Take a Lemon

I waited in my room while Mom spoke with Dad when he got back from taking Tina to choir. Boy, had I messed up now. I had blabbed, and things were no longer in my hands. If my parents made the wrong decision, my life could be over – and they would think they were doing it ‘for my own good.’

I called the only person that I thought would understand.

“Hello?” Nikki said.

“Hi, Nikki. Got a few minutes?”

“Marsh! You sound terrible! What’s wrong?”

“I think I just messed up badly,” I admitted. “Um… I told Mom the truth, and now she’s telling Dad.”

“And… didn’t we discuss this? I thought you had agreed that you should tell them.”

“I suppose… but Nikki, what if they don’t believe me? When I told Tina, she really freaked out. Chad at least seemed really surprised. Mom seemed to think I was overworked or something. I played something for her, and that impressed her, but… I can’t tell what she’s decided happened. And now she’s talking to Dad, and… I don’t know what they’re going to do. I’m really worried that they won’t let me go back to Piques.”

“If they decide you’re overworked and overstressed, you mean?”

“Exactly.” She’d gone right to the heart of it. “If Dad thinks this is all the product of stress, he’ll think that a semester off, where the family can keep an eye on me, could be just what I need.”

“Well…” she said thoughtfully, “that might not be the worst of things. You’ve got Eric looking for the lab; he’ll still be here. And maybe it will give you a chance to, you know, get used to your new body without the pressure of school.”

“But he found the lab!” I exclaimed. I wasn’t explaining this well. “Or rather a grad student did and told him about it. He just called and Mom overheard me, and that’s why I told her. It was either that or lie.”

“He found it? That’s great!”

“Yeah, not so great if I’m still here when he gets to see it. And what good would it do me if they can fix things and I’m still here? And this is Jeremy’s last year and I won’t get to see him all year, and – oh, I forgot to tell you, he took me dancing last night and we’re going to a movie tonight. Or we were supposed to…”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. Jeremy? The boy you were crying about? And why are you…? Marsh, back up a bit. Are you planning to be a boy again or a girl?”

“I…” It was as though I hadn’t really thought it through. No, I hadn’t at all, actually. This had all happened too fast. “I definitely want to be a boy again. I do. Only…”

“Yes?” she prompted when I hesitated?

“Jeremy and I got talking and it turned out that he didn’t actually have a girlfriend and he really liked me, and…”

“And as a boy, that disgusts you and you don’t want to have anything to do with him.”

“Right. No! I mean… I don’t know… I mean…”

“You sound really confused, Marsh. Let’s take this one step at a time. You said he took you dancing?”

So I explained one more time about the arranged date and our soap-opera-like conversation in the car, and the good night kiss, and agreeing to another date tonight.

“So, you really like this guy?” she observed when I had finished.

“A lot,” I agreed. “Like with weak knees and floating on the ceiling and all. I haven’t felt like this in… well, a long time.”

“MmmHmm. Sounds to me as if somebody’s in love again. From what you’ve told me, that seems to be a pattern with you. Do you think you’re in love with him, or with the idea of being in love?”

“What? It’s not love. We’ve only had one date!”

“And now that you think you can be a boy again, you’re going to call the whole thing off, right? Cancel your date tonight?”

I felt my chest constrict. “Um… I don’t know. Do you think I need to?”

She laughed. “No, I’m not making that decision for you. I just wanted to see how you would react to the idea. You are one confused little puppy, aren’t you, Marsh?”

“Seriously,” I admitted. “I guess what I want is to change back… but maybe not just quite yet. I mean, I really like Jeremy a lot, and I know he likes me, and that will have to end if I… I mean, when I change back – if I can. I’m just not ready to give him up just yet.”

“And what happens when you do?”

“Oh, man. Well, he won’t remember having met me, and… I guess the best thing for him will be to find another girl… only I’ll remember and probably still be a little bit in love with him, even though I won’t be attracted to him any more. At least I hope I won’t. So it’ll be almost like with Vicky, where I can remember loving her, but I’m definitely not interested in her right now.”

“And I think you were jealous of the guy she is dating now?”

I sighed “Yeah, and I’ll probably be jealous of his new girlfriend, too, only it won’t be quite the same. With Vicky… I know that she wants me back and I want to be her boyfriend again, and…”

“Still? After all the fights you’ve had?”

“Yeah. There’s just something between us. So the real difference will be that if I see him again afterwards, it’ll hurt me, but not him, and I’ll just have to live with it.”

“It’ll hurt even worse if you keep going out with him, you know.”

“I know. But it’s going to hurt even more if I just stop now, and… well, I still don’t know that I can change back.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I guess… I want to go out with him again, and see… and then I’ll worry about it after I change back, if I can change back, and that depends on whether Mom and Dad let me go back to school.”

“Which you don’t think you can control.”

“I can’t! If they decide that I’m inventing the whole thing, they’ll decide that I need to be under a doctor’s care – Mom already suggested that – or that I need to stay home and rest.”

“That would really suck.”

“Yeah. Mom promised that they wouldn’t do anything that made me uncomfortable, so maybe I’m just worrying for nothing.”

“Will your Dad go along with that?”

“I have no idea. I don’t remember her saying anything… Oh, I have to go. I hear them coming.”

“Talk to you later, Marsh. Let me know what happens.”

“I will. Thanks!” And I hung up, about ten seconds before I heard them knock at my door.

“Marsh?” called Dad. “May we come in?”

“Come in!” I called, sitting up on my bed. At some point in the telephone conversation, I seem to have lain down on it.

The door opened and my parents came in, first Dad, looking at me as though I were a stranger, then Mom, looking very worried. I think Dad’s expression hurt more. There was none of the fondness I was used to, and depended on. I had been afraid that this would happen if he ever found out, and now here it was.

Mom took the desk chair, the only chair in the room, and Dad stood halfway from the door to the bed. “So,” he said. “I assume this is the truth that we weren’t supposed to believe?”

“I know it’s hard to believe,” I told them quietly, “but it’s the truth. It’s not a hoax, Daddy. They really did change us.”

“Well, your mother seemed pretty impressed with your guitar playing, and I admit that I don’t have a good explanation for how you might have learned to play as well as she claims, nor would I be able to judge just how good you are. So I have to admit that there is something going on here. But… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a story of people going back in time just to change other people. Usually there’s something else they’re trying to do, and then people wind up changed as a result. Going back in time only to make other people miserable seems gratuitously cruel.”

“I don’t know, Daddy. I didn’t pay as much attention to the details as I probably should have. They asked a bunch of questions about our family, though, and said that we should imagine how small changes could lead to big changes.”

“Now, on Thanksgiving, you made a lot of claims, which you later agreed were lies. How many of them are you now saying are true?”

“I… don’t remember everything I said, then. I was pretty upset.”

“About this cousin.”

“Tyler. Yes.”

“So that’s one of the things you say was not part of the hoax.”

I sighed in frustration. “It’s not…” I took a breath. “Tyler did exist. His disappearance was one of the changes as a result of the experiment.”

“Which means that it was not only the volunteers who were changed; supposedly a lot of people were changed.”

I nodded.

“So why did Bob Peterson say it was a hoax?”

“The Strangers in the Mirror say that it’s a cover-up; for some reason the College doesn’t want people to know about it.”

“And neither did you, apparently. So if it’s a cover-up, you went along with it.”

“I did tell you at Thanksgiving,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but you also said you were a boy. I saw you last night, Princess. That was not the reaction of a boy.”

I turned red. “I… It was a very nice date.”

“And you reacted just the way I’d seen you react on dates with your last boyfriend.” He sat next to me on the bed and put his arm around me. “Marsh, I realize that somebody must have happened, and I promise that I’m going to do whatever it takes to fix this and make whoever did this to you, pay. But it seems to me that we have an awful lot of questions and not very many answers. We have a few clues: your claims and those of your friends, this lab that your friend found, and the insistence by Piques College that it’s a hoax.”

“How is that last a clue?”

“Well, let’s take stipulate that there really was an experiment. It was clearly conducted with school approval, right? I mean, you didn’t hear about it through some back channels?”

“No, they posted an ad on the school’s internal website.”

“And now they’re denying that it even happened. I don’t suppose the ad’s still around? Or that anybody made a copy of it?”

I shook my head. “They only usually run for a couple of weeks.”

“The fact that they are claiming it’s a hoax suggests that something went wrong. That it didn’t work the way the College expected. So talking to the people who did it might be useful.”

“If we could find them. We’ve been looking for a long time.”

“But now your friend knows where the lab is, right, Honey?” Mom put in.

“We think so,” I said, although I wasn’t quite as excited about it as I had been.

“So we need to see that lab,” Dad concluded. “And we need somebody who will understand what we’re seeing. That means that we need a physicist, right? One who is not connected with Piques College. I’m going to have to ask around to see who might owe me a favor.”

“Isn’t Sylvia Shimmer’s husband a physicist?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know,” Dad responded. “Ask her. Just don’t get too specific yet about why. We might also need to see if there is a legal angle here; if we can get in touch with the parents of the other victims, maybe a class action lawsuit will work. Marsh, do you have a way to reach the others?”

“Um… I’m not sure. And I’m pretty sure that most of them won’t be willing. They’re pretty frightened of even being found out.” And I had already lost control. I really wasn’t too crazy about the way Dad was taking over. This was my life we were talking about. I should have just come up with an excuse for Mom.

“Well, work on them. Call them and try to make them see reason. I’m sure they’ll make the right decision.” I shivered. That was too much like the way Dean Peterson had spoken.

“Marsha, what’s wrong?” Mom asked. It was as though she could read my mind.

“It’s just… It feels like Daddy’s trying to bring in all the big guns and it’s going to bring all kinds of attention on us, and… it makes me wish I hadn’t told you.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. “OK, Princess,” Dad said after a moment. “We don’t have to do it that way. What did you have in mind?”

“I guess…” I squirmed a bit. “I sort of thought we could start by seeing what’s in the lab and go from there.”

“And maybe, Art, what she really needs now is support, not solutions,” Mom explained. And then she came over and set on my other side and put her arms around me.

“OK. OK,” Dad said, watching me rest my head on Mom’s shoulder. “I just… feel like I want to do something about this. If what you’re saying is true, Marsh, that means that you and all of your friends… had their lives violated. I’m your father, Princess. Nobody should be able to do that to my little girl and get away with it.”

“Let us know what you want from us, Honey,” Mom said. “If you want lawyers, we’ll get lawyers. If you want scientists or commandos, or whatever, we’ll figure out a way.”

“Commandos?” I asked, picking up my head.

She grinned. “I’m just being dramatic. The point is, while this is very strange for us, you are our daughter and we are on your side.”

I nodded.

“Seriously strange,” Dad agreed. “Um… I can’t help feeling as though this is just a dream or something.”

“It’s been a nightmare for me,” I said.

“I get that, and I’m going to try not to ‘take over.’ But I do hate feeling as though I can’t do anything.”

“I’ll let you know, Daddy,” I said, and I kissed him on the cheek.

Then he stood up and pulled Mom and me to our feet. “OK. So if we can’t solve this, can we solve something else? Why don’t we all pick up Tina and then go out to lunch? Sort of just to celebrate Marsh being home – whichever version of her she happens to be.”