Take a Lemon

The hug had been comforting to both of us, but the drastic difference in my height and shape was an uncomfortable reminder of the impossibility of resuming our old relationship as it had been – at least for now. Vicky’s comment was at least as much a way of letting us break the embrace without dealing too much with that as it was an actual desire to see me sew – or at least that’s how I took it.

Still, it was a safe change of subject. “Were you serious about wanting to see me sew?” I asked as we parted.

“Um… to tell you the truth, I’m not sure I could handle that right now, Marsh.” She looked around my room. “Wow. This is really a girl’s room, isn’t it? Not exactly what I was expecting.”

“It’s the way I found it, except for the guitar.”

“Oh! So you got a new guitar?” She looked where I had indicated. “It looks different from your old one.”

“Yeah, I’m borrowing it from a friend. Actually,” I added, realizing the connection, “it belongs to Ben Fosberg. He’s sort of turned off by the whole thing and doesn’t even want to see it, and his sister’s a good friend of mine, so she said I could borrow it.”

“Oh, poor Ben. I think he’s had it worse than any of us. Except for you, that is.”

“Except for me? Are you saying that nobody else changed sex?”

She nodded. “As far as I know. At least nobody in the Strangers has admitted to it.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t exactly tell Ian and Luke the whole truth, either. I just told them that I looked like I could be my own sister.”

“So maybe it happened to somebody else. Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. In fact, until I realized who you were, it hadn’t even occurred to me that some of the volunteers might have changed sex. Ben’s change seemed the most that anyone would have experienced.”

She looked around some more. “So you really do have a sewing machine, huh. And I guess all those,” she said, indicating my garment rack, “are things you’re supposed to sew. For money. Wow. I mean… wow. I’m seriously freaking out a bit, Marsh. I don’t understand how you can be so calm. I mean… you’re a girl, Marshall!”

“I’m calm, now. I certainly wasn’t when this first happened, but I’ve had a bit of time to get used to it – and of course, I still refuse to accept it as permanent,” and I looked stubbornly at her, daring her to gainsay me on that point.

But she just nodded.

“Out of curiosity, Vix,” I asked, “is there any particular reason you’re dressed up like that?”

She looked embarrassed. “I guess I just really felt funny about my ex-boyfriend dressing more girlishly than I was. It’s bad enough that I’m taller than you, without also being the only one who’s wearing pants. If you can wear a dress… so can I. Besides, the more feminine I look, maybe the more it’ll be easier for you to… I don’t know. I’m very skeptical that there’s any way back, but I want to give you as much of an incentive as I can.”

“Believe me, Vixy, I have plenty of incentive,” I laughed. “But I’m worried that I could be just going over old ground. What kind of things did the group try?”

“Well, we looked in the physics building, of course. I think we were pretty thorough, but I suppose we could have missed something. And we did web searches, but Davis is kind of a common name, and if you look for physics papers written by a Professor Davis at Piques in the past decade, the only one you find is the guy we know about, who is not the one in charge of this experiment.”

I sighed. “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I found. Anything else?”

“I think some of the guys had more ideas, but nothing seems to have panned out. That’s why we’re pretty much all convinced that there’s no way back.’

“So why all the secrecy, then?”

“Secrecy?”

“I spoke with Ian and Luke and they took me on this incredible obstacle course to get to their dorm.”

She grimaced. “Oh, right. I didn’t realize that you had met them. Well, they’re just paranoid. Some of the group are convinced that there’s this massive cover-up, and that the administration is trying to find the people who went to the Messenger and do… I don’t know what to them. Others are convinced that the experiment wrote itself out of existence. Something to do with a grandfather paradox.”

“That’s what Chad thought might have happened.”

“Oh, you told Chad? That doesn’t really surprise me.”

“Yeah, and I told Tina and Alvin and Nikki, too.”

“Alvin – your director? And who’s Nikki?”

“Nikki is Ben’s sister. She’s also Alvin’s girlfriend, our costume mistress, and the one who’s been teaching me to sew and just generally been a really good friend.”

“Which is why you have his guitar. OK, now it all makes sense. But… that’s a lot of people, Marsh. I’ve told Christine, and that’s it, outside the Strangers. And my secret isn’t nearly as big as yours.”

I shrugged. “I only told people I thought I needed to. I needed more help than you did, remember.”

“True.”

“So…”

“So.”

“Um… the Strangers in the Mirror…”

“Please, Marsh. I don’t want to talk about them right now. Can’t we try to forget about this whole thing for just a while?”

We sort of stared at each other for a moment; I assumed she was thinking mostly the same kind of thing that I was. It was great to be here together, but we certainly weren’t together in the way we used to be. There had been a fair number of things we used to do when we were dating, like dancing and skating – but those sort of required me to be a guy, or probably wouldn’t be much fun this way, even if we were willing to risk being viewed as a gay couple. She also used to love listening to me play song after song, but I was hardly going to inflict on her what I could manage now. Making out was definitely not happening.

That left talking, which we were already doing. We had always been able to talk for hours, and now we had plenty of things to catch up on, even if we sort of had to waltz around the question of whether there was a way back. So we just talked about stuff. We had over a month to catch up on, and despite her earlier reluctance, she was intrigued to see me actually use the sewing machine, so I worked on a couple of patch jobs that I had. I still wasn’t ready to try altering Terry’s gown, of course, but I felt comfortable enough with the simple work that I didn’t mind doing it in front of her. What was particularly odd was that it was almost easier to do when she was there, talking to me than when I was alone.

She laughed about how I had had to avoid Carl’s attempts to flirt with me, tsk’ed about the way I had given Nikki enough information to figure out the truth about me, and was scandalized about my having to kiss Jared for the play. But it was my admission about having been attracted to Jeremy that shocked her the most.

“A boy, Marsh? Seriously? You were attracted to a boy?”

“I was playing a role, Vicky,” I protested. “I figured that the girl I was portraying would be attracted, that’s all. So it seemed right that I should actually be attracted. Since I thought it was a dream, right? It doesn’t mean anything. If I ran into him today, I wouldn’t be attracted at all. I was just a bit confused.”

“Hmm.”

“So… what’s happened with you, since…?”

“Hmm. Well… it made me sort of re-evaluate things. Like our relationship, and… well, I’ve been looking at my drawings, and I’m thinking that maybe art shouldn’t just be a hobby after all. I mean, when you lose things you thought you never could, it sort of puts things into perspective.”

“Trust me. I know that very well.”

“Yeah, well… I’m sort of leaning towards making Art my major.”

“Really? What happened to the psych and sociology?”

“Oh, I still like those, but… I don’t know, maybe I’m just getting a bit selfish…”

“You’re entitled,” I assured her. “You have to do what you enjoy.”

“Yeah, well, it was kind of late to change my classes, but… remember that drawing class I dithered over? I asked the instructor if I could sort of audit it.”

“Great!”

“Yeah, well… he wasn’t too crazy about the idea, especially since the term was almost half over, but I showed him some of my sketches and he let me sit in.”

“Good. I’d love to see what you come up with.”

“I really wish I’d brought some of my latest work. I think I’m really improving, Marsh.”

“I’ll have to come over to your place, next time, so you can show me.”

“Yeah…” She looked around my room again. “Talk about putting things into perspective. I was really upset when I saw what had happened to me, but you… I mean, just about my whole life is really unchanged by comparison. I have the same roommates, the same friends, the same clothes, even my body isn’t really all that different.”

“And your face isn’t really changed all that much, either, Vix. Besides us two, nobody else would probably have noticed, even if they remembered the old you.”

“I guess so.” She sat silently, looking down and thinking for a few minutes. Then she looked at me, and said decisively, “We have to get you back, Marsh. I’m not sure I believe it’s possible, but at least we have to try.

“The Strangers meet once or twice a week, and I’ve sort of stopped going. I mean it’s kind of depressing. Everybody looks so normal, and we all sort of look at each other and think, ‘what happened to her isn’t so bad – why is she upset?’ And most of us have pretty much given up. But there’s some who haven’t, and it’s probably worth you meeting them. I don’t know if there’s any hope, but… I’ve never been so motivated as I am now. I want you back, Marsh. I want Marshall back.”