Take a Lemon

It was a real relief to get to lunch after my final morning class, which was European Literature. It was the only class that was completely new to me, and I had spent most of the class just taking notes; I wouldn’t say that I had actually understood more than half of what Professor Tipton had said. Lunch was at least partially familiar, as I sat with most of the same people from breakfast, most of whose names I had managed to recall.

So far I had managed to identify Phil and Jay and Susie, Lisa, and Sheila, in addition to my two roommates. I hadn’t seen Sheila at breakfast, and Lisa didn’t join us for lunch, nor did Phil and one other boy and girl. There were also two more boys with us at lunch whose names I had not yet learned. I discovered that Jay was a junior, majoring in Physics, and Sheila seemed to be some kind of language major. I made a mental note to write all of this down after my last class, which was a biology lab.

In the meantime, I wondered what the others had heard about the cause of my problems. I would have expected it to be a prime topic of conversation, students finding their very beings transformed by a rogue experiment, but nobody had even mentioned it at breakfast. Was it possible that it was old news that I had somehow missed before break? So I asked, “Hey, did any of you guys hear about the time-travel experiment that was changing people’s DNA?”

One of the boys snorted.

Jay gave me a disdainful look. “Oh for… Marsh, you didn’t really believe that nonsense, did you?” The rest of the gang looked confused, so he explained. “The Evening Local had an article which said that several Piques students claimed that some scientists went back in time and changed their DNA.” Most of the others snickered.

“What’s funny about that?” I demanded.

“Marsh… in the first place, there’s no such thing as time travel. It’s physically impossible. Haven’t you taken any physics?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“Well trust me on this one. In the second place, the alleged victims are just exactly the way everybody remembers. The only ones who are supposed to have remembered anything different are the victims themselves. It’s like the bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the guy claims a witch turned him into a newt, even though he’s clearly not one.”

“Got better…” one of the other boys muttered, showing that he knew the scene Jay meant.

“And in the third place, the article doesn’t even mention any names! There are no specifics of any kind, no way to verify anything. So it’s a hoax, an urban legend. Either the writer got bored and made something up, or a bunch of students snookered him.”

“Well… how can you be sure?” I asked, not sure whether I would have preferred that he believe the story or not.

He exhaled in exasperation.

“What did they say happened?” Sheila asked.

The boy who had snorted chimed in, “One girl claims she’d lost 3 inches from her bust.”

Two of the girls laughed at that, with one commenting, “Gee, I’d be pissed if that happened to me…”

“The bottom line, Marsh,” Jay concluded, “is that there is no supporting evidence for what is certainly an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Q.E.D.”

I shrugged. I had to admit that if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I probably would have been convinced. But, while I happened to know he was wrong, I had no way to argue against him. As he said, I had no evidence that I used to be a guy. Tina and Chad had believed me only because they knew me so well, or rather, because they had known Marsha so well, and were more willing to believe that science worked differently than they had believed it did than believe that Marsha would behave so far out of character. I doubted that any of Marsha’s friends would know her so well as to give me the opportunity to prove this to them, even if I had wanted to, and even if I hadn’t already triggered an argument that had pulled the rug out from any case I might choose to make.

Not that it should really have mattered to me. I certainly didn’t want most of Marsha’s friends knowing about this – not only would it be horribly embarrassing, I wasn’t sure how they would respond to knowing that I wasn’t really Marsha – and I didn’t actually have any friends of my own in this timeline. That was kind of a sobering thought to take back to my dorm room. I didn’t actually exist anymore, except as a passenger in Marsha’s head – a passenger now responsible for flying the airplane, but without the requisite training. So far, I had managed to avoid crashing, but the whole seamstress issue was looming on the horizon.

It was fortunate that my only afternoon class, biology lab, was very familiar to me, as my level of concentration was nowhere near where it should have been. I was worrying about sewing, and excited about the read-through, and of course, I was still in the midst of my first-ever period. We were studying human anatomy and “my” lab partner (Rob Sullivan, according to Marsha’s class notes) and I had to identify bones on the skeletons in the lab. Fortunately, we were concentrating on the arms and legs – the “appendicular skeleton” and most of them were pretty easy, although I had trouble remembering which was the radius and which the ulna.

Returning to my dorm, I collapsed and actually napped for about an hour. Apparently, the stress of playing the role and pretending to know all of the people that Marsha knew was starting to get to me, and my room was the only place I could drop character. It was very fortunate that my sister and Chad knew about it – at least I had somebody I could talk to.

Afternoon study was already a habit with me, and I saw no need to change it. Typically, I would at least review my notes and recopy any that were hard to understand. I hadn’t decided exactly when I was going to do all of the new reading that Marsha’s literature course demanded – not to mention the papers. Most science majors weren’t all that great at writing, and didn’t enjoy it. Apparently, that hadn’t bothered Marsha, or at least she wasn’t afraid of trying it.

The EuroLit notes were the only ones that gave me any real trouble, mostly because I wasn’t as familiar with the material that had come before. The review was supposed to reinforce what I had heard, but since I hadn’t understood the notes when I took them, reviewing them mostly only let me clean up my handwriting and see the same odd explanations. A one-week quick review was certainly not going to be able to make up for the two months or so of classes that I had missed, but I did my best. Getting familiar with the new material was at least worth something, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

The review took me just under an hour. Since I had the read-through for Mousetrap that evening, I decided to devote the remaining hours of the afternoon to getting familiar with the sewing machine. Any solution that Tina devised would undoubtedly require me to do some sewing, and I needed to be ready. Despite my panic of the night before, I really didn’t want to quit this adventure prematurely. Aside from the one-time chance to do a really plum role in an Alvin Tomlinson production, I could see possibilities in learning things about girls by being one that would just have to help me with my relationships once I changed back.

I’d already figured out how to do a basic stitch, so the next step was presumably to sew two pieces of cloth together. I didn’t bother rethreading the machine, since I didn’t really care what the result looked like and the thread that was already in it would be fine. I pulled out some scraps from Marsha’s sewing basket, held them together under the foot, and pushed the pedal. I had expected the feed mechanism to move them together and keep them aligned, but it didn’t. The pieces moved partly together, but the top one slipped, and the seam I got was a complete mess, crooked and uneven.

I didn’t have to be an expert to know that I was missing something yet again. There was obviously a way to keep the pieces together; was it technique? I tried to reason things out. It was possible that it was just a question of my lack of skill, but the machine was pulling kind of hard. It just didn’t seem possible that you were supposed to keep the two pieces pinched together with your fingers and keep up with the machine. If it were pieces of wood I was trying to fasten together, I would have used some sort of a clamp, but I couldn’t find anything in the basket that even resembled one. I tried it a few more times, but had little success. I was going to have to ask Tina when I spoke to her tonight, after the read-through.

I got up early the next morning, because I was about to face my next challenge. Presumably, Marsha ate breakfast with her friends in the dining room, and I still didn’t know who they were. Chad and I had discussed this, and figured out that I had two options. First, I could hope that my roommates ate with me – that way, I could just follow them. Failing that, I could get to the dining room early, ideally before any of Marsha’s friends, and sit where they would find me.

The roommate whose name I didn’t know was waiting when I came out of the bathroom. “Are you heading for breakfast?” I asked her.

“Naw, I’m going to wait for Lee Ann. Are you in a hurry?”

“Yeah, I need to go check on something at the registrar,” I explained. Which I did, actually, since aside from the science lectures, which should be the same, I didn’t know Marsha’s class schedule. I might have just blown my chance to follow my roommates. I wasn’t sure whether the conversation meant that Miss No-name usually ate with Marsha or not. Well, that would just have to wait until tomorrow, I guessed.

The meal ticket in Marsha’s purse indicated that I was supposed to eat in the Danby Hall dining hall, which was a couple of dorms away. There were a few students already sitting after I went through the food line, and I tried to catch their eyes, but they showed no sign of recognition or invitation, so I picked a table near the end of the line and sat down to wait. I had brought my script to study, since I had no idea what time Marsha’s friends usually ate, and I didn’t want to finish before they arrived.

I needn’t have bothered, as it was only a couple of minutes before I was no longer alone at the table. “Why are we sitting here today, Marsh?” I heard.

I looked up to see two blondes just sitting down next to me. Both were wearing t-shirts and jeans, which didn’t really surprise me. That was the college uniform; girls like Marsha who always wore dresses or skirts were rare. It was the taller of the two who had spoken, and I had to stop myself from automatically evaluating her attractiveness. That was a habit that could only cause me problems, especially with girls as pretty as this one was.

“I just felt like randomly picking a different table this morning,” I shrugged. “Consider it a tribute to the second half of the term.”

The girls chuckled at that. “How was your break?” the second one asked.

The first one added, “And did Phil ever call?”

Apparently, the whole idea of Marsha and Phil had been on the mind of more than one of her friends. Maybe if I shot it down for these two, they’d pass it on to anyone else rooting for “us.”

“No, and he’s missed his chance,” I informed them. “I’ve decided to put my dating plans on hold for the rest of the year.”

“Oh, you’re so brave, Marsha. Good for you,” the shorter one complimented me. “Um, if you’re not interested, do you mind if I go after him?”

“Susie!” the other one hissed.

“What’s the problem? Marsh said she wasn’t interested.”

“I’m not,” I confirmed. “Susie is welcome to him.” And thank you for telling me your friend’s name.

“Why are we sitting here today?” asked a new voice, belonging to a dark-haired boy.

“Marsh was feeling random,” the girl who was not Susie answered. “Morning, Jay.”

“Good morning, ladies,” Jay said to the three of us, as he sat across from her.

Thus armed with yet another name, I joined Susie in responding, “Good morning, Jay,” and managed to sound as though I had known him all along.

Over the next twenty minutes, a half dozen more students joined us, including my roommates, so I really could have waited for them. I learned the names of most of them. I already knew Chandra. The girl who had first greeted me was Lisa, and my other roommate was named Terry. I also caught a glimpse of Phil who indeed gave me more of a look-over than I would have liked, but was easily diverted by Susie, who moved to sit next to him.

The first class period was 8:00, and the registrar wasn’t open until 8:30, so I just had to hope that I didn’t have a class that early. Two of the guys at our table did, and excused themselves early to make it there on time. My roommates and I returned to our room together, with me listening more and speaking less than they seemed to expect, and at one point Lee Ann leaned over to Terry and told her something quietly. Terry gave me a sympathetic look afterwards, and seemed to press me a bit less.

I found a shoulder bag in Marsha’s room, which I loaded with all of my notebooks, since I didn’t know yet when I was going to need them, and headed for the registrar. A few minutes later, I had a copy of Marsha’s schedule and was ready to head to my first class. Marsha was in a different Spanish class than I had been, and a different Orgo lab, but the rest of our shared courses were the same: both lectures, the bio lab, and both science sections, which probably indicated that they had been divided by last name.

Second period was the Organic Chemistry lecture. I streamed into the hall with dozens of other students, half of whom were pre-med, like me. I had no idea where Marsha was used to sitting, so I sat in my usual area – left side, about a third of the way back. This put me almost directly behind Geoff, my ex-roommate, with whom I had been accustomed to walking to class. I had no idea if he and Marsha knew each other, so this time I made it a point not to call attention to myself. At some point, I would probably have to force the issue, but I had way too many other things to figure out just now.

The lecture itself was as straightforward as it had been before Midterms. Professor Jones is an excellent lecturer with the interesting habit of illustrating reactions with different colored markers; his students purchase a four-color pen specifically for his class to keep up. Oh, there was the occasional student who would decide to defy convention and take notes all in one color, but those who have tried have generally reported that it was a mistake, as it makes it much more difficult to understand the diagrams in their notes.

Focusing on his lecture and his illustrations was probably the first real shot of normality I had had in over a week. A lecture this technical requires you to concentrate on the matter at hand. All thoughts of unfamiliar physical sensations fade into nothing. I’m sure that had somebody addressed me as ‘Marshall’ just then, I could have had a conversation for some time before realizing that I wasn’t actually Marshall right now.

Before the change, my next class used to be math; now, it was Spanish, which was actually a bit of a positive for me, as it gave me a much shorter walk. I’d gone about halfway between classes when I heard, “Morning, Marsh.”

I turned to see a female student I didn’t know, falling into step beside me. “Congratulations on ‘Mollie’,” she continued. “Are you getting excited about it yet?”

“Very much so,” I replied, honestly. “I can’t wait for the read through.” I was definitely getting the hang of open-ended comments. There should have been no indication that I didn’t know who this girl was.

“Yeah, me, too. I love being the stuffy old lady. Lots of attitude to my role.”

That meant that she was playing Mrs. Boyle, thus giving me one more piece of information that Marsha had somehow had. As Marshall, I hadn’t actually known any of the other cast members; apparently Marsha had already met this girl.

Aloud, I agreed with her description of the role in question. “I’ll say. Do it well, and the audience might even sigh with relief when you’re murdered.”

That brought a giggle, which was so contrary to the personality of the role she was going to be playing that I almost giggled in return. Well, to be fair, I did giggle, just a bit, and was so shocked that I even had the capacity to do anything of the kind that I stopped almost immediately and settled for a smile, which my new friend shared. I had taken an immediate liking to this girl, and wondered what kind of relationship she and Marsha were supposed to have.

I was a bit disappointed, then, when she veered off the path to Spanish and headed for a different classroom, with a “See you tonight, Marsh.” I had hoped to sneak a glance at her notebook to learn her name. It wasn’t a major deal, of course, since I would undoubtedly learn it at tonight’s read through.

My ability to concentrate in Spanish class was hindered by the memory of having giggled. There were so many facets to my role as Marsha, and I never knew in advance what was going to bother me, but this did. Girls both laughed and giggled, but boys were only supposed to laugh. Giggling was… not manly. Giggling was for girls only. Getting into character was fine, but this was dangerously close to going over the edge. And I had only been at it for a bit over a week!

With 20-20 hindsight, I should have been able to figure this out. I had grants and loans to help pay for tuition, but I needed to supplement that; my agreement with Mom and Dad was that I was responsible for a few thousand dollars a year, which wasn’t all that difficult for me, playing occasional gigs. Since she didn’t have my guitar, Marsha would have needed some other way to pick up cash. Mom had been bringing in a decent income as a seamstress, and had taught Tina to sew. Obviously, she would have taught her older daughter as well, if she’d had one – as she did, now. I knew nothing about sewing, but there was clearly a lot involved, or Mom wouldn’t have been able to make money at it.

I had arranged to call Tina in the evenings on a regular basis, for more coaching as needed, and this certainly counted. I dialed her cell.

“Hi, Marsh. Everything OK?”

“Not quite,” I answered, as calmly as I could. “Tina, remember I asked you to warn me about things that would be different?”

“Yeah…?”

“Teen, how does Marsha bring in money for school?”

“You- I mean she’s a seamstress, Marsh…” she started. Then she got it. “Oh. Wait. You… you probably don’t know how to sew, do you?”

“Bingo. When Mom was teaching you, I was practicing my guitar.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Oh man. I’m sorry, Marsh, I guess it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t have taught a boy to sew.”

“Yeah, maybe I should have told her I wanted to learn, ‘just in case some mad scientists turn me into a girl, one day’! Tina, what the Hell – I mean,” I corrected myself, “‘what in the world’ – am I supposed to do now? There are lots of people expecting me to sew things for them, and I don’t know the first thing about it!”

“Um… I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, I think I have to give up, now,” I said, tightly. “I’ll go to classes tomorrow, but afterwards I’m going to have to go back to the guys who changed me and have them undo it. There’s no way for me to fake this.”

“What??” The panic was evident in her voice. “Marsh, you promised! You said you’d give me at least until the end of the year!”

“Yeah, but that was before I found out how impossible it was going to be. I can act like a girl, Teen. I can pretend to know Marsha’s friends and I can take her courses, but sewing…? That’s a skill, Teen. You know how much is involved. It’s not like I haven’t tried, but there’s no possible way around this. To keep playing the role of Marsha, I need to be able to sew, and I can’t.”

“Wait, Marsh! Please wait! Give me time – let me figure something out. This is my life we’re talking about, here.”

“It’s not your life, Teen,” I said, exasperated. “You’re the same little sister I remember. The only change is that you’ll remember having a brother again, not a sister.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Marsh. It’s not your entire memory that will be ripped away and replaced. Please, Marsh, give me some time.”

I sighed. She knew I couldn’t do anything that might hurt her. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t, but she was so panicky, and she was my little sister… “OK, I’ll wait. I’ll see when these things are promised for, and I’ll try to make excuses about being late. But I need a solution, Teen. I can’t just go the rest of the term without delivering what Marsha promised, and I can’t afford to stay in school if I don’t have any kind of an income. Do you have any ideas?”

“Maybe you can learn, Marsh. You have Mom’s old sewing machine, right? Why don’t you start by learning how to use it? The manual should tell you how to thread it and how to do some basic stitches. I’ll think about what else we can do, OK?”

“Sure, Teen.” I guess she wasn’t the only who had been panicking. I didn’t see how reading the manual was going to do me much good, but it at least let me put off any irreversible decisions, and Dad had always taught me to delay those as much as possible. I could always give up later, if things really started to become impossible. Promising to talk again tomorrow, we hung up.

There was no manual attached to the sewing machine, but I knew that some appliance manuals were available online; after all, the manufacturer makes their money by selling the hardware, and having a manual available can cut down on calls to their support lines, so it was in their interest to make it easy to get one. A quick web search using the make and model number brought me to an electronic version. I was a bit annoyed to find that I had to pay for it, but my need was great enough to make it worthwhile, so I did so and downloaded an electronic copy. Since I’d spent my break catching up on my course reading, I had time to deal with this problem. I started to read the manual from cover to cover. Some of the terms in it were things I’d overheard Mom and Tina using, like ‘bobbin’ but I’d never been quite clear on what they were. Using the pictures included, I managed to find the bobbin. Apparently, I had to wind it somehow, which meant finding the thread.

Marsha’s sewing basket was next to the machine, and contained dozens of spools of thread, as well as needles, pins, scissors, and other tools I didn’t recognize. There were also several bobbins, some loaded with varying colors of thread, and some empty. For a moment, I sagged in my chair. This whole thing just seemed impossible. “One step at a time, Marsh,” I reminded myself. Other trite sayings came to me then, like “in for a penny, in for a pound,” and “look before you leap,” although the last probably should have been something like, “look before you are pushed.”

Deep breath time. The first few steps were purely mechanical, and didn’t seem to require an excess of skill. I found an empty bobbin and put it in the machine, then picked one of the larger spools of thread. I figured that I was going to be wasting some of it, and didn’t want to run out of something I might need later. Winding the bobbin wasn’t really all that difficult – it took me a few tries, but after a bit I thought I had the knack of it.

Pleased with an early success, I next tackled actually threading the machine. After several false starts, I discovered that it could pretty much thread itself, if I just started it properly. The acid test, of course, was whether I could actually sew anything with it. There were lots of descriptions in the manual about all kinds of fancy things you could do with the machine, which I just ignored. Finally, I found what I was looking for – starting a stitch. It didn’t seem all that hard. The biggest problem was that I had hold onto some cloth really close to the needle. And I needed some cloth to experiment with – I was not about to practice on actual clothing.

I did find a few scraps in the sewing basket, but they were really small, perhaps an inch by six inches. Following the instructions, I put one of them under the ‘foot’ crosswise, so that I could keep my hands a couple of inches away from the needle. In some ways, it felt like using a table saw – I had to guide the work through the danger area without letting my hands get too close.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped on the pedal and the cloth shot quickly through the area where the needle was. I hadn’t actually expected that – with a table saw, you have to push against the blade and the wood tries to kick away from it. With the sewing machine, the cloth was actually pulled into the needle. In a slight panic, I lifted my foot and found that I had sewn a line of thread most of the way through my cloth strip. The directions told me how to end it, so I pulled it back and tried again.

It took me a few tries, but I discovered that it was actually a lot easier than a table saw. For one thing, the cloth was being moved by a separate mechanism; you didn’t have to push. For another, since the needle just moved up and down, I wasn’t really in any danger of hurting my fingers. I practiced for close to an hour before I was satisfied. Now I could… sew a line into a strip of cloth, which was probably not very useful. At least the machine was becoming slightly less foreign. I think if I’d had any idea how much I really needed to know, I would have felt a bit more confident – or possibly more intimidated.

Lee Ann Taylor! My crush for the last several weeks, was Marsha’s roommate? Was this some kind of a cruel joke? I could just see myself pining for her, watching her select a new boyfriend in front of me. Even if it would be undone in the timeline when they changed me back, in the meantime it was just going to be torture. When I had accepted that I was giving up on her for this fall’s House Parties, I hadn’t expected to have it rubbed in like this.

But I’m an actor, right? I’m skilled at managing my emotions – that’s what I always tell myself. That has to include pretending that I’m really the girl Lee Ann knows as a friend and roommate, instead of the guy who’d been flirting with her. Fortunately, her back was to me as she opened the door and preceded me into “our” dorm room. It gave me a chance to get my face under control.

I set down my suitcase and closed the door behind us as Lee Ann turned around. “How was your break, Marsh?” She was as gorgeous as I remembered, and her voice was like music; no changes there, thank goodness. Even if she was now off-limits to me, I would have hated to see such perfection spoiled. That’s speaking strictly as a connoisseur, of course. My own vested interests seemed to be massively on hold.

“Um…” I stammered. Apparently, I had not gotten myself quite as under control as I had thought. “It was… refreshing.” I’d had to think about that. “Interesting” would have prompted questions I didn’t want to have to answer or parry. “Relaxing” was an outright lie. “I feel as though I’m ready for a brand new start.”

“Great!” she said, smiling. “Did Phil ever call?”

Phil? Who in heck was Phil?

“Um, no,”

She sighed. “I warned you, Marsh. With a boy like Phil, you’re going to have to take the initiative. He wants to ask you out, that’s obvious, but he won’t allow himself to believe that a girl as pretty as you would ever say yes. We’ll have to come up with a scheme to make him do it.”

“Actually,” I gasped, “I’m… going to be a bit busy just now. I think I could have done better on my midterms… and this play is going to take a lot of my time. This really isn’t a good time for me to be dating.”

“You are not going to back out on this again,” she snapped. “Don’t you remember how miserable you were last May when you didn’t have a date for House Parties? How I had to argue with you about asking your ex-boyfriend from home? Do you really want to go through that again?”

“This… this just really isn’t a good time for me, Lee Ann. I mean, I appreciate your help, but I think… it’s just not…”

Lee Ann sighed again. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, Marsh. Phil’s a perfectly nice boy, and you’ve known each other since the beginning of the year. But I’m not going to force you. If you’re afraid, you can just let some other girl snap him up. Your loss.”

“I’m sorry, Lee Ann,” I told her, actually feeling a bit guilty. The real Marsha would probably have been eager to date this guy, but getting into character only went so far. “Um, so, how was your break?”

“Stephen is so exasperating. You know what he did? I swear, this time I really was thinking of breaking it off with him. But Saturday morning, bright and early, he rang my bell. The sweetheart had driven overnight all the way from St. Louis to see me. He was exhausted, of course, so I kissed him and sent him off to bed, but we got to spend a day and a half together before he had to drive back to school.”

“That’s… great, Lee Ann. I mean, really, that’s great!” I said, trying to force enthusiasm into my voice. Inwardly, I was both totally crushed and at the same time, relieved. Thanks a lot, Chandra. Apparently, the rumors of her relationship’s demise were premature. Looking at the bright side, it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about watching some other guy win her heart. I had too many dark sides to look at already to want to think about this one too much.

“Mm Hmm. That’s what I’m telling you, Marsh. There are a lot of nice guys out there. I think Phil is one of them, but you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself, apparently.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you when you got back. I should probably finish the reading for tomorrow’s classes. If I don’t see you later, good night.” And she went into what was obviously her bedroom and closed the door.

I finally had a chance to look around. I was standing in the living room, with four doors leading off it, in addition to the main door. One of them was obviously a bathroom, which meant that this was a three-girl suite. I knew which door was Lee Ann’s, but I didn’t know which was Marsha’s or, for that matter, who our third roommate was. For a moment, I dithered. I could knock at one of the other doors, but what if it was Marsha’s door and one of the other girls saw me? I didn’t want them wondering why I didn’t know which door was ‘mine.’ I could just open a door, but again, I didn’t want to do that if ‘my’ other roommate was there. So I temporized. I sat down on the couch and picked up The Decameron, which I was reading for EuroLit. I figured that I could just sit there for maybe an hour. If nobody came in or I didn’t figure things out, I would take a chance on one of the doors.

As it happened, I had to wait just over half an hour before the main door opened in, and our other roommate entered, wheeling a duffel and carrying a garment bag. She was a tall girl with a calm disposition that seemed at odds with her fiery red hair. Of course, when I say, ‘tall’, that doesn’t mean much, since just about everybody looked tall to me, these days. She didn’t see me at first, dropping her duffel and turning to close the door, until I stood and greeted her.

“Welcome back,” I said. “How was your break?”

“Oh, hey, Marsh,” she answered. “You’re just the person I wanted to see. Let me put my stuff in my room, and then I have something to show you.”

She pushed open the door next to Lee Ann’s and dragged her duffel inside. I congratulated myself on my stratagem; I had just learned that Marsha’s room was the one on the other side of the bathroom, without her roommates learning that I hadn’t known. My as-yet-nameless roommate returned quickly and opened the garment bag, taking out a formal gown.

“What do you think?” she asked, holding it up in front of herself.

“Um, the color looks good on you,” I managed, trying to recall how my mother had answered similar questions when Tina had asked her. “And the cut looks good for your figure.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but please look more carefully. I want your professional opinion. I… got this on the bargain rack.”

Professional opinion? What was that supposed to mean? I got a very queasy sensation in my stomach as one possibility suggested itself to me. But I stood and came closer, taking the top of the gown in my hand.

I rubbed it between my fingers, trying to invent something that would sound good. “The material seems good quality, and the lining should be comfortable and warm – that’ll be important for the fall.” I tugged at a seam. “The stitching is strong and tight. I’d say you got a good buy.”

I had no idea if what I’d said made any sense at all, but she seemed pleased. “I was really worried,” she admitted, “but I really couldn’t afford anything more expensive. When would you be able to take it in for me?”

“I’m… not really sure, yet.” I forced myself to say, my suspicions bolstered. “There’s plenty of time – I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Marsh,” she smiled.

“I- I really need to start preparing for classes,” I said, hurriedly, wanting to know the worst as quickly as possible. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“OK. G’night, Marsh.”

“Good night.”

And I picked up my book and dragged my suitcase to the last door. Pushing it open, I saw what was largely a typical dorm room, not all that different from the one I’d had a week ago as Marshall: the standard bed, wardrobe, and desk, arranged to give a reasonable impression of space. But there were a couple of major differences. Next to the desk was Mom’s old sewing machine, and beside the wardrobe was a garment rack, with about a dozen articles of clothing with customer’s names pinned to them, waiting for Marsha to repair or adjust them.

I was so screwed.

Finally, the week was over and I had to return to school.

“Daddy” drove me to the train, and we might have had another potentially uncomfortable half-hour together; however, this time I actually did have something to ask him about. Something about our earlier conversation, as well as the general way he had treated me all week had bothered me, and it had taken some time for me to figure it out: he was happy to be with me.

Now that sounds really stupid, which is why it took me so long to work things out. In the past, he had told me how much he enjoyed having a son to do things with; we had done lots of stuff that he simply never did with Tina. I knew that he had also taken her out from time to time, and although I didn’t know the details, those times were never nearly long enough for them to have been watching or playing games, and they’d never come back home with stuff from the hardware store or anything similar. Now, thanks to the time travel business, he no longer had a son to do these things with, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

Part of me knew that I was being irrational. He no longer knew that he had previously had a son, so maybe he was just used to it; but I somehow expected him to be less happy as a result, or at least wished he were. So I asked him.

“D-daddy,” I started, still not quite getting the name right, “Does it ever bother you that you have only daughters?”

“What a question, Princess!” he answered, smiling. “Why would it bother me to have two of the most wonderful daughters in the world?”

“I mean… don’t men usually want a son? You know, to carry on the name, and do guy things with? Weren’t you disappointed? Why didn’t you try again for a boy?”

“Marsh, I wouldn’t trade my girls for a dozen sons. I have no complaints, and your mother and I were quite satisfied with the two of you. What brought this on?”

It wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been looking for, but I couldn’t think of a good explanation. I could hardly fault him for missing the real me, after all. It just kind of hurt a bit that I could disappear from his life and not leave a gap, even though in this timeline I’d never been there at all. “I… I don’t know. I was just thinking about things.”

“Thinking of things is always good.” And he smiled indulgently at me again. “When you have children, you never know what you’re going to get, but your mother and I feel quite fortunate.”

“But…”

“Besides, I figure between you and your sister, I’m likely to wind up with at least one grandson, eventually. I have no complaints.”

And I guess my only complaint was that I couldn’t get a rise out of him on this. Foolish, I know, but I think I had good cause; it’s not everybody who gets changed into somebody else, only to discover that nobody seems to care.

He dropped me off at the station and kissed me goodbye – again on the forehead. Then he lifted my suitcase onto the train for me. Now full of clean laundry, it felt a lot heavier than it had when I was Marshall; fortunately it had wheels, so I just dragged it behind me on the train. With a train ride of nearly an hour, I had a bit of time to think.

The ride also gave me a chance to drop out of character, partly, since none of the other passengers seemed to know me. Part of my coping strategy was to do this as much as I could; many sophomores had individual bedrooms in suites, so I would probably be safe there at least. I would just have to remember to get into character before coming out of my bedroom, and for that, I planned to rely on a trick Mr. Condrin had mentioned. The idea was that if you could carry a regular hand prop onstage, you could make an association between it and your character; picking it up would trigger you to fall back into character. In my case, I could use Marsha’s purse; I had worked on carrying it everywhere, as it was something that was so obviously Marsha and not Marshall.

The past week, although extremely disconcerting, had at least the virtue that I had had two close allies whom I had known very well, and who knew my secret. I had no intention of revealing the truth to Marsha’s friends, most of whom I probably didn’t know at all. Aside from phone contact with Tina and Chad, then, I was sort of on my own.

The first order of business, of course, was to meet her roommates. Girls seem to share a lot more about themselves than guys do, and Marsha had been living with these girls for a few months already; she had also probably known them for a while last year before they decided to room together. Tina had assured me that they would be friendly and understanding, but would also know Marsha well enough to spot egregious personality changes. So there were plusses and minuses, there.

Marsha also would have had a larger circle of friends, and I was going to need to learn their names pretty quickly. The three of us had discussed some strategies for finding out things without seeming to be ignorant. At the very least, the next couple of months were going to be interesting, but I saw no reason that I couldn’t manage.

There was a shuttle from the train to campus waiting when the train pulled in, and one of the returning male students carried my bag off the train and into the van. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or humiliated. I had just always taken my ability to lift heavy things for granted. Girls obviously had to find other ways to cope with such things.

The campus was pretty much unchanged. Not that I had really expected the time-regressed DNA-alteration of students to have an effect, but you never knew. I saw about the same mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces, and a few nodded at me, or said hello. Having the same nickname kept things from feeling stranger than they could have. About the most uncomfortable incident was bumping into my “ex-“roommate, Rajiv. My initial reaction was to greet him, and I only caught myself after I had opened my mouth – there was no reason to think that Marsha would have known him. Nor did he know me, but the sight of a pretty girl noticing him was enough to pique his interest.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “For a moment there, I thought I knew you.”

“Well, that’s easily fixed if you don’t,” he smiled at me – and I wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t more of a leer. “I’m Rajiv Shah.” And he held out his hand, which made me have to take it so as not to be rude.

“Marsha Steen,” I responded, pleased to have remembered “my” name, despite being flustered. “And thanks, “ I interrupted his attempt to say anything more. “I’ve got to go.” And, heart pounding, I tried to walk past him, which would have worked a lot better if my suitcase hadn’t chosen that moment to tip over.

“Why don’t I carry your suitcase and walk you to your dorm?” he offered.

“Um, thanks, I appreciate the offer,” I managed. “But… I… I have to meet somebody, and…”

“Hey, it’s OK!” he laughed at me. “I was just trying to be helpful, not stalk you!”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, reddening. And I knew I had overreacted, even as I managed to right my recalcitrant luggage and get it moving again. Rajiv is a decent sort. I wouldn’t have roomed with a jerk. It’s just… he was actually the first boy, other than Chad, that I had spoken with since my… alteration. It could have been worse. I’d heard that some guys don’t easily take ‘no’ for an answer. At least I didn’t have to deal with that, this time. I was going to have to come up with a better response. Getting all flustered probably made me look… well, I wasn’t sure what, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.

Laramie Hall seemed much further from South Campus than I had remembered. Maybe it was just the pain of lugging the suitcase around. But Marsha had managed, so I should be able to, as well. Finally, I stood outside. This was going to be my first real test – talking with my roommates, girls who presumably knew me very well. Oh well. I took a deep breath. Showtime.

There was an elevator in the dorm, so I didn’t have to lug my suitcase up the steps. When I stepped out onto the second floor, I saw close to a dozen girls, standing in the hallway, chatting. As I threaded my way through them, searching for number 218, many of them greeted me as either “Marsh” or “Marsha.” If I had been a bit less nervous, I might have tried to draw some conclusions from the way they addressed me as to how close they were as friends. A couple of the girls looked familiar, but the only one whose name I knew at all was Lee Ann’s friend, Chandra-something-or-other.

There were a couple of girls standing next to the door to room 208 when I got there, one with her back to me, in a white top and a cute short blue skirt that framed her rear perfectly. I automatically started to admire her backside, but remembered in time and  started to fumble in Marsha’s purse for the room key. Before I could find it, she suddenly turned around and said, “Let me get that for you, Marsh,” and opened the door with her own key. It was Lee Ann Taylor.

I spent most of my break learning to act like Marsha. Tina had school, of course, but in the evening, she was my teacher and coach. We did yet more practice with walking, and Tina had me practice shaving my legs and my armpits. I’d always been sort of aware that girls did those things, but never really gave it too much thought. I just figured that girls were naturally pretty, and ignored just how much time some of them spent on getting that way. I had been used to simply getting up and tossing on some clothes. Marsha had put her clothes out the night before, as I did, but only to cut down on how much she had to do in the morning.

I spent a lot of time reviewing Marsha’s notebooks. Normally, I did this anyway, as I’ve found that it reinforces learning, but in the case of EuroLit, I had an additional motivation. I also recopied some pages, yet another review technique that I’ve sometimes used. It was interesting to compare my handwriting and note-taking style with Marsha’s – and Marshall’s, for that matter. My new handwriting didn’t quite match either, but seemed something of a combination of the two. I suspected that this was the result of a combination of my habits with Marsha’s muscles and reactions.

Reading the books covered in EuroLit consumed a lot of my daytime hours, but wasn’t as painful as I had feared, and I found that I actually liked some of them. I suppose that’s why they’re called classics, since people generations later can still enjoy them. It occurred to me that I had another problem waiting for me when I changed back – since Marsha wasn’t taking Boolean Logic, I wasn’t really going to have time to focus on learning what was taught in the second half of the term. I didn’t have to worry about the final, of course, since I was going to change back afterwards, but I had planned on taking the next level course, and that meant that I was going to have to make up what I was going to be missing.

A somewhat trickier situation was my relationship with Dad, or rather, “Daddy.” As Marshall, it had been easy. We hung out, played tennis sometimes, watched baseball or football on TV, all typical “guy” things. We didn’t talk an awful lot; but we bonded just by being together and sharing stuff. It was pretty obvious that wasn’t going to work for “Marsha.” I watched Tina – she practically flirted with him. There was no way I was going to be able to do that. Beyond my initial enthusiastic, relieved hug, therefore, I took to mostly smiling at him silently while giving the air of being on my way to do something important, and otherwise avoided him as subtly as I could. After all, I was going to spend most of my “Marsha” time away at school, so I figured I could probably get away without ever learning how she was supposed to handle him.

I should have known better. At dinner on Thursday, he said, “You know, we haven’t spent any time together since you got home, Princess. Are you up for a Dad-and-daughter night out tonight?”

When I hesitated, Tina kicked my foot under the table to get my attention and then nodded urgently, so I agreed. But I pulled her aside while the two of us cleared the table. “Tina, what is the ‘night out’ thing with Dad?”

“Haven’t you ever done this with him? It’s something he does every few weeks with us. He takes you out for ice cream and maybe buys you something nice and you sit and talk for a while.”

“Really? Ice cream?”

“Sure,” she responded. “What’s wrong with ice cream?”

“I’m nineteen years old. I figured I’d be kind of old by now to get excited about going out for ice cream.”

She looked at me as though I was stupid. “The point of the evening isn’t the ice cream, Marsh, although that’s nice. The point is to spend time with Daddy. I don’t get it. Didn’t you ever spend time with him as a boy?”

“Well, yeah, but not ice cream. If we were going out, it was to do something. Like maybe he’d get sports tickets. Or sometimes he’d have to run to the hardware store and he’d ask me along just to keep him company. But we didn’t really talk. The point was to do something.”

She shook her head. “Talking is doing something. I’ll never understand boys.”

An hour later, “Daddy” and I were walking in the mall, eating ice cream cones. “Everything good at school, Princess?” he asked. I nodded, neutrally. “Mom tells me you got a great role in a play. Are you excited about that?” I nodded again.

He looked at me curiously. “You don’t seem to be yourself, Marsh. Something on your mind?” That was kind of an understatement. I knew that I wasn’t acting the way Marsha should; it’s just kind of funny that Dad noticed. I hadn’t thought he’d paid all that much attention, and if I were going to reveal my situation to either of my parents, it would have been Mom, not Dad. Not that I didn’t love him; I was just a lot less certain about how he would react, and I didn’t want to take the chance. Which meant that I had to come up with an excuse.

The first thing that came to mind was the conversation I’d had with my sister. “Dad,” I started, “how do you feel about Tina dating?”

The question clearly surprised him. He stared at me for a couple of seconds before favoring me with an indulgent smile. “About the same as when you started, Princess.” He motioned me to a nearby bench. Once we were both seated, he continued.

“Like any father, I get nervous when my daughters are out with a boy. I remember my own inclinations at that age, so I know I have reason. But Tina is responsible, so I don’t worry too much. As long as she is home on time, I think everything should be fine. And it’s not as if I could – or would – forbid her to date. You wouldn’t have liked that if I had stopped you, would you?”

“Well…” I started, automatically, and then checked myself. I certainly wouldn’t have minded if my parents had stopped Marsha from dating Dirk, but Marsha wouldn’t have felt that way, and I was supposed to be reacting as she would, so I changed it to, “… that’s different.”

He chuckled, obviously believing he had caught me being hypocritical.

“I’m just worried,” I continued. “I mean, what if some boy persuades her to be, you know, intimate?”

“This isn’t about Tina, is it?” he said, suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Your mother told me about this boy at school you were interested in, and how you suddenly got evasive when she asked you about him.”

Now it was my turn to stare.

“This boy. Did he… force you to do something you weren’t comfortable with? Is that what this is about?”

Wow, was Dad ever off the mark. I could see where he’d gotten it, though. The combination of Marsha’s apparent enthusiasm for this mysterious guy, combined with my own queasiness over the idea plus concern for Tina seemed to have led him to put two and two together to get five. I guess I was out of character, and that’s what I needed to fix, quickly. How might Marsha have handled this?

“No, Dad-d-dy,” I answered, stumbling over the name a bit, “I just don’t really want to talk about… um… dating right now. Like I told Mom, I have a lot of school work.”

“School work.” He definitely did not look convinced. It was time to improvise.

“Um… yeah,” I said, trying to look a bit guilty. That would reinforce his suspicions without me needing to confirm anything.

He gave me another long look, and then shook his head. “Marsh, your mother and I met at Piques, remember? The idea that boys and girls find each other… attractive is not a surprise to me.”

“I’m really not…” I started, speaking slowly enough to make it easy for him to interrupt me. And he did.

“We’ve tried to teach you girls what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s important and what’s not. Beyond that, we just have to trust you. And I know that we can.” He winked at me and added, “All I ask is that you make sure to finish school. And make me a father-in-law before you make me a grandfather.”

It wasn’t too difficult to look embarrassed at the implication. Of course, since I wasn’t even going to be dating a boy during my brief portrayal of Marsha, he had nothing to worry about. I found it a bit interesting, though, that he had never given me that speech as a boy. But I just said, “Yes, Daddy,” and that seemed to satisfy him.

OK, I admit it. I panicked. It’s possible I even sort of screamed – just to myself. Actually, I guess, that’s kind of a lie, since Tina heard me, but in my defense, I think it’s a perfectly natural reaction when you wake to discover that you’re lying in a pool of blood.

It was Tuesday of break, three days since I had been stuck in this strange new life. Sleeping in a nightgown instead of pajamas was becoming almost familiar, and I no longer freaked out upon discovering myself to be female. I had even managed to put on parts of my make up mostly on my own Monday morning, and gotten a grudging, ‘not too horrible’ rating from Tina – before she made me take it off and do it again, of course.

My heel-walking was improving dramatically, and I had graduated to one-and-one-half inch heels. That wasn’t where I needed to be, but it was definite progress. Id been careful to walk in flats where Mom and Dad could see me – if they had seen me stumbling around in heels, they would have known a lot more was wrong. By this time, Tina had me walking with my shoulders back and chest out, which also meant that I was giving “my” breasts a lot more prominence than I would have liked; but once again, it was supposedly just part of how Marsha walked. And it had all seemed so easy when I’d made that boast!

I was trying hard to see ways to think of this as an adventure of sorts, but my belly was just feeling more and more sour. I’d tried drinking milk, but that didn’t help. I tried exercising, in case it was a muscle strain of some kind, but to no avail. I was so bothered that I woke up earlier than I should have, around 7:30. This being break, I had promised myself that I could sleep in, but as soon as I woke up I could tell something was wrong.

My legs were sticky. My abdomen was sticky. And my clothing was plastered to my skin, but it didn’t feel like sweat. I reached down to touch the sheets under me and felt a sticky liquid. I couldn’t see my hand in the dark, but I brought it to my nose and smelled it. It was blood.

I stopped myself from screaming as soon as I realized I had done so, and sort of froze in panic. I wasn’t fully awake yet and my brain hadn’t quite clicked in when Tina started pounding on my door and shouting, “Marsh! Are you alright?” I think I probably just croaked out something and she opened my door and ran in, asking, “what’s wrong?” in an extremely worried tone of voice.

She turned on the light and I pointed, “Look… blood! I’m bleeding! I’m…”

But instead of the sympathy I expected, she put her hands on her hips and scolded me. “Oh for… Marsh, this is why you wear a tampon.”

“A tampon? Why…? Oh. Period. Right. Um…” My brain was only starting to click into what was going on; after all, this was new to me.

Just then we heard Mom running down the hall. Her and Dad’s bedroom was at the opposite end of the hall from ours, and if I’d been luckier, she wouldn’t have heard me. But Tina poked her head out and said, “I’ve got it, Mom. Marsh just had a bad dream.” Then she tossed my comforter on top of me before Mom came in to the room.

“Marsh, are you OK?” Mom asked, obviously concerned about why her elder daughter might be screaming about a bad dream.

I wasn’t quite sure why Tina had made that claim, but I trusted her enough to stammer, “I’m fine, Mom. Really.”

She looked at the two of us, evidently decided that we had the situation under control, and went back to whatever she had been doing. I looked at Tina, confused.

“Marsha probably wouldn’t have forgotten to insert a tampon, but even if she did, she wouldn’t have screamed about a little bit of blood.”

“A little?” I echoed. “Look at me! I’m covered in it!”

My sister pulled back the comforter, which now also had a bit of blood on it and then pulled back my sheet as well. “No,” she insisted. “You got a bit on your sheets and on your nightgown, but that’s it. I guess you couldn’t tell it was coming.”

“Tell? How was I supposed to tell?”

“Well, didn’t you feel a bit funny or something the last two days?”

“Funny? Teen, everything has felt funny the last few days. How am I supposed to know the difference between a normal funny feeling and a funny funny feeling?”

“What about cramps?” she asked. “Or some kind of tension in your guts? Did you feel anything like that?”

“Oh,” I remembered. That was supposed to be my warning? “I thought that was just indigestion.”

“Well it’s not.” She sighed, again. She seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. “Let’s get you cleaned up. You can use a wash cloth to clean up the comforter. I’ll sneak the sheets and all into the laundry while you wash up.”

“Wait,” I protested. “Why all the secrecy? Is Mom not supposed to know that Marsha has periods?”

“I just thought you might be embarrassed about freaking out over a little blood.”

“Well I’m not. I mean, yes I am a bit, but not enough to sneak around. I mean… I’m not really sure I’m thinking clearly, here. This whole thing is new to me. If you think we need to keep it from Mom…”

“Maybe you should just tell Mom and Dad everything?”

“No!” I snapped. “Don’t be stupid!” Then I clapped my hand to my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “I- I don’t know where that came from.”

“Feeling a bit irritable?” Tina guessed.

“Irritable? I guess you could say that! Things are coming at me from every direction and I’m not in control. My old body – my real body – didn’t surprise me with massive bleeding in the morning, I never had to do balancing acts when I walked or stick goo all over my face.”

“Well, your hormones are making you irritable. That’s pretty normal when you’re having a period.”

Somewhere among all of the feelings, I could tell that made sense. Certainly, I had seen my girlfriends’ moods change from time to time, but hadn’t realized to what extent it was biological. My friends and I used to joke when a girl got angry that she was “probably on the rag.” Suddenly, that didn’t seem particularly funny any more.

It also served as a real low point for me. I had been holding things together by treating this whole thing as a role I was playing. Wearing female clothing wasn’t bothering me too much because it was all part of the role; a role which I was only going to be playing for a limited time. But the period was something else. Unlike a costume, it affected me from the inside out. It wasn’t just something on top of my skin; I couldn’t even look at it the way I was trying to look at Marsha’s body – something for appearances only. I was bleeding from deep inside, using body parts I wasn’t supposed to have, and it was throwing my whole emotional state off – and of course, an actor’s emotional state is something he’s supposed to control, above all.

“Great. Just great. How are we supposed to keep Mom and Dad from figuring out I’m not used to this nonsense. That would just put the topper on everything. It would be super weird.”

“Weirder than Chad and me knowing?”

“Yeah. You and I are really close. We’re used to helping each other. And Chad and I are – or used to be – best friends. Mom and Dad are… parents.” Besides, Tina was already hot on persuading me to stay this way; what if Mom and Dad agreed? It would be horrible, having to resist that kind of pressure from my whole family. It wasn’t something I wanted to face. I didn’t tell her that, of course. I didn’t want to give my sister any ideas.

But meanwhile, I was covered with blood, and probably still bleeding. I didn’t really know how this “period” thing worked; it was one of those details I had chosen not to learn too much about. “OK,” I said. “I’ll get washed up; if you think you can get my sheets and things into the wash without Mom noticing, fine. Otherwise, I’ll just do it myself in a bit. But I guess I need you to show me how to do this tampon thing.” The very idea grossed me out, but I didn’t see a real alternative.

We eventually decided that there was a simpler way to deal with the blood. I bundled up my sheets and nightgown and soaked them in the sink while I showered. Then, following Tina’s instructions I managed to perpetrate this new indignity upon the body I was wearing. Telling myself that it wasn’t really my body helped a lot.

If there was any plus side to this latest experience, I admit that it helped me develop a greater respect for girls, given that they had to do this every month and still managed not to go totally insane. It’s really too bad every guy couldn’t experience it for himself, just once. At any rate, I was very glad that I was only going to have to go through it two more times.

Dinner was only a bit strange. As a girl, I was apparently expected to help Mom serve more than I had as a boy, something I had simply not noticed previously. I had always helped anyway, but now Tina was making it clear that I was to do more. The Tina I remembered had apparently expected her big brother not to do as much as she did, and I had simply not noticed.

It wasn’t until well after dinner that I was finally alone; alone for the first time since this… change had happened. As long as Tina had been with me, I hadn’t had to face what had actually happened, not really. I had been focusing on what I was going to do, planning my portrayal. In some sense, it had almost felt as though I was rehearsing a play, or more accurately, an improv. I had worked on techniques, on characterization – it had been very easy to see it as completely fake. But now I was alone, and I had to face reality.

I was now wearing a female body. Nobody knew the real me, the male me; everybody only knew Marsha. I was still here, of course, wearing the body and pretending, but nobody remembered me, and only Tina and Chad even knew that I was present. Obviously, I had been stupid. If I had read the papers on the experiment, would I have had a chance to back out? Possibly not, given the apparent number of other victims. But at least I would have known what to expect, and maybe I wouldn’t have reacted the same way. If I had been prepared, maybe I wouldn’t have made that boast about being able to carry off the portrayal for two-and-a-half months.

If I hadn’t announced my intentions, if I hadn’t promised to wait, I would simply confront the people who had done this to me as soon as I got back to school in a week. A quick interlude as a girl might be interesting, but a week would probably be enough; however, I had announced to Tina that I was going to wait, and to give up so easily wouldn’t be manly. And given the feminine fleshly costume that I was wearing, I needed to find something manly about myself.

Not that there weren’t some compensations, of course. The chance to do a leading role in an Alvin Tomlinson production was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it had just been handed to me out of nowhere. And given my relationship difficulties, it could do me a lot of good to get to know what being female was like in a way that no guy really ever could.

This all left the question of how I was going to deal with the body itself. The clothing wasn’t an issue – I had little choice on what I had to wear, after all. Marsha’s wardrobe was pretty uniform – modest skirts and dresses. But as for the body… I was certainly not unfamiliar with the female form. I had been intimate over the past few years with several different girls, and while I enjoyed female nudity – a lot – I wasn’t so curious that I felt a real need to play with the new parts that were now completely in my control. The thing is, while I had full access, it wasn’t my body. It was a girl’s body, and I’m not a girl – I was wearing Marsha’s body, and she was sort of my sister, and if I were to touch the body in certain ways, well, that would almost be like groping my sister, which was really creepy.

At the same time, I couldn’t completely detach myself. I felt what this body felt, and I had to manipulate it. I had to touch it, even the intimate parts, to clothe it and bath it, and I had to touch its private parts when going to the bathroom. Sitting down to pee wasn’t itself a major deal; I had done so on occasion anyway, but it was inconvenient having to do it all the time. In a way, it was fortunate that I was wearing skirts and dresses – it served as a reminder that things were different as soon as I started unfastening my clothing. Showering was odd, too, if only because the water tended to take rather different paths on Marsha’s body than it had on my own. I tried not to think too hard about exactly where it was going. And the hair! I couldn’t believe how much work it was to wash and dry hair this long. Tina pointed out that I didn’t really have to wash it every day, which helped.

Marsha’s bedtime rituals didn’t seem all that much different than mine. Like me, she had picked out clothing the night before and then dressed for bed; I had to ask Tina, though, how to select an appropriate dress for the next day. I wasn’t quite clear on which ones were appropriate when. She also warned me that I would have to remove “my” make-up before going to bed. We were going to start make-up lessons in the morning.

The next morning began, as the previous one had, with Tina yelling through my closed door, “Marsha! Get up… We have a lot to do today!” I groaned and tried to sit up, but the tension of the previous day had apparently found its way to my lower back and belly. Either that, or I was having a reaction to Mom’s good cooking, after subsisting on the institutional food they served us at school. In either case, getting out of bed was a real effort, and the prospect of my impending girlification lessons was not an incentive for action.

But I knew I had to do it; I only had a week before I had to start portraying Marsha in school, and there was way too much I needed to learn. So I forced myself out of bed and opened the door. “Just give me a sec to get dressed, OK, Teen?” I said.

“Actually,” she answered. “Why don’t you wash up first? You’re going to want to let the moisturizer soak in for a while before we get started.”

“Moisturizer?”

“Uh huh. You need to moisturize your skin for ten minutes before you put on makeup.”

“Wait. How long is this make up thing going to take me?”

Apparently, I was starting to sound resistant, and I got the look from Tina again. “That depends on you, Marsh. But it’s going to take forever if you don’t get started.”

So I shut up and followed her into the bathroom, where she coached me on the proper way to wash my face in the morning (it seemed that the way I had always done it wasn’t good enough for some reason), and then had me put on this lotion which was supposed to do something to my skin that was somehow important.

It’s not as if I’d never worn make up before. When you’re on stage, you have to wear it or look totally washed out, and part of the ritual before going on stage through middle school and high school had been sitting in front of a mirror while the girls made you up. I just figured that it was the same thing as what they did every day. Apparently not.

“One big difference, Marsh,” Tina explained after I had dressed and was back in the bathroom, “ is that stage makeup is intended to be seen under very bright lights and from very far away. Regular makeup is seen from just a few feet away or sometimes even closer.”

“Closer?” I asked, at this point not sure I understood anything at all.

My sister blushed a bit and answered with a dreamy smile. “You know, when you’re getting cuddly with a boy, and he’s looking into your eyes…”

“I think we can skip that lesson,” I told her hurriedly, finding myself blushing even more than she had. “That, at least, is something I know I can avoid.”

Girls’ make up turned out to be lots more complicated and time-consuming than I had anticipated, and there was room for plenty of variations. I hadn’t actually watched my girlfriends when they got ready for the day; I had just always had the impression that it took them an eternity. I was starting to see why. In the end, we compromised. Tina taught me the basics, including the way she remembered Marsha wearing her own makeup. She also insisted on teaching me an ‘evening out with girlfriends’ version, but I drew the line at ‘date makeup.’ I knew that she was trying to turn me into the sister she remembered, but I was just acting, and I had to draw the line somewhere.

Still, it was a lot to take in. The base wasn’t too bad. We’d often had to apply our own base for plays. But Tina had me applying something she called concealer under it. Then I had to put on powder, whereas with stage makeup, that was the very last step. But we were just getting started. There was blush, and shadow, and mascara… there was just no way I was going to be able to manage this properly. Tina promised to write it all down for me, but I had a feeling it was going to take me at least an hour each morning, especially, since I couldn’t easily start over without washing all of the base off.

After make-up practice, we went back to heel-walking, so that I could tackle walking up stairs. Tina said that there were different ways to do it, but that Marsha had taught her always to use just the balls of her feet, just as with going down stairs. The trick here was actually stepping on the edge of the steps so that the heels didn’t catch. It meant that I couldn’t do my usual two-steps-at-a-time run up the steps; but then again, my legs didn’t really feel long enough for that now, in any case.

I really wanted to take a break from all of this Marsha practice and relax – or at least do some of the EuroLit reading, or something, but Tina had school, and Sunday was my last chance to get her coaching full time for a week. We did take a short break just to talk – she wanted to know more about Marshall’s life, and wanted to tell me more about things she had done with Marsha, which I suppose I needed to know. This would all have been so much easier if we could stretch it over a month, especially if I could relapse to being myself in between.

So we worked and worked, and the tension in the pit of my stomach just seemed to get worse and worse.

I followed Mom into the kitchen. She handed me a peeler and some potatoes and we started. Apparently we were making stew tonight. Dad and I had always liked Mom’s stew. Thinking about him, I suddenly realized something – neither Mom nor Tina had mentioned him and I hadn’t seen him all day, not since I turned into Marsha. His car wasn’t in the driveway. Where was he?

I started to worry. When he came back after walking out on us, he’d never told Tina or me why. I once asked him, and he’d tousled my hair and said simply “A man should be around to raise his son, Marsh.” What if he had been serious? What if my being a girl meant that he hadn’t come back? Had my stupidity in signing up for that experiment denied Tina a father and Mom a husband? I couldn’t just ask – I didn’t want Mom to know about the change, and there was no way to excuse Marsha needing to ask. When I was done here I’d have to ask my sister. In the meantime….

“How did midterms go, Marsh?” Mom asked.

They’d gone fine for me, so that’s what I told her. Of course, I had no idea how well Marsha had done, but I figured we were pretty similar in terms of intelligence and study habits, so the answer was likely to be the same. At any rate, I didn’t have a better answer just now. But apparently that wasn’t Mom’s focus, anyway.

“Any progress with that boy you were interested in?”

What boy? Tina hadn’t mentioned anyone; she had just said that Marsha wasn’t seeing anybody.

“Um, no, Mom,” I said, taken off guard and panicking just a little. Then I added, “And, I’ve been thinking… I don’t really have time to date right now.”

Now I knew to watch out when I got back to school. Had Marsha been flirting with somebody? Dating a guy but not seriously? That could be a real problem.

She just smiled at me knowingly, and didn’t pursue the matter. It was her usual pattern – she was good at inviting us to tell her things, but not prying. And usually, I did want to tell her. But what could I say? I didn’t know very much about Marsha’s life, and almost anything specific I could say would have to reveal that I wasn’t Marsha, after all. Was I wrong to keep this change a secret? Suddenly, I wasn’t sure.

I must have spent more time than I had realized, agonizing over the question, because she prompted me, “Something on your mind, Marsh?”

“Oh, no, Mom. I mean, yes. I was thinking about the play. Mousetrap.”

“Yes?”

“We start rehearsals right after break.”

“Yes, you told me. And Mollie is a great role.”

“I think so, too, Mom.”

Outwardly, I was calm, but my guts were roiling. Now I had even more things to worry about. What if Dad wasn’t around? What if Mom figured out the truth and thought I was lying to her? Was Marsha so much better at acting than I was? With a good director like Alvin, I should be able handle it, shouldn’t I? Mr. Condrin had always said that the most important relationship in the theater is between an actor and his director, and Alvin probably knew that. I’d just have to make sure to establish that kind of relationship with him.

We talked more about inconsequential stuff. I had to invent answers, trying not to be specific, since I had no idea about Marsha’s actual school life. Mom seemed to sense that something was wrong, so I tried to distract her by asking what was new with her. She seemed to appreciate it. I don’t think I’d ever done that before – asking my mother about her life, her sewing and so on. With Dad gone, Mom had started doing a lot of seamstress work. I remember resenting how much of a burden this had put on Tina and me, but obviously she’d needed to bring in money; when Dad came back, she’d continued it, and the spare bedroom was full of clothes needing alterations and repairs.

Things kept reminding me of Dad, and it was hard to remember not to mention him or hint about anything involving him, since I didn’t want to admit my ignorance. I kept hoping she would say what he was doing or say that she missed him or something so that I would know.

Then I found out. The door opened and there he was. I don’t think I’d ever run so fast in my life. I threw myself into his arms with an excited cry, “Dad!”

“Wow, what a greeting, Princess!” he exclaimed, obviously pleased. “I’m really sorry I missed you last night, but I had to get up early today. Everything good with you?”

What a question! I couldn’t really give an honest answer, but at least Dad not coming back was one thing I didn’t have to worry about. At least everything hadn’t been worse in this timeline.

Hugging Dad was… strange, since I only came up to his chin now. As Marshall, I had actually been a bit taller than he was, and he had tended to greet me by just grabbing my arm or patting my back. It was very odd to have him kiss me on the forehead after hugging me. That was the way he had greeted my little sister, only now I was even shorter than she was, so apparently, I got the forehead kisses, too.

Tina had heard him and came downstairs to get the same greeting – a kiss on the forehead. Then Dad excused himself to put his stuff in his study. I probably could have found out that he was home if I had gone there, but of course I didn’t think about it until I was talking with Mom in the kitchen.

Then I realized what he had said – he had called me “Princess”! What the hell? I grabbed Tina and asked her about it.

“Yes, Daddy’s always called you that, why?”

“It’s just that I’ve never heard him do that before. Dads don’t call their sons, ‘Princess.’”

“Oh,” she laughed, “I guess not.”

“And… um…” Given everything else that had happened, I was surprised that this bothered me, but, “Is he expecting me to call him, ‘Daddy’?”

“What else would you call him? Oh… I suppose you’re used to calling him something like, “Dad’?”

“Usually.” I sighed. “I suppose it’s part of the character. But can you please try to warn me about things like that?”

“How am I supposed to know what you don’t know?“

“I have no idea. Just… try to think about what a guy wouldn’t know. Please. This is going to be tough enough as it is. I don’t want too many surprises.”

“I’ll try, Marsh,” she promised me. “I’ll do the best I can.”

We practiced heel-walking some more after that, since it really wouldn’t be in character for Marsha to wear flats all the time. The short heels Tina had me start with proved to be not all that much of a challenge. Then she had me try walking down stairs with them.

Wow! That was quite a difference. First, it was scary as Hell, although I remembered to say “scary as anything” to Tina. If I slipped while walking on a floor, the worst that would happen was that I might turn an ankle, but it was pretty obvious, even without Tina’s warning, that slipping the stairs could hurt a lot worse. Holding on to the rail was a must.

What was really funny, though, was that my original idea – of walking without the heel touching the ground – worked here! The danger was actually that I might catch my heel on a step or slip forward, since the sole of the shoe was slanted and smooth. But as long as I was careful only to land with the ball of my foot, and make sure it was fully on the step, I was fine.

After that, we finally got to the read-through, and I got yet another shock. Tina was helping me, reading the role of Giles, Mollie’s husband, when we encountered the direction that he was to kiss her.

“Wait,” I said. “Kiss?”

“That’s what it says, Marsh. They’re married, so why the surprise?” She winked at me, which just rubbed it in harder.

“I’m not surprised, I’m just… a bit taken off guard. How am I supposed to kiss a guy?”

“What’s the big deal? I saw you kiss Dirk enough times.”

“In the first place, Teen, that’s really disgusting. Anyway, it was Marsha who kissed Dirk, not me. Um… remember who I really am. I kiss girls, not guys. Kissing guys is…”

“… really nice,” she finished. “Or at least I think it would be – I’ve only done it once, so far. With everything else you’re doing, aren’t you sort of being a bit ridiculous? I mean, you’re a girl, Marsh. Why shouldn’t you kiss a guy? Anyway, it’s not for real, and it’ll be Mollie kissing Giles, right?”

I had to admit the truth of that.

“So it’s just playing a role. Who knows? Maybe you’ll like it!”

“I certainly hope not,” I replied. And that was the last we spoke on that subject. It was just a play; it didn’t mean anything. It’s just that Mollie was going to be kissing this guy with my lips.

I was actually in a pretty good mood now, for the first time since this horrible discovery, so I was content to let my sister guide me. “So what should we work on, first, Teen?”

She thought for a moment. “I can do your make up for you, if we have to go someplace, and help you pick out clothing, so those can wait. But I can’t walk for you, and you can’t walk around like you are afraid of being heard. So…”

She opened my closet and rummaged around a bit. I peered over her shoulder and saw more shoes than I’ve ever owned in my life. There must have been close to a dozen pairs. As Marshall, I owned a pair of sneakers, one pair of dress shoes, and a pair of boots. I used to own a pair of loafers, but they wore out and I never saw the need to replace them. But Marsha had way more than that. Eventually, Tina selected two pairs.

“Here are some flats than you can wear for around the house, Marsh. It’s going to take you a bit of time to get used to heels. Let’s start with these pumps.”

“Wait. ‘Pumps’?”

“It’s a pretty standard shoe, but the heel is a lot lower than the ones you were trying to wear this morning.”

“Didn’t you say Marsha was wearing the higher ones because of her height? I’m really not comfortable being this short, and I think I’d rather learn to wear the higher ones. At least I’d get more of my height back.”

“You can work up to those, Marsh. The shorter ones will be hard enough for you.”

Obviously, she knew a lot more about this than I did, so I put on the pair she handed me and stood up. “Now what? Do I just walk?”

“Yes. Try to walk across the room and back. And this time, step on the heels. That’s what they’re there for.”

So I did. It wasn’t horribly bad. I wobbled on almost every step, but didn’t even come close to losing my balance. I turned and looked for approval, but Tina looked pained.

“No, that’s not even close, Marsh. You shouldn’t have to stop and balance every time you put down your foot. Look. Watch me.”

She walked across the room so that I could look at her feet from the side. She wasn’t pausing at all, but neither was she spending a lot of time on her heels. She’d land on her heel and then roll immediately on to her toe.”

“OK, I think I see what you’re doing,” I said. I walked back to the closet, making it a point to slap my toe against the ground as soon as my heel hit the ground. It felt really awkward, but at least I wasn’t wobbling. Not much, at any rate.

Tina wasn’t really impressed. “That’s better,” she admitted, “but you’re still trying too hard. The toes should come down naturally, without all that slapping stuff. Try talking smaller steps.”

“Smaller steps?” I protested. “I’ve got tiny little legs, so I’m already talking shorter strides than I’m used to.”

“Just do it.”

It was like a revelation. The first couple of steps felt almost natural. I didn’t have to force my toes down, they just hit automatically. I experimented a bit, walking back and forth. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

“I think I’m getting it, Teen! Look. The shorter stride makes my foot come down almost flat, so I don’t spend a lot of time on my heel. Then if I shift my weight forward as I step, my toe comes right down.”

“Not bad,” she said, pleased. “Your walk is starting to a look a lot more natural, and it’s making your hips swing nicely.”

“Wait,” I said, my heart feeling as though it wanted to stop. “My hips?”

“Uh huh. That’s what you taught me. If you walk properly in heels, it gives you ‘a womanly stride that the guys like to watch.’”

“Um, wait. Wait.” I sat down on the bed, trying to hide my backside as best I could. “I’m not really comfortable with that part.”

“That’s what Marsha taught me,” she shrugged. “Not much you can do about it. It just happens naturally. Besides, it’s the way Marsha walks. And you want to be in character, don’t you?”

It was a good point, and I probably would have felt better about it, if she hadn’t winked at me immediately afterward. I resolved then and there that ‘Marsha’ was suddenly going to be a bit more tolerant of her lack of height. Those flats were definitely going to be my friends.

“Oh come on, Marsh,” Tina chided me. “You’re attractive. The boys will look. Not as much as if you were half-naked like most of the girls on campus, but you’re not going to be able to stop them from looking at all without really calling attention to yourself.”

It was clearly payback time. I know that I had enjoyed girl watching, and had never given any thought to how the girls felt, being watched. I guess I’d figured that if a girl didn’t want guys looking, she’d… Hmm. What, exactly? Dress modestly? I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. I guess I was dressed pretty modestly, with my skirts down to mid-calf and my long sleeves. In fact, I sometimes thought that girls in pants, especially jeans, were dressed much more immodestly, with all the creases seeming to draw the eye in one particular direction. Still. I turned in the mirror a bit. My bust wasn’t extraordinary, but my figure was pretty decent. If I saw a girl who looked like that, I’d have looked. Not that I was attracted to myself, of course. That would have been really creepy. But I had a lot of experience looking at and evaluating girls, and I’d probably have rated Marsha at least a 7 or an 8.

“Checking out the merchandise?” Tina teased me.

“No!” I said, jumping away from the mirror, embarrassed. “I was just… well, does it bother you when they look, Teen? It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about.”

She shrugged. “I think it would bother me a lot more if they didn’t look, Marsh. I like boys, and I want them to like me – or at least for certain ones to.”

“Certain ones?” I echoed. “As in boys, you might want to date?”

“Well mostly, a boy I have dated.”

“Wait a minute! You’re dating boys already?”

She gave me an impatient look. “I’m fifteen years old, Marsh! When did you start dating?”

“Um… I was… fourteen. But that’s different! I’m a boy!”

“Why is that different? How old was your first girlfriend?”

“Um, fourteen.”

“And I’m fifteen. So what’s the problem?”

“But. You’re my sister!”

“And your girlfriend was probably somebody else’s sister.”

I knew that this made perfect sense in my own mind. There were good and sound reasons that my sister shouldn’t be dating yet. I just couldn’t think of what they were. “I’m not going to win this argument, am I?” I finally admitted.

“Hardly. I waited a whole year longer than you did.”

“Oh.”

“And Marsha encouraged me. Did you encourage me, Marshall?”

I sighed. “It’s just so hard to think of my sister… out with some boy.”

“Get used to it. It’s going to happen a lot, I hope.”

“Oh. Um, how far have you gone?” I asked, not sure if was really ready to hear the answer. “

“We went to a couple of movies. He held my hand. And. I’ve had one good night kiss so far.”

“Anything else?”

“You sure you want to know?” she said, teasingly.

“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”

She laughed again. “That’s as far as we’ve gone and as far as I’m going to go just yet. What about you Marshall? How far have you gone?”

“Um I’m really not comfortable…”

“Farther than kissing?”

“Yes…”

“Lots farther?”

“I’m really not comfortable…” I repeated. At his point, I really wanted to change the subject, but Tina was having fun making me sweat.

“Marsha and I talked about this kind of stuff all the time. I know exactly how far she went with Dirk.”

“But… guys don’t talk about things like that.”

“Girls do,” she insisted. ‘This is going to be an interesting time for us, isn’t it? Did you talk to me at all?”

“Oh sure we talk a lot – just not about… you know…”

“Sex?”

“Tina!”

“Sorry – it’s just so funny to see you nervous, Marsh. If you’re really uncomfortable, we don’t have to talk but I hope you want to – I like talking about stuff with you – with Marsha, I mean.”

I sighed. “I’ll do my best, Teen. I can’t promise.”

Just then mom poked her head in. “Marsh? Ready to spend some time with me?”

Was I ever! I was glad to have that conversation end. I’d always been close to Tina, but there have been some things we just didn’t discuss. Apparently, her talks with “Marsha” had been a lot different than with me. I was sure she would understand, but she’d probably also try to get me to talk the way she was used to. It was going to be an interesting few months.