Masks Chapter 11

*Before…

My inner bitch is bigger than hers?

I’m so biting my tongue to keep from saying that.

“I didn’t cow-tow to her Mom and that’s never happened before so she thinks I’m nuts.”

“Well you get that from me.”

I smile. “That’s actually kind of cool Mom.”

She gives me a funny look when we pull in home and I try to give her a smile and then I head inside and upstairs.

Yick…my shirt is literally stuck to me with sugary coffee and caramel and whipped cream.

I go to the bathroom and I turn the shower on really high and I climb in and that’s about as far as my adrenaline takes me before I sit down in the tub and start to hyperventilate.

* And Now…

Nathanial's life gets turned the wrong way when his new school goals don't go so well and his girlfriend breaks up with him. Things get worse when he encounters a woman with a 'special' gift that completely changes who he was, and is given something he is not prepared to live with. Now he must break the spell in order for things to go back the way they were, when he was a boy. And the only way to do so is to live and develop a life of a beautiful teenage girl, before time runs out.

Masks Chapter 10

*Before…

I’ll confess that I want to be that girl that these guys are singing about. I don’t say it out loud but I would love to be the girl getting sung to and just like holding myself in a happy hug while someone is playing something sweet to me.

I hold back on going full on girl with them and yet…yet I’m actually being included now thanks to M.J. and partway through the bus ride we end up lacing our fingers together and squeeze each others hand once in awhile.

It’s the best morning I’ve had in a long time going to school…maybe ever.

She looks at me and smiles and adjusts her hand and we hook pinkies together all the way until we get to the bus stop at school.

I can’t stop smiling.

*And Now…

Masks Chapter 9

*Before…

Brave…?

No Mum If I was really brave I could tell you all who I really am.

And it feels like Stephanie’s little candle was guttering in the dark right now.

I get dressed without looking at myself and slip into bed and pull one of my pillows down from my head like a reflex.

I hug it tight because It hurts.

I just can’t bring myself to turn off the light at my bedside.

Just can’t.

*And Now…

Masks Chapter 8

*Before…

“You’re welcome honey…You’re my niece I love you.”

I squeeze her really hard and she does back. One of those hugs that gets right there inside of you right where you usually don’t get hugged but need it the most in.

I head home and it does really suck going back to being Steven but this time…this time it’s different.

The real me that girl sealed away in that drum curled up in the dark.

She got hugged, told she was loved.

And inside my dark place that’s like me suddenly having someone give me this emergency candle and I have a little bit of light there in this dark place.

Candles can be amazing right?

*And Now…

Masks Chapter 6

*Before…

I’m partly excited and I’m partly bracing myself to be jealous and I go with her upstairs.

I feel better than I did…opening up and helping each other even if it’s not all the way it’s helped, the clothes are helping heck being in an exclusively female home helps.

I’m not into the spiritual stuff that much because I can’t it’s guyboden but there is a female energy to the house.

I…okay M.J. bedroom door has these little tole-painted flowers around the old moulding for the door and she has a dream catcher hanging there in the middle of the door. It’s cool already.

*And Now…

Can Dreams Come True?…Part 7

I’m still trying to figure things out.

How he is, how that must feel.

I sort of get it but.

He’s a girl that’s never been a girl but she…he’s not transgendered?

Okay one thing’s pretty clear and that Ryan seems way, way more together than me.

It’s actually kind of nice in that way.

I lean back in the chair I’m in and sort of hug myself and think and I’m still doing that when he comes back and he looks at me.

“Josie? You okay?”

The pictures of me in the dress finally appeared. Even I wasn’t ready for what I saw. Mom and I both gasped as the first picture was seen. It was a shot from my waist to my head; I’m looking toward the sky and am slightly backlit, creating a halo around my head. It was the most beautiful picture I had ever seen and it would have been so with any other model. Mom’s eyes had filled with tears.

“Because you’re my best friend. I’ve known you forever and I’ve never thought of you as being a boy. Why do you think you’re my best girlfriend? Amanda, you are just being you now. It took something like discovering the game you played with your mom to make you realize you’re a girl. I know you have a reputation for being tough, but being a boy doesn’t make you that way. Standing up to bullies does and a girl can do that too, you just don’t realize it yet. When we’re together you couldn’t be more feminine if you tried. Being feminine isn’t the way you move or talk or any of the things girls do on the outside, it’s what’s here,” Cindy said, pointing at her heart.

Masks Chapter 3

Chapter 3

We went home and I actually spent a lot of the time that week helping out with things around the house.

Getting pumpkins and hay bales and all those electric lights for things and Dad does go all out for things like this and stuff.

And getting the boat garage cleaned up for my friends to come over and the kids that’ll be there because they’re friends of my folks or Aunt Els. They’ll want to have their adult fun and stuff and we get to have our stuff.

I’ll admit that I’m kind of a full on geek with some stuff too.

Lead Shoes-18

Chapter 18

It’s good that he’s in a better mood after all of that as we head to the Bowl ‘N Wash and I go around the back way. There’s lots of room and stuff and while like I said it’s not a bad area out front there’s usually a bunch of kids out there to smoke and smoke up or drink.

It’s the “rebel” teenager stuff kind of place but I park the van out back and we head to out front from there.

I slow down well I can’t really go fast in my crutches anyways but I wait and see if I can see her out front and she’s there.

When I got home from school I heard Mom on the telephone. She was laughing and her mood had changed from the night before. I walked into the kitchen as she hung up the phone.

“Hi honey, oh my God, what happened to you?”

Masks Chapter 2

Chapter 2

*Before…

He actually passes me a shopping basket. “Go and fill your boots we’ll make this a cool Halloween and a homecoming for them okay.”

“Anything?”

“Anything Bud.” ….Bud…there’s another one that just is…ick but I let it go. I start getting stuff there’s this little spark of an idea that’s forming in the back of my head about me actually being me this year.

Well not really me but not Steven.

I just need to convince my parents to let me go out by myself this year.

*Now…

Chapter two

Secrets
By Susan Heywood

The conclusion

Alonely…Part one?

It’s my own little made up word for this, for the way that I feel so much of the time. I can be around people and I’m still alone.

And it hurts.

And it’s lonely.

So…Alonely.

Alonely sucks.

I mean there’s stuff that people always tell me that is just…

Get out there, go places if you don’t go places how are you going to meet anyone?

Masks Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I stared at the wall of them.

And stared, and stared and stared.

There was something just so…I don’t know about them. The masks and the make-up kits for the girls that they got to wear every Halloween.

Not that I could.

Images 52

Chapter 52

I’m still humming the song as we pull back into the diner and I head inside and slip through the crowd of customers and all the way to Taylor and he’s flipping some stuff from the grill to plates and I let him put them up to the pick up window.

Then I kiss him before he has a chance to put anything new on the grill and I go over and over again leaning into him pressing close and go until some of our regulars at the counter start to hoot and holler.

I wave at them and I keep kissing him for a few more minutes.

Oh yum it is such a good thing to kiss him.