For 17 years Jane Smith had existed in the margins of everyone else's lives, ignored by classmates and teachers alike. Jane knew her infatuation with Bobby Dukakis was just a useless fantasy---Why would one of the most popular boys at her school show any interest in a shy little mousy nobody like her?---but she couldn't help how she felt! And even just loving him from the shadows brought happiness to her drab anonymous life. But when Jane stumbled across a powerful witch's book of spells she tried to perform one that would transform her into the sort of sexy, confident young woman that Bobby might fall in love with. Janey's first-ever attempt at witchcraft backfired in a truly horrifying fashion, and she just knew her whole life was over!
Which it was, but not in the way she imagined...
NOTE: You really, really, really need to read my 2009 Halloween story BOBBY'S GIRL before reading this continuation. After you've read it you'll see why I thought it was so important for you to read it first. BOBBY'S GIRL is just 5 little pages in length and can be found HERE:
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/15425/bobbys-girl
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This was a nightmare! A NIGHTMARE!!!
Janey could not imagine how the magic spell she'd casted could have gone so terribly wrong! She had followed the instructions in the old witch's spell-book to the letter; measuring and mixing the potion's ingredients exactly like it had said to do; then reciting a rhyming incantation that stated what she wished would happen in clear and certain terms before chugging the stuff down and falling asleep fully clothed.
When she woke up this morning and caught sight of herself in her bedroom mirror she was amazed by what she saw! She had been turned from a mousy-haired “plain Jane” who had needed her big clunky glasses to see anything at all into a striking blonde with perfect vision; long shapely legs; a cute, zit-free face like a MISS TEEN USA contestant and a pair of massive breasts distending the front of her plain white t-shirt; which Jane considered overly large but she knew the boys at her school would find them exciting, judging by the sort of comments she'd so often overheard them making about a fellow student named Holly Holman.
And since she hadn't made any specific requests about her appearance---only that she would become a girl that Bobby Dukakis would find irresistible---she knew Bobby would like them too, although he was too much of a gentleman to as crudely as those other boys did or to call the Holman girl Holly Hooters.
It had really seemed as if the witch lady's Heart's Desire Transformation Spell had worked a miracle on Janey!
Until she slid her shorts down her curvy new hips to see what could be making them bulge out so strangely in the front and screamed: “OH MY GOD!!!!!”
Jutting from where her 'girl parts' had been was a pale fleshy thing like some revolting species of snake that had evolved without eyes. She knew what it was---a PENIS!---having taken the same four-week sex education course everyone else did back in eighth grade. But from those simple line drawings of male genitals in the class's textbook she never would have guessed that one could be so huge; and why on Earth was it a part of her?!!
Nestled below the nasty thing was something even uglier; a wrinkled hairy sack that she knew held a pair of testicles- her testicles! Unable to stand the sight of her new genitalia she tugged her pants back up to her waist. But now that she knew it was there she could feel it; a warm sensitive mass held squashed against her body by her too-tight shorts. This was an absolute nightmare!!
Then it occurred to her that maybe a nightmare was all this was. That she was still asleep. But when slapping herself hard to try and wake up didn't work she knew she was already awake, and this whole insane situation was horribly real! The shock of it made Janey's head spin, and for a few moments she thought she was going to pass out, but when she didn't she knew she would be denied even a temporary escape from this living Hell. And that's when the tears started...
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All she had wanted was to have the kind of teenage romance all the other kids at school seemed to have, but instead she'd been turned into a FREAK! A hideous deformed MONSTER! Her tears turned to sobs, and then suddenly she was screaming!
As painfully timid as Janey was she probably hadn't raised her voice in anger more than a dozen times in her whole life. And she certainly had never run around crying and yelling and smashing things! But her sense of having been betrayed on some ultimate cosmic level was so overwhelming that her body seemed to be acting on its own as she kicked the candles surrounding the electrical tape pentagram she'd affixed to the floor and sent them flying! Another kick sent the spell-book scudding halfway across the room, its pages fluttering.
She snatched up the heavy wine goblet that had held the spell's magic potion and hurled it against the far wall; but it must not have been made of glass because it just bounced off. She grabbed the eyeglasses she no longer needed from the end table beside her bed and tried to break them in half, but their plastic frames were so heavy it took almost all her strength before they finally came apart with a satisfying crack! that made her left palm buzz and sting like it had been snapped with a massive rubber band. Then she threw these too!
The rage kept building inside her, a frightening and unfamiliar force that was compelling her to destroy more and more and bigger and more valuable things. On the same end table she'd always laid her glasses on at night was a lamp in the shape of a cartoon character that she had loved since she first watched The Happy Happy Hugglebugs Show at the age of five; but now she hated this ugly bug and that stupid show! And she hated that stupid show's stupid theme song (Life is a Funshiney Rainbow After All), which wasn't just stupid but an evil lie!! She snatched the lamp up and yanked it sideways so that its plug popped out of the wall socket. Her bedside table had nothing on it now. She kicked it over before hurling the lamp blindly, not caring what it hit!
Or not until she saw that it was heading for the window! She cringed---breaking windows was going too far!!---but last night had been unseasonably warm and the window's bottom half was open most of the way so it sailed through the gap, hitting the window screen hard enough that it popped free of its brackets, and the screen and the smiling Happy Pappy Hugglebug lamp tumbled into the bushes outside.
All at once Janey's rage turned to a leaden despair. It wasn't her room's fault that she'd turned herself into this weird thing that there probably wasn't even a name for- it was all her own stupid fault! And smashing stuff wasn't going to change her back to normal; she'd just be a freak with a busted up bedroom.
Something warm and thick was running down her fingers. When she brought her hand up to look at it the sight of the whole thing covered in blood startled her so much that her arm jerked and splatted blood against the eggshell white wall above her bed's headboard. There was a puddle of it on the floor beside her too.
Not seeing anything in her room that she would want to get bloody Jane wiped her hand on her shirt so she could find out how bad she'd cut herself. The gash in the heel of her palm was about an inch long and must have been made by one of the halves of her glasses when she'd snapped them in two. The wound was white but now it was filling with blood again. Since her shirt already had blood on it she grabbed the bottom edge of her t-shirt---which her new breasts were causing to hang down in front of her tummy like a curtain---and clutched it to staunch the flow of blood. She knew she wasn't going to bleed to death but this was one more rotten thing on the worst morning of her life. She had a penis. Things couldn't possibly get any worse...
Suddenly she heard a woman's saying in alarm: “Brad, wake up! You hear that?”
'Ohmigod,' she gasped, HER PARENTS! She'd forgotten all about them!
Her fathers voice was much fainter but was probably saying that he didn't hear anything.
“But I did. From Janey's room! Something's wrong!”
“JANEY HONEY, WE'RE COMING!!”
Mr. and Mrs. Smith had gotten home from their Halloween party quite late and fairly drunk, so they'd slept through more of their daughter's destructive rampage than they otherwise would have. As they came running down the hall Janey panicked, throwing her full weight against the bedroom door- “NO DON'T COME IN HERE!!”
But there were two of them, and it didn't take long for them to push their way in, where they stood gawking at her. She wailed, “Mommy! Daddy! I made a horrible mistake!”
“What?!” cried her mom, glaring at her, "Who are you?!! Where's our Janey?!!!”
“I'm right here! I'm Janey!”
“What are you talking about?! Where's Janey?! Who are you???” they kept repeating.
“But I'm ME!” she cried; and then desperately tried to embrace her mother. But the woman recoiled in fear as her father shoved her, knocking her to the floor like she was some dangerous intruder trying to attack his wife.
Janey wasn't hurt but she was so stunned by her daddy's roughness that she didn't try to get back up. She just sat there on the new shaplier butt she her woken up with this morning—an oddly spongy sensation---and started to cry even harder than before.
“That must be how she got in!” said her mom, pointing at the screenless window. Then they noticed the circle of candles, the wine-glass chalice and the spell-book, its open pages inscribed with strange, witchy symbols.
“What's all this? Some kind of Satan-worship bullshit?!” demanded her father who she had only heard swear once before, when he'd got his hand smashed by the car door.
“I don't know, maybe,” she sobbed, because for all she knew it really was the devil who was behind this nightmare she couldn't awaken from.
“Maybe what?!” asked her mother shrilly as she bent down and picked up one half of Jane's glasses, “What have you done with our baby?!!”
“I told you!”
“The kid's crazy! Just look at her! Go call the police, Sally; I'll hold her here,” said her dad. Then he stood barring the door as her mother hurried back to the bedroom where their phones were.
Some seconds later Janey heard: “What's the emergency??! Our daughter's been KIDNAPPED! Yes of course we need the police! 1484 Maple Tree Lane. And tell them to hurry! We caught one of them!”
Jane looked at her father pleadingly, “No Daddy! I wasn't kidnapped, I'm right here! That book there, it's a magic book, and-”
“If nonsense like that is all you're going to say then just don't talk to me!” he told her, so she didn't.
Perhaps she could have escaped through the open window before the cops got there, but where could she go? She had a PENIS!!
And maybe jail was where freaky freaks like her belonged anyway. Or some other place where they had cages for freaks... The Freak Zoo.
Her hand had completely stopped bleeding by the time two uniformed policemen showed up. The officers turned on a recording device smaller than a mobile phone and had her parents recount everything that had happened since they were awoken by the commotion in their daughters room.
When asked if there was anything missing her mom looked around then said angrily, “They took her Mister Hugglebug! Janey loved that lamp!”
“No I don't! And it's out there in the bushes,” said Jane, pointing.
Then the policemen asked her what she was doing in this couple's house, and started firing off questions faster than Janey could answer them:
“What's your relationship with Jane Smith?”
“Why were you in here vandalizing her room?”
“Did you just pick this house at random?”
“Do you go to the same school as her?”
“Was she your girlfriend, maybe? Who broke up with you?”
“I AM HER!!” she shouted, startled by how loud this had come out.
“Then why don't your own parents know who you are. And why did they call the police on you?”
“Because I- It's hard to explain,” she stammered, “but if you just let me explain I can explain.”
“This should be good,” muttered one of the cops, but they let her tell her story.
She told them how she'd been in love with Bobby Dukakis since she'd first set eyes on him, treating them to a long description of how perfect in every way he was- so how could anyone not be in love with him?! Then she told them about buying the box of cookbooks at the people across the street's garage sale, and discovering that one of them was a book of magic spells written down by the neighbor girl's grandmother, the late Rosa Farranino-
“Oh, her,” muttered the fat cop, “Batty old broad had half the neighbors convinced she was a witch!”
“Must've had some kind of hoodoo,” said the tall cop, “They say she did crack the Van der Wahl case!”
Whatever they were talking about must have been before Jane's time. She found her thread of thought again and explained how she tried one of the spells in the magic book while her parents were at their Halloween party, and it had changed her appearance so much that now they didn't recognized her!
The one thing Jane didn't mention was the thing protruding from between her thighs, that thing she could hardly bring herself to think about, let alone tell anyone else it existed. And now she was crying again. “I just wanted to be pretty!”
As she told them all this the four adults were making faces like they couldn't decide if she was crazy or just pretending to be crazy. And she had to admit she wouldn't believe a story like this either if it hadn't happened to her. One of the policemen asked, “But if this 'magic spell' worked---which it must have, since anyone can see you're a very pretty girl---then why were you screaming? Why are you crying?”
“I don't knowwww!!! she sobbed miserably. Which was a lie, but all the true things she'd told them hadn't done her one bit of good. Except for the fact that her mom was now looking at her like she felt sorry for her; which was easier to bear than the icy looks of accusation she'd been giving her while they waited for the cops to show up...
Mrs. Smith had decided that whatever else the young blonde was she was clearly insane; and people as delusional as her shouldn't be held responsible for whatever they did. And if Janey had been the victim some cult of drug-crazed Halloween ax-murderers, then this girl was the dumb member of the group---a follower, not an instigator---who might have simply been forgotten about as they sped off in their getaway vehicle. She sensed that this kid just didn't have it in her to be vicious or cruel...
In fact, in some weird way she reminded her a lot of Janey; an apologetic meekness that seemed totally incongruous in a young woman this beautiful. And the way she was twisting a strand of her hair around and around her finger as she looked down at her feet was an unconscious gesture Linda Smith had seen a thousand times. Could it possibly be that-
No, that was a ridiculous! If she started believing in stuff like this she'd be as crazy the girl who for whatever reason thought she was their daughter. Yet Linda couldn't help feeling oddly protective of the young intruder; and when the cops had the girl put her wrists behind her and secured them to each other with handcuffs she protested: “It that really necessary? Come on, she's just a kid!”
The tall one shook his head, “Sorry Ma'am. Regulations say male officers can't frisk female suspects. Doing this will keep her safe and us safe until we get her to the station, where there's always at least one female officer on duty...”
He told the Smiths that even though there were signs that a struggle had taken place here---this girl had blood on her shirt, and there was some on the floor and on the wall there---at the moment all they were arresting her for was trespassing. But a detective would drop by fairly soon with a forensic specialist to see what the evidence said about their belief that their daughter was taken, or if any other charges could be brought against the suspect; and that they shouldn't move or clean or even touch anything in this room until the CSI guy went over it.
He said to be patient and cooperate when the detective asked a lot of the same questions they'd already answered---it had to be done that way---and after that he would question 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch here' down at the station, and maybe get something resembling the truth out of her. With a consoling grin he told them, “And who knows? Your daughter could come walking through the door at any moment, and can tell us what the hell happened here.”
“If she does we might just drop the charges,” said her dad while her mom nodded in agreement, “Although I'd hope you would get this kid some sort of psychological help. She obviously needs it!”
The officers told Janey what she was being arrested for and recited this thing about what her rights were, and asked her if she understood. She nodded, even though it had just sounded like a bunch of words. Then they led her through the house and across the front yard.
The last thing she heard her mom say as she closed the front door behind them was: “So many of them are on drugs these days, and younger and younger and not just weed. At least we never have to worry about Janey experimenting with dangerous substances. She's terrified of-”
Jane sighed. Experimenting with dangerous substances is exactly what she had done!
Joy Farranino---the dark haired thirty-something woman who had inadvertently sold Janey the magical “cookbook” that got her in so much trouble---was across the street hand watering their house's small dichondra lawn. She watched the two sheriffs escort the pretty blonde teenager to their black and white cruiser, obviously very curious about what was going on. Joy waved uncertainly but the two cops didn't wave back, and Janey couldn't.
When they opened the door for her she scooted awkwardly to the center of the back seat, and off they went. This was a nightmare!!!
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Janey had woken up with a problem. A HUGE problem! On Halloween Night she'd performed a magic spell that she hoped would turn her into a beautiful girl that the boy she was hopelessly infatuated with would want to date, and it had. But her transformation had come with a tragic deformity that dashed all her hopes of ever becoming Bobby's Girl! To make matters worse her parents didn't recognize her now + had refused to believe she was their daughter, and called the cops on her, and now Janey was in jail for tresspassing + possibly some far more serious charges. This was a disaster---a complete and utter cock-up!---and she just knew her life was over...
Or was it?
NOTE: IT'S MY PARTY + I'LL CRY IF I WANT TO is a direct sequel to my short 2009 Halloween story BOBBY'S GIRL, which you really need to read first, in order to avoid massive + possibly life threatening spoilers. Here is a link to BOBBY'S GIRL:
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/15425/bobbys-girl
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All the way to the police station the two officers up in the front seat made fun of Janey, cracking stupid jokes about witches, like: “Careful there, Bob! She might turn you into a frog. Ha ha!”
But they weren't particularly cruel or off-color jokes, and anyway Janey hardly heard them, lost as she was in gloomy thoughts about the grotesque jumble of male and female parts she had somehow turned herself into, and what sort of future she---if she could even still call herself 'she'---might be facing.
The “real” Janey was never going to turn up, and even if she didn't go to prison for kidnapping or murdering herself, the life she'd had with her parents was over. As far as they or anyone else in the world knew she was not Jane Frances Smith of Princeton New Jersey, and had only popped into existence a few hours ago. What did the authorities do with someone like that?
She supposed that kids who got caught wandering around without parents or identities were assigned some name and then were either adopted or got put into a foster home. But once they found out what she was what foster parents would ever want to take her in? There was probably an orphanage in some remote location where they stuck all the weird genetic mutant children who had two heads or tails or lizard scales or penises. She didn't imagine it was a very nice place. And she knew she could kiss off any dreams she'd ever had about someday finding romance or getting married. But the thing that broke her heart the worst was that BOBBY would never in a million years want anything to do with her now!
Or no; He would be nice to her out of pity---like he had been those few times they talked---because that's the kind of boy he was. He was always standing up for the kids who got picked on and showing kindness to the friendless ones. But he never dated any of the misfit girls, and why should he?! Bobby could have his pick of any female on campus, and the girls he went out with were always the beautiful and popular ones, nearly indistinguishable from each other in how they dressed, talked and acted.
So he would never want to date a freak like Janey even if she was superficially his 'type' now, because he was just a normal down-to-Earth American boy who liked nice normal American things. And those rumors that one cheerleader he'd broken up with had tried to start about him---that Bobby was “some kind of weird fag” who had wanted her to put a Big Stick Popsicle up his bottom---were so obviously ridiculous that these stories not only failed to gain traction in their high school's rumor mill but totally backfired on the embittered ex-girlfriend, and she was soon off the cheer squad and eating lunch by herself. Because EVERYBODY loved Bobby Dukakis!
And while Janey knew in her heart that no one could love him as much as she did, she should have realized that not even magic would be enough to make BOBBY + JANEY a reality. She saw now that it had never been meant to be; and that she was suffering a punishment straight out of Greek mythology (which she'd read up on because it was Bobby's heritage...) for her overreaching dreams. From all the stories she'd read about people being turned into animals or statues or suffering other weird metamorphosises she knew that nothing ticked off the gods up on Olympus as much as some foolish mortal who didn't know her place.
When they got to the station the two cops talked briefly with an officer at a desk and filled out some forms, then they made her sit on a bench between them with her hands still cuffed behind her. “Could you please take these off of me? My hand is going to sleep.”
“Our Youth Liaison Officer Gina Martinelli will do that,” said the chubby cop, “She'll be handling your booking, and they said she's on her way here, so it shouldn't be- Ah, here she is!”
“What do we have here?” asked the slender dark-haired policewoman striding up the hall toward them.
“Residential trespassing. Took the window screen off and climbed into someone's house, started running amok,” said the tall cop. He and his partner stood up so Janey did too.
“Cooperative?”
“Meek as a lamb. But there were signs that she was tearing up the daughter's bedroom before we arrived. And from the stuff she's been saying it's pretty clear she's 5150.”
“We don't use that code anymore,” Martinelli reminded him sternly.
“Well whatever they're calling it, she's not playing with a full deck. Mr. and Mrs. Smith's daughter wasn't there---they seem to think she was kidnapped---but our girl here kept insisting she was their daughter Jane. We get the weirdest damned calls on Halloween night, and even though it was morning I'd count this as one of those...”
The pretty policewoman frowned. “Are you sure the Smiths were telling the truth and didn't just have you haul in their daughter? There's some pretty screwed-up parents in this state.”
“They are not!” cried Janey, “They're good parents! They just don't recognize me because of the magic spell!”
“See what I mean?”
“What I see is a scared kid who isn't gonna give me any trouble,” Martinelli replied, “Are you, Hon?”
“No Ma'am!”
“So polite! And please, call me Gina...”
“I'm Janey,” said Janey, “Really I am!”
“All right Janey. Let's get you booked and into the system.”
As the policewoman deftly unsnapped the metal cuffs from one of Janey's wrist and then the other she asked, “How did you get blood on your shirt?”
Janey showed Gina her injured left hand.
“Oh Jeez! You really gouged it. Well we'll get that cleaned up when we get you cleaned up. Now I'm going to have to frisk you. I want you to lean against that wall with your arms like this,” she said, spreading her own arms out.
Barefoot in just a t-shirt and shorts, the kid was underdressed for this time of year and Gina just gave her a token pat down, concentrating mostly on her pants pockets. Empty. She asked Janey if she had any ID on her, and when she said no Gina tsk-tsk!'ed at her and said, “You should always have your ID with you when you go out.”
“But I didn't go out, they took me out!” said Janey, pointing at the two departing policemen.
“Okay. If you don't have it, you don't have it,” shrugged Martinelli, then asked her all the standard questions about name, Social Security number, date and place of birth, et cetera and typed it all up on a computer she had switched on, not balking when the address where Janey claimed to live was the same one she'd been arrested at.
At a different table she grabbed hold of Janey's hand and one at a time pressed her fingers and thumbs down on an inky pad and then against the array of ten squares on a heavy manila paper form. She noticed she didn't have to tell Jane to just relax her hand. “You seem like you've done this before...”
“When I was ten my parents took me here and signed me up with the state's SAFEKIDS program. They printed my fingers just like this and had us write down stuff like how I get to school and what friend's house I might be over at if I was missing---we had to leave that one blank---then got some DNA out of my mouth with like a long Q-tip.”
“We won't need any DNA from you today-” the woman started to say when her phone started playing the theme from the old TV show Dragnet. She pulled it out, looked at it, and chuckled. “Way to make a liar out of me, Dondo! Okay it looks like we will be taking a DNA sample. The CSI just requested it...”
She found a DNA-kit envelope and opened it, took a sample from inside Janey's cheek, placed the swab inside the disposable plastic test-tube and stoppered it, put that in the smaller envelope that was inside the big one, wrote something on it and attached a little press-on sticker that had numbers on it, then dropped it in a wire basket-thing that said LAB. Then Officer Martinelli had her stand in front of a screen-thing that pulled down like a window shade and took a front view and then a side view photo of her, just like Janey had seen done on countless TV cop shows.
More than anything else, having her mug shots taken really made Janey feel like she really was a convict now. As the policewoman started walking her down an ugly beige hallway she gulped, “Are you gonna stick me in with all the criminals?”
“No, we're going to find you a nice private cell. Although if we get busy later you might have to share it with another girl your age. But not some guy named 'Bubba' if that's what you're worried about. We keep the men and women separate and never put juveniles in with adults. Now let's get you out of those clothes and into your county issues.”
She led Janey down a hall to a big square opening in the wall with a counter along its bottom like at a dry cleaner's shop, behind which sat a bored looking woman. As she took her feet off her desk and stood up Gina said, “Hi, Dawn. We need a female inmate's, small. And a- What's your bra size, Hon?”
“I don't know,” said Jane, because it was obvious that none of the bras in her dresser would fit her now.
Gina said, “Tell you what. Just give us your best guess and a few sizes larger and smaller and I'll bring the rest back.”
The woman dropped a selection of plain white bras onto the counter, then a set of inmate's clothing. Jane had thought her 'county issues' would be an orange jumpsuit (like they wore on that show about a bunch of thespians in a women's prison called Orange is Black Now that her parents wouldn't let her watch); but instead it was a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, panties, white socks and a pair of white tennis shoes, all prominently stenciled MERCER COUNTY JAIL in bold yellow letters. She supposed this was to keep anyone from stealing them, but Janey didn't think it was too likely anyone would want to steal clothes as ugly as these. Lastly Dawn produced a cheap scratchy bath towel that smelled like bleach and dropped it onto the pile, which Officer Gina indicated Jane was supposed to gather up and follow her down the hall with it.
Janey thought there would be a dressing room like they had at JC Penny's or Target that she could go into and change. But they entered a room with some benches to sit on and and a tiled area on one of the walls that had three shower heads sticking from it, with a drain in the cement floor and a raised rim like a semicircular speed bump running around it to keep the water inside that one area.
But no shower curtains or or any sort of partitions around it. No privacy, which was a big problem!
The officer pointed, “Take a shower, dry yourself off and we'll see if any of these bras fit you.”
“You mean like take a shower naked?”
It was such a silly question that Gina couldn't help laughing. “Well how else do you take a shower?”
“I don't really need one though. I took a shower this morning and I'm really clean,” Janey lied.
“Everybody we house here has to take a shower. It's the rules.”
“But I can't!” cried Janey.
“But don't you want to get all that blood off you? It always feels good to get cleaned up and into a clean set of clothes; doesn't it?”
“NO!!” screamed Janey. “I mean yeah I like being clean, but I CAN'T!!
“You mean you're shy? But they must have showers like this when you go to gym class,” Gina said, then had a thought that might explain both the girl's state of near panic and her personality in general. “Or are you home schooled?”
“No, I take PE at school, and we have showers, but that was before! Before I drank that stuff and was normal like a girl; but now, I mean last night it all just- I mean I CAN'T!”
Officer Martinelli had a good instinct for when a suspect she was talking to was about to freak out and take off running. And even though it usually didn't happen this far into the arrest process, she was reading all the same signs of panic and flight in this kid, who had been nothing but compliant and sweetly ingratiating until now. Gina asked gently, “But why can't you? It's just us girls here. You don't have anything I haven't seen before.”
Janey started sobbing so hard her whole body was quaking! She spat bitterly, “You wanna bet?!”
And suddenly Gina knew why the kid was so terrified of undressing in front of her. 'Wow!' she thought, 'I never would've guessed in a million years!' It was incredible how well girls like Janey could pass when they started transitioning early enough. She couldn't see a single thing about the young woman that said 'male'. She told her, “It's okay Sweetie! I said it was just us girls here and as far as I'm concerned it still is! And I know your body isn't like you wish it was---not all of it, not yet---but when you're a little older you'll be able to fix that too. So don't worry about me being here; I know lots of transgender people. Or a few, anyway. My friend Darla is a policewoman up in New York.”
Janey looked up, astonishment on her tear-streaked face. “Really?!”
“Yes, really! She's one of the best cops I know and just a beautiful woman, inside and out. And she was born a boy just like you...”
“But I wasn't born a boy!” sobbed Janey, “I was a girl. And I'm not transgender; or I don't think I am anyway, because being a girl never felt wrong to me. But now I am wrong! I mean I woke up and I'm pretty now and my eyes are good and I got a bust like Holly Hooters, but I also got this thing now; So it's like I'm not a boy or a girl, just a THING!! A thing with a thing and I belong in the Freak Zoo and I wish I never found that stupid book!”
Officer Martinelli wasn't sure what Janey was saying but took a guess. “You mean you're intersex?”
“I don't know, I've never even had sex!”
“No, this doesn't have anything to do with whether you've had sex or not. Intersex people have a body that isn't all male or all female, but might have one thing a guy has and something else a girl has. Sometimes it's obvious the minute they're born, and other times it stays hidden for years."
“Really?” asked Janey. They hadn't even mentioned this in that sex education class she'd had in junior high.
“It's not that common, but it's a lot more common than some folks would like to believe. So if that's what you are it's not the end of the world, and you're not alone. There are others like you, who live their lives just like anyone else, and none of them have to live in the Freak Zoo. They closed that place down years ago...”
“But if I look like a girl and I have a- You know, a boy thing... then what am I?”
“What do you feel like you are?” asked the officer.
“I don't know anymore!” she cried.
“Then what do you want to be? Deep down inside you know that. Your heart's desire.”
“I want to be Bob-” Janey started to say, but stopped herself. Though Bobby had been the “heart's desire” from her magic spell maybe being Bobby's girl wasn't really the most important thing in the world after all. Or at least not right now. Janey's wish to be the mousey boring 'Plain Jane' she'd been yesterday was just for her, so she could feel like herself again. She said, “I want to be a girl.”
“Then you're a girl. If that's who you really feel like you should be.”
“I can just do that?” asked Janey skeptically.
“Why not? Who else is better to decide something that's that important to how you live your life and how you feel about yourself---and it really is nobody else's business---than you?”
“I dunno,” she sniffled, “Maybe scientists and doctors who study all this stuff?”
“Doctors have a terrible record of deciding for others who they should be. Especially with intersex people. They take a baby with ambiguous genitals and decide whether the child should be a boy or a girl, then use a scalpel to try and turn them into that. And years later it turns out they were totally wrong and that person doesn't feel at all like the sex that the doctor just arbitrarily decided they were, but feels like they were violated by some doctor playing God with their body, and by the parents who forced them into that gender; all because they couldn't handle the idea of someone being sexually ambiguous, which is rare but it's totally normal.”
“How come you know so much about all this? Are you intersex too?”
“No, I'm pretty much female through and through. But I had a friend in college who was; And when I was your age I had a lot of people telling me who I was supposed to be and that who I was in my heart was wrong; so I can at least somewhat imagine what it's like,” Gina told her, not being more specific because she didn't want to spook the timid kid, who gave the impression of having led such a sheltered life that she might not have ever met an out-of-the-closet gay person.
“You mean because you like girls?”
Gina was a bit surprised that Janey had figured this out, but then realized her euphemisms wouldn't have been hard for a 17-year-old with half a brain to read between; and the kid wasn't dumb. Gina said, “Yes, that's part of who I am. But I like adult girls, and I'm married to one; so don't worry about me. And if you want I'll turn around and look over there while you take your shower. I think I can bend the rules that much.”
“I'm not worried about you bein' a thespian. You're a nice person, and I got real worries to worry about! My own parents don't know me, I'm in jail for being in my own house and my whole life got wrecked by one thing I decided to try and didn't even really think would do anything! I'm so stupid!” said Janey and started crying again. But she managed to say, “But I'll take a shower 'cuz I just wanna get this over so I can go to my cage or whatever and sleep. And I don't want you to watch me do this but it ain't because of you, it's 'cuz of me. What I am now, I don't even want me looking at me!”
The policewoman's heart just about broke when she heard this. Whatever this girl's actual story was, it was obvious she needed a whole lot of therapy and support and love. As she turned her back to give Janey some privacy she said, “None of us knows what our future holds, and just because it looks hopeless it doesn't mean it is. There was a time when I was sure my life was hopeless, but after I made it through the rough part and got out on my own it turned out to be pretty great, and I wouldn't trade the life I have now for anything! So please don't give up hope!”
“That would be nice,” said Janey flatly, then Gina heard the faucet handle squeak and the sounds of water raining down on the teenager and the shower's concrete floor, which almost drowned the sound of the girl's quiet sobbing.
Clean and dressed in her jail clothes, with a beige butterfly bandage covering the betadine-orange wound in her palm, Janey checked out her living quarters. There wasn't much to see. Two steel bunk beds with thin plastic-foam mattresses. A steel sink and a steel toilet with no cover, three cinderblock walls and one made of bars, and a television bolted to a spot high on one wall.
Officer Martinelli had given her a short list of basic cable channels she could watch, and Janey chose THE ANIMAL CHANNEL with the sound down kind of low, all of which Gina had to do from outside the cell. Janey picked a bottom bunk to spread the two blankets and the crummy little pillow they had given her on, and lie down to watch some TV.
She tried to watch AMAZING SHELTER DOGS, but even the heartwarming stories of dogs snatched from the jaws of death and given loving homes and then saving their adopted families by barking when the house catches on fire couldn't hold her interest. And the dog pound scenes were just too depressing. Because she knew that for every Amazing Shelter Dog there were fifty who never found their loving human family but got murdered and tossed in the trash. Life was not a funshiney rainbow after all...
'All those dogs in the background are probably dead now,' she thought, and rolled over and put her crummy pillow over her head so she couldn't see or hear the TV.
She tried to go to sleep so she could escape from her grim reality for an hour or two; but her head was full of doggie gas chambers and penises, the hostility and lack of recognition on her parents' faces when they discovered her this morning, and a future she couldn't believe might be as okay as Officer Gina was trying to tell her it could; and she was crying again.
Janey was getting really sick of all this crying!
“I'm just a crybaby freak,” she cried, and the thought of being such a stupid crybaby freak made her cry...
For the most part, Gina had kept her promise to not watch Janey while she disrobed and showered, except for the quick look she had sneaked just to confirm that the troubled teen wasn't merely imagining she had sprouted a dick and balls. Gina had delivered people with stranger and more irrational delusions about their bodies to the Princeton University Medical Center for psych evaluation (Like the exhausted and terrified man who was convinced he had an extra set of arms that no one else could see; Demonic arms that were planning to strangle him the instant he fell asleep!). But Janey was not imagining that she had a boy's sex organ on her very female body. It was there.
Although Janey's story about how it hadn't been there yesterday didn't really seem credible. Partly because this could never happen, but also because she'd gotten a good enough look at it during her furtive peek to notice that it was circumcised. Gina was no expert on mysteriously-appearing penises, but she was pretty sure that if a human female ever did wake up with one on her body it would come complete with a foreskin...
Then again, if it was possible for drinking a magic potion and reciting a silly rhyme to make a penis grow on a girl then all sorts of equally fantastic things might also be possible, and maybe some leprechaun had climbed in through her open window and circumcised Janey while she slept. But Gina was more inclined to believe in Occam and his razor than any leprechaun mohel...
She logged on to a computer and amended the girl's file, checking the TRANSGENDER box; but because she wasn't sure what Janey's real story was she skipped over the subcategory box labeled INTERSEX and marked the one that said OTHER, UNSPECIFIED. And in the space provided for NOTES she typed in 'Recommend protective custody' and initialed it, because putting Janey in with either the male or the female juveniles could only cause trouble. Gina just hoped that whoever dealt with Janey next would actually bother to read it.
Janey had almost finally cried herself to sleep when she was startled awake by a loud Bang! Bang! Bang! sound. She rolled over and saw a cop pounding on the bars of her cell with one of those big plastic sticks with a handle some of them carried on their belts.
“Get up!” he ordered rudely as he unlocked and opened the barred door, “Bradshaw wants to see you.”
“Who?!” asked Janey.
“Detective Bradshaw,” he replied irritably, like she was supposed to know this but was too stupid to.
She wanted to ask him who Detective Bradshaw was but decided it would probably be better to talk to this policeman only when she absolutely had to. He sure didn't smile like Officer Gina had. As she followed him down the maze of corridors she caught a look at a clock on a wall, and was surprised to see it was barely past eleven.
He led her to a room with a dining room sized table in the middle and big mirror set in one wall that she assumed was one of those one-way window things. There were two chairs on opposite sides of the table. In one of them sat a man in his sixties wearing a grey suit and a tie, and when he nodded Janey took the other chair. The table's top had a heavy bracket bolted to it near her side that a suspect's handcuffs could be attached to so he couldn't leap across the table and bite his interrogator's nose off, but Janey wasn't handcuffed and the man clearly had no fear of her. He said his name was Detective John Bradshaw and he was investigating the State's case against her-
“-for the tresspassing and vandalism at 1483 Maple Tree Lane. Do you deny you were there at approximately 6:45 this morning?”
“Well no, because I live there.”
“Okay. I see you're still going with that,” he said neutrally, “Do you want to tell me in your own words what you were doing there?”
If Janey thought there was some lie she could tell him that would make her be in less trouble she might have told it. But the only story she could think of was what really happened, so she told it the same as she had to the tall cop and the fat cop only with a little less stuff about how perfect Bobby was, and again hedging about the reason she was screaming and smashing her stuff. Detective Bradshaw only asked a half dozen questions before deciding to just listen and take down notes about her on a notepad.
When she was done he thanked her, and she realized the questioning was over. She asked, “Am I supposed to ask for a lawyer or something?”
“We're still not sure if there will be a formal proceeding. If there is, you will see a juvenile court judge within 72 hours of your arrest and be able to enter a plea of either guilty or not. If you plead not guilty you can either call your lawyer or hire one. Or you're welcome to contact them now.”
“I don't have a lawyer. Or any money to get one.”
“I didn't think so. Then the court will appoint you a public defender. One can come talk to you some time today if you want, so you and he can review your options and start planning your defense.”
“No, that's okay. I don't really know what I'd tell him,” admitted Janey. She only knew what went on in courtrooms from TV dramas and a couple of very old movies she'd watched in her 9th grade social studies class that she only vaguely remembered (Twelve Angry Mockingbirds?); but she was pretty sure no attorney would be willing to defend her on the grounds that she was Janey Smith who had drank a magic potion and got turned into this unrecognizable blonde weenie-girl.
“And you're sure you don't want to call your real parents and maybe they could help you with all this?” asked the detective.
“Brad and Linda Smith ARE my real parents!”
“Oh of course. I was just asking...”
The not-very-nice deputy was waiting outside and led Janey back to her cell without a word.
Detective Bradshaw sighed. The girl had clearly believed her own story, and there wasn't much point in questioning someone as crazy as her. It was pretty clear that 'Janey' wasn't competent to stand trial for trespassing and he was going to suggest to whatever prosecutor got stuck with this turkey of a case that they ask she be given a psychiatric evaluation. She was going to wind up in the hands of the head shrinkers eventually, whether or not this thing actually went to trial.
The Smiths weren't looking to have Fake Janey's head stuck on a pike for daring to enter their house uninvited, as creepy as this can feel to a homeowner. They just wanted their daughter back. By the time he showed up there at nine they had calmed down enough that they were willing to listen when he told them there wasn't a lot of evidence connecting Fake Janey to Real Janey's disappearance, and no sign that there had been a struggle other than with whatever demons were inside the crazy girl's head.
It was almost as if Real Janey had gone out for a night of fun (teenage girls are seldom as innocent as their parents imagine) and Fake Janey had seen the screen off the window while walking past their house and decided to go exploring, and then for whatever reason had gone berzerk. Maybe her psychosis was triggered by that 'Hugglebug' lamp his CSI Dondo Reyes had retrieved from the bushes outside the window. It was nasty looking little brute.
And even though the tests he'd ordered probably hadn't even arrived at the lab that did all the DNA analysis for the Sheriff's Department yet, both he and Dondo had been pretty sure that the small amount of blood found at the crime scene would turn out to all be from the injury to Fake Janey's hand.
This might prove to be the strangest case Bradshaw would get today but it was hardly the most important. There had been several other break-ins and burglaries during the night---mostly commercial---that he still needed to investigate, and before he got even in to the station this morning there'd been a call about a dead body found in a park, which even though he wasn't a homicide detective he'd been close enough that he was the first one on the scene. Luckily what someone thought was a dead person floating in the park's little pond had turned out to be a mannequin. Halloween was always a weird time of year in New Jersey, but luckily they hadn't had any Martian invasions in a while...
.
Back in her bunk, Janey watched a show that was on the Animal Channel about those pretty little fishes called clownfish, and how they could actually completely change their sex.
'Maybe I'm a clownfish,' she thought sleepily, 'And just haven't finished turning into a boy yet...'
And then she was a clownfish, and for some reason was having a really angry argument with a pretty teenage mermaid, when a deputy came and woke her up; but a lot less rudely than that last cop had.
He had a metal tray with a plastic spoon and her lunch on it, some white gravy and meat goop heaped onto some white bread toast that wasn't as bad as the name he called it---Shit on a shingle---but it wasn't very good either.
She ate it as she watched some more TV and then she was dreaming again, that she was on trial in a courtroom somewhere in the deep South that was packed with spectators---her trial was some super big deal for some reason---and it was so hot everybody had little fans they were fanning themselves with; and her penis was up on the witness stand, being cross-examined by that actor from the old movie she suddenly realized she was in (Gregory Pecker?).
But even with the freaky dreams sleep was good. It made the time go by quicker. Because the next thing Janey knew another cop was waking her up to eat her dinner. A tray piled with some tasteless glop he called chicken tetrazzini. She thought it might be the same stuff she'd eaten earlier only dumped over noodles this time instead of toast...
Gina Martinelli couldn't stop thinking about the girl in Holding Cell 3-C and her crazy story. She had to figure it was some kind of psychological defense, a way to avoid the shame someone had taught her to feel for being trans, or intersex, or whatever the troubled young woman was physically.
But after she clocked out Gina found a computer terminal and brought up Janey's case. The girl's fingerprints had been taken the old-fashioned way but then the ink-on-paper prints (which served as a back up copy in case anything happened to the computers) had been put on a high-resolution scanner and entered into the Department's criminal data base. These were what she brought up on her computer screen, and just on a hunch ran them for matches with the records of every police department in the US, the FBI and even Interpol. Seven minutes later the closest thing to a match (30%) on any of her fingers was the left thumb of a seventy year old embezzler currently doing time in Florida.
But the prints that Janey claimed had been taken when she was ten wouldn't be in the criminal justice system. Despite what the tinfoil-hat crowd claimed, the SAFEKIDS program had not been put into effect so that the government could keep cradle-to-grave files on ordinary citizens, but actually to try and keep kids safe. And the data submitted by parents had helped solve six missing children and abduction cases that Gina been personally involved in. While not every police officer could just poke through the files they had on kids without the approval of a judge and the regional director of SAFEKIDS, as Youth Liaison Officer Gina was affiliated with the program and could get into its catalog, as long as she logged on using the special password they had given her and left a record of and an explanation for everything she had done in there.
There was no telling how many Jane Smiths there were in New Jersey that had been signed up with SAFEKIDS, but when she entered the address Janey claimed was hers she found her Jane Smith. The ten year old Janey's photo looked absolutely nothing like the teenager they had in custody, and Gina could tell that digitally advancing the picture's age to 17 wouldn't bring it any closer to resembling the blonde girl who was claiming she had been this bespectacled child with the mousy brown hair.
But it didn't take seven minutes or even seven tenths of a second for the images of all ten fingerprints to come back reading a 100% match to their counterparts in the other file. Officer Martinelli gazed at the ten sets of side-by-side images on her screen that were perfect duplicates of each other, her eyes moving back and forth between them a few times looking for any variation before concluding aloud: “You have GOT to be shittin' me!”
When you discover something that you know is going to sound unbelievable to people it doesn't hurt to have not just one but two sources of undeniable proof of your claims. So Gina went downstairs to the forensics lab and asked the tech who's name she always forgot how long it would be before they had the the results of the gene test for Case #331-87032; then asked if there was any way they could get it done faster than that.
He found and handed her the sample's envelope, and then the envelope of samples from the crime scene, and said, “Well we might get them by noon tomorrow if you took this over to Genco right now and had them put a rush on it.”
“All right I'll do that,” she smiled and glanced at his name tag, “Thanks, Mike!”
On her way home she found Genco Laboratories among the clinics and medical supply places surrounding Princeton University Medical Center, and had them bill the sheriff's department the extra $70 for their one day service on both. She was pretty sure accounting wouldn't squawk about this when they found out why.
Janey slept and watched television and slept some more and slept again. It was like when you had the flu and felt achy and weak and miserable and you just wanted to sleep all day, only in this case her symptoms were all psychological and sleep seemed like the perfect remedy against her sense of despair and just the awareness of what she had turned herself into that came with being counscious.
But by around three a.m. there was just no way she could sleep another wink, and it was a long, long night full of increasingly horrible visions of her future until a cop came by and broke her cycle of gloomy fearful thoughts by singing out musically, “Room service!”
He was young, blonde, good looking; and his silly “room service” routine almost made up for him delivering a tray full of the worst half-frozen scrambled eggs and soggy toast Janey had ever had.
He stood there with his hand stuck through the bars and Janey couldn't figure out what this meant. Was she supposed to slap his palm like a high five or something? She asked, “What is it?”
He said in a ridiculous snooty voice, “Excuse me Mod-omm, but a tip is customary...”
“I'm sorry. But the only tip I have is to not do any magic on yourself because it can really go bad!!”
“Very well, Mod-ommmmm. I shall bear that in mind,” he said, and was gone.
When he came back a few animal shows later Janey couldn't figure out how it could possibly be lunch time already.
But he didn't have a tray, and was talking in a normal voice. He unlocked her cell and told her to bring anything that wasn't county property and wasn't contraband and that she wanted to keep because she wouldn't be coming back here.
She didn't have anything like that so she got up and started following him down the corridor, asking him,
“What's going on? Are you moving me to another cell? Or am I going to the real jail or something?”
“No, you have to go see Detective Bradshaw first, but then you're going home. All the charges against you have been dropped.”
“Dropped? But how?! I mean why?!? I mean WOW!!!”
“Yeah, I thought you'd like that,” he grinned, “The detective will explain it all. He has some people with him you might know...”
.
.
The past few days had not been kind to Janey. The spell that she cast on Halloween night in hopes of becoming Bobby's Girl had come with a side effect so horrible it made her flip out + start tearing up her room, convinced there could be nothing worse than this! Then she was hauled off to jail, which in fact was quite a bit worse. But now Janey was reunited with her family + going home, so at least she knew she wasn't destined to end up in a cage in some Freak Zoo. But what kind of life could a girl who didn't quite officially exist + who wasn't completely a girl anymore look forward to? She sure had made a mess of everything with that stupid magic spell!
Or had she?
NOTE: This story is a direct sequel to my short 2009 Halloween tale BOBBY'S GIRL which should really be read first, and can be found HERE: https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/15425/bobbys-girl
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Janey was led back to the same interrogation room Detective Bradshaw had questioned her in the previous morning. But there were three more chairs around the table, with Officer Martinelli and Janey's mom and dad sitting in them, so maybe it was more of a conference room now.
On the table in front of Det. Bradshaw was a briefcase that looked just about empty, and the lady police officer and her parents each had a manila folder in front of them. Her dad's was lying open and Janey could see a photostatic copy of one of those card things like Officer Gina had pressed her inky fingers to on the previous morning. And this xerox probably was of that same card; she couldn't think of why they would be looking at somebody else's fingerprints...
“Honey is it really you?” asked her mom. She stood up and gestured like she wanted to take Janey in her arms.
“It is, Mommy!” mewled Janey, rushing toward her mother and a desperately-needed hug. “I'm sooooooooooo sorry! I never should've messed with that dumb magic book!”
“DON'T!” barked Detective Bradshaw in a fierce tone that stopped them both in their tracks. “There will be time for that later. We have a great deal to hash out about what actually happened on Halloween night; about who's really who here and what we should do about it if she is. Take a seat, Jane.”
Janey sat. Her mom was smiling at her but her dad was frowning, like he was struggling to see anything at all familiar in this young stranger he'd called the cops on two days ago. The sound of Bradshaw clearing his throat drew Janey's attention back to him.
He told her, “You are no longer under arrest or a suspect in any criminal case. But if your appearance means anything you're still a minor; So the purpose of this uh, meeting is to determine what we're supposed to do with you.”
“That should be obvious!” said Janey's mom.
“Nothing is obvious about this case, Mrs. Smith. This is hands down the weirdest situation I've seen in my thirty-seven years in law enforcement, and two of those years I spent as an NYPD vice cop in Times Square back in the 70's when it was- Well, it wasn't a place you'd take the kids to; and I saw things that were weirder than I'd ever thought was possible. Which should give you some perspective on how unbelievable this case is to me. I know I didn't believe Officer Martinelli when she came to me with what she'd discovered. But evidence is evidence; and two DNA records and two sets of fingerprints taken seven years apart prove that just as she's been claiming all along, the young woman who has just joined us is the same person as this child here,” said Detective Bradshaw as he grabbed the last remaining item from his briefcase an 8x10 photograph that he he held up and moved back and forth to let everyone get a good look at it.
It was Janey as she'd appeared two years earlier, in a bright lime green sweater that didn't flatter her spotty red complexion. Her hair looked like someone who didn't know quite what they were doing had tried to give her a perm, and her face wearing that expression of barely contained panic it always did when she knew she was about to be photographed. A print she'd seen every day, hanging in their hallway alongside other framed family photos; which her parents must have grabbed to bring with them.
“Thanksgiving 2007,” Janey blurted out, remembering her mom's attempt to 'do something' with her unmanageable hair and how bad it had stunk.
“Okay show-off,” smirked the detective after looking at what was penciled on the back of the print, and asked her, “But you can understand why we found your story so hard to believe, can't you?”
“Yeah I can,” said Janey faintly.
Then Bradshaw turned to her mom and dad, “So what about you? Do you believe that in spite of that the fact that she looks nothing like her, the fingerprints and the gene mapping results prove that the girl we arrested is your daughter Jane Frances Smith?”
Brad Smith tapped the file folder in front of him, “As crazy as it seems I'd have to say this DNA stuff proves she is.”
“And you, Mrs. Smith? Are you convinced?”
Linda Smith held her hand up solemnly, “I am. I swear!”
“You don't have to raise your hand, Mrs. Smith; You're not under oath or whatever. This isn't a hearing or some official inquiry, it's just a- Well I'm not sure what this is. It's not exactly how we do things. If I'd had any brains I would've kicked this mess up the chain of command to Chief Throckmorton and let him deal with it. Or call in those two FBI agents from that TV show where all the weird stuff happens---the space monsters and all that---because this is just about like that. But I didn't so, uh, here we are,” said the detective with a bemused little shrug.
“I think we're doing exactly the right thing here,” Officer Martinelli told him, “And I'm pretty sure you think so too. By-the-book is almost always the way to do things, but there really isn't a book for a thing like this. Which means we need to follow the first rule of juvenile justice.”
“'Do what's in the best interest of the child',” recited Bradshaw, “I guess you're right. Better to take care of this quietly, in a way that will satisfy all the parties it actually concerns. We don't need this thing turning into a circus.”
“Janey especially doesn't need that,” said Gina, “The poor kid's gone through enough hell as it is; And could you imagine what The Post would do with a story this strange?”
“It would be right up their alley,” said Bradshaw, “Especially with her, ahhh, unusual attributes.”
“Unusual attributes?!” asked Janey's mom anxiously, sensing there was something these two weren't saying. But when her husband pointed at the right and then his left side of his chest she nodded 'Oh yes, of course!' Their little girl certainly was unusually busty now. Linda shuddered inwardly as she imagined what sort of picture of Janey the sleazy tabloid rag would put on its front page.
Bradshaw said, “But you can rest assured that---on our end of things anyway---this story will never go beyond this room; which I chose because the way these older police stations were designed, the interrogation rooms tend to be somewhat secluded; for reasons that I'll leave up to your imaginations. But now, if you'd care to indulge me, if anyone here can think of an explanation for how a seventeen year old girl could change as much as Janey here apparently did between the time you left for your Halloween party and when you came into her room at six the next morning I'd love to hear it. Because I've got nothing, not a clue; and it's baffling the hell out of me!”
“Well I bought these books at a garage sale-”
“An explanation that DOESN'T start with 'I bought a magical cook book'!” said Bradshaw loudly.
“Sorry, no,” said Mr. Smith while Officer Gina made an 'I'm clueless too!' face and shook her head.
Janey's mom spoke up, “But maybe 'magical cook book' really does answer the question; as ridiculous as I know it sounds. The old woman across the street whose book Janey says she got that magic spell out of? This neighbor of ours Gladys Weaver used to go around telling people she'd seen Rosa doing things you couldn't explain; but Gladys was a bit of a- Well, more than a bit of drunk, actually; So I always took it with a grain of- I mean NOBODY can fly! But now I'm thinking maybe some of it was true. And Rosa did solve those three murders in a row back in 1998 and '99; which I didn't know about until I read that article about it. I kidded her: 'You're in the papers now; you're a celebrity!' And I thought she knew, but she got upset. She goes: 'I AM?!? Keeping me anonymous was part of the deal. I can't afford to get famous!' And she stopped helping the police after that.”
Bradshaw snorted like he always did when someone around the station brought up the old stories about the octogenarian supersleuth, and said: “Or she got lucky with her hocus-pocus those three times and decided to quit while she was ahead.”
Officer Martinelli had vaguely known the legends about the 'Psychic Granny' but hadn't connected them with this witch that Janey was talking about until now. She told him, “We should get so lucky! She did walk in and give us the perp's name in the Van der Wahl case, who wasn't anyone we were even looking at! And told us where that other one hid the murder weapon. Two people she'd never even met. That was pretty 'lucky'...”
“I don't know if she was lucky or psychic or what,” said Mrs. Smith, “All I know is I'd heard things about Rosa Farranino, more than a few times! And her granddaughter Joy is sure convinced she had some kind of powers; because right after those officers took Janey away Saturday morning she came over to see me. Joy used to just be a holy terror, with that foul mouth and nasty attitude, making a scene out in the middle of the street at 3 a.m. with those scummy friends of hers! But it's a miracle the way she's turned her life around in this past year-”
“Wait a minute! Joy Farannino?! I know her!” exclaimed Officer Martinelli, remembering the Italian chick she'd had a few confrontations with back when she was still on the beat, working toward getting her college degree for the Youth Liaison position. The most recent one had ended with Gina nursing a split lip (“Don't you 'Paisana' me! I ain't your fucking paisana, you stupid dyke pig-” BOOM!), barely managing to restrain herself from committing some serious police brutality; while Little Miss Think-I'll-Drive-on-the-Sidewalk-a-While got an assault on an officer charge added to her DUI.
Maybe this granddaughter had some kind of voodoo going for her too, mused Gina. Because while the woman did get her license revoked for that, Gina had been stunned to see a usually very tough and savvy judge falling for her bullshit tears of remorse and sentencing her to rehab and fifty hours of community service. Gina asked Janey's mom, “But you say she's cleaned up her act? Like for real?!”
“Did she ever! Joy is someone else you could say just changed overnight. And it seems almost as impossible as what happened to Janey, even if it was just her personality and her attitude. It used to be if she was being nice you knew she wanted something, but now it's 'what can she do for you?' Like last week when she came over and helped Brad get my car running for me, something about the little spaces in the- What she say it was, Honey?”
“The points on the spark plugs. Which is what I thought it was, but she had a feeler guage and set them for me---zip zap!---like she'd done it a hundred times. I never would've suspected Joy knew anything about cars. Well except how to crash one. She was always good at that.”
Janey added, “And she comes over and says 'Hi' to me; instead of just yelling 'Spazz!' and 'Ya little four-eyed dweeb! at me from across the street like she used to. She's really nice now!”
“That's great to hear,” said Gina, who would have put money on Joy Farranino being either OD'd in an alley or serving hard time by now. And while it was good to be reminded that even the worst people can change sometimes, the miraculously reformed addict and all around skank's connection to both the mystery of Janey and this old lady who might have been an actual witch was making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It couldn't all be a coincidence!
Linda continued her story: “So when Joy came over to ask me what was going on; First I asked her if she knew where Janey was, or if she'd seen anything unusual, because that's all I could think about right then. When she said she didn't, I told her about our crazy intruder and the crazy stuff she was yelling, and how it looked like she was trying to call up the Devil with all those candles and that star thing she'd put on the floor; and that I really thought the worst when I saw that blood on the wall!”
“Sorry,” said Janey with a sheepish grin and held up her bandaged hand.
“So Joy goes 'I know this will sound impossible', and said that if that girl in Janey's room said she was Janey she might of really been her. Because Joy knew for a fact that her nonna's magic was very powerful and could change a person so you'd never recognize them. She goes 'She sure did a number on me and Joy!' and starts laughing. Which I didn't understand; it's weird to talk about yourself in second person like that, and even weirder the way she kept on laughing! And when she realized she couldn't stop she thought that was hilarious too; and just waved bye-bye and left, giggling like a crazy nut all the way home! And I thought 'Oh dear lord, she's back on the drugs when she was doing so good!'”
“Oh no!” cried Janey, dreading what this could mean. Having to keep her window shut to block out the epic screaming matches between Joy and her father, and being called nasty things from across the street again. Plus she was worried for Joy, who she now thought of as a good friend.
“No, baby! Whatever it was that struck her so funny I don't think she was on drugs. It sounded like it then; But here we all are, and you really are Janey, just like she was saying!” Linda said, then turned to Detective Bradshaw, “And all of this tells me that old Rosa really was a witch- the kind you only see on Bewitched or Debra Cadabra. Who can do all that stuff! Maybe not go flying around like Mrs. Weaver said she saw; But some of it! Because if it wasn't magic that did this to Janey, then what was it?”
“I don't know that it even matters how it happened,” said Mr. Smith, “I mean you and Janey both think it was magic. And maybe it was. Or for all we know it was aliens! Or some weird virus the government isn't telling us about. Or what do they call those little machines they're supposed to be developing?”
“What little machines?” asked Linda.
"They're real tiny, like germs; and they- Never mind, it's not important! The point is, something came along and made Janey four inches taller and totally different looking. Maybe you could prove it was a virus if you could find some in her; but how do you prove it was magic? I mean by definition magic does things you can't explain; You might as well say God did it. And unless it could give us a clue about how we can change her back I don't see how knowing what caused this will change anything. The only important question for us is: What do we do now?”
The detective smiled and spread his hands, “Now you take her home. But before you do there's something Officer Martinelli has to discuss with you, about your daughter's, uhm- body; Something I haven't seen but Martinelli has, and I have no reason to doubt she saw what she saw....”
“About her body?!” gasped Janey's mom, “What's wrong with her? Is she sick?!”
Martinelli shot the investigator a scowl that said: 'Thanks for sticking me with this part, John!'; then turned to the frightened parents and said, “No, she's not sick. Or I mean I'm not a doctor, but I don't think so. This is more what you would call a condition.”
“Oh God,” cried Linda, “A CONDITION!!!”
Gina made a placating gesture, “Sometimes condition just means different, Mrs. Smith. Which this is, and pretty rare. But there are people who are born with what Janey has, who go on to live healthy normal lives. Or healthy at least. I can think of much, much worse things someone could be born with than this. Or re-born, like it seems happened to Janey here...”
“So what does she have?” asked Janey's dad.
“Let me tell you what this isn't. It's not Downs Syndrome or blindness or deafness or being unable to walk. It's not childhood leukemia, or some disease like early onset ALS, sitting in a kid's genes like a time bomb to come along and rob him of his abilities one by one, then his whole future,” said Gina glumly, “I had this cousin; Rocco his name was. Thirteen years old. A bright, inquisitive, sensitive boy who dreamed of growing up to be an astronaut. Wanted to walk on Mars someday. But when he was around nine my uncle Angelo noticed he was starting to drop things, and slurring his sp-”
“JUST TELL US!!!” screamed Janey's mom, and then added, “Please?”
“I will. And I swear I'm not just dragging this out for no reason,” said the policewoman, “But before I do I need you to tell me something. Because I've only known her since she was brought to me by the Sheriffs, and you've known her all her life. But When Janey was born, was there ever anything unusual about her anatomy? Or anything odd that you might have noticed later?”
“Odd? Her hair was always lank and stringy and conditioner never seemed to get it to perk up; But no, not really. Why?”
“Okay,” said Gina, “And has she ever been seen by a gynecologist?”
“I just took her in August. She hasn't started having her periods yet, but the doctor said not to worry, that Janey's probably just a late bloomer.”
“But nothing at all out of the ordinary besides that?”
“No,” frowned Mrs. Smith, “WHAT IS THIS?!!”
“Well I'll tell you. When I'd gotten Janey almost to the end of the booking process, where she was supposed to give me her street clothes to put in the property room, take a shower and change into these sweats you see her in, she got very agitated and resistant. Not hostile, or making a game out of giving me flak like some criminal might do, but terrified of what I would find out when she took her shorts off,” she said, “Because in addition to all the changes in her appearance, whatever happened to her seems to have changed her genitals. I can't tell you if she has a uterus or ovaries inside her, but in the area where the vuIva would be on most women, Janey has a penis and testicles like a man.”
Janey's parents didn't both faint dead away, but from the way the blood drained from their faces it seemed like it was touch-and-go for a second.
A moment later Mr. Smith was yelling: “What is this?! Some kind of SICK JOKE?!!”
And Mrs. Smith was sputtering, “B-b-but HOW?! When I took her to that doctor she said she was fine down there. She had her hymen!”
“This is no joke,” said Gina, “And all I can say is it must've happened with the rest of her changes.”
“Well obviously somebody really screwed up here,” said Mr. Smith, “This isn't Janey! It can't be!”
“This is the girl that officers Garland and Babinski arrested in your home Saturday morning,” said Martinelli, “Whose fingerprints and DNA tests both match those of the girl you signed up with the SAFEKIDS program back in Two Thousand and-”
“I DON'T CARE WHAT YOUR DAMN TEST SAY!!” roared Mr. Smith.
“And yet a minute ago you were saying these tests proved she had to be Janey!”
“A MINUTE AGO SHE DIDN'T HAVE A GODDAMN DICK!! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO PULL HERE?!”
“Honey calm down,” said Mrs. Smith.
“But did you hear what she just said?!!?”
When the Smiths were led into the room a half hour earlier it was obvious to Gina where the girl had gotten her terrible shyness from. While Linda Smith wasn't quite as mousy or gun-shy about interacting with others as her daughter was, you could tell she hated making waves and found it comforting when her husband made the decisions and did most of the talking. But Gina was gratified to see that when it came to the well-being of her child, Mrs. Smith could suddenly grow a pair and start asserting herself ('Okay,' she thought, 'That probably wasn't the best metaphor to use right now...')
Linda looked straight at her husband. “Yes I heard what she said! I know it's crazy, and I'm not happy about it; But she's our daughter! Which you just said you were convinced she is!”
Brad Smith crossed his arms in defiance, “Well I'm not convinced now! How the hell did she get a dick?!”
“You just said how she changed didn't matter! And doesn't she act just like Janey, right down to the little things? I mean like that thing she's doing now winding her finger in her hair!”
“They must've coached her how to act!” he spat, pointing accusingly at the two law officers.
“How would they know about the hair thing she does? And who the hell is 'they'?! Why would anyone go through such a complicated charade? What would they get out of it?!”
Brad tried to think of a reason for the far-reaching conspiracy that must be behind this deception, but he was having a hard time organizing the chaos of his thoughts, which seemed to all be whirling around like cows and gasoline trucks caught in a tornado of pink giggling cartoon penises, that had faces like those weird girly goldfish in Fantasia. He stammered, “Well muh-maybe this is how they infiltrate.”
“Who infiltrates? What are you talking about?!”
“But that's how they'd do it, you see?! Get to the police first. Fire; the infrastructure! And they'd need hosts, right? To blend in. Maybe some kind of pods, or... or... or-”
"Honey, you're not making any sense!"
And suddenly Mr. Smith was shouting: "Well SHE'S not making any sense!! TEENAGE GIRLS DON'T JUST SUDDENLY GROW A PENIS!!!”
“No they don't,” said Officer Martinelli, “But your daughter did. So get a grip!”
“That thing is not my daughter!”
Janey---who had been downright bubbly just minutes before---burst into tears.
Mr. Smith felt a stab of remorse over making this sexual-hybrid child cry, but if his choice of words had been thoughtless or cruel it was their fault, dammit! For reasons he could not fathom they had called him and Linda down here and were trying to railroad them into some ridiculous scheme that made absolutely no sense, while the real Janey was who knows where, and if they weren't part of it they were dupes of whoever was really behind it, too useless and stupid to be wearing those badges!
Or maybe this wasn't some conspiracy or an invasion of alien penis people---those both suddenly seemed a bit far-fetched---but some evil psychological experiment, or one of those prank reality shows- it was just so hard to think! If this was some kind of gag he was gonna sue the hell out of the bastards!
Gina glared at the man. On a scale of 1 to 10---where 10 was going apeshit on someone's head with a riot baton---she sensed she was at about seven. 9.8 was as high as her anger had ever risen in the line of duty; And whenever she did come close to violently losing her cool it wasn't because some drunken Jersey Shore reject called her a stupid dyke pig, or even landed a punch or two. What triggered Officer Martinelli's rage was when some lowlife (of any social class) harmed, bullied or threatened anyone smaller or weaker than they were. Physical or emotional abuse against a child, spouse, girlfriend, boyfriend or pet never failed to get Gina's blood boiling!
The reason her anger was only at 7 was that she sensed that the way Mr. Smith was behaving was not typical for him. While Janey had clearly had serious issues long before she grew a penis, one thing Gina never sensed from the child was any red flags that she had been abused. Janey had been valued and loved in her home environment; and was so over-protected that she hadn't grown much of a defensive hide against the normal slings and arrows of life; but neither parent had traumatized Janey in any way. Gina had only talked to the girl for about an hour, but her gut-feeling about things like this usually turned out to be right.
But what he'd said just now was totally uncalled for, and she snarled, “That 'thing'?! 'Not your daughter'?! Remember that you said that, because you can bet she's going to- for the rest of her life!”
Gina knew from firsthand experience that a shattered relationship can be mended if both family members want it bad enough; and that even a pronouncement like: 'I have no daughter!' can be forgiven in time. But you never forgot hearing it, or that nightmare moment when you learned just how conditional a parent's 'unconditional love' can be...
“It's funny,” she said humorlessly, “You were all set to take Janey home when you thought she'd been turned into some flawless beauty. But now you found out she does have a flaw, and suddenly she's damaged goods that you want to just throw away!”
“I never said that!”
“You didn't have to. She heard it loud and clear,” Gina said, and in her best Clint Eastwood growl asked him, “You find the idea of what she is repellent? You think it makes her some kind of freak?! I've got news for you: Janey thinks so too, and she hates herself! This is your child, and she hates herself!! The poor girl has been going through hell since she got here; locked up in a strange place, scared, completely alone, and she needs you! LOOK AT HER, GOD DAMN YOU!!”
Brad turned to look at the sobbing girl, who was crying so hard she could barely get the words out: “I'm sorry I have a penis, Daddy! Please don't throw me away!”
And suddenly---like some computer generated effect in a movie---Brad could see her face emerge from this teenage stranger's face; The child who had always been the most beautiful sight in the world to him even with her lank hair, the smattering of zits on her chin, and those big heavy glasses that seemed to be dirty again ten minutes after she cleaned them. His beautiful baby girl!
Brad crumbled. “Oh God! Janey Honey; I am so, so sorry! I can't even begin to-”
“And I'm sorry too, Daddy,” whimpered Janey, “I didn't mean to get intersexed!”
“No Sweetie, you have nothing to be sorry about,” said Brad, and stood up, “Can your mean stupid Daddy have a hug?”
This time Detective Bradshaw allowed the hug.
And the next hug, and the one after that. Father hugging daughter; Mother hugging daughter (“Oh my baby! What did you DO to yourself?!!”); Husband hugging wife (“You were always the smart one in this family...”). And maybe it was her watery eyes, but Gina found herself suddenly blindsided and grabbed tightly by Mrs. Smith, who whispered: “Thank you!”
All that was left to do was to give Jane Smith back the clothes she'd been arrested in and collect her county issued ones. She was no longer considered a prisoner, so instead of making her change right at the property room window in front of everyone Gina led Janey and her parents to a visitor's Unisex/Handicapped bathroom and sent Janey in to change.
As they waited Officer Martinelli asked Mr. Smith, “So you're good with this? You don't think we're the pod people or something?”
He let out a sad, embarrassed laugh. “I'm better with 'this' than I am with myself right now. I feel like a real horse's rear end!”
“This was a very strange situation,” Gina told him, “Nobody can say how they're going to react to something this far outside of anything they ever thought they'd be dealing with. But you came through it and did what a father's supposed to do. I've seen way too many dads and moms who can't even bother to take care of the basics. Or take all their anger from their bad choices out on their kids. And as much as I care for Janey, I didn't raise her for 17 years and then suddenly she's totally unrecognizable and so medically- uh, unusual.”
“You do, don't you?” said Mrs. Smith, “Care for Janey...”
“She's a sweet kid. Eager to please, no chip on her shoulder; Definitely a better daughter than I was at her age.”
“She grows on you, doesn't she?” grinned Mr. Smith.
“Yes she does. And if you folks don't mind I'd like to come check up on her in a few days and see how she's doing. This wouldn't be in any official capacity,” Gina explained, “It's not an 'inspection' and has nothing to do with Child Protective Services or anything like that. I guess it's just me being nosy. And I'd call ahead first to see if it's convenient.”
“Of course you can!” said Mrs. Smith.
“Drop by any time,” said her husband, “Linda's usually home and I get in around five most weekdays.”
Gina was pleased by this response to her asking for a follow up to what wasn't even a criminal case anymore. Good parents liked it when you took an interest in their child's well being and safety. It was the ones who in the aftermath of some business she'd had with their child would say things like 'How I raise my kid is none of your damn business!' that she made sure to drop in on unannounced.
Janey came out of the bathroom; sniffling like she'd been crying again, all changed and ready to go home. But first she wanted a hug from Officer Martinelli.
There were rules about this sort of thing, but from the way Janey's parents were beaming at her like she was some kind of hero Gina knew it would be okay. As they embraced Janey---who had heard enough of the policewoman's unfinished story to know it hadn't ended well---said, “I'm sorry about your cousin Rocky...”
“Me too,” said Gina, “You and him would've gotten along great.”
As the family drove south down Albert Einstein Blvd., Mr. Smith called back to his daughter, “Let's play a little game, Janey. I'm going to ask you a lot of questions, most of them will be so easy they'll seem silly, but you just answer them. Okay?”
“Sure,” said Janey happily. She was so glad to be out of that ugly place!
“Okay, this first one is very, very easy: What day and year were you born?”
Janey told him her birthday, then frowned, “But this isn't really a game, is it Daddy?”
Brad kept forgetting that his daughter wasn't as utterly credulous as she'd been even at the start of high school two years earlier. He sighed. “No honey, it's not. But I just have to know for sure.”
“And I need to know that you know. So ask me everything you can think of.”
Which is what he did. All the way home and then for another hour in their living room Brad Smith gave her the Things-Only-Janey-Could-Know test, asking for details big and small about his daughter's life and trying to trick her with questions about relatives and former pets who didn't exist.
It was getting close to noon when Linda broke in: “How much longer are you gonna keep doing this?”
“I guess I'm done. If she hasn't missed one yet she's not going to. She's either Janey or she's a mind reader and she's plucking the answers out of my head. Which isn't possible either. And so with two impossibles to choose from I'll go with the one that has fingerprints and DNA records to back it up,” Brad told her, then said to his daughter, “Okay Honey, no more questions. I just had to make extra sure. I'm sorry if I was giving you the third degree; you probably got enough of that from that Detective...”
“It's okay,” said Janey, “Sometimes I don't even know if I'm me! When I went into the bathroom at the police station and the lights came on I said, 'Oh, excuse me!' because I thought it was some girl in there, just standing there in the dark. But she was me in the mirror and was saying it back at me, and I went 'Wow!' And for a while I just stared at my reflection, who was like some stranger. And even now, when I look at my hands and see these long fingers I got; or look down and see I've got these- you know, my chest, it's like I'm riding around inside of somebody else. And it's so weird how I suddenly got as tall as Mom. I feel like I'm on stilts!”
“You might even be a smidge taller than me,” said her mom, “But now I have a question: What do you guy want for lunch?”
Brad shrugged, “You know me. Whatever you've got.”
“Can we have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup?”
Linda smiled. These had always been her daughter's go-to comfort food after a trying day. “Of course, Dumpling!”
“But I really need to get into some other clothes first,” said Janey, “This shirt's too small, and these shorts feel all tight in weird places! I really hope there's something of mine I can still wear.
“We'll find you something,” said her mom.
“I sort of wish I coulda kept those sweats they made me wear in jail. Those were comfortable, like wearing PJ's.”
“I have a pair of sweats I'm pretty sure will fit you. And your father can loan you a few of his t-shirts until we can go shopping and get you some new outfits.”
“Thank you!” said Janey. It was the most enthusiastic she'd ever sounded about clothes shopping.
“Do you want to take a bath first?”
“A bubble bath?”
“Of course,” her mom grinned. This was another favorite comfort ritual of Janey's...
Linda, and went upstairs and filled the tub for her; poured some HUGGLEBUGS HUBBLE-BUBBLE BUBBLEBATH into it from the box with the creepy dementedly smiling bug-people on it, and stirred it around. When the water temperature and everything were just right she called Janey up for her bath.
Like cutting Janey's food up on her plate for her, physically washing her and shampooing her hair was something Linda had done for Janey long past the age when most parents decide their child could manage to do these things on their own. Janey hadn't been as old as ten but she hadn't been five either when her father finally put his foot down and more or less ordered his wife to stop helping her bathe (“This isn't helping her!”). It was one of the few arguments between them that Janey could recall (“It's just not normal, damn it!”) and it had somehow made Janey feel like she'd been caught doing something shameful and wrong...
But the bathroom was still a space that Janey and her mother shared with little concern for privacy, one often coming in to use the toilet while the other bathed or changed or whatever. But now Janey found herself extremely uncomfortable with the idea of disrobing in front of her mom. “Could you please leave, please?”
“Honey, I'm still your mother...”
“But I'm not still your daughter!” gulped Janey, and suddenly she was in tears again.
“Don't be silly! You'll always be my little girl,” said Linda as she grabbed her in a hug that Janey resisted for all of a second before collapsing against her.
“But I'm not a girl!” Janey blubbered, “I'm a THING! Daddy said so!”
“Ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” went Linda, rocking her from side to side, “Daddy was just upset. People say things they don't mean when they're upset. And that DNA test said you're my daughter, with my girl chromosomes inside you. Or in most of you. Remember what the nice police lady said? You just have a condition, is all. And condition just means different, it doesn't mean bad.”
“I know, but I don't like it! I didn't want this!”
“I know, Baby,” murmured her mom soothingly, “I wouldn't like it either if it happened to me. But remember the other thing Officer Gina said? If this spell could do this to you, then it probably could have done something much, much worse! I mean you could have woken up on Saturday morning blind, or with that Jerry Lewis Disease, or-”
“Or WITHOUT A HEAD!” whooped Janey, and she was suddenly laughing through her tears, imagining herself making ridiculous squawking and gurgling noises and running brainlessly in circles like the title character of the Cartoon Network series The Misadventures of Mike the Headless Chicken!
Linda eased herself out of the hug and stood there grinning and shaking her head over her daughter's hysterics. “Are you laughing about that stupid chicken again?! I honestly don't know why you kids think that show is so funny. All he does is run around crashing into walls!”
“He's a headless chicken! What do you expect him to do?!” giggled Janey, and then grew somber again, “Besides, I got to have something to laugh about, my life sure isn't funny. I'm supposed to graduate in a little over six months. How am I gonna go to back school being someone who doesn't even exist?”
“Your father and I will figure something out, I promise. But you should get in the tub before the water gets cold. There's clothes on the counter there, lunch will be ready when you come down.”
“'Kay,” nodded Janey. She pulled her t-shirt off over her head, and after a second's hesitation pulled down her shorts and stepped out of them---resigned to the fact that her mother sometimes seeing her disgusting alien genitals was going to be part of her new life---and eased herself down into the foamy water.
“Do you want the music on?”
Janey nodded, and she clicked on the little replica cathedral radio on the counter as she left. It was tuned to a station that played songs that were already oldies when Linda was growing up, but it was her station, and Janey had grown into a teenager knowing more about the pop music of the 50's, the 60's and the first half of the 70's than about anything her contemporaries might listen to.
Relaxing in the tub, Janey decided it was going to be bubble baths from now on. The suds hid the sight of her hated new protuberance, so she could almost pretend she was normal...
As Linda started down the stairs room she could hear Janey screeching happily along with the radio: “It's my party and I'll cry if I want to! Cry if I want to! Cry if I want to-”
Whatever had given her daughter such a beautiful face sure hadn't done the same for her voice. But now that she was hearing Janey without seeing her changed appearance it occurred to Linda that her daughter's singing voice and speaking voice both sounded exactly the same as they always had. Janey could answer the phone when Grandma called and Grandma would instantly know who it was. It seemed strange to Linda that she hadn't noticed this before, but it might be why she had already been half-convinced that their “home invader” really was who she said she was even as the sheriffs were hauling her away...
She hurried down the steps and into the living room where her husband was sitting in his La-Z Boy watching some sports thing. “Listen to that, Brad!”
Brad listened, smiling at Janey's enthusiasm but cringing at everything else about her singing. He chuckled, “Okay, so she's not exactly American Idol material... ”
“But I mean listen to her! Who does that sound like?”
The boy in the old Lesley Gore song was named Johnny, but Janey was changing it to:
“Nobody knows where my BOBBY has gone
But Holly left at the same time
Why oh why was he holding her hand
When BOBBY'S supposed to be mine?
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to,
cry if I want to-”
Brad's jaw dropped open. “Good Lord, you're right!”
“Still think you need to ask her more questions?”
“If I did, I sure don't now!” he declared. But Janey's voice wasn't the thing about her that he had been anxious to know about. He asked, “So is it true what those cops were saying about Janey? I mean, did you see it?!”
“I saw it. And let's just say I don't think Janey will be giving us any grandkids now. Or not unless she- Oh God!” cried Linda, her mind recoiling at the notion that had popped into it. Not because she was homophobic or strongly opposed to the idea of their daughter being in a relationship with another female (if she met a NICE female...); but just the sheer impossibility of: 'Our little girl's a daddy now!'
Brad figured out what Linda was Oh God-ing about, and had a similar reaction. Along with that 'pregnant man' who had been all in the news a few months ago, the world sure was becoming a crazy place! He asked her, “Do you think she could? Would that even be possible?”
“How would I know? But from what I saw it didn't seem impossible...”
“Maybe a doctor would be able to tell us what's what with her. She needs to see one anyway, right? See if she has any health issues we should be worried about?”
“Definitely,” said Linda, “But we can't take her back to Dr. Nilsson. I mean how would we explain that this is the same girl he'd seen last time? And whoever she sees, do we take her there as Janey, so she's covered by our health plan?”
“I don't know. Until we can get her legal identity squared away I'm not sure if that would be wise.”
“And how do we get that squared away?”
“I have no idea, this isn't something I ever thought would come up. But I'll think of something. The main thing right now is to get her looked at. If we have to pay the whole bill, we'll pay it. With this raise I just got it's not like we're hurting.”
“All right, I'll look around and find one who can see her,” said Linda “This is a mess, isn't it?”
“You're not kidding! And all because she wanted some cookbooks...”
Then they heard Janey coming down the stairs and both put on big smiles.
.
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Mike the Headless Chicken:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken
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