Presley was a Dodger town, being in the area called the Inland Empire, but the Angels looked like they might go to the playoffs this year and the Dodgers kind of sucked. Besides, Ryan was a cool guy who threw harder than anyone.

My smallest posters were of Chris Reeve as Superman and Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman. I stared at Wonder Woman. Would I grow up to look like her? Probably a better chance of that than looking like Chris Reeve. But wow.

"Maybe take the baseball poster down?" Dad suggested.

"What do girls hang on their walls?" I asked.

"Not a clue," he admitted, and we both laughed, our faces red.

The rest of the room was probably problematical. All blues and browns and kind of somber at that. The walls were a pale off-green that, now that I thought of it, I had never really liked.

"We could repaint," Dad suggested.

"But not pink," I said.

Dad chuckled again. "Got it," he said. "I can't imagine what you're going through, uh, hon."

I shrugged. I couldn't either.

Mom pushed past us and started hanging my new stuff up. Dad really took a look at me and nodded as if he approved. Oh, God.

"You should wear some jewelry," Mom commented.

"I don't have any," I said reasonably.

"Yes, you do," she said, putting two items on my dresser. One was a bracelet with a porcelain-like unicorn charm and the other a necklace with a star and a blue stone set in it, both still on the Penneys store cards. "I got those when you were shoe shopping."

"Uh," I stammered. I knew I should thank her for being thoughtful and careful as well but was I really going to wear them?

Dad picked up the jewelry and began removing them from the cards. He handed me the bracelet and then stepped behind me, holding the necklace. "I'll fasten this for you, Punkin," he said. He took a look at where it fell on my chest then shortened the chain a bit, so it didn't disappear into my shirt.

"Nice," he commented, looking at me in my mirror.

I took a deep breath and put the unicorn bracelet around my left wrist loosely, so it dangled enough to show off the charm which was really quite pretty with painted blue eyes and gold hooves and horn. Cute. Argh.

Mom clapped her hands and beamed at me. Then she looked at Dad and said, pointedly, "It's crowded in here with all three of us."

Dad smiled. I could see him in the mirror behind me. He turned me around, and I looked up at him. "You know we love you, Punkin, no matter what you decide," he said.

Then he kissed me on the forehead which was a pretty good indication of what decision he would prefer, I thought. When he left the room, he closed the door behind him.

"Now," said Mom. "I got you something else to wear that you really need, honey."

I knew what it was before she took it out of the package — a bra.

Mom was more specific. "A training bra," she said. "I saw how irritated your nipples were from wearing your shirt when you were changing clothes in the store."

"Mom," I said. I couldn't think of a protest that amounted to more than me just refusing to wear it for reasons related to having been a boy for eleven years.

She motioned at me. "Take your shirt off but be careful of your necklace and bracelet."

I did so, and Mom showed me how to put a bra on, fastening it behind me and adjusting the straps. "You'll be so much more comfortable," she said. Then added, "Oh, I should have got the 26-inch band. You are just so skinny!"

"What size is this?" I asked.

"Twenty-eight, double-A slash triple-A," she said.

"Are the next two sizes single-A and short-A?" I asked.

"What? No, silly," she laughed. Mom had been a jock in high school herself, so she got the joke. "It's not baseball. It's padding." She showed me the thin pads, two for each cup. "I didn't think you wanted enough to take you up to a full A-cup, but these are removable as you grow."

"Oh, God," I said out loud, staring at the girl in the mirror, wearing just a bra from the waist up. The first time I had really seen myself as a girl.

"Audrey," Mom warned me. "No taking the Lord's name in vain, honey."

"I wasn't," I said. "That was a prayer. Oh, God, take this A-cup from me."

Mom smiled but finished the real quote. "Yet not my will but thine." She blinked. "That makes me think, we really should have gotten you something to wear to church."

I looked straight at her. "We don't go to church that often," I said, knowing that Mom liked to dress up for church, it being one of the few times she would actually wear a dress herself. I was so glad we had gotten out of the mall before she thought of this.

She patted my hand. "It's such a relief to find out you don't have something life-threatening wrong. We should be thankful, and I think that God has given you this opportunity to correct a mistake."

"It wasn't my mistake," I muttered. I took my little teddy bear polo and put it back on, careful again of the jewelry. The bra made noticeable tents in the fabric. I could die of embarrassment wearing this stuff, I decided. What the heck would I have to wear to church if we ever went again?

Mom laid some other things she had purchased on the bed. Another training bra, "For when you're doing laundry. You know undies need to be hand washed." A purple hand mirror, with a matching comb and brush. A bottle of clear nail polish, "We'll do your nails at home," she said. A tube of what looked like pale pink lipstick but Mom insisted was just tinted lip balm, "Like strawberry-flavored ChapStik."

Then the billfold she had mentioned, a cloth one in denim with blue paisley inserts, just skirting our restrictions. And a purse to match the pocketbook. A purse. If anyone saw me carrying a purse, I knew I would die. Just die and be out of my misery.

I almost looked forward to it.

Everything you know about yourself is wrong....

I heard one of my brothers come in through the back door into the laundry room. “Ma!” It was Morgan, four years older than me and a complete asshole. “What’s for dinner, Ma?” he shouted. From the sound, he’d moved on to the kitchen.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Wanna help me tame the beasts?” she asked me.

I shook my head but she tugged me to my feet, and I trailed after her. “Didn’t Dad take them out for pizza?” I asked.

“Teenage boys are never full,” said Mom.

I made an unladylike snort, but with my current appetite, I didn’t have room to sneer.

Morgan looked up from the open refrigerator as we entered the room. “Hey, sis,” he said. “You’re looking nice. Except for the hair,” he added.

I stared at him. Oh, yeah, Dad said he would tell them about my—temporary?—change in status. His casual acceptance of what I was wearing floored me but the last comment was a reminder that I was dealing with one of my brothers after all. And I could almost bet that Dad had not said this was just a try-out for the big leagues.

“Get your head out of the refrigerator,” Mom ordered him. “And don’t tease your sister about her hair—it will grow out. Audrey, if you can get past the Moose, take out stuff for making a salad.”

“A salad?” Morgan pulled a face like a cat examining a lemon, but he got out of my way.

“No one in this house eats enough salad and don’t tell me your father thought to make you eat one with your pizza.”

I took out a head of lettuce, two tomatoes, three carrots and half a red onion from the cold bin. From the meat drawer, I took a block of jack cheese and a stick of the summer sausage Mrs. Fordyce makes herself.

“I eat salad,” I commented. Since the Crisis, I ate lots of salad, it had become one of my favorite things and making a good one was something I enjoyed, too. Morgan attempted to grab the sausage, but I turned away in time.

“Get out of the kitchen, or we’ll put you to work,” Mom warned him.

He fled, pausing only to laugh at me. “Looks like you’re going to be on permanent K.P.”

I pointed the knife I was cutting tomatoes with at him. “Yard work,” I said. “It’s a fair trade.” It was true, I hated yard work, and Morgan hated helping in the kitchen.

He scowled on his way out.

Mom giggled while she grated cheese. “You found a bright side?”

I shrugged. “A teeny one. Will I still have to work on cars with Dad?” I hated that, too. Getting greasy and dirty had never been a thing for me.

“I dunno,” she said. “He made sure I know how to change a flat, so maybe, maybe not.”

I already knew how to do that, so maybe I was safe from oil changes, greasing the zerts, and replacing spark plugs. Working on cars, like doing yard work, was often sweaty and dirty, and I had never considered my aversion to be a symptom of hidden girliness, just common sense, ordinary prudence, and a decent dislike.

Just like I had not thought of kitchen work as being girly either, but it was something I enjoyed and was good at. I decided not to think too much about any of it with a sharp object in my hand.

I started dumping veggies in the large salad bowl while Mom tore slightly stale, homemade sourdough into chunks, and spread them on a cookie sheet before painting them with the garlic butter she was melting in the five-inch cast iron skillet.

I heard Lee Junior clomping down the outside stairs from the room he shared with Morgan. As youngest, I had gotten the small inside second bedroom while my older brothers divided the huge room on top of the garage between them.

It would work out now, too, for different reasons. I never had wanted to share a room with my brothers. They were noisy slobs, and I wasn’t. I felt a blush starting but ignored it.

Lee was eldest and named Leland after my dad, though not actually a Junior because they had different middle names. Still, we usually called him Lee Junior or just Junior since Little Lee had stopped being appropriate years ago. If Morgan was Morgan the Moose, Junior was Lee-Viathan. Two inches taller than Dad and fifty pounds heavier, at seventeen, Junior had been busting broncs and punching cattle for two years.

He smelled like it, too, as he came in the kitchen door. “Hey, chicklet,” he said to me. “Looking good. ‘Cept for the hair.”

“Get your reeking carcass out of my kitchen!” Mom roared at him.

Chicklet? That’s what he called his girlfriends. He stole sliced carrots from the salad bowl, his huge hand getting away with half of what I had already cut up. I scowled and pretended to stab at him.

Mom did more than pretend. She snatched up a wooden spatula and thwacked him across the knuckles with it. “Keep your dirty paws out of the salad bowl, you heathen!”

“Ow! Ma! I didn’t do nothing with that hand!”

“It’s the one I could reach,” she said. “Besides, if I hit the hand with the carrots in it, you’d probably fling them all over the room.”

I began to understand why Mom seemed happy with the thought of a daughter in the house instead of another son. Lee grinned and winked at me as he retreated. I could only blink back; I’ve never been able to do that close-one-eye-and-leave-the-other-open thing that a real wink requires.

Mom slipped the tray of croutons under the broiler while I turned olive oil, water, balsamic vinegar, crushed garlic and spices into homemade Italian dressing.

Moose had set the table, and Junior had filled glasses with water and ice from the wet bar. They weren’t completely useless indoors, though Dad must have reminded them of such chores. I could hear him in his usual seat at the head of the table making gruff noises at the boys.

Everything, including slices of summer sausage, went into the salad bowl and I carried it in to set in front of Dad who stood up to do the tossing with overlarge salad tongs. Then we all sat down at our usual places, and Dad said a short prayer. “God bless this food and this house. Amen.”

We repeated the amen, and then we ate.

I had almost forgotten that I was wearing jewelry, panties, and a bra. I might have managed complete amnesia except my brothers kept sneaking looks at me. Other than the jewelry, I’m not sure what they were looking at. Maybe the teddy bear logo on my shirt.

Mom got up to fetch fresh bread and sweet butter from the Fordyce creamery to fill up the corners of the beastly stomachs. I buttered a small slice myself while I thought about how I should handle the interest of the animals.

I caught the Moose leaning a bit to examine my profile, so I turned to him, being direct. “Yes,” I said. “I’m wearing a bra because I need one.” Not for size but....

“I didn’t ask,” he said quickly.

I took both of them in with a look. “What made you two think it appropriate to make remarks about my hair?”

Junior volunteered, “Dad didn’t make it off limits.” The Moose smirked.

Dad covered his face with his hands, but I could see his shoulders shaking. He was laughing. I ignored him.

“You could wear a wig,” Morgan suggested. “Just till it grows out.”

“You could wear a dish of butter, upside down,” I said. I reached out and flicked him on the ear. “And you can’t hit me back cause I’m your sister now.”

“Audrey!” Mom snapped. Moose rubbed his ear, but he was grinning at me.

“Don’t tease the animals,” Mom warned. Dad kept his hands up, but his forehead was turning red.

“Is it Audrey now instead of Audie?” Junior asked from across the table and out of reach.

I stood up quickly, grabbing a glass of water to prevent it from turning over. “Just call me Jane,” I said, then I left the table without permission and ran down the hall to my own room.

I’m not crying. I told myself, but I knew I was lying.

I heard Moose complaining before I shut my door, “But we’re all named Jane.”

***

It must be the hormones, I decided. The ones that were causing me to grow titties and need a bra. I couldn’t even think of what I had been crying about, exactly. Well, the whole thing of discovering that I am actually a girl and my brothers being sort of cluelessly shitty about it. That.

But they had been trying to be nice. And I had taken almost everything they said and did the wrong way. Like I was suspicious because they were being nice. Kind of funny when you think of it that way.

But I knew that if I had run from the table a week ago, I would have got yelled at right then and someone would be in the room now reading me the riot act. Mom and Dad were cutting me some slack.

I sat up on the bed and looked at myself in the mirror on my dresser. Too much crap in the way, so I stood up to get a better look. Was my hair really that terrible? Short, yeah but I remembered girls who had hair just as short. But there was no style to it, curls going any way they wanted. It might as well have been cut with a bowl on my head.

Did I want to do something about the disaster? Or tough it out as being evidence of my clinging to my boyhood? How exactly is ugly hair boyish?

I kind of liked the golden blond color, though. Lots better than the mousy brown it had been.

The door to my room opened, and Dad stuck his face in. “Punkin?” he said.

I grinned at him, hideously, I hoped, but he grinned back. “So you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I said. Had I almost called him Daddy? “I just got mad about Morgan and Junior staring at me and saying dumb stuff.”

“You weren’t crying?”

I waved a hand. “Oh yeah, comes with the new territory, I guess. I’ll probably cry the next time I see a cute puppy, too.” I tried to laugh, but it didn’t come out right, more of a giggle with a sob at the end. Shit.

Dad came into the room and wrapped his arms around me in a hug. “So brave,” he said.

Brave? I didn’t feel brave. I felt terrified. And yes, that was what I was crying about, being scared. The way my brothers had treated me was not awful, it was sort of funny and sweet, and I didn’t know how to react, and that scared me.

“I’m not brave,” I said between sobs. “I’m scared out of my wits.”

“And yet, you keep on keeping on,” he said. “That’s what courage is, in my book. Don’t be afraid to cry. The rest of us have got your back, you know. Your brothers would do anything for you, except maybe go through what you’re going through.”

I had to laugh at the mental picture of Moose or Junior trying on jeans with hearts on the butt.

We both laughed then he wiped away my tears, and we sat on the bed for a while, his arm around my shoulders while I held his other hand in my lap. I felt better already, and if it wouldn’t have been so girly, I would have held his hand up to press against my cheek.

My dad doesn’t give the impression of massiveness my brothers do. He’s tall but lean and lanky. He’d been just another ranch hand when Mr. Fordyce sent him back to school to learn bookkeeping and accounting. Now he was in charge of the finances of the whole of the Fordyce family enterprises, not just the ranch.

So what I’m saying is Dad is smart. Really smart. If he thinks I’m brave, maybe I am brave. I don’t feel brave, though.

“You’ve always been brave,” Dad said. “Your brothers are bold. They don’t feel fear like you or I do. They just do what they want and deal with the consequences. But you’re smart and thoughtful. You know what risk is, and yet, you go ahead and do what you need to do. That’s real courage.”

He grinned down at me. “Your brothers are reckless, like your mother. Everyone advised her against marrying a saddlebum like me, but she did what she wanted to do and hang the consequences.” He looked around. “I guess things worked out okay.”

I had to laugh and cry again.

“Not that it didn’t take some courage on my part to marry a wild woman like Evie,” he said grinning.

We both wiped our eyes and stood up. “Are you ready to go back in and let the animals sniff you, so they know you’re still family?”

“It’s scary, but yeah. I don’t want them to think I’m mad at them,” I said. “But tell me the truth, is my hair really a problem or were they just teasing?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “Hair is your mother’s department. C’mon.”

I followed him back to the dining room where the boys had been busy, clearing the table away. I knew what I had to do, and I didn’t want to do it.

“She’s ba-ack,” said the Moose as I came in.

I walked up to him, and he pretended to dodge a blow. “Don’t hit me, again,” he said in a fake whimper. “I can’t hit back.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said, and I wrapped my arms around him and hugged, hard as I could. Then I kissed him on the chin. I had to stand on tiptoe to do it. Moose is almost six feet tall at fourteen.

Junior was grinning as I walked up to him. He bent down to put his face in reach and pointed to his cheek. “Right there, chicklet,” he said.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, too. It felt weird, but right. “I don’t know much about how to be a sister,” I said. “Am I doing it right?”

“Crazy? Check. Unpredictable? Check. But sweet? Check,” he said, laughing. “Remember when Moose and I used to throw you around?” His arms went around me.

“Ack! No, don’t!” I squealed. We hadn’t done this in years, not since I started school. I was a lot taller now and not sure I could keep my balance.

“Go long!” Junior shouted to Moose. Then he threw me at my brother. Literally picked me up by my waist and hurled me with both hands at Moose who was scrambling around the dining room chairs like a free safety trying for an intercept.

“Mom! Daddy! Help!” I screamed as I flew through the air.

“Not in the house!” Mom screamed, too.

I didn’t leave the floor for more than a few feet and landed running, tripping, falling, to be caught before I went down by Moose who was laughing so hard I thought we would both fall over. “I got you, sis,” he said, wrapping his big arms around me and pulling me to his chest.

Then he kissed me on the forehead just before I stomped on his foot. “Ow, ow,” he laughed. “I forgot you always do that.”

“I’m not a chew toy!” I yelled at him. But we were all laughing, Mom, Dad, my brothers and me, too. Nothing got broken, not even Moose’s foot.

I didn’t weigh more than 85 pounds even if I was nearly five feet tall. And this after a growth spurt and putting on more than the weight I’d lost in the crisis. With the clodhopper boots he wore for ranch work, Moose’s feet were in no danger from me.

Next time, I decided, I’d kick him in the shins.

If you aren't who you thought you were, who are you?

I helped Mom finish cleaning the table while Dad and the boys trooped off to watch some game on TV. “Is it the Angels?” Mom asked. “You don’t have to give up watching the Angels just because we found out you’re a girl.”

I made a face at her. “It’s not the Angels,” I said. “Their game is later; they’re at home.” Besides, Dad and my brothers were Dodger fans.

“Then you and I can watch the Angels,” Mom said.

I didn’t care at the moment but I nodded so we could stop talking about it. Together we rinsed the minor amount of dishes used and put them in the dishwasher without saying much of anything.

“I called your Aunt Nora,” Mom finally mentioned.

Nora is Dad’s older sister and has a daughter, Beth Ann, in her early twenties. And both ladies work in a beauty salon.

“Argh,” I said quietly.

“I asked them to come over and bring stuff for hair styling and…”

“Mom!” I said louder.

“…and a mani-pedi. Even though you’re only…”

“Mom! You told them about me?”

“Well, yes, dear. You’re going to be back in school on Tuesday….”

I left the big salad bowl on the counter instead of tenting it in the lower rack and headed out of the room.

“…and you should try to look nice. So no one doubts. Audrey?”

I didn’t answer.

I debated going back to my room but instead headed through the house and out the living room door to the windlock. This is something you need on a house where we lived, a small room with one door going into the rest of the house and one going to the outside. It isolates the interior from the wind and dust that blows almost constantly through the desert passes and canyons. In summer and winter, it also helps with cooling and heating the house. On the back side of the house, the laundry room served as a windlock.

The two walls of our front windlock that didn’t have doors had big windows, and this being late summer, they trapped a fair amount of heat. Even at almost sunset, it must have been over ninety degrees in the little room. The only furniture in the windlock was a loveseat and an end table with a lamp on it, but I didn’t sit. I stared out the western window toward the sun going down at the other end of the pass.

It had not been a good day.

I had never figured on growing up to be as big and strong as Lee or Morgan, and I guess I’d never really wanted to, for that matter. They were my brothers, but I was nothing like them. And now I knew why.

“I’m a girl,” I told myself. “I’m like Mom, and Aunt Nora and Beth Ann.” I closed my eyes and felt the red light of the sunset on my eyelids. I played with the bangles on my wrist. I wasn’t completely a girl, I knew. I could still point-and-shoot when doing my business, but they would probably want me to have an operation to fix that.

Girls were supposed to have Slot A instead of Tab B.

I didn’t want to have an operation. I didn’t want to be a girl if it meant I had to let someone cut on me. I didn’t want to give up baseball and being pals with Pete and not worrying if my shoes matched the ribbon in my hair, either.

I snorted. Maybe I was being too dramatic. I just couldn’t see wearing dresses or makeup, but lots of girls on ranches almost never did. Mom wore dresses only to go to weddings or funerals or some fancy party somewhere and makeup for her meant maybe a touch of lipstick.

As if thinking of her summoned her image, Mom’s face appeared at the window in the door back into the house. Just checking on me, I guess, since she disappeared without opening the door. It was too hot to stay in the windlock for very long, and after another minute or two, I went back inside.

* * *

Dad’s oldest sister, Aunt Nora, and her daughter Beth Ann showed up before the Angel game came on. They had the same coloring as Dad, pale yellow hair and gray eyes; their blondness perhaps accentuated by the perks of their profession as beauticians. Beth Ann, in particular, had stunning golden waves and a fresh complexion. They were dressed in contrasting smocks and slacks as if they had just come from their shop, the only salon in Presley, which perhaps they had considering the time.

Dad and the boys had given up on the sad sack Dodgers who were doing one of their patented late-season meltdowns. The guys had gone back out to do evening chores, and were just now returning, all noisy and smelly.

Mom decided that we would cut my hair in the smaller room off the big bedroom, her and Dad’s bedroom, since the guys planned on watching something new in the living room; an old movie, I think.

The guys as a term no longer included me. Mom got everyone coffee or lemonade and led us girls through the house to the back room, and everyone said hello as we passed. Junior grinned at Beth Ann who he had a crush on when he started high school four years before, despite or maybe because she was five years older and a cousin, besides.

“Hey Betsy,” he said to her, a nickname she hated, “I know you can’t make my new sis as pretty as you but give it a shot, huh?”

Beth Ann rolled her eyes and only said, “Brothers,” reminding me that she had one herself. Gordon was off studying Forestry or something at UC Davis up north.

I made a face and a Neanderthal grunt, surprising even myself; then we all giggled. Oh, jeez, I thought, we’re bonding. Next, we’ll be watching a sappy movie and crying.

I still wasn’t too sure about getting a new girly haircut, but pretty soon I was sitting in the big office chair in the little den where Dad did our family finances, looking out over the backyard and across the fields to the dairy barns while Aunt Nora examined my hair and Beth started on my nails.

The sun was low in the sky behind us on the other side of the house, and the golden light made the barns and fields look almost magical. The purple mountains did their majesty thing, but I was the one feeling fruity instead of plain.

“Your hair is pretty short, hon,” Aunt Nora said, “but it’s a lovely color. Reminds me of warm taffy at the carnival still being pulled in one of those machines.”

“Huh,” I said intelligently, and Beth giggled some more. I stared at my reflection in the mirror. Except for the curls and Mom’s round chin, I looked more like Aunt Nora or even Beth Ann than I did Mom’s side of the family. The sharp cheekbones, high forehead, straight nose, and big blue eyes I got from Dad.

“Maybe a sort of pixie cut?” Mom suggested. “That’s what they did with my hair after I got sprayed by a skunk when I was ten. I looked darn cute, too.”

Nora snorted. “I remember that, Evie. Yeah, have to be short. Audrey’s hair is too curly for any real bangs, so something kind of tousled-ish?”

I had a vague idea of what that might look like and nodded involuntarily. They all beamed at me. I’d seen the picture of Mom at that age; she’d looked like a dark-haired version of Shirley Temple.

“Mom’s good at this,” Beth assured me. “You’re going to look so cute!”

“Kee-rist,” I muttered but, luckily, no one heard me. I blushed anyway, feeling guilty.

While Beth clipped and filed and poked my fingers with little sticks, her mom snipped and combed, and spritzed my hair with something smelly that was neither completely pleasant nor unpleasant.

“I know what you’ve got in that spray bottle,” I said.

“What’s that?” Aunt Nora asked, sounding puzzled.

“Girl cooties,” I said. “I know that smell anywhere. And now I have my own.”

Mom was sipping her coffee when I said that and made spluttering noises then had a coughing fit while Aunt Nora and Beth Ann hooted and slapped my hands.

I grinned, but I wasn’t entirely kidding, just trying to be a good sport about it. I really was dreading when Pete found out about my cooties.

After they all got over the giggles, Beth Ann asked me what color I wanted on my nails. “Just clear,” I said.

“You sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” I said. Mom had bought a bottle of clear when we were shopping, but of course, Beth Ann had brought a whole selection of pink, red, and lavender.

So she offered her professional opinion. “You’re worried about what your friends might say? I think you should jump in the deep end. Go all out, pink nails, ribbons in your hair, and wear a frilly dress to school on Tuesday.”

I know I probably changed color, first white with fright then red with embarrassment. I shook my head a minimum amount but got a warning from my aunt to sit still.

Beth Ann was chuckling again. “Your face,” she commented. “But seriously, Audie—Audrey, don’t let them give you a hard time about this. Get up in their business if they can’t deal. It’s your life, but I think you’d have less trouble if you just jumped in with both feet.”

“This isn’t my idea at all, Beth Ann,” I protested. “I’d still be letting everyone think,” I swallowed, “that I’m a boy if it were up to me. It’s just my inside plumbing is different. And that doesn’t show.”

She gestured at my chest.

“Padding,” I said.

“Not all of it,” Mom put in. “And it will show more, soon.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. I sighed.

“You’re wearing a charm bracelet,” Beth Ann pointed out.

I shrugged and got another warning from Aunt Nora. I liked my little ceramic unicorn, feeling like a rare beast myself. I liked my ears, too, so I held still.

Beth Ann apologized. “Sorry,” she said. “I know I’m just trying to help but it… maybe it feels like, uh, nagging or something on your end?”

I waved the hand she wasn’t working on instead of nodding with scissors so near my anatomy. I didn’t want Beth Ann to feel bad about it. I had a lump in my throat that meant I might start crying again, so I didn’t say anything at all for a moment.

“I’ve got a tinted gloss, just a tiny bit of pink, hardly noticeable,” said Beth Ann. She held the bottle up to show me. “I think it would look so pretty?”

“Okay,” I managed to say. Why not? If I gave in a bit maybe they wouldn’t try to drown me in girliness.

* * *

An hour later, I looked at myself in the mirror over the chest of drawers in the little room. Aunt Nora had trimmed my hair, but there seemed to be more of it now. It still lay in messy curls, but it had shape to the arrangement. A girly shape, I guess; I certainly looked less like a boy.

I held my hands up, fingers spread. My nails were shaped and tinted a slight pink, not so much you would notice if you didn’t know it was there. My unicorn bracelet and the necklace with the blue star completed a picture. The blue, I noticed, matched my eyes. Mom and my brothers have gray eyes, Dad and I have eyes as blue as new Levi’s jeans. Indigo, Mom called the color.

I looked nice and ten times girlier than before. I sighed, feeling a bit of icy dread in the pit of my stomach.

At one point, Aunt Nora commented, “You have the same problem Beth Ann has, nearly invisible eyebrows and eyelashes. Your ‘lashes are long and thick but almost transparent, same for your brows.”

“I use mascara and eyebrow pencil,” said Beth.

I frowned, but Mom put in, “She’s too young for makeup,” and I sighed in relief. Then she added, “Maybe when she starts high school.” Well, maybe.

“Do you like how you look?” Beth Ann asked, handing me a hand mirror.

I rolled my eyes before even looking. “This is not my idea,” I reminded her.

Mom gave me a hug around the shoulders. “She’s just not used to being so pretty, yet,” she teased.

“Mom!” I protested, but I couldn’t help smiling as the others laughed. I had certainly had no desire to be pretty, but the mirror showed that my hair did look infinitely better than the rat’s nest it had been.

“Now,” Aunt Nora explained, “you need to wash your hair with shampoo and conditioner every evening.” She handed me tubes of stuff from her shop. “And make sure it’s dry before you go to bed. As short as it is and the low humidity around here, it will probably air-dry in just a few minutes. Comb it while it is wet to prevent tangling. Never use a brush on wet hair; you’ll get split ends.”

“Okay,” I said. “But how do I get it looking like this again?” I waved at my head.

Beth Ann took over. “In the morning, you can use a brush on dry hair. First brush it front to back, then from back to front. Brush up from the sides. Then shake your head back and forth and up and down.” She demonstrated and we all giggled. “Use your fingers to comb stuff upward a bit, then spritz it with a light hold spray.” She held up a can and sprayed some on my hair.

“It smells like strawberry ice cream!” I said, not sure if I liked the idea of smelling like dessert.

“Uh, huh,” said Beth. “This is for girls your age,” (I tried not to wince), “so nothing too… uh, sexy? It’s just a pretty smell.”

Aunt Nora completed my lesson in hair care with a few more remarks. “If your hair gets mussed up, you can brush it back into shape and spray it again. But that’s why you want to shampoo every night, to get out the spray and the dust it attracts. But you need the spray; your blond hair is so fine, it won’t hold a shape long without some help.”

I shook my head. “Lot going on I never knew about,” I said.

They laughed.

* * *

Aunt Nora and Beth lived in Presley, not in one of the houses at the ranch compound, so they headed home for dinner, and Beth Ann had a date with her fiancé, Greg, one of the Fordyce grandkids. I noticed that she was wearing a necklace with the interlocked squares and diamond of the ranch cattle brand.

Jemmy Fordyce, Greg’s cousin, was a grade ahead of me, and we’d be going to the same school again starting next week when I began sixth grade in middle school. I remembered Jemmy as being something of a snot and a bully, but I didn’t really know Greg at all.

We’d missed the beginning of the Angel game. The sun was going down, and the guys were snacking in front of the TV after having taken care of evening chores while I got my hair cut. Dad, Morgan, and Junior were rooting for the Angels because the Dodgers had lost and they were hungry for a win. They might get one, too, but it could be interesting. The Angels were playing the Milwaukee team who had beat them the day before.

I knew all that, but my personal drama made it seem less important than it would have a week or two earlier. For one thing, now I knew I would never pitch for the Angels; they don’t let girls play Major League Baseball, and I didn’t see that rule changing any time soon. Besides, I never had learned to throw overhand with any real force or distance.

Feeling discriminated against and a bit confused, I followed Mom into the kitchen.

We seldom ate a full meal Saturday evening unless Dad decided to barbecue, but Mom said, “They’re going to want a hot snack in a bit.”

I flashed a grin because I had had the same thought. The guys weren’t the only ones who were hungry. I threw a bag of popcorn into the microwave while Mom took some frozen taquitos out and poured a bit of oil in the big, cast iron pan.

I took a tray down from the cabinet, standing on the little one-step footstool, and got out a basket that I lined with napkins. I also took out a large wooden spoon that I placed on the tray. Taking a beer from the fridge, I twisted the cap loose then poured the popcorn into the basket and loaded it all on the tray. I’ve never tasted beer but the popcorn smelled yummy.

Mom watched me curiously as I headed into the living room where Dad sat in the lounger, and Junior sprawled on the couch. I stepped around the Moose occupying the floor and set the tray on the little table beside the lounger. “I thought you might like a beer and some popcorn,” I said as I picked up the wooden spoon.

“Thank you, Audrey,” Dad said, smiling at me.

Morgan grinned, sat up, and reached for a handful of popcorn — so I hit him across the knuckles with the spoon. “This stuff is for Daddy,” I said, holding my chin up. “Go get your own.”

Junior fell off the couch laughing.

Finding out who you really are isn't always comfortable.

 
After Mom and I brought out trays with sodas, taquitos, salsa, sour cream, and guacamole, we all watched the end of the Angels game — they won. Junior made room on the couch for Mom, and I shared the lounger with Daddy, sitting sort of in his lap. I hadn’t done that in years.

“Your hair is nice, Punkin,” he said once.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You don’t seem so upset as earlier?”

I shrugged. “Being able to hit Moose with a spoon and not get hit back has some value,” I admitted.

He laughed, putting an arm around my waist, and I leaned back against him. He felt warm and solid, and I felt—safe? More than that but I wasn’t sure I could pin down the feeling. It was more like when I had been very small, and he had held me and carried me around.

*

When the game ended, Junior commented on my hair, while he and Moose cleaned up the living room. “You look great, chicklet,” he said. “Kind of like a sleepy elf or something.”

I shook my head but told him, “Thanks.” An elf?

Moose got his revenge, though. Just as I started down the darkened hallway to my room, he zoomed out of nowhere and grabbed me.

“Yike!” I squealed.

He let me go and rubbed both hands through my hair, chortling. “Can we get some whipped cream with the strawberries, sis?” he asked, sniffing of my hair.

I whirled around to kick or slap him, but he had already retreated, grinning. I wasn’t really mad, but he had scared the snot out of me.

Mom and Dad said nothing about the horseplay, and I figured it was fair enough. I had set him up with the wooden spoon trick, after all. So I just said, “No more sweets for you tonight,” and pretended to stomp off down the hall. Morgan is a goof, but I love him.

My brothers’ easy acceptance of my change in status did puzzle me. We had always been very different in personality and outlook, but I had just put that down to them being older than me. And bigger, much bigger.

When I had been younger, I looked up to them and made a nuisance of myself trying to be with them all the time. Especially Morgan. But by the time I started second grade, it became obvious to me that we had few interests in common. They liked physical action, even if it were dirty and a little dangerous, as long as it involved being outside and making lots of noise.

Junior had tried things like riding one of our bulls, and Morgan was like to copy him. I thought they were nuts and stuff like that did a lot to end my hero worship of their antics.

I liked quieter, more indoor activities like reading books or learning how to bake bread from Mom. I guess I had always been a bit girly that way. Maybe Moose and Junior found it easier to relate to me as a little sister than as a weird little brother.

I decided that if I thought too much about that, I would either start crying again or laugh myself sick and back in the hospital. Maybe with a new jacket that tied in the back.

Sniffling just a little, I turned left at the end of the hallway and opened my door.

* * *

In my room, I had to turn on a lamp because the sun had gone down behind the western mountains at the far end of Fordyce Valley hours ago. I pulled both sets of curtains closed. Usually, I only closed the outer set to keep out most of the light from the barns, but I felt the need for more privacy now and the more opaque inner curtains —drapes Mom called them— made me feel safer.

But I stood there for a moment, holding the drapes away from the window so I could look out on the night.

I could see shadowy cows standing around in clumps in the fields going up the slopes of the nearer hills. These were the dairy herd. Farther away, the beef cattle, mostly steers, would be keeping each other company in the same way as the darkness grew. They didn’t have anything to fear — there were no wolves these days, and the few cougars or black bears in the mountains would keep their distance from the ranch and its people.

After a bit, I turned away from the familiar view and began getting ready for bed.

Aunt Nora had said I should wash my hair every evening, so I decided to take a real shower. I laid out a clean pair of shorts and my pajamas, then stood there looking at the underwear for a moment. For maximum weirdness, apparently, I would feel just as strange wearing boy-style shorts as girl-style undies….

What the heck? It would make Mom and Dad happy that I was really giving this living as a girl thing a try so I replaced the shorts with a pair of panties, making a face at myself in the mirror when I did that.

Which reminded me to take off my necklace and bracelet and leave them on the dresser, I didn’t have a jewelry box, but I didn’t need one. Yet. I still felt a little creeped out wearing such stuff (pretty!) but having more than two pieces to choose from would be nice, I supposed.

Soap and towels would already be in the bathroom, along with the shampoo and conditioner Aunt Nora had given me. Just before I started down the hall to my bathroom, which also served as the guest bathroom, Mom tapped on the door and came on in.

“I bought something else for you at Penney’s,” she said, smiling and presenting me with a package, something pale blue wrapped in clear plastic.

More surprises. I started to ask ‘what now?’ but saw that the package contained a girl’s nightgown. I blushed as I accepted it. “Thanks, Mom. I guess my boy’s PJs wouldn’t be right if I’m going to give this a try, huh?” One more piece of ice for the collection in my belly.

“There’s tons of stuff you’re going to need,” Mom said. “But we can go as slow as you like.”

I shook my head. Not “as slow as I liked,” but more like “as slow as I was willing to throw a fit about,” but I knew she had good intentions.

I opened the nightgown package, remarking, “Technically, this is a dress.”

Mom looked surprised. “I didn’t think of it that way. Uh — at least it isn’t pink?”

We laughed softly then hugged.

“I’ll wear it,” I conceded. “No one will see, but family and I guess I have to start trying dresses sometime.” Ouch.

“It’s pretty plain, but it’s nice enough and also opaque for walking around the house,” she said.

I hadn’t even thought about that. Yike.

I stepped back and Mom followed me. She noticed the curtains and drapes being closed but didn’t say anything about it. I opened the package of the nightgown and held it up. It would easily fall past my knees and almost to my ankles.

“How could this not be a dress?” I asked Mom.

She just smiled.

I shook my head. It would be funny if it weren’t happening to me.

I had discovered that I actually could like some things about being a girl. I felt closer to my parents now, but that might have happened anyway, just because I had been sick for a while. Teasing my brothers with impunity was only a small perk as was getting out of certain sorts of work that I disliked.

I had discovered that I liked jewelry which puzzled me. But wearing girl’s clothes made me feel, well, weird. And I knew that Mom, and possibly Dad, would keep pushing on this.

I put my pajamas back in the lower drawer of my dresser and tossed the wrapper from the nightgown in the trash can by my door.

Mom started looking through my closet but said nothing.

“Don’t start throwing stuff away until I decide….” I trailed off. “Just don’t, okay? Not yet.”

She nodded. “Some of this you’ll want to keep, anyway as long as it fits. But you’re going to need a whole new wardrobe, Audrey.” She came over to me then and gave me a peck on the forehead (though short compared to Dad or my brothers, Mom was more than half-a-foot taller than me). “I’ll let you get your shower and see you in the morning, honey,” she said and left.

I grabbed my stuff, followed her out and down the hall for my bath.

*

Getting undressed, I rediscovered my bra. I had honestly forgotten I was wearing it. I hung it carefully on the towel rack furthest from the shower so it wouldn’t get wet accidentally. Mom had said it was all right to wear the same bra more than one day in a row, so I planned to. I think that was because they had to be hand washed and yet didn’t get dirty or smelly that fast. I didn’t want to think about putting the bra back on, but I did need it.

The ranch house had an oversized water heater, so the proper temperature was almost instantly available. I stepped under the shower and used the shampoo Aunt Nora had given me. Twice like it says on the label, both times using some of the lather on my upper body. Then I used conditioner and left it in for a bit while I cleaned elsewhere.

The soft terrycloth washrag seemed rougher than before, especially around my nipples but I cleaned neck, ears, elbows, and hands before using the rag below my waist. It had only been a few weeks since I had lost a layer of hide in the Crisis, and my skin was soft and tender everywhere — even my feet.

Growing up on a ranch, I never went barefoot like some of the town kids sometimes did. Bad stuff to step in or on everywhere and things that might step on you as well as dangerous machinery everywhere. Even with shoes, I had once stepped on a spike that went all the way through my foot and the shoe, top and bottom. That had required stitches and tetanus shots.

But now I had polish on my toenails. Sigh. Well, they did look nice.

I rinsed my hair and everything else with cooler water then stood still for the blast of cold that made one feel alive. I used two of the big fluffy towels to get dry, trying to pat instead of rub. I’d found out in the hospital that rubbing my new skin when it was damp with anything as rough as a terrycloth hurt.

I wrapped the dryer towel around me, standing on the wetter one. The mirrors had fogged up, so I wiped the one above the sink clear, having to stand on tiptoe to reach. Standing there, looking at my reflection, I moved the towel up to cover my chest and swollen nipples. Even wet and stuck to my head, my new haircut helped make me look more like a girl.

I sighed again. (I was doing that a lot.) I’d enjoyed being a boy, but honestly, I had hardly thought about it. Like a fish never thinking about water, I guess. It just was.

Some things I kind of liked about being a girl. Being honest to myself, I had always liked pretty things and had never enjoyed getting dirty or gross. While I loved baseball, I wasn’t any good at playing it and spent the one year I joined Little League on the bench or getting thrown out at first.

I turned my towel to the other side to absorb more water and opened the bathroom door a crack to get some air. We had no guests in the house, so this was my own bathroom, even if it didn’t connect to my bedroom like Mom and Dad’s bathroom did theirs.

Moose and Junior had a bathroom in their over-the-garage domain, too, so they didn’t have to come into the house for baths. I had already been glad I didn’t have to share one with them, and now more than ever.

I took a comb and began working on my hair. No brushes when it was wet, Aunt Nora had said. The comb helped it dry faster by getting air into the fine, dense curls. Again, I decided I liked the new color. I hoped it wouldn’t darken again. Blondes have more fun, right?

I dropped my towel and pulled on a clean pair of white panties, pushing the only part of me that still looked like it belonged on a boy so that it pointed backward and didn’t show. After handling that part of me, I felt my ears burning like I should be embarrassed.

I had planned on putting my bra back on. Mom had said it was okay to wear the same bra for two or three days unless it obviously needed washing. But did girls wear bras to go to bed? Considering the sensitivity of my nipples and how the bra had kept me from having to think about the soreness all afternoon, I did put it back on. I sort of thought that I needed to get used to wearing it. I was only going to get bigger up there.

I picked up the nightgown and examined it again. Very light, very soft, blue, opaque, with white stitching and a bit of white lace at neck, sleeves, and hem. My first clothing with a skirt. I turned another sigh into a grunt that came out sounding like a squeak.

Slipping it on over my head, I noted that, as I had thought, it reached past mid-calf almost to my ankles. I stepped over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I fluffed my hair with my fingers and looked at the girl in the mirror. I thought I looked pretty cute. Darn it.

What the heck were Pete and my other friends going to think? I kind of dreaded that but put it out of my mind. Pete and his family had taken the last weekend before school started on Tuesday to go on a mini-vacation down to Sea World. I wouldn’t see him until late Monday afternoon, probably. Danny, Lance, Chuy and my other friends I wouldn’t meet again till Tuesday morning.

And the girls, Rhea, Grace, Penny, how would they treat me? As a new member of the club or as an interloper?

It would be a new school for all of is, though. Presley only had a K-5 elementary school. We would all be riding the bus to middle school in La Rosa Morena, the next larger town in the area. Lots of new kids to meet. Our fifth-grade class had had only twenty-three students, but there would be more than a hundred in the sixth grade. Maybe I could disappear, and no one would recognize me.

Sighing, I turned to cleaning up the bathroom and putting my discarded undies and t-shirt into the hamper. I carried my jeans back to my bedroom with me and hung them in my closet.

The sighing of the A/C stopped, but the house was still cool inside, a nice temperature for sleeping. I turned out the light, but I could still see, dimly, from what leaked around the drapes. The lights on the barns were there in case of rustlers, believe it or not. It still happened, even in this day and age.

I was in bed and nearly asleep when Mom and Dad peeked in to check on me. They didn’t say anything, and I didn’t move. I must have dozed off before they closed my door and left.

* * *

A yellow-orange glow filled the cave, and I didn’t realize I was dreaming. Outside the cave, it was a warm green day in late June, just like the first time I had been there.

“Pete?” I whispered, but no one answered. Holding the hem of my nightgown up off the rocks, I made my barefoot way toward the fungus or mold or whatever it was on the wall near the back.

“Did you do this to me?” I asked it, but of course it didn’t reply.

When I had raised such a theory with the doctors, they had dismissed it. Such a thing wasn’t possible—people didn’t grow new organs because they had touched a furry alien blob in the back of a cave. Nor could organs I remembered having just disappear. Por lo tanto, tonta, I must have always been a girl.

I stopped asking them or even thinking about the cave on Mt. Palomar. But now…

“Why?” I asked, but still no one had an answer.

Suddenly, I was on the bus, going to middle school, still wearing my nightgown but now I had a pile of books in my arms. I walked down the aisle, my bare feet slapping on the plastic runner. I never went barefoot outside the house, but there I was in the dream. I sat beside Pete, who I had been friends with since pre-school.

He made a face. “Cooties! You’ve got cooties now, Audrey! You can’t sit with me!” He put an arm up to fend me off.

So I dropped my books, grabbed his arm, and licked him.

If you don't know who you are, how do you find out?

I woke up thinking about Pete and going to school on Tuesday. And I remembered something I had forgotten. I sat straight up in bed. “Oh, shit!” I said. Luckily no one heard such unladylike language.

I got out of bed and glared at my reflection wearing the blue nightgown. “I’m wearing a dress,” I muttered. “With lace and a bow at the neck.” I shook my head, annoyed but I had a bigger worry now than just Mom talking me into a nightgown. Well, I hadn’t put up much of an argument, and I shoved down my embarrassment. Things seemed different in the morning, and I had a new thought to worry about.

First, I made a trip down the hall to the bathroom. Pulling up my nightgown, and pulling down my panties(!), I sat down to pee. I didn’t have to but keeping the gown out of the way would have been awkward, I told myself. Instead of giving it a little shake, I used a small wad of tissue to make sure I was dry down there, and things were tucked back before standing up and readjusting stuff.

I blushed when I saw myself in the darkened mirror, but I had things to think about. I hadn’t turned on the lights, and I didn’t flush for number one, just putting the lid down. You don’t if you live in a desert and don’t have city water or sewer.

Back in my room, I sat down on the bed and considered something Daphne Ross had mentioned to me on that picnic in June. The middle school in Rosa Morena requires girls to wear skirts except on Fridays or the day before a holiday when they can wear pants or shorts. And boys can wear shorts on those days, too. But they don’t have to wear skirts, Monday thru Thursday; how is that fair?

I squeezed my eyes closed. Maybe I could go to a different school? What the heck was with such a rule anyway? Didn’t they know it was 1979?

Nibbling on the pad of my little finger, I tried to think of a way out of being forced into skirts. I could pass as a boy, even naked unless someone did an ultrasound of my insides. Well, a boy with boobs, but I should be able to go to school as a boy until, and if, I finally had an operation to look like a girl, you know, down there. Yet here I sat with a girl’s haircut and wearing a girl’s nightgown.

The fact that I had mostly enjoyed being treated like a girl yesterday afternoon didn’t matter to my mood this morning. And my behavior in the bathroom made me squirm a bit. I didn’t have to act like a girl when I was alone and in the dark, did I?

I might as well go to the doctors and tell them to get rid of my useless penis instead of going through the charade that I was only trying out being a girl for a while. If I started going to school in dresses, how would I ever be able to go back to being a boy?

“F-f-fooey,” I said, chickening out on using a really bad cussword, even alone. I felt like such a wimp that I tried again. “F-f-fudge ripple!” I said, which was one of mom’s fake cusses. I lived around cowboys, I knew lots of cusswords, but I never had been comfortable using them after several lectures from Mom when I was little.

Thinking of her, I turned my head, listening. Daylight had not yet begun to peek around my drapes, but a glance at the clock showed it must be nearly morning. Which meant Dad and my brothers would be gathering for coffee-and before going out to do chores. So Mom would already be in the kitchen to make coffee, heat up rolls, or toast bread. I’d heard her go down the hall while I was in the bathroom, I realized.

Coffee-and was family slang for the not-quite-meal before breakfast. Usually, just coffee with a buttered roll, toast with jam, or maybe a piece of cold meat in a biscuit. But sometimes Mom, with my help, made cinnamon rolls the night before and got up early to pop them in the oven.

Not on a Sunday morning, though. Still, I could hear people moving around the house. No one had woke me, but it was time to get up and join in. I was halfway down the hall before I remembered that I was wearing a nightgown. I shrugged, feeling a bit resigned to my fate.

Barefoot, I walked into the kitchen to find Mom buttering the small finger rolls we used while wearing a nightgown much like mine. Coffee dripped into the big stainless steel carafe from the coffeemaker next to the stove, and the rolls, reheated in the warming oven smelled delicious.

“Morning,” she chirped. “We were going to let you sleep in, so much has been happening.” She handed me a packet of cocoa and a cup, and I turned the heat on under the teakettle after sloshing it to make sure it wasn’t empty.

“Thanks, I guess,” I said. “But I’m awake.” I sighed, climbing onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar and discovering that this was a different process when wearing a long skirt. I almost fell on my butt when I trapped the hem between my foot and a rung of the stool. Flustered, I figured it out and got seated where I could watch Mom at work.

She didn’t need any help, so I just stayed out of the way. I hadn’t had any responsibilities for morning chores since the Crisis and felt a little bit guilty about that. On a ranch, everyone works.

I felt even guiltier when Mom snatched up the whistling kettle, poured hot water into my cup, handed me the mini-whisk, and put the cream crock within reach. At nearly the same time, she placed the tray of buttered rolls on the bar and poured coffee into thermal cups just as the guys started arriving.

Morgan was the first, coming in from the utility room end of the bar. Two sugars, double cream, a roll into a pocket, one in hand and one in his mouth. “Cute,” he said around the roll while pointing at me with another.

I snatched a roll before they disappeared and pointed at him with it. “Stupid,” I said. He grinned, and I blinked at him, my substitute for winking.

Dad came in from the other door to the kitchen, gave Mom a squeeze, me a pat, grabbed a coffee, one sugar, and two rolls before following Morgan through the utility room. “Thanks,” they called as they dodged around Lee-Viathan making his sleepy way in between the washer and dryer and chest-type deep freezer.

Lee Junior, the only member of the family who was not truly a morning person, took his coffee black. He peered at me from under the shaggy brows he inherited from our grandfather back in Oklahoma. “Chicklet,” he said. “You should take over the early shift from Mom, let her sleep in some mornings.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. “You’re right.” I liked that idea. Being responsible for the almost-meal would go a long way to relieving my guilt for avoiding other chores.

He peered some more. “That blue suits you. Despite what I said to Beth Ann, I don’t know how we never noticed before how pretty you are,” he rumbled, grinning to show that he was at least half-teasing. “Ma,” he added, “you should get her some ribbons to wear.”

I glared at him for that, but he only grinned wider. For some reason, I never could tease Junior back like I could Moose.

He scooped three rolls into one of his big hands and turned to shamble out after saying thanks to Mom.

She gave him a piece of motherly advice before he disappeared. “Open your eyes, so you don’t fall into any holes in the ground, Leland Albert,” she called.

“Once,” he called back, laughing. “That only happened once.”

After they were gone, Mom yawned widely, poured herself a coffee, and climbed up on a stool beside me.

I had used the mini-whisk to get my cocoa all smooth and then dumped the little utensil into a glass of water. I hate lumps in my cocoa.

We sat quietly, sipping hot liquid and nibbling on the last of the rolls. The guys would be back in a bit less than an hour, and they would want a real breakfast, but we had time to relax.

I considered bringing up what I had remembered about the middle school dress code but decided it could wait till we maybe had some time to do something about it. Like what, I had no idea—another reason to delay.

“I don’t mind getting up early,” she said after a bit, responding to Junior’s suggestion that I take over coffee-and.

“I know,” I said. “But we should figure out how to divide the job up somehow. I don’t want to go out to the barns with the guys to toss hay or shovel, uh, manure.”

She chuckled. “I always kind of enjoyed that when I was your age. Physical work, even if it was a bit smelly or nasty.” Mom really was a tomboy.

I put my knees together and smoothed my nightgown over them.

She laughed. “You’re going to work this to your advantage? Be a girl when it suits you?” She offered me an evil grin.

I gave her a shaky one back. “There ain’t a shiny side to every cowpie, but it don’t hurt to look,” I said, using one of Grandpa Decker’s sayings. Mom’s father was a chewed-up old rancher in western Oklahoma who had never managed to stay married despite having a store of country wisdom that would ‘make a hoot owl blench.’ Whatever that last part meant, quoting Grandpa always gave Mom a smile.

She did so and since she couldn’t wink either, gave me the sort of squinchy blink both of us used instead.

We giggled. I can’t call the sound of our enjoyment anything else.

Mom shook her head, looking at me sideways. “Your father always said he wished we had a daughter he could spoil. You’re going to be able to wrap him around your little finger, sweetie.”

I had the grace to blush because I had already noticed Dad’s new favoritism. And my brothers seemed to be prepared to spoil me, too, despite the teasing they considered my fair share.

I made my eyes big and round as I looked back at her. “Does that mean I can finally have that pony I’ve always wanted?”

She almost fell off the stool, laughing. I’ve never asked for a pony. I can ride, but I don’t want my own horse because I know exactly how much work owning the beasts is. And spoiled or not, you can bet that I would be required to take care of any asked-for animal.

I tried to keep a straight face but ended up failing to stifle more giggles.

After only a few more minutes of conspiracy, we set to work making breakfast. Mom stirred up biscuits while I washed and peeled and cut up fruit. We had cantaloupe, tangelos, grapes, and apples, some of which were right from orchards or fields on the ranch.

With biscuits in the oven, Mom began arranging bacon on a broiler pan while I put the fruit into individual bowls. Moose and Junior might complain if they didn’t get what they considered enough meat, but in truth, they inhaled fruit whenever they were offered it, so they got bigger bowls than the rest of us.

Bacon in the broiler and fruit on the table, Mom got out the eggs, and I began grating cheese and chopping onions and peppers for the scramble. Just like with chopping the fruit, I sat at the breakfast bar to do these chores. I’d only recently gotten tall enough to use the kitchen cabinet surface to work on and was still more comfortable sitting on my stool.

Mom separated out a few egg whites, added a splash of water, beat them fluffy with the rinsed off mini-whisk then folded them into the other eggs, and added my freshly grated cheese.

The big skillet was already pre-heating on the stovetop with a thin layer of bacon grease from previously saved drippings. The biscuits, all golden and smelling like heaven, came out to cool, and Mom turned the bacon with tongs, put it back in and cranked the oven up to broil while I poured juice into glasses. Orange for the brunets, apple for Daddy and me because acid didn’t agree with us so much. I loved OJ, but it had never liked me back.

Mom made quick gravy with part of the drippings when the bacon came out all fragrant and smokey, and I ferried things to the table.

It all came together as the sun rose and we heard the guys coming in the back, laughing, cleaning their boots with the putty knives kept by the doors and washing their hands and faces in the laundry tubs. They stormed in through the utility room into the dining room, all appetite and noise.

Biscuits in napkin-lined baskets, bacon on a pile of paper towels, scramble with cheese, onions, and peppers in deep bowls; I felt so proud I could burst when Daddy complimented us on such a beautiful meal. He always did, but somehow it was special this morning.

“Audrey,” Mom said, bursting my bubble a bit, “go put your slippers on. A lady doesn’t sit at the table with bare feet.”

“I don’t have slippers,” I protested. I didn’t think I would cry, but my eyes suddenly burned. I knew the rule about shoes at the table, it applied to boys, too, but I had forgotten.

“One more thing,” Mom sighed. “Well, wear a pair of mine, quickly, honey.”

I hurried out of the dining room then raced down the hall into my parents’ bedroom and opened Mom’s end of the closet. Slipping my feet into the first pair of slippers I saw, I headed back out to join the family at breakfast.

I didn’t even take notice that the slippers were pink with rhinestones and bows. That they were too big, I was aware of since I nearly tripped running down the hall before slowing to a fast walk through the living room.

They were waiting for me to take my seat; coffee poured in front of them and prepared as they each liked it. I sat next to Mom, across from Morgan, whose gaze had locked on the pile of bacon. A half cup of coffee sat by my plate, too, with lots of cream and sugar already added.

“Audrey,” said Dad, “would you say the prayer for us this Sunday morning?”

I closed my eyes and bent my head. “God bless this food, this family, and our happiness,” I prayed.

“Amen,” they all said. Morgan might have rushed it a bit.

* * *

The guys cleaned up the table while Mom and I started in washing up the pots and pans we’d used and loading the dishwasher. I got a hug from Daddy, a “Good job,” from Junior and a sloppy kiss on the ear from Morgan. Way more appreciation than I had ever gotten for my kitchen work as Audie. I could get used to this, but I knew it wouldn’t last.

Finally, Mom and I had it all sorted out. She noticed that I was still wearing her slippers and commented. “Do you want to go do more shopping today? There’s still stuff that you need.”

“I guess so,” I admitted. “What’s open on Sunday?”

“Nothing in Presley and not much in Rosa Morena,” she said.

Now was a good time to tell her. “Do you know about the dress code in middle school?” I asked. My insides turned icy while my face went hot.

She blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I got a letter back in May. Something, they… Do they…?”

I nodded. “Girls have to wear skirts, Monday through Thursday. Or at least they did last year, according to Daphne.” Something else suddenly occurred to me. “Can we find out if that’s still the rule?” I felt like I might start to cry.

Mom glanced at a clock. It wasn’t seven thirty yet. Not everyone keeps ranch hours so she couldn’t call anyone for a while. “I’ll ask around, but I think so. Go get dressed. We have to go shopping anyway. Take your time. Stores don’t open for quite a bit.” She looked thoughtful. “Marsha might be up, and her daughter Rhea is your age.”

Rhea Braun, a tall girl I had gone to school with for years. Long gorgeous blond hair. Did I feel a pang of—something? She lived on the Blackberry Ranch, even further from town than we did but closer to Rosa Morena. Her dad, Oskar, was a pilot and ran a small crop-dusting service from an airfield on the ranch.

Rhea had shot up in height the year before, taller than any of the girls or boys our age in school. And near the end of fifth grade, she had started developing a shape. Her birthday was in October, so she had been six months older than me. Would I look like Rhea in six more months?

Mom caught me staring at nothing. “Go get dressed. You took a bath last night, so it won’t take you long. But we have plenty of time. Nothing opens before ten on Sunday.”

“Kmart in Rosa Morena does,” I said.

Mom made a face. “For your first day of school, we want something better than Kmart. I’m thinking Nordstrom’s.”

I headed toward the hall, asking, “Where’s that?” I knew, but it didn’t come to mind at the moment.

“Closest one is Tyler Mall.”

I did a take, almost turning around. “Mom, that’s over an hour away!” In Riverside. It would almost be closer to go to Palm Springs or San Diego.

“But they have the nicest dresses,” said Mom.

I opened and closed my mouth several times before she said go, again, and I went. Chills had gone down my spine, but I had had a weird thought. Did Rhea shop at Nordstrom’s?

Can you buy a new identity at Kmart?

Mom got on the phone a little after eight and confirmed with Rhea’s mom that Rosa Morena Middle School did require girls to wear skirts to class except on Fridays and the day before a holiday. And that boys were required to wear button-up shirts with collars since Marsha had a son, Rhea’s brother, Willem, in ninth grade going here, too. She even directed Mom to find the letter the school had sent out describing the dress code in detail.

“What’s with such rules?” I complained after she let me see it. “It’s not a religious school or anything. Is it even legal?” I felt put upon and could not avoid a bit of a whine in my voice. We were both dressed and heading for the car after telling the guys where we were going.

‘The guys’ as a phrase still irked me a bit too, since it no longer included me.

Mom rolled her eyes at my tone of voice and let me see her do it. “You’ll live,” she said. “I had to put up with it when I went to school twenty years ago. Of course, the Presley elementary went K-8 back then, and we had half as many people living in the Heights.” Meaning all the little connected mountain valleys of northeast San Diego County and the neighboring areas in other counties.

I kicked a rock in our gravel driveway while Mom backed the big Ford Crown Victoria out from between the pick-ups and four-wheel drives of the ranch vehicles. I was wearing my jeans with the heart stitching on the butt, the pale green pullover teddy-bear shirt, my necklace and bracelet, and my sneakers with the rainbow laces. I had on panties and my bra for underwear, too.

And I was outside the house dressed as a girl from skin out.

Mom stopped the car with the front passenger door right in front of me. I heard the electronic lock release and opened the door. Mom was grinning at me. “Look, your shirt is the same color as the car.”

I looked. Then I closed the door and ran back to the house. I heard the electric window going down and Mom calling after me. “Audrey? Where are you going?”

“To change shirts,” I yelled back as I went through the windlock at the front of the house. I knew we still had plenty of time; the current plan was we would stop in Rosa Morena on the way, the Kmart there would be open, and we could pick up some everyday stuff, then drive north to the Tyler Mall.

In my room, I was tempted by my boy clothes. The other two tops I had, besides the blue one I had worn yesterday, were the red one, which was really a washed-out burgundy color, and the lavender. Purple, even pastels, had always been my favorite color, and I even had boy shirts in lavender.

I sighed, holding the burgundy teddy-bear shirt up beside my face. It looked all right. I tried the lavender next, and it looked better, bringing out the violet color of my eyes. I sighed, then pulled the green shirt off and the lavender one on. Of course, I had to redo my hair, which meant going to the bathroom to get my comb damp.

The process was comb my hair, then brush it back, brush it forward, brush it up from the sides, then shake my head, and last, spray with the light hold stuff that smelled like strawberry ice cream. It was kind of fun and looked really good.

Mom had waited patiently in the car for me. I guess she understood why I couldn’t wear a shirt that matched the car’s color. “Better?” she asked as I climbed in and swung the heavy door closed.

“Uh, huh,” I said, buckling up.

We got on our way, Mom remarking as we went under the squares and diamonds of the ranch gate sign, “That top is almost pink.”

“It’s not pink. It’s lavender-blue,” I said.

“We’ll get you into something pink eventually, but a cool pink will look best on you. Just one or two shades over from what you’re wearing now.”

“Argh,” I said, and she laughed.

* * *

When we got inside Kmart, Mom surprised me by heading straight for the toy department.

“What?” I said when she towed me away from the girls’ jeans.

“We don’t want the cheap clothing they have here, well, maybe a nice jeans skirt? But something you don’t have that every other girl has are some dolls.”

“Mom!” I protested.

“You do have GI Joes and don’t think I haven’t seen you play with them. You make up stories, and your Joes talk to each other and have feelings. And those Star Wars dolls we got for you two years ago.”

I know I was turning red. Pete had teased me about the way I played with my action figures. I’d inherited most of my toys from my brothers, and these were the old 12-inch Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force men. I had seven of them and a ton of their accessories, including astronaut, deep-sea diver, and superhero costumes. I hadn’t played with them much in a while, and especially not much this summer, what with everything else going on.

In fact, Pete had kinda made me feel weird back near my birthday in June when I told him that Ace, my Atomic-Man figure, was worried about how his son was doing in pre-school. He laughed at me, accused me of playing with dolls and of turning into his little sister Margery. I hadn’t touched them since.

Not even the Star Wars ones. One of the figures in the set I had gotten was Princess Leia. And I hadn’t taken any of them out of the box in months, but her figure was still in the plastic bag it came in.

“Poop,” I said out loud.

“What, hon?” Mom asked.

“Nothing,” I said. I didn’t want to admit it but I’d always been jealous of girls having so many neat different dolls to play with. I had HotWheels cars, too, and they were fun, but it was harder to make stories with them because they didn’t have faces.

I wanted to use a stronger word than ‘poop,’ but I kept my mouth shut.

Mom towed me behind her like a kite all the way to the doll aisles. The toy section was only half as big in summer as it would be near Christmas, but there were still two aisles full of dolls, one of Barbie-type dolls and one of baby dolls.

“Cowpie,” I said.

“You want a kewpie doll?” Mom asked. “I have one I’ve had for years. She sits on my dresser next to my jewelry box.”

I couldn’t get any redder. I tried to explain. “Mom, I’m dying here,” I told her.

She looked at me and grinned. “No, you’re not. Look around.” The store was almost empty. “No one cares which doll you choose, or if. But if you don’t choose, I will.”

“Mom!”

She made a gesture at the rows of dolls looking a challenge at me. “It’s okay, really, you’re allowed.”

I weakened. “I’m too old for dolls,” I said.

She laughed at me. Not in a mean way, but still. “Think of it this way,” she said. “You’re buying dolls for a deprived little girl who has never really had a doll of her own.”

“I’m not—I—” I wanted to stomp my feet and pout, but that would surely have caused Mom to laugh at me again. Because the absolute worst of it was—I did want a doll of my own.

“Let’s go over here,” Mom said suddenly, leading the way. Here was another toy aisle, perhaps a little more boy-oriented with Legos and Hot Wheels but at the far end were playsets and action figures.

Some great stuff. But my eyes went immediately to the lower racks where some toys on cards and in boxes had collected a bit of dust. And one of the cards showed an action figure version of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman.

“Mom,” I said, almost not breathing. I had a poster of her in my room in nearly the same pose as on the box. And the figure looked great with a cloud of black hair around her face.

“Here’s Princess Leia with Carrie Fisher’s face, and Lindsay Whosit as -uh- The Bionic Woman, and they even have Wonder Woman in her Diana Prince disguise.”

“Mom,” I said, taking a breath. These dolls were in the same scale as my GI Joes. Which also meant….

“I think they are all the same size as Barbie, so there’s lots of different clothes you could dress them in.”

“Mom!”

“You can pick two here and two from one of the other aisles, and a change of clothes for each doll,” Mom said.

Very reasonable for a blackmailer, I thought. “That’s going to be close to $20 for clothes and dolls. Uh, action figures,” I said.

She shrugged, looking pleased with herself that she had proved her point.

Wonder Woman’s costume was partly painted on, and the Bionic Woman had that funny arm that opened up to show it was mechanical so I picked Princess Leia and Diana Prince

“Don’t you already have one of Leia?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “But if we have different clothes for each of them, they can be sisters.”

Mom seemed to think that was funny for some reason.

Barbies are not action figures, and I couldn’t fool myself that they were anything but dolls. But I talked Mom into a playset, a scale model kitchen that was so incredibly cute! It even had a tiny box of Rice Krispies. Another $20 but Mom didn’t seem to mind and cooed over it like she was the one who would be playing with it.

I picked a Barbie that was wearing jeans and then three other sets of clothing for the three grown-up dolls. But my eyes lit on a Skipper doll, Barbie’s little sister. She was called Growing Up Skipper and, according to the package, when you turned her arm a certain way, she would get an inch taller and develop a bit of a figure. Small boobies, a lot like mine.

Okay, I had to get that. She came with two skirts that looked like they were made of tablecloth material so I picked out a set of denim overalls for her.

After that, we wandered around the store, got a bag of hot pecans from the nut cart and a cup of soda to share before taking the stuff we bought out to the car. The huge trunk on the Ford swallowed everything up and left me feeling a bit bereft when the lid closed on my new treasures.

That was when I knew I really was a girl because I so wanted to play with my dolls. Silly, but there it was.

I hiccuped, and Mom looked at me curiously. I didn’t want to cry, but I came very near to it. I swallowed hard and said, “Mom, I don’t know anything about how to be a girl.”

“You’re doing all right, honey,” she said.

She offered me the last sip of the Coke we had got, and I took the lid off to suck on some ice. The first week of September can be very hot in Southern California in the middle of an asphalt parking lot, but it was barely nine in the morning, so it was more the idea of how hot it was going to get than how hot it really was. Or maybe I just wanted something n my mouth to avoid talking.

“School,” I said around the ice. “Playground games.” I waved the cup, and she took it back.

“There’s some other things we could get here,” she said, heading back toward the store entrance.

“Wha—?” I hurried to catch up to her and almost swallowed the piece of ice.

“You’re saying you don’t know how to play the right jacks games or jump rope rhymes or how to talk double-dutch?”

“Uh? What’s double-dutch?”

“It’s like pig latin but harder for boys to figure out,” she said grinning. “You put extra syllables in the middle of words. It was a big thing when I was your age.” She snorted, remembering something. “You get on a roll with it, and sometimes you can’t figure out what you said yourself.”

I giggled.

“Weblee arblar gobling tobloo byblai yubloo suhblum bublooks,” she said.

“I—What?” I stopped, staring at her.

“You’ll get the hang of it, it just takes practice.” She kept moving, stepping on the mat for the automatic door.

“What the heck did you say, Mom?” I hurried to catch up again. “Mom?” I got the giggles again. I had sort of understood her.

We went straight to the magazines and books, and she started picking things out. Tiger Beat magazine I sort of could have predicted. I rolled my eyes, but it went in the pile. A couple of the 50-cent Nancy Drew mystery books. Okay. But some of the other books and magazines seemed off.

“Some of these are too young for you,” Mom said. “But girls your age will all have read them when they were younger, so you should too.”

That kind of made sense. I threw in a couple of choices myself, things I had seen girls reading.

We were getting quite a pile. “Are we spending too much money?” I asked.

Mom sniffed. “Wait till we get to Nordstrom’s.” She stopped what she was doing and put an arm around me. “Honey, six weeks ago we thought we were going to lose you to that fever. Mr. Fordyce’s insurance covered most of the medical bills, and we’re willing to spend what it takes to—to make up to you that we didn’t know who you were.” She had a catch in her voice.

I didn’t squirm out of her hug even though I wanted to. “I love you, Mom,” I said and hugged her back.

We took our new purchases up to the counter, and the check-out lady smiled at me. “Is it someone’s birthday?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

Mom put in. “She was sick and missed her birthday.”

Several of the store people beamed at me. “Well, happy birthday, better late than never,” the cashier said, laughing. “You got those toys and now books! You’re going to be a happy, busy young lady for a while.”

Being called ‘she’ and ‘young lady’ still made me want to squirm, but I smiled and nodded and said thank you again when she handed me one of the bags.

“Spoil’em when they’re young,” she said as she handed the other bag over to Mom. Then to me, “Your hair is cute but so short!”

“Thank you. They had to cut my hair when I was sick,” I said. “My aunt gave me this new style.”

“Well, she did a good job, honey,” said the lady and the next woman in line nodded and smiled at me, too.

I felt good as we went out to the car. Everyone had been so nice to me, not actually what one would expect in Kmart.

Mom was sniffling as we got to the car. “Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked, realizing that she had been crying.

“You’re just so beautiful, honey,” she said.

Oh, Jeez! I know I turned red as a stop sign.

Mom leaned on the car for a moment, and I put our bags onto the lid of the trunk. I hugged her around the middle, and she kissed me just above my ear.

“We almost lost you,” she said, repeating something she had said inside. “You ran a fever of 104°, you could have died, or been blinded, or had brain damage. But we got you back, and because of all the medical tests they did, we found out something.”

“Uh,” I said. I tried to get away, but not too hard. I was afraid she was going to muss my hair. “That I’m a girl?” I said.

“And that we love you, so much, honey. So much,” and she kissed me on the forehead.

She held me away from her. “Spoil’em while they’re young, the lady said. Is there anything else you want, just for yourself, before we hit the road again. We’re going to get you lots of pretty clothes at Nordstrom’s—don’t make that face!—but is there anything here at Kmart you would want?”

“Uh….” Something did occur to me. I fingered my bracelet. “Some… some cheap jewelry? Maybe?” Something else occurred to me. “Uh, you said just for myself? But could we maybe get something for Moose and Junior? I know Moose might want a new Dodger cap, his old one got eaten by a steer.”

Mom laughed, which is why I said that about the cap getting eaten. “Sure,” she agreed. “But the Dodger’s are toast this season. We’ll get all the guys Angel caps so they can root for a winning team.”

We put the books and magazines in the car, not the trunk this time so I could read them while we drove up to Riverside. Then we went back inside.

We got the Angel caps for the guys and some jewelry for me. Mom got herself a new Angel cap this time, a pink one. She offered to get one for me, but I said, no, it would mess up my hair.

So I got a sun visor instead, just the bill with the Angel logo and a strap to go around my head. It was pink, too. I guess I’m over that hating pink thing.

Is finding out who you are like winning a prize?

Who would have thought we could spend more than an hour shopping in Kmart? We got some other stuff I hadn’t mentioned yet, like a pair of cheap slippers to wear instead of my sneakers for when we go shoe shopping later and also some socks and hand cream, bath soap, sunscreen and stuff like that.

And a purse. A big straw bag with handles and a fake leather strap and two pockets inside it. There was a stylized sun on one side of the bag and a cartoony-looking giraffe on the other. A giraffe? Oh well. The colors were in the African-inspired reds, yellows, purples, and greens that were stylish right then.

I picked the purse out because I thought the giraffe looked really funny and I wanted to be able to pretend that people might be laughing at the cartoon instead of at me for carrying a purse. But I needed it. The jeans I was wearing with the heart-shaped patches on the rear pockets turned out to not have pockets at all — just decorations, front and back, that looked like pockets!

So I put the tubes of sunscreen and hand cream and the strawberry flavored lip balm along with a cheap brush and comb set into the purse. I also put in the Tiger Beat magazine, and two books. One called Ramona and Her Father, about a little girl and her dad, I picked because Ramona was a town two valleys over from where we lived. The other was about a girl starting high school and dealing with her mentally-challenged older brother. I could relate.

Mom had also picked out for me a little pocketbook made of blue gingham cloth, and she gave me five dollars and some coins to put inside. Five dollars! “That’s for you to spend on anything you want,” she told me. Well, I tried to remember if I had ever had five dollars just to spend myself before, and I remembered going to the San Diego County Fair in Del Mar last year.

The fair is huge, one of the biggest in the country. We go every year, partly because of the livestock show and mostly because it is just a lot of fun with all kinds of shows and concerts and exhibits and races and carnival rides. I had to miss it this year because it started the week that I got so sick.

Two years ago Junior had won at the carnival baseball toss the gigantic plush duck he and Morgan had in their room. He had tried to give it to me, and I had refused because what nine-year-old boy has a green and yellow plush animal as big as he is? Now I kind of regretted turning it down because —heck!— girls are expected to have that kind of stuff and it would look so neat sitting on my bed.

I remember Junior tried to give it to his girlfriend at the time, Wanda, and she was all, “You wanna give me a duck? What are you trying to say?” I laughed so hard at that I got the hiccups, and I couldn’t even figure out why it was funny. So Morgan and Lee ended up keeping it in their room. I wondered if I could ask for it?

I thought about this after we got in the car and started for Riverside. Mom didn’t like anyone talking much while she drove so I had time to read some and think about things. I had the two books and the magazine in my big straw bag, and the other printed stuff was on the backseat. Everything else went in the trunk.

Tiger Beat was kind of interesting, but I hardly knew who any of these people were. And frankly, I didn’t care too much to know them, either. I guess the girl cooties hadn’t completely corrupted my brain yet.

We headed west across the highland valleys then turned north when we got to the freeway, just south of Temecula. The sign said 45 miles to Riverside so still almost an hour to get to the mall. There wasn’t a Nordstrom’s closer, and they were Mom’s favorite department store.

Reading in a moving car makes me sleepy, and after a bit, I asked Mom if I could recline the seat and maybe take a nap.

“Sure, honey,” she said. “Though if you want to talk a bit the freeway is pretty empty and it’s not like a mountain road anyway. Anything you’d like to ask me?”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Uh…. I—I—”

Mom laughed. “You don’t know where to start.”

“Yeah, like that,” I agreed. I straightened up in the seat and put my book in my bag. “Um. Am I going…am I going to…uh—”

“Like boys?” she guessed. A little too accurately for my comfort.

I nodded, turned red, and squeaked a quiet, “Yeah?”

She didn’t laugh. “Who knows?” she said. “It’s okay if you do and okay if you don’t.”

“What —uh— what if I like girls?” I asked.

“That’s okay, too, I guess,” she said. “It’s a hard thing to figure out, and it’s not something you can plan. You’re still a bit too young to really make up your mind.”

I fidgeted for a bit. Mom watched me without losing concentration on the road. I finally got up the nerve to ask another question. “If I get —uh— things fixed…” I made a vague gesture nowhere near my groin, “will I be able to have babies?”

“The doctors say probably, but they admit they don’t really know. Would you like to have babies someday?” she asked me one back.

“I don’t know. It’s such a weird idea. I mean for me. I still don’t think I’ve had enough time to think about it.”

She nodded. “Take all the time you need to think,” she said. “Seven or eight years, at least.” She laughed, and I made embarrassed squeaking noises.

I didn’t say anything for a while, then I asked, “Having a baby hurts, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. “It hurts a lot. You weren’t so big a deal, six pounds fourteen ounces but Morgan got called Moose before he was even born.” She laughed again. “I was big as a house with him, and he was half-an-ounce shy of ten pounds when he was born. His head was the size of a cantaloupe. But Lee Junior was my first and I thought he was going to split me in two even though he weighed only a pound more than you did.”

She paused for a moment. “Of course,” she said after a bit, “it was your father who fainted.” And she laughed some more. “With both boys. But he stayed awake for you and was the first one to hold you after you were born.” She smiled, remembering.

I tried to imagine something that would grow up to be as big as one of my brothers coming out of a tiny hole between my legs. Yikes! Why would girls let that happen to themselves? “You must have liked Daddy a lot,” I said.

I thought we were going to have to pull off the freeway before Mom stopped laughing.

*

We pulled into the mall parking lot at about 10:45 and discovered that the mall itself didn’t open until eleven on Sundays. Luckily, several of the restaurants were open, either in the parking lot of with openings there.

“Pancakes?” Mom suggested, and my stomach made an audible reply. I was embarrassed but also hungry. The Perky’s Coffee Shop was right next to the entrance to Nordstrom’s, so we went in and got shown to a table. Mom had made me bring my bag with me —okay, my purse— and after we were seated told me to take off my Angels sun visor and put it away. I’d forgotten I had it on.

“Is my hair okay?” I asked Mom.

“We got you a mirror, isn’t it in your purse?”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I dug around in the straw bag and came up with the purple-backed four-inch hand mirror that came with my comb and brush set. I checked what my hair looked like (it was fine) while Mom gave me a mysterious smile. “What?” I asked as I put the mirror back.

“Nothing,” she said, still smiling.

The waitress in her red-striped mini-dress came over and greeted us. “Good morning!” she said; her nametag read Barbara. “Hello, Ma’am,” to Mom and “Hello, young lady,” to me. I’d never been called that before, and I think I reacted by turning red.

Barbara had menus and handed one to each of us, then asked me, “Are you under twelve, honey?” I nodded. She gave me another smaller menu, “If you order off the kids’ menu, you get a toy!”

My face still red, I didn’t look up. Mom made it worse by laughing, and asking, “The way she eats, can she get two toys for eating two kid’s meals?” I tried to stare a hole in the table.

Barbara laughed. “She’s shy,” she commented but then added, “I think your hair is so cute,” to me.

I looked the kids’ menu over to avoid talking. The portions did look small, like one pancake, two bacon, and a scrambled egg. Or a small burger with a few Perky’s chips, which are French fries made like fat, crinkled potato chips. I would have to order two of them. I was that hungry.

Mom ordered coffee for herself and lemonade for me. I can’t drink orange juice. After Barbara left to fetch stuff, Mom said to me, “You don’t have to order off the kids’ menu.”

“Good,” I said. The toys are probably cheap junk, anyway, I told myself. But the last time we ate at Perky’s —there isn’t one near us, so it was probably in San Diego or Escondido— I got a neat miniature fireman with hat, boots, and coat that could be removed.

I had decided on a cheese and veggie omelet with a pancake and a fruit cup by the time Barbara came back. It was twice the price of a kid’s meal, but I figured it would probably fill me up. If not, I could probably cadge a few of the chips Mom was getting with her eggs and toast.

Barbara was tickled about me ordering a large omelet when she took our order. “You’re going to be a big girl sooner than later, huh?” she teased me.

I giggled a bit nervously.

“You should see her teenage brothers, Moose and Leviathan,” Mom commented. “But Lord help you if you ever need to feed them.”

Barbara’s peal of laughter attracted attention from all over the room. She covered her mouth and fled back to the server’s station, where I heard giggling among the waitresses for the rest of the meal.

I sighed and rolled my eyes at Mom. She grinned and did our patented non-wink back at me.

“We need a plan,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Well,” she continued, “I figure you need two nice dresses for wearing to church and special occasions like parties. And a pair of shoes to go with them, oh, and a small leather purse.”

I stared at her.

“You’ve got jeans, tops, and sneakers for Friday, but we might want to get you some shorts for the hot days in the rest of the month.”

“This is a plan?” I squeaked.

“If we get four school-worthy tops and two or three skirts, you could go weeks without wearing the same thing. But maybe a more casual, summery dress or two, as well, to break things up. And two pair of school shoes with another bag.”

“Mom!”

“Punkin,” she said seriously, “you need all this stuff, and more. It will start getting cold in the mountains in less than six weeks. We can make another shopping trip in October, but a jacket or a sweater for cold nights right now would be smart.”

I put my head down on my hands, contemplating the girliness looming in front of me. “What if I decide not to do this, to go back to being, —uh— who I was before?” I didn’t want to say it out loud in public.

“Lift your head, Audrey Jane,” Mom ordered.

I did, sitting back in the seat properly, too. “Sorry,” I squeaked. In our family, talking to adults while hiding your face was not allowed. I suppressed my inclination to kick a chair leg, which would be a more serious violation.

Mom shook her head the tiniest bit. “Not to worry, honey. You have a lot on your plate. But tell me, do you think it likely that you will decide to go back to being —uh— Audie? Because tomorrow, we need to go see the school administration.”

I froze. I honestly had not considered that. While students would not have class until Tuesday, teachers, and staff would be at work on Monday, getting ready. And obviously, the school needed to know my situation.

“I’ve got letters from your doctors explaining your medical condition, but the school is going to want to know if this is a permanent change.” She looked and sounded sympathetic, but she was putting me on the spot, so I wanted to suspect her of secret gloating.

And I wanted to kick something more than ever. “I can’t answer that right now,” I said.

Mom nodded and smiled, and our food arrived just then to cut off that line of conversation. Barbara offered a wager. “If you can finish the omelet,” she said, “I’ll bring you the tray of toys so you can choose one.”

“Don’t encourage her,” Mom said laughing and Barbara joined in before refilling our water glasses.

Mom and I switched to water for drinking and got down to the serious business of eating, or at least I did. I knew I had to eat the fruit cup, Mom would scold me if I didn’t, and I wanted to eat all the omelet. It wasn’t that I needed a cheap toy. I just wanted to see what was on the tray. Okay, I did want the toy. Anyway, the pancake was extra, and I didn’t have to eat any of it.

When it came down to it, I left more than half the pancake and maybe two bites of the omelet. I just couldn’t finish it. I blamed the butter on the pancake; I hadn’t used any syrup. But I was full. I sighed.

Barbara, the waitress, showed up carrying a tray full of toys. She smiled at me, “You did good, I’m going to count that as having finished.” She laughed, holding the tray out where I could see. The first thing I noticed was a sleeping baby doll, only four or five inches long, wearing a pink onesie and wrapped in a yellow blanket. I don’t know why my eyes went immediately to that.

“Mom,” I said, but I didn’t ask for advice or comment.

I got one anyway. “She loves dolls and telling stories with them,” Mom said, and Barbara laughed.

I may have broken some record for the reddest face on an eleven-year-old.

All the toys were in little cellophane envelopes. The tray was divided into two sections, one for boys and one for girls, but Barbara had presented it with the girls’ side closest to me.

The boys’ toys included a dump truck, a fireman, a plush dog, a whistle, and a bag of plastic blocks in bright colors. The girls’ section had the baby doll, a card with a set of summer clothes for a Barbie-type, another bag of blocks but in pastel colors, a collection of plastic bracelets, and the same plush dog as the boys’ side had.

I picked the baby doll, partly because Mom had said I didn’t have one. “She can sleep on my dresser,” I said, “and when I see her there, I’ll remember coming here and trying to eat an omelet bigger than my head.”

The grown-ups laughed a lot at that.

“What’s her name?” Barbara asked.

I glanced at Mom. “Madeline,” I said, the name that Mom had suggested would have been mine if everyone had known I was a girl when I was born.

“That’s cute,” said Barbara, then she had to leave to put the tray away and wait on other tables.

Mom sniffed and wiped an eye while I took Madeline out of her envelope and examined her carefully. She had bright yellow painted-on curls and a rosebud mouth. Her little fleece onesie was decorated with lambs, kittens, and baby chicks. She was so darn cute. I wanted to hug her, but instead, I wrapped her in her blanket and stowed her away in one of the pockets in my purse.

We got up to go, and Mom left an enormous tip on the table. Barbara and the other waitresses waved and called out bye to us, and we waved back, thanking them. The restaurant had an exit into the mall, and we came out into the wide hallway right next to the Nordstrom’s entrance. They were just opening, actually.

Directly across from us, though, a collectible doll shop display window held a dozen two-foot-tall dolls in back-to-school clothes. I wanted one, suddenly and felt very much a girl right then except something reminded me that I wasn’t completely female—yet. “Mom,” I said. “I need a restroom.”

What do you wear if you don't know who you are?

The restroom in Nordstrom's turned out to be as deluxe as I had ever seen with a couch in a foyer, several full-length mirrors, and auto-spritzers to keep it smelling good. Mom laughed when I asked if anyone was ever tempted to move in.

From there, we went directly to the Girls Department, and I cringed only mentally. A mannequin with short curly hair wore a blue skirt with a pink-striped shirt that caught Mom's eye. "Audrey, what do you think?" she asked, pausing in front of the display.

I wrinkled my nose. "I like that color blue," I said, trying to find something agreeable.

"It has a touch of purple, but it also isn't so dark," she noted.

"Uh, huh," I said. "The shoes are sort of clunky, but in a good way."

She laughed. "They're Oxfords but with a buckle instead of laces." Which would probably mean something to someone else. It turned out I knew nothing from shoes. The terminology was a mystery to me.

I sighed, looking again at the skirt and top. There were two other mannequins wearing variations, green and red skirts, shirts in different color stripes or solids.

Mom had found the rack with the display clothing and pulled out two skirts, then two shirts. "You should try these on for sizes," she said. I rolled my eyes, and she smiled at me. "Audrey?" she said.

I nodded, taking the stack of clothing and looking around for the changing rooms. Other people were beginning to filter into the store, and the salesgirl coming toward us got hijacked by other customers on the way.

Just as well, I didn't feel like talking anyway. Mom led the way to the women's changing booths, she'd been here before, and I went inside. I winced mentally as I passed beneath the sign, but I hadn't expected her to follow me.

"Mom!" I protested.

"Hush," she said. "Are you going to know what you should look for in how a skirt or blouse fits? I'm your mother, we're both girls, and you don't have to get naked to change clothes."

I rolled my eyes again but not where she could see then took off my top and jeans. Mom had taken one of the shirts, a lighter solid blue, though the label said "Periwinkle," out of the package and removed some of the pins. "Try this one first, if it fits, we won't need to open the other one."

I put the shirt on, the backward buttons baffling me for a moment. Mom handed me the blue skirt, and I stepped into it, fastening the waistband.

"Tuck in the blouse," Mom directed.

Blouse. I sighed and did so, turning to look in the mirror. I blinked.

"That suits you," Mom said. She checked the details of the fit while I stared at my reflection. Somehow, dressed as a girl in a skirt and blouse, I looked more grown-up, less like a little kid. "It's long enough for the dress code. Do you like it?" she asked.

I shrugged, smiling. "Like is too strong a word but I don't hate it like I thought I might," I admitted. I looked nice in the mirror, but I wasn't going to say that. I felt sure that with tall blondes like Rhea in my class, I wasn't going to stand out in a pretty way but now I knew I didn't look like a boy wearing a skirt, either. I looked a bit like Beth Ann must have at my age but with short curly hair.

Which reminded me. "Mom, can I have my brush from my bag?" I'd pulled my top off over my head, and the side mirror showed me a cowlick sticking out in back. Mom handed the brush over and watched as I tamed the rebel lock. "What?" I said as I put the brush away again.

She had an odd look on her face, amused, maybe. "Let me remove more pins and tags, and you can wear this while we shop. You won't have to fix your hair every time you change tops, and you need to practice wearing a skirt."

I made a noise that sounded a bit too much like a squeak, but she was right.

We left the untried clothes on a rack and went back out. Walking in the full skirt with it swishing around my legs, totally different from the nightgown, was a new experience. My embarrassment got so bad, I had to close my eyes. You're a girl, I told myself. Get used to it — swish, swish, swish.

Mom let me pick out three more, uh, blouses in the same pattern. I chose a blue striped one, a lilac striped one and one with narrower red and black stripes on white.

Mom smirked a bit when I chose the lilac shirt. "Lilac is not pink," I said. She just grinned at me, but I've always liked all shades of purple.

I didn't like the other colors of the skirt, green, black and red, so we moved on toward the denim department. Green? Barf.

"A nice jeans skirt can be very versatile," Mom was saying. "And the standard jeans colors will go well with the blouses you picked and the polo shirts you already have."

"Uh, huh." I couldn't be enthusiastic about picking a skirt — stupid school for having a stupid dress code.

Mom pushed past a couple of racks of clothes, commenting, "A lot of these would be too short on you. The rules say no more than four inches above the knee."

I blushed, thinking about wearing a skirt and guys looking at my legs. Pete, in particular, my best friend, was notoriously rude about whether girls should be wearing shorts or mini-skirts. Thinking about Pete and some of the comments I had heard from him ended up making me a little annoyed.

I looked down at myself in my new skirt. It wasn't any of Pete's business whether a girl had fat thighs or knobby knees, not that I had either of those problems. I discovered I had stopped in front of a rack of skirts with ruffled hems while glaring at an imaginary Pete.

"Do you like those, honey?" Mom asked.

I took a real look. The skirts were made of very light denim, much lighter than any boys' pants I had ever worn. That might be a lot cooler in the hot days of September. The cut was even wider than the skirt I was now wearing, and there were five or six inches of denim ruffle at the hem. Talk about swishy.

I blinked. But why did I think that would look good on me? I had a picture in my mind, and the ruffles seemed to emphasize my legs, making them look long and slender. "I've got nice legs, don't I," I said out loud.

Mom laughed. "Yes, you do. A bit twiggy, but at your age, that's very good."

We ended up with the ruffles and two other denim skirts to try on, with three blouses of different cuts, too. One blouse was a very western style, with shiny buttons and snaps on fake pockets. My dad had a shirt like that, and I had a mental image of me wearing my girly version standing next to him.

After visiting the changing room, I did pick the ruffled skirt because my legs looked long and slender below all that sort of bouncy skirt. And in the image of Daddy and me in my mind, I was wearing the fancy denim ruffles. He would think I was so cute and call me punkin. I had to grin and blush at the same time. You could maybe die from being too cute, I thought.

"Are you getting into this?" Mom asked when I burst into giggles looking at my reflection.

"I dunno," I admitted. "If I don't think too much about it, I guess. The girlier the clothes I pick, the less like a boy I look, huh?"

Mom nodded. "Beth Ann's advice to jump in with both feet looks smarter and smarter," she observed.

"Okay," I said, sighing. "Let's go look at dresses." Only a tiny bubble of icy dread formed in my throat.

I had changed back to the deep blue skirt and the button up periwinkle blouse, and we left the rest of the stuff we had picked so far at a counter with one of the sales girls, including the tags from the stuff I was wearing and my jeans and teddy-bear polo I came in with. I had on my necklace and my bracelet, too.

I played with the unicorn as we walked through aisles of some of the frou-frou-est little-girl dresses I had ever seen. No way, I kept telling myself, then my arm brushed up against something, and I had to stop to look.

It was a dress, of course, but for a big girl, a girl my age. It was longer than any of the skirts we had chosen, and made of the softest stuff I had ever touched in my life. I checked the size, but it didn't make sense. The shirts we had picked out were size 10-12, and this dress was a size 3-4? Maybe dresses had different sizes than shirts?

I pulled it out of the rack and held it up. It was, in fact, cut very like a shirt above the waist with cuffed half-sleeves, a pointed collar, and buttons down the front. It didn't look much, if any, bigger than the blouse I was wearing. The full skirt hung in folds, soft as anything I could think of.

I held it up higher. "Mom, what is this made of?"

She turned from the rack she was looking for and reached across to feel. "Oh, that's rayon. Very nice. Funny to see it in a girl's dress; it feels delicate, but it wears like iron and would last for years. You'd probably outgrow it before you wore it out."

"I like it," I said in a voice that sounded funny to me. "I want to try it on."

"It's pink," Mom pointed out.

I shook my head. "The label says the color is called 'Strawberry Milkshake,' so it isn't quite pink. Not pinky-pink, it has a little blue in it."

She laughed at me, and I giggled at my own rationalization. I wasn't even looking to see if there was another dress in a different color. I wanted this one.

Mom came around the rack to get a better look. "Oh," she said. "It's not a girl's dress, 3-4 is a women's size." She held it up to measure against me. "It would be very long on you, honey. Mid-calf at least, and the waist might be a bit low?"

"Feel of the cloth, Mom," I said. "It's like it's actually made of milk and cream and strawberries."

She looked me directly in the face, and I bit my lip. "Did you see the price?" she asked.

I nodded. More than any four or five things added together that we had already picked out. I bit my lip.

She read the label. "Dry clean or hand wash. Cool iron only. And it would probably have to be altered to fit you."

I pointed at a sign. "Free alterations with $50 in purchases." We were probably going to make that easily. Probably already had.

"It's a perfect dress for wearing to church or a fancy party…." I trailed off. The picture I had of me wearing the dress to someplace with lots of people was frightening but exciting, too.

I pushed forward with my reasons. "And you said it's rayon and will wear forever, so I can get lots of use out of it." Stop trying to cringe, I told myself.

"If we alter it to fit you now, the way you're shooting up, you might outgrow it in six months."

"I'll try real hard to stay skinny and short," I promised, going for silly.

She laughed, and I knew I had won. "Okay, we'll get the dress if we can get it altered to fit today, and remember, it's Sunday. But a couple other things…."

"Huh?"

"We'll get you a wig until your hair grows out. Your short 'do would look a bit silly with an elegant dress like that."

"Really?" I examined the image I had in my mind and realized that Beth Ann's shoulder-length waves would look better than my short curls. "Yeah, I guess. But I can't wear a wig all the time."

"Maybe. Also some low heels, 1-1/2 or 2 inch," she added.

Deeper and deeper.

She went on. "Also, you need nice jewelry for a dress like that. And pierced ears."

"Ouch," I said, my hands went to the sides of my head. "Okay." I really wanted the dress.

Mom stared at me for a moment, then she grinned. "You really want that dress, don't you?"

"Mom," I complained. "Yes, I do, and I can't explain it. I'm embarrassed enough about it, don't tease me."

"I wasn't teasing about the wig," she said.

I sighed.

"Or the pierced ears," she added.

I nodded, rolling my eyes. Boys did not get pierced ears, not in my part of California in 1979. We blinked at each other, wrinkling our noses and giggling.

Nordstrom's was amazing. Not only could they alter the dress on a Sunday in only two hours, but the seamstress said she would do it in such a way it could be altered back if I out grew it. "Such a classic design," she commented. "You have good taste, young lady. Just bring it back here, and there might be a small charge unless you buy something new."

I almost promised to do all my shopping at Nordstrom's but stopped myself in time. I would have, but it was eighty miles from home.

We did more shopping in the two hours. There was still lots to do.

They took care of the ear-piercing at the jewelry counter with a little gadget that made a noise like shooting a BB gun. I got two sets of studs with tiny gems, one set lilac and one rose, and some cleaning fluid and instructions. Mom bought me a fake pearl necklace and bracelet set, too. They would go great with my strawberry dress.

We picked out two sundresses, one white with big blue flowers and one a bright, cheerful yellow with a lace bib. "You can wear those to school, too," Mom pointed out. She also picked for me a party dress, purple with glittery details, that was too short to wear to school but looked amazing on me with my curly hair.

I got a denim jacket and a thigh-length sweater the color of blackberry juice; one or the other of them would go with almost anything we'd bought.

Shoes. Shoes I found were a whole 'nother shopping experience. Picking two pair of oxfords for school, another pair of house slippers, some low-heeled strappy sandals for dress-up, and cowgirl boots to go with all my denim took almost an hour.

Walking in heels was not as hard as it seemed like it should be. I didn't have any trouble and wore them the rest of the day. Being taller was neat.

I got lots of socks and my first pair of hose, well, two pair, and a new smaller purse to carry to church, and a big white, paper-straw hat with a pink band. I guess I'd given up hating on pink cause I loved how I looked in that hat.

"It'll be the whipped cream on your strawberry milkshake," Mom said, and we both giggled.

They did have wigs, and I ended up wearing one that gave me blond waves down to the middle of my back — also bangs. I wasn't sure I liked either of them, they both felt weird, but when I picked up the dress from the seamstress and wore the wig with a hairband the same strawberry color, I decided I looked like the heroine in a Disney movie.

I had everything but the dimples. I sucked in my cheeks and looked at Mom cross-eyed, and she got the joke, almost busting up laughing.

Before we left, she bought something without me while I was in the restroom. Whatever it was, it came in a big box about 20 inches long and nearly a foot on each of the other sides. "Another late birthday present," she said.

I wore all my finery that I could when we finally headed out. The store closed at five on Sunday, and we barely made it out before they locked the door, but Nordstrom's sent a young man with a cart to carry all our stuff out to the car.

His name was Stephen, and I think he was pretending to flirt with me. I had no idea what to say or do about that, and Mom thought it was hilarious.

"I bet you have several boyfriends already," he said, winking at me. "But tell me, do I have a chance?"

All I could do was giggle. I couldn't wink back because I didn't know what that would mean, and besides, I still don't know how to wink. Boyfriends? I hadn't even been thinking of such a thing!

After Stephen left with his cart, Mom showed me how to get into a car while wearing a dress. Basically, you just move your hand under your butt to keep your skirt from wrinkling. I was feeling pretty grown-up in my new clothes, but I kept getting the giggles.

We drove through McDonald's on the way back to the freeway, and I got a Happy Meal, which was kind of like Perky's Kid's Favorite Meal since it came with a free toy. Not as cool as Perky's toy since it was just a cheap plastic bracelet with a Starfleet emblem from the Star Trek movie which hadn't even come out yet, but the box the food came in had puzzles, riddles and games all over it.

Okay, it was pretty cool.

I used lots of napkins to keep from getting anything on my dress then I think I fell asleep soon after we finished eating and maybe before we got back on the road home. Next thing I remember is Daddy opening the car door and helping me out. I'd forgotten about the wig I was wearing, and I had some of it in my mouth.

Daddy stood there smiling at me while I said, "Ptoo," several times, getting rid of the hair. My brothers were behind him, staring at me. The sun was going down at the western end of the valley, and I was standing there pulling the wig out of my mouth like a goof.

"She slept all the way back," Mom said. She laughed, then called Moose and Junior to help her unload the trunk. "We spent a ton of money on your sister," she told them.

"I'm sorry…" I started to say, feeling Dopey and maybe a bit Sleepy and Grumpy, too.

"You're beautiful, princess," said Daddy, which made me cry, so he scooped me up, giving me a kiss on the forehead.

I laid my head on his shoulder and whimpered, all tired and grouchy. I tried to tell him it wasn't my fault we had spent so much. "Not my idea," I mumbled, "except for the milkshake."

"Shh, shh, baby girl," he said as he carried me inside. The light in my room was all golden with the sunset. He put me down on the bed and went to pull the drapes. "Finish your nap, Audrey," he said, before closing the door on his way out. "We'll wake you up in a bit."

I worried about wrinkling my dress for only a moment before I was out like a light.

What if Cinderella was right about dreams?

I dreamed of Pete asking me to go to a party. “It’s me, Pete, Audie,” I said, thinking he hadn’t recognized me dressed as a cowgirl.

“I know who you are, Audrey,” he said. I laughed at him, but he didn’t think it was funny at all. “Do you want to dance?” he asked.

Looking at my feet, first wearing boots and then the shoes we had bought to go with my milkshake dress, I said, “I don’t know how to dance.”

“Neither do I,” Pete admitted. “But I bet we both could learn.”

He reached for me, but I ran away because I didn’t want to dance before we learned how. Outside, a buffalo moon made the mountain all silver and black.

What does it mean to want to dance and not know why? I asked, but the buffalo had no answers.

*

My ears were sore when I woke up. I touched one and found the little jeweled stud there. “Oh,” I said, remembering. For a moment I resented having been persuaded to allow the earrings to be put in. But the only girl my age I knew who didn’t have pierced ears belonged to one of the odder religious groups.

And we did have some odd ones. That might have been the reason Rosa Morena Middle School had such a strict dress code. Dad had once mentioned that most of the local politicians were religious-types, and I guess that would include the school board.

I sat up and discovered someone had dressed me in my nightgown, Mom, probably. A good thing, I decided. I didn’t want my milkshake dress to get all wrinkled.

My dress. Sigh. I shivered. I loved that dress and how I looked wearing it, and I still couldn’t explain how I felt, even to myself.

I got up and checked the closet. And there hung the dress along with all the stuff we had bought, neat and put away. The wig was even on a stand on the hidden chest of drawers in the closet. And my dolls were all in a row on the shelves. I guessed Mom had had a wig stand somewhere, a thing like a blank-faced mannequin head on a stick.

My rayon dress was in a clear plastic bag as well as being hung up. The deep rose color looked even darker and richer hanging there, and I felt all sophisticated and grown-up to own and wear such a thing.

A lot of my boy clothes were gone, though. I checked. Well, not a lot but almost a third of them. Most of the ones missing didn’t fit well anymore or were worn-out, torn, or stained.

I rolled my eyes. I know I’m a sound sleeper, but how long was I out? I checked the clock, did some math, and realized it was less than an hour since Mom and I had gotten home from our expedition. Maybe Dad had done some of the sorting and culling while we were gone.

Mom would have saved everything for patching or rag-making at the least. Dad might have tossed the whole lot out. I sighed. But the only thing I really missed was my brown corduroy pants that made that neat whush-whush sound when I walked. But September was too warm for corduroy, and they were already almost too tight at the end of last winter.

I yawned widely, but I was awake now. I never have problems waking up in the morning, but if I take a nap in the daytime, I need an hour or two at least, or I’m going to wake up in a bad mood. I winced, remembering how I’d whined and fussed getting out of the car.

That’s what Daddy had meant when he told me to finish my nap as he carried me inside. I smiled a bit at that memory. I’d fallen asleep before we got to my room. It was so much like when I’d been small, and one of my parents had tucked me in. Getting dressed and undressed while asleep was sort of embarrassing but comforting too.

They hadn’t done that in a couple of years for Audie, but Audrey qualified for the “baby girl” treatment. I blushed. Daddy had called me that as he carried me. And he’d called me “Princess” when he saw me in my dress.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet. On the nigh hand I kinda, sorta loved being Daddy’s Princess. I guess like just about any other girl would. If you’re going to be a girl, being a princess is best. On the off hand, three days ago, I thought I was a boy.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My hair was a mess from sleeping while wearing the wig, and wearing the wig while I was sleeping in the car. I found my brush and comb and got to work. There was a little spray bottle of what I had called girl cooties to dampen my comb with, too, and the other spray bottle of hold. I’d have to shampoo all that stuff out later.

When I had my hair right, I put on the cheap bracelets we had got at Kmart and did my squinchy wink at my reflection. I was wearing the studs with the rose-colored gems because they had matched my dress better. “You are so not a boy,” I told the girl in the mirror, turning a little sideways to see how my bra pushed out my nightgown.

I tried a few cute poses like I had seen girls in movies or TV do, and ended up giggling at myself. It was possible, I decided, to overdo the cute. Then I realized I could hear my brothers laughing at something in the living room, Junior’s deep boom, and Moose’s baritone cackle. They were probably snacking in front of the TV unless Mom had decided to make a late dinner.

Thinking of that, I felt guilty. I should be helping her. The guys must have done the evening chores in the barns before we got home while I was out having fun shopping.

Wait.

Did I have fun shopping for girl clothes? I guess I did. I giggled and headed for the door to join my family, making a short detour to put on a pair of opera slippers. The nicer plum-colored ones. Then another longer detour because once in the hallway, I discovered I needed to go pee.

When I got to the living room, Morgan called out from his usual place on the floor, “There she is. Sleeping Beauty.” He grinned at me, and I stuck out my tongue.

Lee Junior on the couch, sat up and patted his thigh. “Come sit on my lap, chickadee. We’re watching a movie with Alex Karras. Mom’s making toasty cheese and homemade potato chips.”

One of my favorite things in the world! Open-faced cheese sandwiches toasted in the broiler with slices of tomato on top and thick potato chips made in the pressure fryer on the side. Oh! Someone needed to make the sour cream and onion dip! I started for the kitchen.

Junior reached a long arm out to snag me as I tried to go past. “I have to help Mom,” I protested.

He pulled me into his lap. I felt tiny; my big brother is huge. “Hut-uh,” he said. “Dad’s helping her, and they are having a talk.”

“They’re talking about you,” Moose put in.

Junior kicked him. “Shut up, moron.”

Moose looked offended and brushed imaginary dirt off his sleeve, but they were both wearing socks, not shoes. “They are talking about her,” he said. “Probably about how much money you spent today,” he grinned at me evilly.

Junior kicked Moose again, but this time Moose grabbed his foot and pretended to bite him on the ankle. “Why I oughtta,” said Junior.

Moose went, “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk,” and rolled out of the way as Junior tried to stomp on his head.

This action almost threw me on the floor. “Guys, guys!” I squealed. “There’s an innocent little girl in the middle of your fighting!”

“You!?” they both said, looking at me, and we all dissolved into giggles and guffaws.

We watched the movie for a while. “Haven’t we seen this before?” I asked.

“Well, duh,” said Moose.

“It’s a tape,” said Junior. “It gets funnier every time I see it.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re the moron,” said Moose.

“Don’t start,” I told Junior who made as if to kick Morgan again. So instead, he reached a big paw out toward my head. “And don’t muss my hair!” I warned him.

“Ooo! Kitten shows her claws!” laughed Moose.

“Kitten,” Junior repeated, grinning. “That’s a good name for you. Prickly but cute.”

I hissed at him which got both of the big guys laughing. I had to turn away not to show my own grin, but I got an attack of the giggles when Junior poked me in the ribs then hugged me up to his chest.

“The thing with avoiding getting scratched by your kitten is to hold her tight,” he intoned. Moose grabbed my foot as if to worry it like a dog with a bone.

“You guys! Lemme go!” I whined. “Mom! Daddy! Help!” I pretended to struggle then really did try to get away when Junior rubbed my cheek against his neck stubble. “Ow! Lemme go, you cactus!” At seventeen, he had an impressive amount of beard.

Dad poked his head out of the kitchen, prepared to glare at us, but just as he did, my brothers both let go of me. I sat there on Junior’s lap, all three of us looking calmly back at Dad.

“Just like I thought,” said Dad with a mock scowl. “Guys, your sister is not a chew toy.”

“I told them that yesterday,” I said. I tried out one of the cute poses I had practiced, hands on my hips, nose in the air and lips pressed together, still sitting in Junior’s lap. Moose got the hiccups laughing at me.

Daddy went back to the kitchen, shaking his head.

“You might be too cute,” Junior commented, chucking me under the chin with a knuckle.

“I’m trying not to be,” I said. “But it’s really hard when you have as much talent as I do.”

* * *

Instead of onion, Dad had made sour cream garlic dip. It tasted amazing with the meal. I ate three of the cheesy toasts, as many chips as I could snag before they disappeared into the gullets of my brothers, a saucer of Jenny Fordyce’s home-canned bread-and-butter pickles, and I drank a pint of sun-tea, prepared by Moose of all people.

We chattered about our day —talking over one another— my brothers teasing me about being a spoiled princess brat, and me accusing them of animalistic deviance. They always thought it was funny when I used big words. We made monkey noises at each other until Mom had us stop because she had a stitch in her side from laughing.

The meal was a huge success, and we all ate as much as we wanted. Dad had forgotten to call for a prayer, so before we started the clean-up, we all joined hands and said, “Thanks be, amen.”

I dragged my stool over to the sink to do rinse-and-swipe, Junior packed the dishwasher and Moose ferried in the plates and bowls and wiped down the table.

Mom and Dad relaxed in front of the TV, restarting the tape.

“We’ve seen this before,” said Dad when they got to the scene around the campfire.

“Duh,” said Mom.

*

Later, no one could stay awake through another viewing of the movie. Moose was sound asleep on the floor, snoring, until Junior grabbed his leg and started towing him toward the back door.

“Gerroff!” complained Moose. Like me, Morgan tended to wake up grumpy if he hadn’t completed a full sleep cycle. He staggered to his feet and trudged off toward the utility room, Junior guiding him with touches on his shoulders.

Daddy kissed Mom and me, and we all shared hugs and happy sniffles before starting for bed.

Stopping in my bathroom for a quick shower and shampoo, I discovered that my breasts seemed to have reached a new stage. Not just pointy little cones, the base had filled out into plump cookies with the nipples sitting like caramel candies on top. They were incredibly sensitive, and I put my bra back on as soon as I was dried off.

How big were they going to get, I wondered? Mom’s chest was pretty big, and Aunt Nora even bigger. Beth Ann had more of an average size; though her waist was so tiny, she had plenty of curves. What was I hoping for?

Coffee-and would be in only about seven hours when I crawled into bed finally, a late night for the Jane clan. And tomorrow would be another stressful day since Mom, and I would be driving into Rosa Morena to register me for school. Well, I was already registered but to change things so I could attend as a girl.

Outside, a wind blew and somewhere, cattle were complaining about it. The moaning noise could be spooky if you didn’t know what made it. I drifted toward sleep, wondering if the wind meant the weather was about to change.

Maybe there had been too many changes already, I thought. Through a gap in the drapes, I glimpsed a single bright star shining over the mountains. I tried to make a wish but fell asleep before I could think of what to wish for.

*

Does everyone know who I really am?

I stood outside in the darkness in a long line of kids that reached all the way up to the moon, which hung low and orange in a purple sky. Overhead, gray clouds dropped a heavy rain, the Mexican monsoon that hits our mountains some years.

But I wasn’t getting wet. Dreams are like that.

Ahead of me in line, the rain soaked Pete to the bone, and ahead of him, other kids from our class in Presley tried to shelter under ponchos and rain hoods.

The line moved forward slowly toward the equipment locker where one of the teachers was passing out playground equipment. The teacher seemed to have the head of a cow, but that is often a feature of my dreams. I see a lot of cows when I’m awake.

Pete muttered to himself, complaining, “We shouldn’t have to go to school if it’s raining.” He wasn’t looking at me, so I had a view of his profile. Raindrops clung to his eyelashes and cheeks, looking like jewels.

“I’m sorry you’re getting wet,” I said. But I kind of liked looking at his face, damp and glowing.

“No fair,” said Pete, looking directly at me. “You’re not getting wet. You’re cheating. Girls always cheat.” He tried to push me out of line, and I stepped away from him, a little mad about him calling me a cheat and pushing me.

I turned away, looking around to see if any of my other friends were on the playground. Pete began muttering again about girls being cheaters, but I didn’t look at him.

Rhea, Grace, Penny, and Marcie had started a game of Four-Square on a random piece of blacktop, the shiny red ball splashing in the rain puddles. I wanted to play, so I called out, “Ups! I’ve got ups.” 

But that’s what the boys say when they play Three Flies or Work-up or other games with a softball. For the girls’ games with the big red playground balls, it’s “Nextie. I’m nextie.”

Everyone ignored me except Pete, who turned around again and scowled at me. “Make up your mind,” he said. “No one plays Three Flies in the rain, the ball is too big and red.” He walked away toward some of the boys that already had bats from the cowface at the equipment locker and were hitting rocks and mud clods with them.

I went looking for the right kind of ball, except I didn’t want to play Three Flies with the boys. Hitting mud clods with a bat would be a way to get really dirty. But I looked at the softball mitt on my left hand, and there the ball was. I took it out and threw it at Pete.

“Pickle,” I shouted, but the rain got in my mouth, and suddenly I was as wet as anyone, my skirt hanging limp around my knees. Pete threw the ball back, saying, “You can’t play Pickle with only two people. Someone has to be the girl in the middle.”

I missed catching the ball because I had lost my mitt so I guessed I must be the girl in the middle. Except the boys weren’t playing Pickle, they were playing Pepper, throwing the ball back and forth and Around the Horn except no one would throw it to me.

I waved my arms and cried in the rain, but everyone ignored me. I was all alone on the muddy playground. I wandered around for a while, though I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.

I found a First Baseman’s Mitt, but I left it lying there. I said, “Every boy knows you don’t play Pepper with the wrong kind of mitt,” and kept looking.

The Four-Square ball bounced past me, one of the big red ones the girls used, as big as a basketball. I caught it and started toward the game I could see being played on the blacktop in front of the cafeteria. 

Marcie stood in my way. “You didn’t say Nextie so you can’t play,” she said. She was a big girl, a year older than me, and she’d started middle school last year. “Give me the ball,” she demanded. “You’ll never be a real Nextie because you’ve got a dick. You’re not a real girl, just a cheater.”

I threw the ball so it bounced in front of her, splashing mud on her knee socks. “You snot! You did that on purpose,” she accused.

“Youble cablant problove iblit,” I said, and the other girls laughed.

I smiled in my sleep and the dream dissolved in the rain.

*

I woke up smiling because I smelled cinnamon rolls. Mom hadn’t prepared them the night before so they must be the kind that came in a paper tube, but those were good, too.

My mouth already watering, I got up and put on my slippers then went down the hall to the bathroom before heading to the kitchen. “You didn’t wait for me to come help,” I said to Mom.

She snorted. “This is too easy. I didn’t need the help. You can pour coffee for the guys.”

I climbed up on my stool, taking down three thermal cups from the cabinet and prepared to pour coffee.

“Are we going to glaze them?” I asked. We didn’t always with the homemade rolls, but the ones in the tube came with a squeeze packet of glaze it would be a shame to waste.

“I like them without, that store glaze is too sticky,” she said. “But no one wants to hear Morgan whine.”

I giggled. “Moose does love his sweets,” I agreed. 

She pulled the pan from the oven, turned the rolls out on a cutting board then did a shuffle, so they were topside up. With the board in front of me and the packet of glaze warmed from lying on the back of the stove, I got the scissors out to snip off the corner of the packet. Glazing pastry and decorating cakes was one of my favorite kitchen chores.

“Leave one without glaze for me, honey,” Mom said.

“Okay,” I agreed, giggling. “More sweet stuff for the rest of us.” When Moose came down, I handed him the two ooiest, gooiest, rolls in the pan. He had to lick part of it off before he could bite into them and he still got some on his nose.

* * *

Later after the guys came back from chores and we had a full breakfast and cleanup, it was still barely seven. Mom pulled me aside and said, “We’ll have to go get you registered at school. I figure the office people will be ready for us by ten so you’ve got time to play a bit. If you’re ready to go by nine, we’ll have plenty of time.”

“Okay, Mom,” I said. I kind of dreaded going in to school to register as a girl, but it did seem like something that had to be done.

She reminded me of something else. “When you get ready, don’t do your hair. You can wear the wig to the school office.”

“It’ll be hot,” I pointed out.

“You think long hair isn’t hot? You’ll get used to it.”

“Maybe I’ll just keep my hair short,” I suggested.

“Maybe I’ll put ribbons in it and dye it pink,” she countered.

“Mom!” I knew she was teasing, but still, pink hair?

“Go on,” she urged. “You could get some playing in if you change clothes.”

“What can I do in just an hour or so, though?” I asked as I headed toward my room, still in my nightgown, and thinking that maybe I could wear some of my boy clothes and run around outside for a while.

I went to my room and put on a pair of blue jean shorts, an old t-shirt, and my sneakers. I looked at my messy hair and tried to finger comb it a bit but gave up with it still a mess of curls any which way.

“I’m going outside,” I called to Mom, and she answered okay from her own room. I left by the windlock at the front of the house, looking off toward Pete’s house down by the highway. Pete still wasn’t home, and I missed him. There’d been a lot of changes for me while he was gone and I felt nervous about seeing him again.

There wasn’t a lot to do by myself without getting too far from the house, so I climbed up on the rock border around the flower bed and pretended to be walking along a narrow bridge. I went back and forth a couple of times, but it was a stupid sort of game, and if I did fall off into the flowers, Mom would be annoyed.

I jumped down onto the grass and tried spinning as fast as I could to make myself dizzy. That worked, and I ended up sitting down on the grass to keep from falling, and I laughed at myself for being silly.

One of the older hands, Gilberto Duarte, rode by between the house and the barns and waved at me. I waved back, wondering whether he thought I was still Audie or knew I was Audrey now. 

“Going out looking for dogies lost in the chaparral,” he called. “Wanna saddle up and come along?”

Dogies are yearling cattle that have just been weaned, and they bawl like babies and will follow anything around demanding someone give them milk. They can get into some pretty silly scrapes if you don’t keep track of them so if a few were missing from the upper pastures, they had probably wandered into the rougher desert further down the hill.

I’d done the work before, it’s mostly just finding them and leading them back to grass, but would Gilberto make the same offer to me as Audrey? Or did he think I was still Audie?

Either way, I had no time to saddle up and go along. I shook my head, calling back to him. “We have to go into town in a bit, sorry.”

He gave me a curious look, shook his head, grinned, and rode on by. “Maybe next time, Miss Jane,” he said.

So he did know. I felt my face turn red.

And I knew my hair was messy. Suddenly shy, I headed back inside.

I went to my room and Mom said I could pick out my own clothes for going to school registration, but I would have to look neat and clean, and I should wear a skirt since that was school rules for Monday. Sigh.

“You haven’t opened that one package I gave you yet, have you?” Mom asked, following me to my door.

“Uh, no?” I admitted. I’d seen it on the floor of my closet and went immediately to retrieve it. “What is it?” I asked, sitting with it in my lap and giving it a little shake.

Mom rolled her eyes. “Open it and find out.”

The wrapping paper had green and blue and yellow lollipops on a pink background. They must have wrapped it for her at Nordstrom’s. I started undoing the tape at one end.

Mom made a puffing noise. “You and your father, Audrey. Neither of you knows how to unwrap a present.”

“But the paper is pretty,” I said. “We might want to save it.” I had one end undone and pulled the rest down like a sleeve. “It’s a baby doll,” I said, not sure if I were really pleased or not.

“Look close,” Mom said. 

The doll had bright yellow curls and blue-violet eyes, just like my own. She had a name embroidered in blue on her pink jumper, too. It said, Baby Audrey.

Mom had got the doll from the specialty shop next to Nordstrom’s while I was looking at shoes. She was awfully cute, but I still wasn’t sure whether I was pleased. What does it mean when a girl giggles and cries at the same time?

*

Baby Audrey —the doll, not me— got an honored place on the bed next to my giant plush duck who I had named Myron Mallardo. They would be best friends forever, I just knew it.

I was still trying to think about how I felt about having a baby doll—well, two now—and both of them sort of named after me. I’d put the little Madeline baby doll I’d gotten at Perky’s on my dresser.

I’d had a shower last night, but I put on my other bra, the one I hadn’t worn yet. Going without a bra is really out of the question, already. I’m not big there, but things are so tender.

Clean panties, too. I still look like a boy between the legs, but I’m just a kid, and the evidence is sort of tiny. For some reason, I felt irked at Marcie, an older girl I hardly even knew. Pete got a little shaft of annoyance, too. He was still out of town and wouldn’t be back till evening.

What the heck was I going to say to him, anyway? Should I show him my new dolls? Yikes.

I went back to getting dressed. It felt safer than thinking about Pete or my other friends.

I picked some very thin socks decorated with lace, then my flat oxford shoes with the fake buckles. I buffed those; they had gotten a bit dusty. Mom said I should never put a real shine on them; girls’ shoes shouldn’t be too shiny. Huh, wonder why?

I decided on a dress. Jump in with both feet, Beth Ann had said. The sundress with the big blue flowers, bell-shaped short sleeves, and full skirt. Mom and the salesgirl had both said I looked sweet in it. Looking sweet is good for a girl unless you’re in a fairy tale being chased by a hungry giant.

I added my necklace with the blue stone and my unicorn charm bracelet. We’d gotten two more charms for it at Nordstrom’s: a silver stetson and a gold heart. The gold heart would come apart into two charms, one of which you could give to your best friend. But I couldn’t imagine Pete wanting to wear it.

I looked at myself in the mirror and decided that, except for my hair, I looked like any other girl on the first day of going to middle school. Even messy from sleeping, my haircut didn’t look so boyish, though, just short. 

The sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach might have been a twinge of horror for my situation, but any sensible person would be a little afraid, wouldn’t they? I was going to march into school and tell a bunch of grown-ups that I was a girl now and they should treat me like one.

Oh, yeah, no pressure.

On the “both feet” principle, I had agreed to wear my wig, so I got it from the stand in the closet and went looking for Mom for help putting it on.

Her bedroom door wasn’t closed, so I walked right in and discovered her there in just her panties and bra, trying to decide what she was going to wear.

“Oop!” I said and backed out quickly.

“Audrey?” Mom called. “It’s okay, come on in.” She came to the door to find me half-way back down the hall. 

The guys were all out of the house. Dad had gone up the Big House to meet with Mr. Fordyce, and Moose and Junior had already left for Chularosa Valley High, also in Rosa Morena, but starting a day earlier than my middle school. Lee Junior drove the older of our F150 pickup trucks, with Morgan riding shotgun for his first day of high school. 

Most days, I would probably ride with them instead of taking the twelve-mile trip on the bus, but today, Mom was going along to help me register. As the new me. 

And here I had walked in on her in her undies. I had already blushed more in the last three days than anyone should have to in a lifetime, but I knew my face was redder than manzanita berries.

Mom turned to go back into her room, motioning that I should follow. She laughed, “Just us girls here, right?”

That’s what it meant that she had not bothered to close her door with all the males out of the house. I sighed and followed her into her room.

“That blue looks so good on you,” she commented. “Should I match or contrast?” She surveyed her closet.

“I dunno,” I said. I still had the wig in my hands but was afraid I might start shredding it from anxiety, so I put it down on her dresser. “Are you going to wear a dress, too?”

She seldom wore dresses or even skirts, but she nodded. “I thought I would. In solidarity, if nothing else.”

“Solidarity?” I repeated. 

“Togetherness,” she clarified. “Showing that I’ve got your back.”

“Are you… going to need to have my back?” I asked, remembering how Dad said Mom was bold instead of brave. Full speed ahead and don’t stop for torpedoes. I bit my lip, worrying about the torpedoes.

She shrugged. “Who knows? I put a call into Mr. Lemuel’s office a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t in. His office wasn’t even open.” She snorted. Garret Lemuel was the Fordyce Ranch attorney.

“Huh?” I said.

Mom pulled out a green and blue dress and held it up against her. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Uh,” I shook my head. “The stripes are too wide, and the blue is too close to mine. The patterns would clash.”

“Too wide, huh?” she mused. “You aren’t saying that I’m getting fat, are you?”

I giggled, knowing she was teasing. At five-foot-six, Mom weighs about 125 pounds, fat only by super-model standards.

She grinned at me and pulled out another dress. This one had a lot of small violet flowers with blue, green and yellow details. The vivid colors would not have worked for me, but they brought out her dark coloring and made her gray eyes bluer.

I nodded. “I like that one.” The weirdness of recommending dresses for my half-naked mother had faded a bit. How could that be?

Mom put the one dress back and slipped the other one on. “This one zips in the back with a little hook at the top,” she said, turning away. “Get that for me, would you?”

I did so, suppressing a tiny giggle. The mother-daughter bonding of it all just suddenly seemed hilarious.

She turned around, commenting, “I can reach that myself, but it’s awkward to fasten without seeing….” She saw my expression. “What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t help it. I had to giggle. “Are we going to end up dressing alike? I mean, like to go to church or…something?” I had trouble imagining it.

She laughed. “Probably not,” she admitted. “You look great in pastels, and they always make me look badly embalmed.”

That did it. We hooted like owls and staggered around like drunks, eventually falling into a mutual hug. I guess we bonded real good.

Who do they say that I am?

Mom got my wig sorted out for me, adding a red hairband that somehow went with my other colors. I retrieved my straw bag from my own room while Mom finished getting dressed then I went outside to wait for her at the car. 

I felt more than strange, standing there wearing a dress with hair down the middle of my back—plus bracelets, earrings, even a necklace. It made me a little sad since I didn’t see any way to go back to being who I had been before. No more Audie who would grow up to be a cowboy like my Dad and my brothers.

And the worst of it was, I was doing most of it to myself. I sighed. Okay, I guess there had always been some Audrey in me along with the Audie I thought I was. But, jeez, Louise, did I have to end up enjoying so much of it?

I wanted to kick a rock or something but I knew it would scuff my Mary Janes. If I had to discover I was actually a girl, why couldn’t I be a girl more like Mom, a tomboy who had been roping steers and riding broncs with her brothers when she was only a little older than I was now.

But I’d never wanted to rope steers or ride broncs, not even as Audie. You could get seriously hurt that way. Oh, I probably would have gone ahead and learned how and maybe even been good at it, like my dad was. But now I had a good excuse not to get all sweaty and dirty. I grinned and giggled.

I poked myself in my padded bra. “I’m a princess,” I said. “I’m Daddy’s baby girl.” I squirmed a bit, saying it out loud but wow. What a relief! I wasn’t going to grow up to be all hairy and gross like Junior and Moose, belching and farting with manure on my shoes and grease in my hair. 

“Okay,” I said. “I can do this.” I skipped out to the car and back to the front door, swishing my skirt back and forth as I did, giggling like crazy. I still worried a bit about Pete and what he might say but phooey on him if he didn’t like me as Audrey.

I stopped, remembering how Pete had acted around Daphne, all moony and goofy. What if he did like me as Audrey? What if he acted like that about me? I felt all tingly thinking about it. “Two scoops,” I said. “Fudge ripple with nuts and a cherry on top!”

I glanced over toward Pete’s house. He and his family would be home this evening. What would I say to him? What was I going to wear to meet him? This was going to take some thinking about.

I walked down the walk to the driveway and looked off toward Pete’s again. I sighed. I didn’t want to lose my best friend, and I wasn’t sure I wanted a boyfriend. Well, not yet. “I’m only eleven,” I complained.

Gossip, one of the mongrel cattle dogs, met me at the end of the walk, evidently wanting a scratch and some doggie-talk. She got the name for her habit of muttering and whining while she licked your ears. She made a good distraction from thinking about my own problems.

Careful not to let her put a dirty paw on my dress, I rubbed the top of her head with a knuckle and told her she was a good girl and a good mommie since it was obvious that she was nursing a litter of pups somewhere.

Half-border collie, half-pointer, like most of the working dogs on the ranch, her curly black-and-white coat had attracted bits of hay and straw. She looked anxious as I picked some of her bedding off her but responded with a tail wag and a happy yip when I gave her a vigorous face-and-ear rub.

Collies are good herders for sheep, but cattle don’t like to be nagged about it, my father explained to me when I asked why we always used crossbred dogs on the ranch. Pointers are energetic enough for the work, with good eyesight and some herding instinct, but are less inclined to try to urge cattle onward with a heel nip, which can get a herding dog kicked or stomped.

“Cattle are not sheep. The mix-breed dogs are healthy, reliable, and more laid back about herding. Besides,” he had added, “it’s just too hot out here for a purebred collie with all that fur. This ain’t Scotland.”

I smiled, watching Gossip trot off back toward the barns, the color of her coat and her distended teats making me think of a small fuzzy dairy cow. I glanced down at my own chest, realizing that at some time in the future, I might be nursing a child of my own.

Talk about weirding out an eleven-year-old kid who used to think she was a boy. What in the world would that feel like?

Mom came out and got into the car while I stood there, blinking and wondering about my future. Wouldn’t you need to get married before you had babies? And that would mean….

I must have totally spaced out because she had to lower the electric window on the passenger side and call to me.

“Audrey? Mom to Space Cadet Audrey? We’re ready for lift-off!”

Giggling a bit about her silliness, I climbed in and buckled up.

“What were you thinking about so hard, honey?”

“Gossip,” I said, meaning the dog.

“Oh,” said Mom. “Well, I can’t tell you not to worry, but remember, it’s not what people say to each other, it’s how they treat you that matters.”

“Huh,” I said, a little confused. “Gossip has puppies. Is she going to be okay?”

“Puppies?” Mom frowned. “Oh! Yes, she does, she’s had them on a pile of gunny sacks in the shed behind the cream separator. Junior told me about them. When they get their eyes open, would you like to go see them?”

“Uh, huh,” I said. I knew they would be cute, but Mom has a strict rule about no dogs in the house. Would it be possible for Audrey to do something Audie had never managed and get a puppy to raise indoors? I looked sideways at her. With Daddy, I might have been able to, but Mom was way ahead of me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Don’t plan on playing the brat, don’t even ask. We have enough beasts in the house with your brothers.”

I had to laugh at that.

We talked about my brothers and other animals on the drive, passing through Presley without even having to stop at the one traffic light. Before we’d stopped laughing about the time Moose got his foot stuck in a half-gallon pickle jar, we had reached Rosa Morena and turned onto College Way where the school was located.

The new junior college is two miles outside of town, but Rosa Morena Middle School is all new concrete buildings built where the old college temporary buildings used to be. They’d been temporary for about thirty years until finally a bond was passed to build a new college and a new middle school,

About a dozen white and beige buildings sit around the central grassy square of the new school. A gym and swimming pool at one end are surrounded by various athletic fields and some bleachers. At the other end of the campus, a large building serves as cafeteria, auditorium, and theater. Another large building is the administrative offices.

That’s where we headed after parking the car across the street in a lot marked for visitors. Mom walks fast, and I scurried to keep up then got ahead of her and skipped up onto the curb to wait. “You never went here, huh?” I asked her.

“No,” she agreed. “It hadn’t been built yet, and Presley Elementary went all the way to grade eight, so I went from there directly to high school. Same one your brothers are going to now, across town.” I’d been there for football games and other sports my brothers played. There were a lot of shaggy old trees and some of the oldest buildings in town. It was neat. 

Not so many trees here and most of them skinny with leaves only high up. And the buildings were some of the newest around. We stopped for a moment to admire the murals painted on the multi-purpose and administration buildings. The larger one, on the cafeteria/auditorium, showed the story of Rosa Morena, the character from a novel back in the 1890s that the town and the school are named for.

Rosa was a girl in Old California who fell in love with an outlaw and died tragically, according to the story. It was all a lot of romantic goop to me before. 

But now, looking at the painting of the beautiful Rosa languishing in her jail cell looking out at the valley so lush and green—and in the distance (on the other building), there’s a posse pursuing her boyfriend—well, now, I felt a bit different.

A bit more confused, I guess. Now it did seem sort of cool to be willing to die to protect the secrets of someone you loved. Except that she did die and it turned out her boyfriend had already been killed trying to rescue her. That part still seemed dumb. Like Romeo and Juliet where everyone dies, and it’s supposed to be such a great story.

Her name was Chularosa Valverde. La Rosa Morena was her nickname, and the title of the book in English, The Dark Rose. Which is why the school colors are red, black and white, I guess. The high school colors are maroon and white. Maroon is sort of a dark rose color. Maroon, morena? Oh.

Anyway, the entrance to the admin building was not on the street side, and when we turned the corner, there was another mural visible on the front of the cafeteria. This one showed kids playing games, sitting at desks, singing and stuff. It was cool because it was kids and everything was bright colors and sunshine.

They even showed real games that kids really play like the girls playing Four Square in front of the cafeteria where there really were Four Square courts marked out with paint on the concrete. We’d had a tour of the place back in May, we being us fifth-graders from Presley, but all the murals had not been finished yet then.

I tried to stop to look at things better, but Mom tugged me along. “You’ll be seeing it often enough for the next three years,” she said. “Right now, we have to get you registered.”

She was right so we went through big glass doors into the admin building and there was a sign right there that said Registration. We went to the counter and Mom laid the paperwork she had brought from the doctors down. 

A young woman got up from a desk behind the counter and came up to us. She looked about Beth Ann’s age, though not as pretty. “Can I help you?” she asked. 

“Yes,” said Mom, which I thought was pretty confident because suddenly I was very scared and nervous. “I’m here to correct the registration for my daughter, Audrey Jane,” Mom announced.

“I see,” said the woman. “Last name, and grade?” she asked, pulling a book out from under the counter. Her nametag read Ms. Hudson.

“Jane is our last name,” Mom explained. The whole family is used to this question. “And she’s in grade six.”

Another woman at a desk further back looked up, glanced at me, then stood and came up to the counter, too. According to her nametag, she was Mrs. Wright. “Is this the boy that wants to attend school as a girl?” she asked, frowning first at Mom and then at me. 

Wow. I blinked several times, not at all expecting any such question. She’d heard about me and evidently didn’t believe I was really a girl. 

But, it’s not a good idea to frown like that at Mom without a better reason. 

“No,” said Mom, firmly. “This is the girl who has been attending school as a boy for six years because no one knew the truth. And you have been listening to gossip, haven’t you?”

Mrs. Wright glared at Mom and opened her mouth to say something else.

“Gossip has puppies,” I said, not even thinking about it. Everyone looked at me. “Behind the cream separator on a pile of gunny sacks,” I explained.

Mom was trying not to smile, but now everyone else was frowning. “Gossip is a dog,” she commented and looked directly at the woman who had interrupted with her rude question.

Mrs. Wright looked like she wanted to say something that maybe she shouldn’t, but Ms. Hudson hurried to turn over pages in the big register book she had on the counter, making noise. “Here it is,” she said. “Jane, Audrey Michael, grade six. ”Yeah, you’re already registered, honey.” She beamed at me.

Clueless, I decided and grinned back at her. Okay, the way to do this is both feet first and play up being Audrey to the hilt. I may not have dimples, but I turned the cute up as high as it would go.

“May I see,” Mom asked, reaching out.

Ms. Hudson began to turn the big book around, but Mrs. Wright intercepted, putting a hand down to keep the book from moving. “Why?” she demanded.

“Why do I want to see a public record relating to my child attending this school? Or why do you think you have any right to deny me access?” Mom snapped, after a moment of surprise. “Careful,” she added, “your answer may influence your future employment.”

Ooh, that’s the tone Mom uses when she’s reaching for a rake to chase dogies out of her garden. You never want to have that voice aimed in your direction.

Ms. Hudson pushed the book in front of my mom. “Parents check these entries all the time for accuracy, Mrs. Wright. It’s not at all unusual.”

The older woman glared at the younger woman, glanced at Mom’s expression, then retreated to her desk and picked up a phone. Mom looked at the register. I tried, but the counter was too high for me to get a good look. Even with having grown two inches in three months, I was still too short.

“I’m Jenny,” Ms. Hudson said to me, then asked, “Gossip is a funny name for a dog.”

I laughed. “Yeah, huh? It’s cause she likes to kiss your ears.”

Jenny laughed. “Have you seen these puppies, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am, not yet. They don’t have their eyes open,” I replied. I considered climbing up on a stool on my side of the counter, so maybe I could get a better look at the register, but Jenny had distracted me. “They’re going to be so cute, though. Gossip is black and white with a curly coat, and she’s a good cattle dog.” I couldn’t keep from giggling.

“I bet,” said Jenny, smiling.

“Here’s the line,” Mom said. “You see where it says Audrey and an M? That should be an F.”

Jenny glanced at me. “I see,” she said. “You’re not a boy, are you, Audrey?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But I used to think I was.”

Jenny laughed. “I was a tomboy, too. But I never got my school records mixed up.”

I giggled again. Definitely clueless, I thought, but I liked Jenny.

“Can you fix this?” Mom asked, putting a finger on the mistake.

“Sure,” said Jenny. She moved to her desk and picked up a bottle of buff-colored Liquid Paper.

Mrs. Wright called out. “Jenny!”

“Hmm?” said the girl, looking at the older woman.

“You should talk to Principal Fuller. I have him on the phone.” Mrs. Wright held the instrument out toward Jenny.

“I’ll be right back,” Jenny said to Mom. And she put the bottle of Liquid Paper down on the counter by the book. My eyes shot open, and I stuffed my hands in my mouth, ducking down below the counter where no one could see me.

I don’t know if Jenny knew what Mom was going to do, but I did.

"One bitter truth is better than a pack of sweet lies." -- Grandpa Decker.

Moving calmly and as if she had every right to be doing so, Mom used the Liquid Paper and a ball-point pen to correct the M on my registration to an F. I wanted her to do it, and I didn't want her to, and not just because it might mean trouble with the school.

I saw her, but I didn't see exactly what she was doing because I was hiding below the edge of the counter to keep anyone from noticing that I had a severe case of the giggles. I had both hands over my mouth and my eyes squeezed shut.

I heard Ms. Hudson, Jenny, come back to the counter and tell Mom, "Principal Fuller wants to meet with you. He'll be here in ten minutes or so."

"Certainly, we want to meet with him," Mom agreed in a voice that would carry to the entire room. Then more quietly, she asked, "Are there other records that need to be corrected?"

I couldn't hear Jenny nodding, so I popped back up to see. She grinned at me, and I giggled again, right through the hand over my mouth. I tried to hold still and not jitter up and down, but I was too excited. I'm not sure why, but I was.

Mom told Jenny, "I have Audrey's medical records here, and five copies of a letter from her doctors, explaining things." She tapped the two folders she had brought in from the car.

"Oh, good," said Jenny. "Can I have one of the letters to put in Audrey's file?" She turned to me. "You probably don't even have a file yet, but I can start one."

That wasn't the least bit funny, but I still had to hold back more giggles. She winked at me, so I did my squinty-blink back. At least I managed to stop bouncing up and down on my toes.

Mom and Mrs. Wright traded glares while Jenny went to her desk and prepared a file folder. A few minutes later, a tall, bald man with glasses entered from a side door, came around the counter and offered his hand to Mom. "Mrs. Jane? I'm Principal Fuller."

"Mr. Fuller," said Mom. "This is my daughter, Audrey." She gestured at me.

I was so glad I was mostly over the nerves from watching Mom alter school records. I had even stopped giggling.

I put one foot behind the other, bowed my head and bent my knees a bit before straightening up again. I'd seen girls do this in a movie somewhere when introduced to an important adult — no reason not to try to butter up the principal. "Pleased to meet you, sir," I said.

He stared at me for a moment then broke into a huge smile. "Well, aren't you sweet and polite! Did you teach her to curtsey, Mrs. Jane?"

"No," Mom declared. "Is that what she was doing?" She grinned at me. "She must have learned that on her own." She held out her hand, and I took it. "Can we talk in your office, sir?"

"I was just about to offer," he said then led us around the counter toward a door marked Principal. "Why on Earth…" he started to ask something, then glanced toward Mrs. Wright before stopping to open the door.

I heard a noise and looked back to see Jenny grinning at Mrs. Wright. Hmm, maybe she wasn't as clueless as I thought. Mrs. Wright looked as if someone had given her half a lemon to suck on. Mom has that effect on people sometimes. I looked away quickly so as not to start giggling again.

We moved into Principal Fuller's office. It had his name on the door: Dr. Blake Fuller. He was a doctor, too? Not a medical doctor, probably. He held a chair for Mom and then one for me, which was good since it was a tall enough seat that I couldn't just plop myself into it. "Thank you, sir," I said, smiling up at him and he smiled back.

"You're welcome, Miss Jane," he said. He stepped behind us and closed the office door, then took his own seat. 

Oh, wow. I'd been called 'Miss Jane' before, hadn't I? I didn't remember who by and I wasn't sure, but it was nice in any case. I tried to swallow a giggle, but one escaped, so I turned it into a grin.

"Such a polite little girl," he said to Mom.

She laughed. "Be careful, sir. She's only known she's a girl for four days now and she already has her father and brothers treating her like a princess."

I turned bright red, but I couldn't very well deny it, could I? There was no bar to rest my feet on, and my toes barely touched the floor, so I had to resist swinging my feet.

Dr. Fuller laughed. "I bet she has. Where did you learn to curtsey, -uh- Audrey, is it?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "From watching old movies. I'm trying to jump into this with both feet, and it seemed like a good idea." There went my feet, maybe 'cause I had mentioned them, swinging under the seat in spite of me trying not to let them do that.

He laughed again. "I think you're doing a fine job. Now, you brought some paperwork?" He said the last to Mom, and she handed over the packet of medical records and the doctor's letter. The medical doctor, that is.

Mom and I exchanged glances and our patented non-winks while the principal looked things over. Mom held up an OK sign, and I returned a thumbs up. Mom glanced down, and my feet stopped swinging, just from her looking at them.

"Uh, huh, uh, huh," Dr. Fuller said several times before looking up. "This is good documentation, in case, -uh-," he glanced at the closed door, "anyone tries to cause trouble. I'll make sure all the relevant records get changed," he said, then he broke into a grin.

He looked right at me. With the light from his fluorescents bouncing off his glasses and his bald head, I wanted to squint, but I resisted. "I should have known who you were as soon as I saw you, Audrey," he said, still grinning. "Your dad is Leland Jane, and I went to high school with your Aunt Nora." He laughed. "I was a senior, and she was a sophomore, and I asked her for a date."

He grinned even wider. "I was the geekiest kid in the senior class, and she was the prettiest girl in the whole school, but she turned me down with real, -uh- sensitivity, I guess I have to call it." Still grinning, he pointed at me with his open hand. "And you're going to look just like her in a few years, Miss Jane."

"This is a wig, sir," I said quickly, pulling the blond tresses away from my face. "My real hair is more ginger and all curly."

For some reason, this set Dr. Fuller and Mom to roaring with laughter while I turned bright red again. Did I look that much like Aunt Nora? And why was what I said so funny?

*

We got out of there in a few more minutes after Dr. Fuller mysteriously warned Mom to buy new door hardware and lay in a supply of rock salt, followed by more laughter. Huh? 

Jenny winked at us as we headed out and Mrs. Wright glared but not where Principal Fuller could see her. But just before we disappeared out the door, I got another curtsey to the whole room in. Then I had to scoot cause all the 'aws' gave me such giggles.

Mom was laughing as I skipped past her. "Audrey Jane, you are dangerously cute."

"I know, huh?" I called back to her. I stopped at the crosswalk and waited for her to catch up then took her hand as we crossed the street.

"A week ago you would have let yourself be run over before you would have held my hand," Mom commented.

I rolled my eyes. "I had to. I was pretending to be a boy, and boys don't hold their mommies' hands even when they want to."

Mom made a noise like a sniffle then laughed, shaking her head. "When you jump in with both feet, you pick the deep end, don't you?"

"I guess," I said. Then I pointed out," You would," and we both had a laugh.

In the car, she commented, "That went relatively painlessly. Now, who wants an orange cream cone?"

"You do," I said. "And me, too." So we drove through the Dairy Bee and got cones. I wrapped mine in lots of napkins to avoid getting anything on my dress, and it was so-o-o good.

*

After we got back home, we both changed clothes, and I used the stuff I'd gotten from Nordstrom's to wash my earlobes since the earrings had begun itching. Then Daddy called to say he was having lunch down at the big house while working with Mr. Fordyce, so Mom and I just had a light salad for lunch.

I had put on the jeans shorts I had worn earlier, then almost changed my mind because I wanted to get my new boots broken in and wondered if they would look silly with the shorts. They kind of did, but I took off my wig, fixed my short hair, and wore my Western shirt with the snaps and it all worked.

"If you're going to go riding, you ought to wear long pants," Mom commented. 

"I'm not going to go riding in the middle of the day as hot as it is. Alkali would not appreciate hauling me around." Alkali was the cowpony, a mare, I usually rode. Otherwise, she's retired being four years older than me, but she is a small horse and not too big for a kid my size. 

Mr. Hunt, Pete's dad, was the ranch horse trainer and he sometimes used Alkali to demonstrate proper bluffing, cutting, leaning, shooking, and drifting to younger horses and cowboys. Alkali was so good, she seemed to be able to read her rider's mind, and she could even work off a lead without a rider.

If she was in a field with a bunch of other horses, she would sometimes amuse herself by bluffing them into a compact group, drifting them from one side to another, then cutting out a favored horse to bring over to any humans leaning against the fence laughing their butts off. The other horses never seemed to have a clue as to what she was doing, which made it even funnier.

Fearless, she could buffalo a steer, or even a bull, more than twice her own weight. On top of that, she had an incredible sense of direction and hands who had to work the far pastures sometimes took her along, riderless, just so she could find their way home after dark for them. She was as sure-footed as a mule, too. 

If she had a fault, it was probably that she knew how good she was, and if she thought you were making a mistake, she would get stubborn about following orders. Mr. Hunt never had such a problem with her, though. She trusted his judgment over her own. But more than once, she had brought me home before I was ready to call my ride done for the day.

I really didn't want to do any serious riding in midday, but it did occur to me that I should let Alkali get used to the new me, since I probably smelled different and would be wearing different clothes than she was used to seeing me in.

I told Mom where I was going, put on some sunblock, grabbed a couple of carrots to put in my pockets, and headed toward the horse barn. I'd picked these shorts because they had a couple of real pockets on them.

I had my new white straw hat, too, but hanging down my back instead of messing up my hair. I just thought it looked neat and with the pink hatband, no one was going to think I was Audie. It seemed odd that three days ago I had been so dead set against pink.

It's a third of a mile from the house to the horse barn, so I had some time to think about stuff. Things had happened so quickly—it was only Monday today, and Friday morning, I had still thought I was a boy.

For some reason, I thought back to the day I had gotten so sick. Pete and I had shook the herd of little kids we'd been with and headed off on our lonesome, finding the cave with the funny, glowing mushroom. It had all been part of Pete's plan to annoy Daphne, though he hadn't thought of it that way.

Then I got sick, spent days in the hospital, lost my hair, and…nd eventually found out I was a girl and, according to the doctors, always had been. Even if I could point to pee, I was really a setter. I groaned a little at the old joke, certainly corny enough for any cowboy.

But had that been when it began? Had I never had a clue before the ultrasound that I wasn't a boy, all the way through? I kept thinking about that and almost pulled a Junior by stepping in a hole but caught myself in time.

Two of the hands punching dogies from horseback waved their hats at me from down at the feeding pens, and I took my hat off my back to return the wave. I still didn't want to wear the hat and mess up my hair, so I rehung it from the string around my neck.

I got to the horse barn and used the people-gate in the big door to get inside. It smelled of sweet hay and horse and was dim and cool inside. Cooler than outside, anyway. I walked along the horse stalls, most of them empty, then I heard Alkali nicker at me as she came in the horse-gate to the big grooming box.

"Hey, girl," I said, greeting her back. I took a carrot from my pocket and held it out on the palm of my hand as I reached her box. She took the treat, neatly as always, and whuffled thanks at me.

"You know me, don't you, girl?" I said. "I'm still me." And she nodded like she really understood what I meant. I took the big comb from the leather pocket in the door then opened the gate to go into the box. For the next ten minutes, I worked on taking knots and burrs out of her mane and tail, and she sniffed me all over, spending a little extra time at the pocket that held the other carrot.

"You get that one when we're done," I whispered to her. Horses always know when you're lying to them, so it's best to tell the truth whenever you can.

Spiffed and copacetic.

After using the comb to remove burrs and tangles from Alkali’s mane and tail, I took out the brush and started on her neck. She turned and pushed her face under the brush. I laughed and did as she wanted, holding the brush in both hands so she could push and turn her face into it, getting just the itchy spots that she wanted tended to.

When she finished, turning away with a grunt, I went back to brushing under her chin, and her neck, then her chest, back and sides. I still needed the step stool to reach the middle of her back, not so much because of her height—she only stood fourteen hands and two—but because of the width of her barrel.

“Chubby girl,” I accused her and poked her in a rib with the wooden handle to make her dance and grunt. She knew I was teasing and put up with it, just like I did when she pretended to eat my clothes. I could feature her doing the same thing with my hair after I let it grow out, so I resolved not to wear my wig where she could reach it.

Junior claimed the mare was a Dodgers fan because she had once taken my Angels cap and run to the far end of the paddock to drop her prize over the fence. Moose almost had conniptions, he laughed so hard, and several of the hands saw it too and nearly laughed themselves sick. She was just playing and I forgave her. But a $3 baseball cap and a $40 wig are two different things.

After a while, grooming a horse doesn’t take a lot of thought, and I had been taking care of Alkali almost since I started school. We did this once or twice a week, more if I were doing a lot of riding. So I had time to think as I rubbed the bristles through her coat and around the scars she picked up from being a working cowpony.

I thought about what had happened to me and what I had done about it. I decided I was doing pretty well, adjusting. I’d always been a girl. I’d just not known it. It explained a lot of things. Not being like my bothers but more, on some level I guess I had known.

I mean, I had always hated getting dirty, and I never much liked sports except baseball and riding. And riding was more just something I did because I lived on a ranch, I knew girls at school and on other ranches who were nuts about horses and riding and all of that.

I really preferred cooking and baking. And I thought I might like to learn about clothes and how to sew. That would be neat, I decided. I wondered if my new school offered something like sewing or cooking classes. I kind of thought they did, but I hadn’t been interested last May when schedules were being submitted.

But, if I learned how, I could make my own clothes someday. Maybe even something as beautiful as the milkshake dress.

Plus I needed to learn things about jewelry and make-up, but there was no rush about that stuff. I was only eleven. I wanted to get my hair grown out, and that would probably take a year or more. How fast did hair grow, anyway? I mean, normally, not whatever had been going on with my hair?

I swapped brushes for a couple of wooden tools, sat down on the stool and pulled Alkali’s nigh front foot into my lap. I didn’t have the skill to use a hoof knife or rasp, but I could use the wooden hoof pick and stiffer brush to clean her hooves and look for problems that might need a farrier to fix.

Her shoes were tight, and the frog (the fleshy part inside the horny hoof) looked healthy. She didn’t even have any caked-in dirt; well, it had been a pretty dry summer. I shifted the stool and Alkali took it as the signal to give me her off front foot instead. That one looked good, too.

Another shift and her big, old, nigh rear foot landed in my lap. “Oof,” I said. She whuffled her amusement and turned to look at me. “I’m okay, girl,” I told her and went over that hoof with the pick and hard brush, too.

Another shift and switch and this time, I found a bit of gravel caught between the frog and inside of the hoof. Smaller than a pea but big enough it had probably been bothering her, but maybe not enough to notice. I showed it to her and she seemed surprised.

I stood up, threw the bit of gravel away, and dusted off my hands. “All done, girl. You’re all spiffed and copasetic,” I told her, using some Grampa Decker words. I took the second carrot from my pocket and held it out to her on my open palm. She lipped it up immediately and crunched happily while I put things away.

“We’ll go riding tomorrow, after school,” I told her on my way out. I would have planned a ride in the late afternoon, but I didn’t know what might happen when Pete got home. Judging from the sun, it must be nearly three, which meant the Hunts were expected to return any time in the next few hours—but might be as late as midnight. Probably not, though, since tomorrow was the first day of school.

I trudged back to the house in the hottest part of the day. The barn had been cool and pleasant, but soon I looked forward to the air conditioning in my room. I could even take a shower. I knew I probably smelled like horse which not everyone considered a pleasant odor.

I grinned thinking about how I used to pretend to love to be stinky, just to annoy some of the girls at school when Pete and I would talk about doing ranch work. I hadn’t minded the smells that much, but they sure didn’t go with my new image. Perfume, they were not.

I shook my head at the memory. Still, what should I wear to meet Pete and his family? It didn’t occur to me right at the moment that thinking about what I would wear was a particularly girly thing to do. I had always wanted to look right for the situation. More proof, I guess, that I’d always been a girl.

But should I dress like Audie, so Pete knew who I was? Or should I dress to emphasize the new me? The both-feet rule seemed to apply.

*

Back at the house, I took my time with a shower. My little boobies seemed to have grown every time I saw them, but I think it was just me being constantly surprised that they were there. A few hairs had appeared in my armpits, and elsewhere, too. Gross. I’d better talk to Mom about that.

I was careful not to get the hair on my head wet because I had decided to wear my wig. Funny to think of long hair as part of a both-feet strategy, it was sort of upside-down.

I put on fresh undies, and on a sudden whim, after putting on my bra, I pulled the little pads out of my other bra and added them to the cups of the one I was wearing. It didn’t make that much difference, but somehow, it made me feel braver.

I picked my pale blue sun-dress with the yellow and pink flowers and put that on. It came just to my knees, which Mom said gave me a bit of room to grow and still wear it to school.

That—wearing a dress to school—was going to be weird.

I put on what Mom called socketies, short, thin, white socks with embroidered lace tops, then my black Mary Jane oxfords. My charm bracelet and bangles both went on my left wrist. Then I moved the bangles to my right wrist. Then I moved them back and sighed.

I put on the fake pearl necklace. It had two white strands and hung in a pretty double curve just above the neckline of my dress. Next, the matching bracelet, on my right wrist this time, wishing for a moment of insanity that I had let Mom get me the pink pearls like she had wanted.

I checked my earrings. They itched a bit, so I used the alcohol on them again to dry them out after the shower. I moved the bangles again to my right wrist with the pearls, then took them off and put them back in the jewelry box. Too much is too much.

I looked at myself in the mirror, with my short hair standing up and pointing any-which-way as Grampa would say. I got the wig off the stand and put it on, settling it on my forehead first and pulling it back to fit, just like the lady at the wig desk in Nordstrom’s had shown me. I combed it, then brushed it gently.

I looked at myself in the mirror and saw Audrey looking back, no trace of Audie at all except maybe the freckles across my nose. I squinched myself a wink and grinned, showing just a little bit more of my old self. I dialed the grin back to a sweeter smile. Was I simpering? Maybe.

I went to show Mom.

*

We looked at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her door. Somehow, I looked older and more grown-up than Audie ever had. Maybe it was the pearls and the extra padding in my bra.

“You look very cute, Audrey,” Mom said.

I did look good but I shook my head. Standing next to Mom with her more womanly hips, I saw my skirt seemed to hang limply from waist to knees. I wanted it to look fuller, implying a shape I didn’t really have, yet. “Mom,” I said, “how can I get my skirt to look like there’s more me under it?”

She put a finger on her cheek and squinted, thinking. “You want a slip, a petticoat?” she suggested.

“Uh? I dunno?” I wasn’t sure of the difference, if there was one. “Maybe change back to the yellow dress, it has a fuller skirt?” But no, I’d worn that this morning and intended to wear it tomorrow. I needed more dresses, I realized, and sniffed at the thought. How girly was it to want more dresses? Maybe get another pink one?

“It’s kind of warm for wearing layers,” Mom said, “but I have a short half-slip with an elastic waistband that might do the trick.” She fetched it from a drawer in her dresser. It had a cool white color and an extra panel in the front. I’m not sure why.

We put it on under my dress, the waistband loose but fitting well enough, the length several inches shorter than my skirt. It made everything hang better, holding the dress away from my legs a bit, making a fuller, softer-looking shape.

“Nice,” Mom commented. “And you can take it off in the bathroom if you get too hot, just fold it, and put it in your bag.”

I nodded, really pleased at how I looked. It was not only prettier, but it was also somehow more—sophisticated?

After fussing with my hair a bit more, Mom rummaged in her make-up drawer and came up with a tube of pink lipgloss. “It’s cherry-flavored with only a tiny hint of color. You can pretend it’s lipstick,” she said.

I put it on just like lip balm, which is something you will find in almost every cowboy’s shirt pocket. They’re addicted to the stuff and don’t feel dressed without it.

I tasted the cherry flavor as I put it on then smiled into the mirror in Mom’s room, again careful not to grin too wide. My lips glistened with the slightly pinker color. I loved it. Maybe I would use it all the time, just like the cowboys.

I turned to her full-length mirror and examined the whole effect. Mom made a noise. And I knew she knew why I was doing this when she said, “Pete’s not going to know what hit him.”

We giggled.

Then the phone rang and Mom went to answer it. I glanced at the clock, five after five. It might be Dad, saying he was still stuck at Mr. Fordyce’s or that he was on his way home, or he wanted to take us out to dinner. It might be my brothers who had started high school today, and already stayed late for football practice. They might want to ask if they could stay in town even later.

I wandered out into the hall, hearing Mom’s voice coming from the kitchen where she was talking n the phone. “Dinah! So you’re back!” she was saying.

Dinah was Dinah Hunt, Pete’s mom.

My stomach went fluttery. I smoothed my skirt over my thighs and strolled through the house, listening to Mom chat with Mrs. Hunt.

Through the living room windows, I saw Dad’s car pulling into the driveway. Mom was asking Pete’s mom if it had been hot in San Diego because it had sure been hot here.

It’s not ever hot in San Diego, it’s always hot here in the summer, and who cares? I thought. “Dad’s here,” I said. We both could hear him coming up the steps to the utility room door.

“Leland’s here, Dinah,” Mom told the phone. “I have to go, but we can chat more later, maybe the kids want to talk?” She paused, then laughed. “Uh, huh, I bet he is.” She turned and handed the phone to me. “Dinah says Pete is jumping up and down with stuff to tell you.”

Dad came in through the back door just then. “There’s my pretty girls,” he said. I took the phone from Mom’s hand, and she went around the counter to hug and kiss Dad in the utility room.

I heard Pete saying, “Audie?” in a tiny voice from the earpiece. I put the phone up to my face and said. “Pete?”

“Audie? I got an eagle feather! It’s really cool! And we got photos from whale-watching and everything!” He was excited. “Can you come over? We’re still unpacking the car.”

“I think so,” I said. “But Pete, you’re not going to believe what happened to me while you were gone.” I still tasted cherries on my lips.

He scoffed, same old Pete. “I bet it ain’t as cool as getting a real eagle feather!”

"I really am going to be getting in a bunch of fights," he said.

Mom got back on the phone and talked to Mrs. Hunt about what had happened to me. I didn't want to hear that so I went back to my room. Dad followed me as far as my door, but I shook my head at him and closed it with him standing in the hall. "Audrey?" he asked through the door.

"I'm okay, Daddy," I said, realizing as I said it that had come out sounding awfully girly. I sat on the bed and put Myron, my plush duck in my lap.

"You sure?" he asked again.

"I'm fine, Dad," I said, trying to sound more like my old self.

"We'll be in the kitchen if you need us," he said, and I heard him move away.

I didn't want Mom telling Mrs. Hunt that I was a girl now because then she would tell Pete. But I couldn't ask Mom not to tell because it had probably already gone all around the ranch community, and Pete was going to find out sooner or later.

Lots of people already knew, my aunt and cousin in the beauty shop were practically news central for our little valley plus several of the hands had been told, and they had wives and kids. Then there were the people at the school in Rosa Morena who probably told friends in Presley. I might as well have gone on one of those stupid afternoon talk shows.

"I don't want Pete to stop being my friend just because I'm not a stupid boy," I told the duck. I didn't cry about it, though I did sniff a bit. I put Myron back on the bed and blew my nose on a piece of tissue. I stared at the walls of my room. I really was going to have to change things around, but I had no idea what the walls of girl's room should look like.

I bent over and put Baby Audrey's arms around Myron's neck so it looked like they were cuddling. "Best friends forever and don't you forget it," I told them. Then I left my room and went down the hall to listen and see if Mom was through talking to Mrs. Hunt.

#

Mom and Dad decided they would go with me to visit the Hunts who had just returned from their last-minute summer vacation. Nothing was said about it, but we all knew they were going along as moral support while I introduced the new me to my best friend since pre-school, Pete Hunt. Pete would probably decide I had cooties now, but I thought I could deal with that.

It seemed silly to take a car to drive barely over a mile to the little community where the Hunts lived. Just off actual ranch property and more than two miles outside the town of Presley, Clark Township consisted of forty-four homes and a gas station/convenience store arranged on three streets paralleling the highway and two that crossed it. Half the homes had an acre or more of land attached, and the Hunts owned one of those.

Joe and Dinah Hunt, Pete's parents, had their own mini-ranch on six acres toward the back of the subdivision. They boarded and trained horses there, and Joe worked on the Fordyce ranch as horse trainer, too. Pete was the youngest of their kids and the last one living at home. His next older sister, Kendra, had married right out of high school and lived in Rosa Moreno.

I remembered that Kendra was going to have a baby around Christmas, and Pete would be an uncle for the third time. According to the doctors, I might eventually be able to have babies, too. No guarantees, my body was sort of a one-off, and no one knew for sure. What would it be like to be pregnant, to have a baby, to be a mother?

No clue, and it was making me uncomfortable to think about it. I'd have to have at least one operation to make it possible, and that was definitely unpleasant to think about. I'd better not mention any of this to Pete, I decided.

We pulled right into the driveway at Pete's house, Dad stopping the car behind the small motorhome the Hunt's had taken on vacation. I let my parents get out first, hesitating more than a little. When I did get out of the car, I paused to smooth my skirt. Mom looked at me with a small smile, but Dad twitched. I could understand that as I felt kind of the same way.

Our big sedan was between me and the Hunt house, and I couldn't see over it, but I heard Dad say, "Here comes Pete."

I touched my fingers to both of my earrings, I'm not sure why. Mom started around the front of the car, and I followed her, realizing as I did that last week, I would have gone the other direction, running to meet Pete without grown-ups in the way.

"Audie! Audie!" I could hear Pete shouting. Then he asked, "Where's Audie?" just as I stepped where I could see him over the hood. And he could see me.

"Hi, Pete," I said. "It's me, Audrey."

Mom and Dad moved away but stayed close. Pete stared. He had on sneakers, blue jeans and a green Sea World t-shirt with a picture of an orca on it. His dark brown hair stood up in various directions, and he had a long red scratch on his left arm. His blue eyes were big as saucers, and I could see the green and gold flecks in them.

He opened his mouth and closed it again. He turned and looked back at his house, where his mom and dad were standing near the door. He said, "You're not playing a joke on me, are you?"

I shook my head. "No. This is me. I'm -uh- I'm a girl. I didn't know, no one knew but the doctors -uh- found out. And…." I gestured at myself. "So…."

"Jeez! Audie, I'm sorry," Pete said. He bit his lip. I realized that I could see his freckles too. Usually, his tan was dark enough to hide them, but he'd kind of… turned pale under the tan or something.

"I'm okay," I said. I took a step toward him, and he backed up half a step at the same time, so I stopped. "It's not your fault."

He made a face I can't describe. It looked like it hurt. "I'm sorry for you, Audie," he said. His voice kind of caught in his throat.

I shook my head. "I'm not mad about it now," I told him. "Oh, boy, I was mad on Friday, though." I laughed a bit, trying to make it not sound like a giggle.

Pete grinned, a sick little grin, but it made him look more like himself. "I bet you were." He shook his head. "I can't imagine. Uh, it's not contagious, is it?"

"You mean do I have cooties?" I said, grinning a bit myself.

He blinked. "I guess you do, huh?" he said, smiling now.

"Sure, I've got girl cooties, I guess. But it's not contagious. I've just always been a girl." I shrugged.

Mom and Dad had moved further away and were talking with the Hunts up on their porch. Pete's dog, Shoog, another black-and-white but mostly white cattle dog, came up and nosed his hand, and Pete knelt beside the animal. Shoog looked at me, wagging his tail, while Pete ruffled his ears.

Pete shook his head. "That ain't right. I've seen you when we went skinny-dipping in the cattle tank." He made it sound a little like an accusation.

I squatted down, letting my skirt touch my shoes. I stuck out a hand and said, "Shoog," and the dog ambled on over to let me pet him, too. "Gossip has puppies," I said. "Are they yours, Shooger?" He wagged his whole body in reply, and I laughed.

"Girls don't have…" Pete began.

"Inside," I said. "I've always been a girl inside, I just didn't know it. It -uh- it didn't show."

Pete moved his head like he was watching a fly. He opened his mouth and closed it again. If he kept being a doofus, I just knew I was going to start laughing at him. "Did it hurt?" he finally asked.

I looked at him, then had to grab Shoog's collar when the dog lay down and stuck his nose under my skirt. "No, Shoog!" I told the dog, then asked Pete, "Did what hurt?"

"When they uh…" From pale, he went kind of red.

"When they looked inside? They used a machine like sonar. It tickled a little."

"No, I meant… Did…." He shook his head and didn't ask it.

I could guess what he wanted to know, but I wasn't going to answer. Shoog tried again to look under my skirt. "No!" I said, using a knuckle to rap him on his hard head.

Pete picked up a piece of Eucalyptus bark and stood to throw it. "Get it, Shoog!" he said, and the dog bounded off to fetch.

I stood, too. I kept my feet together, and I smoothed my skirt again. I smiled at Pete, and he swallowed something. "Audie," he said but stopped.

"Can you call me Audrey now?" I asked him.

"Jesus," he said.

"Audrey," I repeated.

"Audrey," he whispered.

Shoog came back with the piece of bark, but instead of giving it to Pete, he brought it to me. It was an odd shape and I threw it awkwardly toward the far corner of the front yard. "Get it, Shoogy!" I said.

We watched the dog chase the wobbly piece of bark across the grass. Pete looked at me, and slowly his expression changed. He smiled. "I guess this explains why you've always thrown like a girl," he said.

"I do not!" I protested. "It's a funny-shaped piece of wood!"

Pete shook his head. "It only makes sense. If you're a girl, any time you throw something, you'll be throwing like a girl."

"Hmpf," I said, but I smiled too. If he was teasing me, he couldn't be that upset about it.

This time Shoog took the makeshift toy to Pete but growled when his master tried to take it away. "Drop it," Pete ordered. Wagging his tail like a weed-whacker, the dog obeyed. Pete scooped it up and flung it down the sideyard. Shoog took off.

We stood there looking at each other for a bit. Pete gestured at what I was wearing. "You're not going to dress like that all the time, are you?"

I glanced down at my dress. "Uh, no. I'm just… Uh, girls have to wear skirts to our new school, and I'm -uh- trying to get used to the idea?"

He nodded. "You look nice," he said.

Wow. "Thanks," I said.

He stared off into the distance, looking toward Palm Springs and the desert hills. "This is gonna suck," he said.

"Uh?"

He sighed. "We're starting a new school, we'll be the youngest, smallest kids there, and my best friend is gonna be wearing a dress. Suck City." He shook his head.

I felt warm all over. I wanted to hug him. "We're still friends?"

"'Course." He seemed surprised I would ask. "If you lost an arm or a leg, or one of us moved away, we'd still be friends, wouldn't we? You ain't dead, just… different." He sighed again. "I'm gonna be getting into a lot of fights."

"You hold them still, Pete, and I'll kick 'em in the nuts," I offered.

We both laughed. "It's a plan," Pete said. "But you're going to wreck your pretty shoes." We laughed some more.

Shoog hadn't come back, and we could see him down in the taller grass of the sideyard, biting the stick of bark into smaller and smaller pieces. We started toward the house.

I was still giggling, but Pete looked thoughtful. We stopped on the porch, the adults had already gone inside.

"You're my friend who's a girl," he said to me. "But you're not my girlfriend, okay?"

I rolled my eyes and made a kissy face at him. "Not yet," I said.

"Argh! I'm serious Audie… Audrey! Mom is going to tease me about that, you know she is, and Dad will be just as bad."

I thought about that. Dinah Hunt was known as a great kidder, and Mr. Hunt had a cowboy sense of humor; the kind that thinks someone going ass over ears off a bronco is funny. "So no holding hands?" I asked seriously, reaching for his.

"Jeez, Audrey! Audie! Audrey! No holding hands!" He jerked his arm away but saw I was grinning at him and relaxed a bit. "You're as bad as Mom!" he accused.

I tried to look as if that hurt my feelings. "We're still going to the carnival together next month, aren't we?" I asked with a quiver in my voice. "It's going to be on your birthday this year." The weekend before Halloween was a big thing in our little farming area — fall harvest, nice weather, hayrides, and square dances.

Pete waved his arms around. "Everyone goes to the carnival!"

"So it's a date," I said.

He held a finger up. "It's not a date! We're too young to date."

I tried to look thoughtful. "Maybe next year," I mused.

He glared at me. "Cut it out, Audrey," he finally said.

"Okay," I agreed. I felt happy to hear him use my name.

We sat on the porch in the wooden glider Pete's grandfather had made. He sat at the right end, and I sat in the middle but didn't crowd him. I smoothed my skirt and kept my feet together on the bar below the bench.

Despite my growth spurt over the summer, Pete had had one, too, and was still taller than me because he was most of a year older. Pete used his longer legs to put the glider in motion, and we sailed back and forth with the springs creaking.

"The kids at school… some of them… are probably going to be mean to you. I really am going to be getting in a bunch of fights," he said.

"We already have a plan for that," I commented.

He shook his head. "Only trashy girls get in fights with boys. You can take care of any girls that give you trouble, but leave assholes like Roy Chunderhead to me." Roy was a bully from Presley a grade ahead of us. His real last name was Churchfield, and he was twice Pete's size, though not as big as Moose.

"You'll get hurt," I said.

"Don't worry about me. If any guy hurts you, Audrey... I—will—break—bones." Pete sounded really mean when he said that.

I remembered what his Dad did for a living. The Hunts were tough, even by ranch people measures. We didn't say anything for a while, and the glider moved back and forth.

He looked sideways at me and smiled. "Who would have thought you would be so pretty," he said.

I tossed my head and looked down at my lap, the long hair of my wig falling around my face. Pete made a noise, and I looked up. He was still smiling. He put his hand out between us. I put mine in his, and he closed it around my fingers.

"M-maybe I am your girlfriend?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "But don't tell anyone until we're in high school. Ya wanna see my eagle feather?"

"Maybe later," I said.

He stood up and pulled on my hand, and I stood too. "C'mon, it's in my room, it's really cool," he said. "The eagle in the bird show at Sea World dropped it, and the trainer said I could have it." He let go of my hand and opened the door for me.

I walked through, but I said, "I don't think I can go into your bedroom anymore, Pete."

He stopped, halfway through the door. We could hear the adults talking somewhere else in the house. "Huh," he said. "Well, come on, we can sneak in this time, and pretend we didn't think of it." He headed off toward his room, and I followed, giggling.