05: Spelling it out

“I don’t know. Here, read the rest of the journal.”

We wandered back to my room as she read it, and I went back to sitting on my bed, drinking Cherry Coke, and watching her. She giggled, “So, you think this is a dream? Do you often dream about me?”

No, not usually,“ I said. ”And I have never dreamed of you as a boy.“

She giggled again. “I haven’t either.” She dropped the journal on the bed next to her. “Ok, so what do we do now?”

Tears were threatening in her eyes, so I said, “Hey, I’m sorry, you know.”

She threw herself forward and hugged me again, “Oh, Bobbi… I mean… what should I call you?” she asked, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Bobby is fine,” I said, “My name was Robert Michael, and you always called me ‘Bobby’, that and ‘my horrible brother’.”

She looked at me concerned, and I hastened to reassure me, “In fun, Jen’s, in fun. You… your other you… were always a great sister.”

She hugged me tighter, “I still will be but… oh, Bobbi, what does that mean… where is my… my actual… my other sister?”

I hugged her back, “I don’t know Jens. I don’t know where your sister is, or my sister. I guess we will just have to do for each other for now.”

We hugged, and she cried, for a long time. We ended up laying on the bed and, after about twenty minutes I realized that she was actually asleep. I grinned… this was a strange dream if it was a dream… certainly my little sister had never cried herself to sleep in my arms before.. and I disentangled myself, threw on my T-shirt and the skirt, grabbed the journal, a pen, and the paper, and went out back.

I always climbed up in my fort when I really needed to get alone and  think, so I was glad it was still here… or, was here… or whatever I mean.

But I wasn’t going to be alone. “Hey Bobbi,” Caleb said as soon as my head popped up through the hole. He was just wearing shorts, and dripping with sweat in the heat of the fort. He had a book in his hands but he put it on the shelf as I climbed awkwardly in. I had never done this in a skirt before, let alone a long one!

“Hey, Caleb,” I answered. If I had know he was there I wouldn’t have come, but once I was already partway in it seemed rude to back out. “No work today?”

“Nope.” I am having a problem with some supplies, and they can’t get them to me today. So I will be starting tomorrow first thing.“ He stared at me rather oddly. ”Did… did you want to be alone?“

Suddenly I didn’t want to be alone. Alone was having to think about what had happened. Alone was morbid introspection and depression.  Alone was… dangerous. “Oh, no,” I said, casting my eyes around the room quickly, “want to play some Scrabble?”

“Ummm, sure,” He said, “if you really want me to be here.”

I ignored his awkwardness and set up the scrabble board. He sat down across from me, keeping his eyes studiously down at the board and his pieces. I looked at my letters:

BBRTAIF

“I can make a six letter word,” I said. We always started Scrabble that way… who ever could make a word with the most number of letters.

“Five,” he said, “Go ahead.”

I was in the middle of putting down my word when I realized that we had started the game according to our private rules, and that he known them. Another part of the dream, I guess. I suppose it fit with the rest of the stuff. Even The Flowerpot sort of fit in with this ‘exactly your life except you are a girl’ motif.

I watched Caleb put down his word, and saw him glance up at me, notice my looking at him, and quickly return to staring  at the board. Well, this being a girl was going to be fun in some ways, anyway, if such a simple thing as running around without a bra on was going to make my best friend all nervous. I grinned, and stared at him even more closely.

“Your turn,” he said, and I suddenly realized I hadn’t even picked up new tiles.

CRNDEIF

He had left me an ‘S’ dangling out at the end of his ‘TRUSTS’, so I grabbed it.

“You are a demon at this game,” he said, as I picked up six new letters.

“Oh, you’re just distracted,” I said, and he blushed furiously.

Suddenly I was distracted, and I started crying. Now, if I had done that before, back when I was a boy, I would have been incredibly embarrassed. But now, as a girl, it felt right, and even intellectually I knew, having been a boy, that he would not be at all busy trying to despise me, but would be frantically trying to figure out what he had done wrong, and how to fix it. “Bobbi? Bobbi? What’s wrong?” He reached out to hug me, but stopped as if he had hit an electric fence. But I was having none of that and hugged him, crying on his shoulder for a good, I don’t know, five minutes.

“I… I need  you,” I said. “I need a friend right now, and there you were, and I was making fun of you, and you were being so nice and gallant and everything. And then I read what we had written on the board and everything just came back to me, and, oh, Caleb, can you be my friend?”

That was about the stupidest thing I had ever said in my entire life, but Caleb didn’t seem to mind. This being a girl thing definitely had it’s advantages. He was so blown away by the hug, and the crying; and so busy trying to figure out what on earth I’d said and what he was supposed to say back, that he wasn’t bothered by anything so unimportant as stupidity on my part.

“I, I’ve always been your friend, Bobbi,” he said. I wished they would stop saying that. I didn’t need them to have been a sister or a friend to ‘Roberta’, I needed them to be a sister or a friend… or a mother or a father… to me!

“Well, I need a friend, but I need a strong friend.”

“I… umm…” He said, and I almost giggled. What could he say to that?

“Caleb,” I said, taking his hand (I was sort of enjoying this), “Can you be a strong friend for me?”

“Yes,” He said, obviously please do have something both manly and obviously ‘right’ to say.

“Read this,” I said, opening to the article in the paper.

He read it, by my estimation, four times, and then his eyes came up to mine, “You… you volunteered for this?”

“Yes.” I said.

“And what… what changed?” He asked, looking, the pervert, several inches below where he should have been looking.

“Read this,” I said, handing him the journal. I saw him open it to the front and hastily added, “at the last page!” Who knows what Roberta had written in that thing! None of it really applied to me, obviously, but still, we girls had to stick together.

His eyes widened, and then narrowed again. He looked at it several times.

“Oh, this was good Roberta. You almost had me going here. You come out, like that… I would never have thought that you would be willing to do that just for a joke. But you, Ok, you definitely had me going. You are going to pay for this,” he said.

“You, you think I am joking!?” I asked, furious.

“Hey, I said it was good! Did Jenny help you with this? Is she down there listening?” He poked his head down the hole and I came close to poking him.

“I am not joking!” I said. “I am not. You think I am Roberta? Your Roberta?! Would your Roberta do this?” I asked, and whipped my shirt off over my head.

His eyes got wide, in the instant before they shot down to the floor. “I had a friend named Caleb,” I said, “a very good friend. And we shared everything, and I could always count on him when I needed help.”

“I… I…”

I waited, and he sat there with his face toward the floor. “You are so going to regret being noble, later,” I said, giggling. “These are really nice breasts, if I say so myself. I can’t take any credit for them, I just woke up this morning with them.” While I talked I watched him while seeming to ignore him, and as soon as I saw his eyes lift up at all I shouted, “You peeked!” and covered myself up.

He blushed and looked back down, and I burst out laughing. “Now,” I said, moving my hands,“do you believe me?”

“Do you, do you want to put your shirt back on?” He asked, plaintively.

“No,” I said, “I want you to tell me you believe me.”

“If I tell you I believe you, will you put your shirt back on?” He whined.

“Maybe.” I said. “If you really mean it, and if I feel like it. I am a girl now, and can act like that.”

He sat there for a minute, and then looked up. I saw what was in his eyes, and I just sat still, letting him test me. What did I care, anyway? He was my best friend, we had taken baths together, and gone skinny dipping in the pond, and everything. Of course, I did look a bit different now, and this wasn’t exactly the same boy, but still. It didn’t hurt me, and he enjoyed it.

“I believe you,” He said, looking back down reluctantly. “There is no way Roberta could have done that. You hardly blushed at all.”

“I did not blush,” I said.

“You did, a bit,” he said, “But Roberta wouldn’t have done it at all, and would have blushed furiously. She wasn’t that modest, and we did grow up together, but the last couple of years she had gotten more modest.”

I relaxed. He was talking in the past tense.

“Bobbi?” A voice yelled, and I hurriedly put my shirt back on.

“In here Jen’s” I yelled, and a few seconds later my sister joined us.