01: Dreaming in the Light

“Bobby, Bobby!” Wake up, Jenny yelled, pounding on the door.

I pulled the pillow harder over my head. I felt just awful. Or maybe not awful, weird. Every inch of my body felt totally strange. And I was hot.

I reached down; good grief, I was wearing a shirt. I hadn’t worn a shirt to bed since was 12 years old and graduated from pajamas to briefs at night. I tugged at it, and the stupid thing stuck underneath me. I finally got it off and tossed it out of bed, my head still firmly buried under the covers. A shirt!

I was just rolling over again when a knock came at the door, “Bobby! Bobby, don’t forget. You promised to drive me to my choir this morning!” Oh what a morning. I guess I would have to get up, even if I felt so weird. My eyes still mostly shut, and my head whirling, I got up and stumbled to the door. “Bobby?!” Jenny said, as I opened it.

But I didn’t have any energy for little sisters just then. I needed a shower, and I had to pee something awful. I just waved at her as I brushed past her into the bathroom, kicking the door mostly closed with my foot. I stumbled over to the toilet, dropped my briefs, threw them in a corner, and sat down. I didn’t think I even had the energy to stand up. Even peeing felt weird. My head was totally spinning. I looked up at the mirror, wondering what on Earth was going on with me.

It was a very nice face. At most other times I would have loved to have that face looking at me. But not from a mirror. Long brown hair. Halfway down the back long brown hair. Nice eyes, nice nose, good complexion. A very nice face. But not my face. And not a boy’s face.

I stood up, and the view got better… and worse.  All the way up and down, just the kind of thing I loved to see. Although not in a mirror.

I poked and grabbed in a couple of places. Ordinarily very nice places. But, you know how it is that if you scratch the bottom of your foot it scratches, but if someone else does it it tickles? This was like that. Nice equipment, but touching it felt like… touching myself. It was just my skin, my hair, my…

Suddenly I became aware that Jenny, who had been talking at me through the door this whole time, had now come into the bathroom and was staring at me.

“Bobby?! What’s wrong with you?”

That was some line.

“What…” I began, and cleared my throat

“Wha…” I tried again. What was wrong with my throat?

Suddenly I realized that the high squeak was just my dream voice.

“What do think?” I finally asked, turning toward her and spreading my arms, “Do you see anything wrong?”

“Yes! You are white as a sheet, you walked right by me without saying anything, you won’t answer me when I was talking to you, and then I come in here I find you staring at yourself in a mirror like you have seen a ghost.”

“And Bobby, you paraded through the hall without a shirt on. ”

“Mom has seen me without a shirt on before,” I said, turning to the shower and starting the water.

“Oh, come on Bobby! I know they do things differently in your dorm at college but, seriously, do you want Mom to freak out? You know what she always says, or at least since we started changing, ‘Big girls don’t do that in our house’? Jenny laughed and then seemed startled when I didn’t follow her. Her face fell and she almost whispered, “This just isn’t like you Bobby, what’s wrong?”

What was wrong was that I was dreaming. If nothing else, having my sister stand there while I was stark naked and getting into the shower was proof of that. She liked to pretend that she was all freaked out when I walked around in my underwear!  And here she was staring at me while I was buck naked without the slightest lecture or pretend modest glance.

I ignored her and eventually she left. I was hoping that this shower would, at least in the dream, help clear my head. But it was still spinning.

And this hair.

“Bobby!” said Jenny, poking her head in the shower, “What are you doing?”

“Washing my hair,” I said, trying to get the shampoo into the ends. I had flipped it up in front of me. This dream was too weird. Long brown hair lying between my two breasts, trying to get the shampoo in it, while my sister, my little sister, watched me and lectured me.

“Bobby, you are washing your hair? What are you thinking about? We have to go soon.” Whatever. I stopped trying to get the shampoo to work, and I rinsed the hair. Just as I started, Ben and Beth came running into the room, the door banging behind Ben.

“Ben!” Jenny said, outraged at the violence to the door; a violence repeated several times a day.

“Hey Jenny,” Said that worthy, jumping up on the stool just ahead of his annoyed sister. He almost always won that race, competing more for his boyness than because he was so eager to brush his teeth.

I heard the curtain, and saw Beth staring at me, her eyes sparkling. “Hey Bobby!” She said.

“Hey Beth,” I said, and waited, but she didn’t remark on my extra equipment either. Seconds later she dashed off to the sink, her twin brother finished with his perfunctory brushing. Then the both of them ran off downstairs, Jenny following.

As I toweled off I looked at the floor. Eventually I bent down and picked them up. Panties. Pink Panties. Nothing special, the modest kind that Mom wore. Pink. This dream was weird. I threw them in the hamper, wrapped the towel around my waist, and went to open the door. But then I thought about it, and wrapped the towel higher. I didn’t want this whole dream to be one big lecture from Jenny.

In my room, well, not my room but the room I had woken up in, I tried to get dressed. I ignored the décor (pink again) and found some briefs. ‘Panties’ I suppose I should call them.  This time white with little pink butterflies on them.

I rummaged around in the drawers some more, and found a T-shirt. A college T-shirt, my college. White with the college logo in the center of the chest. That was nice and neutral. I pulled it over my head, shaking my head at the way it stuck out in the front.

Then I went to the closet. It was full skirts, dresses, and nice button down blouses. Whoever I was, I liked my style anyway. I hated girls in pants. I grabbed a casual denim skirt and stepped into it, zipping it and fastening it after only a moments hesitation. Skirts looked good on a girl, and even guys wore kilts in Scotland, which were a kind of skirt, so I could almost justify it. Maybe it would translate into jeans as a guy; if I suddenly transformed back into a guy in the dream.

The shoes were awful, all stupid high heels. I liked her taste in clothes, whoever this was, but not in shoes. Finally I found a pair of tennis shoes. White, with pink piping. I guess the whole ‘pink’ thing was going to be a motif of this dream.

As I sat on the bed putting on the shoes over some annoyingly short socks I had found, I saw something pink in the corner, and picked it up, looked at it, and threw it back down. A nightgown.  A long, pink, frilly nightgown. No wonder it had been so hard to get off.

I made it downstairs without any more weird dream sequences, and did OK at breakfast. Mom and Jenny kept staring at me, and my whole back was wet from this stupid hair, but other than that it went fine. Jenny looked cute in her choir uniform… the short blue skirt and the fancy white shirt buttoned up to her collar. Mom made her wear a napkin around her neck to protect it from the jam on her toast

Breakfast gave me some time to think, as Jenny and mother were kept busy supervising the twins. I had had weird dreams before, but nothing like this. If I was only turned on, I would understand it… sexual dreams were nothing new since I was like, twelve. But I wasn’t, at all. Not by this gorgeous body, even when it was nude. Weird.

“I need to go now, Bobby!” Jenny said, breaking into my reverie. She wiped her chin, and put down her napkin as one released from prison.

“Ok,” I said, again clearing my throat after the first attempt. This crazy voice would take some getting used to. “I’ll run get my wallet and my keys and I’m ready.”

“Roberta Michelle Smith!” Said my mother, in her number two lecture tone, “I realize that you are a college girl now, and you probably think of yourself as an adult. But as long as you live in my house, and are planning to go out in my car, you will NOT go out like that!” She went off to the next room, and I looked at Jenny; shocked at the name she had called me, and confused as to why I was coming in for number two lecture tone.

“A bra, Bobby!” Jenny whispered, “I realize that you are feeling bad today, but how could you forget to put a bra on?! Especially under that shirt.”

Oh, what a dream. I went back upstairs, stripped off my shirt, found a bra, struggled my excess equipment into it, put the shirt back on, and then looked for my wallet.

But of course I didn’t have a wallet. Or not just a wallet.

I was not going out with a purse. I didn’t care if it was just a dream, I was not carrying a purse. I looked around and saw a backpack. I had seen girls use backpacks before.  I stuffed the wallet into the backpack along with a couple of books from the desk for cover and to have something to read while I waited at the rehearsal, and hurried back downstairs.

I didn’t see Jenny in the living room so I headed outside. The heat hit me like a solid wall but I hardly noticed it. My car wasn’t there. Instead Jenny was sitting in a light grey Civic, fussing with her makeup in the mirror. Mom’s car was the same, but my car… I looked down at the keys in my hand… not my keys either. Oh, this dream was so weird. Couldn’t I have kept my Mustang at least?

I didn’t want a lecture from Jenny, though so, collecting myself I hurried to the car and jumped in, starting it up. I was practically touching the steering wheel so, as I let the car roll down the driveway I moved the seat back a bit.  “Hot day,” I said to Jenny, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looking over her music, frowning with concentration.

“Totally,” she said, not looking up.  Then “Bobby!” she yelled, looking up suddenly as the car continued unchecked out of the driveway; while I tried frantically to hit the brakes with feet that seemed several inches too far away. Slumping down I jammed them on, ending up below the level of the dashboard. I put the car in park and adjusted the seat back to where it had been when I got in. “Sorry,” I said, trying to figure out what on Earth was going on, “I forgot to adjust the seat.”

As I drove down the street, however, I suddenly realized that the real problem was that I was short. Incredibly short. I could hardly see out the window. I felt like I was constantly ‘sitting on tiptoe’. I hoped I could get us to the church without getting in an accident.