Take a Lemon

Alone in my room, I hesitated. I’d been giving this way too much of a buildup, and I knew that was likely only to end in disappointment. I decided that it would be better to think of it as something of a research project than a hope at immense physical pleasure. Accordingly, the goal was going to be knowledge, not a sexual climax. My initial attempt had made me suspect that it was a lot harder for girls, anyway.

First, I had to get myself in the mood. Well, I knew the trick for that; I stood before the mirror and hitched up my skirt and unbuttoned my blouse. It hadn’t been a fluke – for some reason the prospect of myself in revealing clothing was really a turn on. It was very strange, and yet… it worked. Maybe I would look into actually buying myself some appropriate clothing. I’d only wear it in my room, of course. The problem was, I wasn’t too sure of my finances – could I really afford to buy something like that? Something that would essentially just be a sex toy?

When I was sufficiently turned on, I took off all of my clothes and climbed into bed with a small mirror that I had purchased at the student store. After a moment, I got back out of bed and grabbed a flashlight as well.

My first glimpse of “down there” was jolting. Intellectually I knew what to expect, but I hadn’t actually looked at my own female genitalia since I had acquired them. It was yet another visible reminder of my reality. You’re being foolish, I chastised myself. You’ve been a girl for well over a month. It’s about time you stopped being shocked.

And yet… I had never had the occasion before this for an extended examination of a vulva. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d normally ask your girlfriend. As a doctor, I would one day be doing this on a regular basis as an intern on a shift with the OB/GYN department. I could think of this as just another part of my eventual medical education – with the twist that I was doing it pretty much unguided.

In the spirit of exploration, I tried a bunch of things; it was interesting to see how differently my new parts responded than what I had been used to. It didn’t take too long before my feigned clinical detachment went by the wayside, and I began to enjoy myself. It was so different from being a guy – it would start to feel good and then I’d relax and keep touching myself, and then it would build up again. There was no definite end to it. And then I was just too tired to continue and still had trouble getting to sleep. What a pain.

Nikki pulled me aside just as I got to rehearsal the next day. “I’m going to be measuring for costumes today, Marsh. Want to help out?”

“I’m not sure how much help I can be,” I warned her. “Remember that I don’t…” I paused as some members of the cast passed us, and then continued in a whisper, “I don’t have you-know-who’s memories.”

“It’s OK. I’ll write down what I need. I figure you probably know something about men’s measurements, though, right?”

I chuckled. “I think I can handle that.”

“So… any progress on the ‘homework’?” she asked in a confidential tone.

“Well…” I admitted, “I did a bit of exploring. I wasn’t too impressed.”

She raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

“Well, my girlfriends seemed to get really excited during sex, and seemed really to be enjoying themselves. Now I’m wondering if they were just faking everything for my benefit. I mean, it was nice, but nothing to scream about.”

She laughed. “I think we need to have another private chat, Marsh. You’ll be surprised. How are you feeling, otherwise?”

“Pretty good, actually,” I admitted. “I finally dealt with my House Parties problem. I told my roommates to stop worrying about me. I’m just not going to go. I’m going to deal with the fact that I’m by myself.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Was that an issue?”

“Well, yeah. I told you, I’m not attracted to anyone. I’m asexual, and it really bothers me. I like being part of a couple. But I can’t be now, and I’m just going to accept it.”

“Just like that?”

“Well… I guess I just want to stop them trying to fixing me up with a boy. It’s getting really annoying.”

She snickered. “I guess that would be uncomfortable for you.”

“So, I just need to deal with it. Compared to my other problems, it’s pretty minor, I guess.”

“Especially now that you have a way to give yourself pleasure without help?”

“No!” I protested, maybe a bit too loudly. I looked around, though, and nobody seemed to have noticed, amid all the pre-rehearsal socializing. “It has nothing to do with that,” I said, firmly. “It’s just me taking control of my life. I mean, OK, dancing once in a while with a guy could be nice, but that’s as far as I’m ready to go. I just feel safer by myself. Besides, it’ll give me a good chance to work on my chords.”

“Well good for you, then. I’m glad you’re not feeling lonely any more.”

“I didn’t say–” I started, but I was cut off.

“OK, people, let’s get started,” Alvin said in a raised voice. “We’re going to run the whole show, without prompting. If somebody drops a line, find a way out of it.”

“I didn’t say that,” I repeated before rushing to get into place. “I’ve just added it to the things I’m not thinking about.”

Thanks to our double-time drills the day before, we didn’t actually have too many dropped lines, and we were pretty much able to recover when we did, which was good, considering we were opening in a week and a half. There was one bit when I wasn’t on stage that was a bit rough, and those of us watching agonized with those onstage, as they ad libbed until they get back into the scene, but that’s part of the fun of live theater. It was pretty obvious that Jared, who had made the error, was going to study those lines pretty carefully before our next rehearsal.

We took a break between the acts, and I picked up the clipboard and tape measure and approached my first targets. “I have to measure you guys for costumes,” I told Jared and Pete, who were talking together.

“Sure you have long enough tape measure?” Pete joked. “I’m a pretty big guy.”

Considering that he was only a couple of inches taller than Jared, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t referring to his height, and Jared gave him a disgusted look.

“Oh, for that I’ll have to get a microscope,” I informed him, earning a snort of laughter from Jared, and an amused grin from Pete. “Hold still.”

Partly because of our difference in heights, and partly to show that I hadn’t been bothered by his comment, I started with his inseam, and I wasn’t too surprised to see him try to take advantage of the situation, shifting his hips so that my top hand would slip from the top of his leg to his privates. I managed not to react, but coolly moved my hand back where it belonged. Jared noticed, though, and smacked him on the back of the head.

“Cut it out!” he said, annoyed.

Pete smirked, but mostly cooperated while I measured his leg, waist and chest. But when I reached behind him to measure his neck, he grabbed my forearms and quickly whispered, “we’ve got to stop meeting like this,” before releasing me. That time he did manage to embarrass me and I looked away, trying to collect myself, as Jared spun him around.

“What the Hell are you doing, jerk?” he demanded.

“Just teasing. Marsh knows its all in fun, right?”

“Well, stop it!”

I gave Jared a grateful look, and tried a withering one on Pete. “I’m finished with you. Could you get Jack for me, please.”

Jared looked at me curiously as I started to measure him. “You put up with that pretty well.”

“Yeah, well, I guess I decided that I didn’t need to let it get to me.”

“Good for you. Too bad you couldn’t have done that when we were talking in the Grill.”

I nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m learning.”

“So, if I made another pass at you, you’d take it a bit better?” he joked.

This time, I was able to laugh it off. After all, weren’t we friends? “Isn’t there supposed to be something going on between you and Jo?”

“How did you know about that?” he asked, clearly surprised.

“Girls do talk, you know. She even asked for my advice.”

“Oh? And what did you tell her?”

“No,” I smiled. “You first. Are you taking her to House Parties?”

He looked embarrassed. “I haven’t asked her yet. I mean, we’ve talked, but I wasn’t sure she didn’t already have someone.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I was pretty sure Jo had made her interests clear. Had I ever been so clueless as to what a girl wanted? Aside from Lee Ann, I remembered. And Vicky.

“Just ask her, will you?” There was something nice about helping out friends. So why did I have this tension in my heart? I’d already decided that I’d accepted not having a date, hadn’t I?

Jack showed up and I turned my attention to taking his measurements and getting them to Nikki. “It looked as though you were having a bit of trouble with Pete,” she said, as I handed over my work. “Is everything OK?”

I shrugged. “It was just a bit of banter. And I think I can safely say that I am more used to male banter than most girls.”

She laughed in appreciation. “I guess so.”

The second act went a bit more smoothly than the first had, and Alvin was very complimentary when he gave us notes. Then he finished with an announcement.

“Because of the Thanksgiving break, we’re not going to have rehearsal this Wednesday, so I want to rehearse Sunday night, instead. Please try to be back on campus in time for an 8:00 rehearsal. We’re going to be building the set tomorrow, so if you can help out, try to be here in the afternoon, and we’ll be starting with lighting on Monday night. We’ll be rehearsing every night next week, with final dress rehearsal on Thursday. Take care, all, and in case I don’t see you tomorrow, have an enjoyable Thanksgiving.”

Nikki caught me before I walked out. “Can you meet me back here tomorrow afternoon, Marsh? I could use your help picking out costumes. Fortunately, the action takes place in a single day, so we only need one costume for each person. The guys will be pretty easy, since men’s clothing hasn’t changed too much over the decades – I’m pretty sure we have plenty of stuff that will work in the costume room. You can use your blue print dress – it’s timeless and will look appropriate, but we’ll need to go through the racks to see what we can use for Jo and Naomi.”

“Happy to help,” I told her.

“And… I think it might be time for another… lesson.”

I started thinking about Nikki’s “homework” before dinner. On the one hand, despite what Nikki had said, I wasn’t quite sure I was ready for the implied surrender to girliness; on the other, I was intensely curious about what it would be like, and it’s not as if it would be hurting anyone.

Still, I started guiltily when Chad called.

“Oh, hey, Chad!” I said.

“Marsh, I just spoke with your sister. What the Hell, dude?”

“Um… what?”

“Tina says you gave up! I thought we were talking about strategies, Marsh. I’d have thought at least you’d call me!”

“I haven’t… wait, Chad you don’t have all the facts!”

“Well, enlighten me, then. Your sister’s pretty confused and a little bit upset, but she wanted to give you time. She said you weren’t in the mood to talk – but that’s girl logic. If you’re supposed to be really a guy, you don’t get that kind of break.”

“It’s… complicated, Chad.”

He snorted in derision. “No, you’re making it complicated. Tell me flat out – have you given up? Have you decided that you don’t want to change back now?”

“Let me explain, Chad,” I pleaded.

“Maybe you like being a girl? Found some guy you’re hot for?”

“No!”

“What, then?”

“Well… when I called Tina… well, it’s pretty clear that I’m not going to find those guys by walking around the physics building.”

“So you try something else, right?”

He made it sound so easy. “The problem, Chad, is that I couldn’t think of something else to try. I was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything else.”

“Uh huh.” Then he paused, considering what I had said. “You were sure? You couldn’t think of anything? Does that mean that now you have thought of something?”

“Yes.” I explained again about Eric and the search for papers that might hint at time travel.

“But if there’s a cover up, wouldn’t they hide the papers, too?”

I laughed. “You get right to the point, don’t you?”

“Well am I wrong?” he insisted.

“Well, the idea is that the profs have to publish their papers to keep their jobs. It would be kind of hard to get the articles out of the journals just because Piques wanted to hide somebody.”

“I see. But you’re letting this guy do the search for you? It all seems a bit passive. You’re sure you’re still a guy? Shouldn’t you being doing something to help?”

“If I could… but I don’t know physics – I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

“Uh huh… So, why haven’t you told Tina all this?”

That was sort of an uncomfortable point with me, actually. I really hated keeping secrets from Tina. Tina was my confidant. Still…

“The problem is, I probably shouldn’t have told her in the first place, Chad. I mean, you saw how upset she was that first day, right?”

“Yeah…”

“So, I don’t know if this is actually going to work. There’s a pretty good chance that I am stuck. And if I’m not… well, wouldn’t it be kinder not to tell Tina?”

This time he didn’t answer for quite a few seconds, although he did sigh. “Marsh, I don’t know what’s best to do with Tina. If you think it’s better not to tell her, that’s your business. But you’ve been saying that you remember me as your ‘best friend’ and I’ve been trying to live up to that. Now, maybe there’s something that’s not connecting in that girl brain of yours, but with guys, if you’re working on something and somebody is helping you, you need to let them know if there’s something big going down. OK?”

His words shamed me. Guys aren’t supposed to let something like a little depression stop them. We’re supposed to keep going, no matter what, and I really should have called him. “I won’t do it again,” I promised. “If something big happens, I’ll tell you.”

“Cool. So… um, how are things?”

“Very confusing,” I laughed. “My roommates are pushing me to date boys and dance with boys, and so on. They’re convinced that I’ll be miserable if I don’t have a date for House Parties.”

“Uh… yeah. OK. Well, stay firm, dude. Keep ‘em hang– I mean… just, um… take care of yourself.”

“Yeah, you, too, Chad.” Then I remembered something. “Oh, did you ever work out that thing with Kathy?”

“What thing with…? Oh, yeah, we worked that out weeks ago.”

“Oh. Sorry. I just remembered that I hadn’t asked you about it.”

“Don’t worry about it. Anyway… talk to you later, right?”

“Right.”

I had to laugh after hanging up. Chad would never have understood about me exploring between my legs, not now. On the other hand, in some ways he had actually made it easier for me. It would certainly be normal for a guy to be very interested in touching a girl down there – I just had the twist that I could tell what it felt like directly, without needing a girl to tell me. Yeah, I knew what I was going to be doing tonight.

I had just started dinner when Sheila sat down, looking very excited. “Sam asked me to House Parties!”

“Good for you!” Terry commented, sitting across from me. I didn’t see Sam, but several other girls – and Phil – added their congratulations. The only other guy at the table, Jay, rolled his eyes but didn’t say anything.

“That’s more than half of us with dates,” Lee Ann said thoughtfully to Terry and me as we walked back to our dorm room afterward. “And if Phil asks Susie… hmm, maybe we need to call a meeting to work this out.”

“Why do we need a meeting?” I protested.

“Just to make sure that everyone is set,” she told me patiently. “And that includes you.”

“No,” I told her. “I’m not interested.”

“That’s only because you haven’t found the right boy,” she replied, as I rolled my eyes. She wasn’t giving up easily.

Terry leaned over to Lee Ann and fake-whispered, “I think Marsh should go with Jay. All of that fighting just has to indicate a deeply concealed mutual attraction.”

I might have argued, but the two of them collapsed into giggles over the idea, and I settled for a wry, “You guys…” I guess as long as they were still joking about it, I didn’t have to worry too much.

“Seriously, though, Marsh,” Lee Ann said as we reached our room, “You’re making way too big a deal of this. We’re not trying to marry you off or anything. You had fun dancing with Bill, didn’t you?”

That was safe enough. “Yeah, I suppose so – but that was just dancing. Nothing else.”

“That’s all I’m talking about. We’ll find you a guy to dance with for a couple of nights, and if the two of you hit it off, so much the better.”

“No,” I insisted. “Lee Ann, I really appreciate this, but… well, I just don’t want to go this year.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Why not? Just give me one good reason, Marsh. You were upset last year when you didn’t have a date. You were upset just a few days ago when your friend found a date and you didn’t. You know you’re going to be miserable if you stay here in the room all alone when the rest of us are partying. So what’s the idea? Why won’t you let us find you a date?”

At that point, if I had still been worrying about trying to play the role of Marsha, I think I would have given in. After all, I’d managed to kiss Jared as Giles while playing the role of Mollie – I could have treated this as just another role I was playing; however, since I had decided that this might be my own life for, well, for the rest of my life, I wasn’t ready to do that. And that meant that I needed to come up with an answer. If only I had a good one.

“I’m just… confused about a lot of things right now, Lee Ann. And… I’m really not ready. I just… I’m just not ready.”

“And when exactly do you expect to be ready?” she demanded, tapping her foot.

I couldn’t meet her eyes. “I don’t know. I guess… if I’m not ready by the Spring House Parties, I guess I’ll never be.” By that time, I would either have changed back or be forced to admit that it’s probably never happening. And if I really was stuck… I’d have decisions to make. At the very least, I’d have to figure out how to square my lack of interest in either boys or girls with my desire for a relationship of some kind. But at least I could put that off for a while.

“You know,” Terry suggested, “you could just come with us without a date. I’m sure Greg and Steve would be happy to dance with you once in a while.”

I smiled in what I hoped was appreciation. “Thanks, but seriously, I’m just going to sit this one out. House Parties are really for couples, and I’m not ready to be part of a couple, even for an evening.”

“And you’re going to be OK with that?”

“I’m just going to have to be, won’t I?” And with that, I thanked my roommates for their concern and sailed into my bedroom. I had a bunch of homework waiting for me, both the conventional type and that assigned me by my good friend, Nikki.

Something I really appreciated about Bill was that he didn’t try to act as though we were a couple. He brought me a drink and danced with me, but that was it. He didn’t try to hold my hand, touch me when we weren’t on the dance floor, or walk me home. We were just two people who happened to have danced together a bit. It was very nice.

“You seemed pretty comfortable dancing when you let yourself get into it, Marsh,” Lee Ann observed as we walked home.

I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I had been a bit uptight. Um… thanks for yelling at me. I did enjoy myself.”

“Any time you need somebody to yell at you, Marsh, Lee Ann’s your girl,” Terry commented, snuggled into Greg’s arm.

I was suddenly aware that I was the only one walking alone. Of the other single girls, Vicky had left early, and the others had paired off at the dance. Geoff and Lee Ann weren’t actually touching, but were walking close to enough to be seen as a couple to anyone who didn’t know otherwise. It’s not that I wanted to be with anybody in particular, but it seemed really ironic, given my dating history, that I would be the only one without somebody.

“Anyway, you’ve taken a big step,” Lee Ann added. “If we work on it, maybe you’ll be ready for an actual date soon?”

“Let me know if you need any ideas, Marsh,” Susie added. “You were really helpful to me.”

“How’s that?” Phil asked her.

“Nothing…” she said. “But keep it in mind, Marsh.”

I forced myself to smile, and as soon as we got to the dorm, disappeared into my bedroom. I didn’t really want to encourage my friends’ thoughts along that path. There were some lines that I was simply not willing to cross.

At rehearsal the next day, we did one of Alvin’s “games.” In order to help us get comfortable with our lines without thinking about them, he had us run the entire show, double-time. The idea was to make knowing your next line a reflex, since you couldn’t stop and ask yourself, “What’s my next line?”

When one of us stumbled over a line, or even took to long to say it, Nikki fed it to us, rapid-fire. The main focus was on keeping up the rhythm, and she kept us going and going, obviously having done this with Alvin before. It was very rough at first, but we soon learned to anticipate when our lines were coming up.

The acting certainly suffered; you can’t change your timing like that and keep the same emotion. My kiss with “Giles” turned into a quick peck, my screams turned into gasps, and Trotter’s slow interrogation of the survivors turned into a series of snapped-off questions. We finished the entire show in about forty-five exhausting minutes and then took a break.

I collapsed into the chair next to Jo, who was the only one of us not out of breath at that point, having had the entire shortened second act to recover.

“Fun, huh?” she said.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got the hang of it, now,” I gasped, high on adrenaline from the drill.

“Did you guys do this last year?”

“Last…?” I started, before remembering that Marsha had done two shows with Alvin. “Oh, um, yeah.” Which I thought sounded authoritative enough for Marsha, but ambiguous enough in case he had only done it with one of his shows.

“So…” Jo said, nodding her head toward the room. “What do you think?”

“About the rehearsal?”

“No… Jared.”

“Um… I think he’s doing a great job.”

She gave me an “are you being stupid?” look and said, “Marsh, c’mon. What do you think?”

I stared at her, clueless for a moment. Then something in her expression clicked. She liked Jared! My own experience with him had forced me to classify him a harmless friend, and the idea that a girl would actually be interested took some rethinking. To cover up my hesitation, I said, “Oh! Yeah… probably!”

“I just can’t believe he doesn’t already have somebody.”

Given the way he’d come on to me, I can’t say that I was really surprised, but if Jo was interested, I wanted to be a bit tactful.

“Well, I think his technique needs some work,” I ventured, and that brought a laugh.

“I think you intimidated him. He probably just needs the right handling.”

“And you’re just the girl to do that,” I suggested.

“Thanks!” she said, and as if I had just given her permission, she got up and sat next to Jared, who was studying his script by himself.

I looked up to see Nikki finish a conversation with Alvin and head in my direction. “Good job,” she complimented me as she took Jo’s vacated seat. Then she smirked, “How’s the homework coming?”

“Actually,” I admitted, a bit embarrassed, “I sort of decided not to do it.”

“What?”

In a lowered tone, I explained, “I just didn’t think it would be appropriate.”

Nikki stared at me, looked around, and then leaned in closer. “You’re being silly, Marsh. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate?”

“Um, not in front of everyone.”

“Wait, you’re serious?”

I couldn’t meet her glance as I replied, “Yeah.”

Her tone turned sympathetic and concerned. “OK, what’s going on?”

“Not in front of everyone,” I repeated.

“O… K… Sounds as though somebody needs another pep session over tea at my place.”

I nodded. “I suppose. A bunch has happened in the last few days.”

After we ran – and I mean ran – the show once again in double time, Nikki took my arm and we walked to her room. I wasn’t really crazy about the closeness; it seemed wrong, given where my head was, suddenly, but I didn’t want to pull away.

When we reached her dorm, she sat me down in her sewing room again and went to make tea. I had been thinking about how to explain this without sounding totally stupid, and I hadn’t reached any great breakthroughs by the time she came back, handed me a cup of tea and looked expectantly at me.

“Thing is,” I started, “I just felt that it was kind of, you know, the kind of thing one girl could tell another.”

“Yes…?”

“Well, I figured out something that might give me a way back, so I don’t know that I should think of myself of a girl now.”

She stopped in mid-sip. “Wait. You what?”

“I had an idea.” I explained about Eric, and how he was going to look for a paper from the professor behind the experiment.

“And is that likely to work?”

“Well… I think there’s a chance, anyway.”

“And what does that have to do with learning about your body?”

I looked away. “I just didn’t think it’s something a guy should be allowed–”

“Are you insane?”

“Huh?”

“Or just stupid? Because if you’re trying to convince me that you’re really a boy, that seems to be a good approach.”

“Wait. I…”

But she wasn’t letting me finish. “You claimed to have dated a lot of girls in your old life, Marsh. Were you a virgin?”

“What?! No! I had sex with lots of–”

“And I guess you weren’t very good at it, huh?”

“Nikki!”

“I’m trying to make a point. The functioning of the female anatomy is not something most girls want kept secret from their boyfriends. If you ever become a boy again, it is something that your girlfriends will wish you knew. You have a unique opportunity to get to experience what feels good down there – and it’s something that will be valuable to you whether you change back or not.”

“Um…”

“And I cannot believe that you couldn’t figure that out, so there’s some other reason you didn’t try, Marsh.”

I tensed. “Like what?”

“You tell me,” she said, suddenly calm again.

“If I knew…” but I stopped under her gaze. “Well… it just feels…”

“… As though you’d be jinxing the whole thing if you allowed yourself to enjoy being a girl?”

“I… I don’t know. It just…” I shook my head. “If acting like a girl jinxes anything, I probably blew it last night, anyway.”

“Oh?”

“Lee Ann talked me into slow dancing with a boy. Well… she sort of browbeat me into it, actually.”

Her head came up at that. “Did she! Good for her! How was it?”

I squirmed a bit. “Not bad, I guess. I mean… it was kind of weird, only…”

“Yes…?”

“I like having my arms around somebody else. I just wish it was me being the guy.”

“Well, maybe it will be again, one day. In the meantime, you got some enjoyment, right? And nobody was hurt?”

“Maybe. Vicky wasn’t pleased, though.”

“How does Vicky come into all of this?”

“Well, that’s really complicated.” I repeated what Vicky had told me about dating Kevin, and how she had reacted to my dancing with Bill.

Nikki sounded concerned. “So she’s going to be a problem about you, um, exploring your female side.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “I’m not all that comfortable with it, myself, but I can sort of recognize that I need to do it – at least some of it. Maybe not as far Lee Ann wants me to go.” I shuddered at the thought of following all of her suggestions. Being stuck for an entire weekend with a boy who thought he could make me his girlfriend was about the most horrific thing I could think of right then.

“Marsh, think of it this way, then. Not only is this a way for you to deal with what you might need to deal with… the more insight you have into how girls live, the more sympathetic a boyfriend you could be if you change back.”

“I suppose. Maybe I can explain that to Vicky. I’m sure she had plenty of complaints about what kind of a boyfriend I was; maybe she’ll appreciate the chance to improve me.” I looked Nikki in the eye. “But none of her complaints were about sex. She liked sex with me.”

Nikki grinned. “OK.”

“The thing is, I know this is really hard for her. I’d have thought that she could just find another guy – not that I really want her to, of course,” I added hastily. “At least… it would probably be better for her, but she seems to think that… well, that she’s never going to find another boyfriend as good as me.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“That’s what she says.”

“And I’ll bet you just eat that right up.”

“Well… I mean, yeah, it makes me feel good, but at the same time I’m worried about her.”

“So… what kind of relationship do you two have, now?”

I put down my teacup. “That’s difficult. I mean, I still lo– care for her, and I think she does for me, too… but it’s awkward. We’re used to relating on a certain level…”

“As in, ‘horizontal’?”

“No! Our relationship was never just about sex. I mean, that was important, but we enjoyed each other’s company, too.”

“And now?”

I stood up, too agitated to sit. “It’s weird. I mean, I think we still like being together, it’s just…”

“Your old habits don’t work.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s it. Plus, it really bothers Vicky, my being like this, even more than it bothers me, I think – and it really bothers me, don’t get me wrong.”

“But when you look at her, you see the girl you’ve been in love with. When she looks at you, she sees a girl standing between her and her boyfriend.”

“I… never thought of it that way.”

She nodded.

“Oh man, and I really hurt her, you know? I mean, before. I sort of abandoned her to chase after… well, another girl. And after this happened, she still went looking for me, to take me back.”

“I’m not sure if that’s commendable or pathetic.”

“Nikki!”

“Sorry, Marsh. Maybe if I met the girl I’d like her, but I’m not crazy about what I’m hearing from you.”

“Maybe I should introduce the two of you. She’s really a nice person. I… I think she only wants what’s best for me. And she’s like my anchor. She’s helping keep me sane. If I didn’t have her in my life… I don’t know. At least she makes it easy for me to remember who I am.”

Nikki took a final sip from her cup and then put it on the side table next to her sewing box. “Marsh, if she’s that important to you, I can forgive her – for now. But you need to make sure that she really is trying to think of what’s best for you, and not just trying to hold you back because it will make her feel better.”

I nodded, and didn’t argue any further. I trusted Vicky, but I didn’t know any great way to convince Nikki that she was alright. Maybe I’d just have to introduce the two of them at some point.

I returned to my friends only see Lee Ann glaring at me. Suddenly she stood up and said, “Oh, I really need to fix my makeup. I’ll be right back. Marsh… you want to join me?”

I can’t say I’d really gotten into this girls-going-to-the-bathroom-together thing, but it had sounded more like an order than a request, so I went. As soon as we had gotten inside, she rounded on me, fists on her hips, and demanded, “Have you been raped?”

“What?! No!”

“Groped?”

“No What are you talking about?”

“Well, I can’t think of any other excuse for the way you treated poor Bill.”

“But he–”

“He what? He danced with you? Oh horrors!” She put her hand to her forehead in imitation of a heroine from a melodrama. “Whatever is the world coming to when boys actually dance with girls after asking them?”

“But he put–” I started to protest.

“What? His arms around you? When you were slow-dancing? Did he touch you below the waist?”

“Um, not, but–”

“Did he touch you anywhere inappropriate?”

“No…” I admitted.

“You were dancing, Marsh. When a couple dances together, they’re supposed to touch. It’s a social thing. Nobody asked you to hook up with him on the dance floor.”

“But I’m not really attracted–”

“You don’t have to be attracted to a boy to dance with him! It’s a social thing, Marsh! That’s why we do it in public! He didn’t ask you for a date! He didn’t ask you to go back to his room! He just asked you to dance.”

“But…”

“You need to get over this, Marsh. You were not being molested. You were not being threatened. I asked him to be gentle with you, since you seem to have some kind of hang-up about spending time with a boy. Hang-up? More like freak-out city! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“But you see…”

“No. You see. You’ve been miserable about not having a boyfriend, about not having dates, for way too long. Tonight is the night we start fixing that. Tonight is the night we start dealing with your problem.

“The first thing you’re going to do is march back out there and apologize. Then you’re going to go back on the dance floor and dance. And that includes slow dances, and you are going to do them right. This isn’t about sex, Marsh. Dancing is fun. Slow dancing, even with a guy you’re not interested in should be fun, too. When was the last time you hugged a boy? And I don’t mean in one of your plays”

“Um…” If I was answering for Marsha, it could well have been when she broke up with Dirk, and I didn’t know exactly when that was. I guess I could have count the make-up hug with Jared, but that had been after we were friends and it hadn’t been sexual at all, and it sort of was associated with the play. The question seemed to have been rhetorical, though, as Lee Ann didn’t wait for an answer.

“Hugs don’t have to be sexual, either. I hug the guys in our group all the time, just to say hello or good-bye. There’s something very comforting about wrapping your arms around another person, about physical closeness to another person. I think it’s like a basic human need or something. If you spent more time hugging guys as friends and less time hiding from your own shadows, you’d feel a lot better.”

“’Hiding from my shadows’?” I repeated. “My shadows are… well, I guess that doesn’t matter.”

Suddenly she came over to me and took my hands. “Of course it matters, Marsh,” she said in a much gentler tone. I can tell that something is seriously bothering you, and you won’t tell me what it is. I’m trying to help, but I’m working blind, here. Can you tell me now? Is there some reason that what I’ve said doesn’t make sense?”

I shook my head sadly. “No, No, you’re right. I need to… I mean I know that I have to start…” I took a deep breath. “I’m not comfortable with who I am, Lee Ann. With who I might be. I keep thinking I have it under control, and then something just sets me off.”

I think the problem right now was just that I was being whipsawed in so many directions, so quickly. Just a few days ago, this had been just a lark. I had been sure it was temporary, so I hadn’t mind pretending. Well, to be honest, even then I had freaked out about Jared, and all he had done was to make a lewd suggestion. But Bill…?

Objectively speaking, Bill hadn’t really done anything wrong. Certainly he hadn’t done anything I hadn’t done when I was still Marshall. Boy, I was really acting like a queen bitch, wasn’t I? It wasn’t fair, not to him, not to Lee Ann, and not to any of my other friends. Could I blame this on my period? Maybe, but did I really want to? Definitely not.

If I wasn’t going to share my problems with my new friends, the least I could do was not to take it out on them. If only for my own self-respect, I really needed to get control of my emotions, or at least figure out how to react more sensibly. I owed Bill an apology, at the very least.

Before Lee Ann could say anything, a girl I didn’t know poked her head out of one of the stalls. “Is it safe to come out? Are you guys done yelling?”

Lee Ann and I looked at each other in shock and then started laughing. We had simply not considered the possibility that there might be someone in the bathroom with us. The girl stared at us, then washed up and deliberately began fixing her makeup.

As we left together, Lee Ann took my arm and spoke softly. “We’ll talk about that later. Can you try dancing with Bill, as I suggested? Maybe you can use your acting here, if that’ll help.”

Gamely, I agreed. “I can try. I’m really not comfortable, slow-dancing with– I mean, I’m not comfortable, slow-dancing.”

“I think it is important for you to get comfortable.”

“I know,” I whimpered. “You’re right. I have to be social. I have to… OK”

I didn’t want to be queen bitch. If nothing else, it was my self-image at stake, here. So when we got back to where our friends were sitting, I walked over to Bill and cleared my throat. Better to take care of this right now.

“Bill… I’m sorry. I was ru– I, uh, overreacted, and I said some things that were unfair and…” I caught Lee Ann’s eye. “I… I think… if you’re up to it… and you don’t mind… I’d like to try again.”

I had clearly surprised him, as he looked over at Lee Ann and gave her an impressed nod, then turned back to me. “Is now OK?”

“Sure,” I replied and followed him back onto the dance floor. He offered his hand, but I wasn’t quite ready to start holding hands with a boy. Not yet. I was pleased to see that he didn’t make a big deal out of my reluctance.

We started with the random gyrating thing again, but after a few dances, Bill suddenly started doing some kind of formal step; when I had trouble copying him, he took my hands to lead me. Despite my intentions, I flinched at first, but then forced myself to relax and to follow him. I’m not a bad dancer – for an actor, that is – but following was a whole new idea for me, and it took me most of the song before I got the basic idea.

A few dances later, the music turned slow. I looked around and noticed Lee Ann and Geoff watching, so I took a deep breath, put my arms around Bill’s neck, and leaned my head against his chest. I managed not to flinch when he put his arms around my back, and we swayed to the music together.

The closest experience that I could think of to this was Dad hugging me when I was home over break after my change, or maybe when I was about ten or eleven years old and still much shorter than he. There was an element of comfort in having somebody hold me, especially somebody so much larger. The biggest discomfort was the obvious indication that he was turned on, sticking right in my belly.

I couldn’t really comment; I’d been in his situation myself,  more than once. To keep myself from focusing on it, and possibly to divert his thoughts, I asked, “So, your girlfriend isn’t at Piques?”

“No,” he said, again talking into the top of my head, “she’s at Penn State.”

“And what are you guys majoring in?”

“Well, she’s a civil engineer, and I’m a math major.”

“Oh, right,” I realized. “I asked you that already, didn’t I?”

Talking into his chest felt funny, so I turned my head to look up at him. That was a mistake, as he was leaning over to hold me, and it put my face just inches from his – way too close to be comfortable. I’d been that close to Jared on stage, but never like this with a guy in real life. The fact that our bodies were pressed so close together at the same time only made it worse and I hurriedly put my face back down in his chest.

He started to laugh and then stopped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to… but the way you reacted…”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I’m just a bit weirded out by this whole thing.”

“Have you never slow-danced before?”

“Um…” I had certainly done so with girls, and Marsha had almost certainly slow-danced with Dirk, so ‘no’ would be a lie. What was new was me slow-dancing as a girl with a boy. So I just told him the truth that I could. “This is a new experience for me.” Let him misread that how he chose.

“We can stop, if it’s bothering you.”

“No,” I insisted. “No, I’m sorry. I really need to get used to this.”

This time he allowed himself to laugh. “You do realize that this isn’t supposed to be painful.” He really was going out of his way with me, treating me better than I probably deserved.

“It’s not,” I admitted. “It’s just awkward.”

He started to release me.

“No!” I protested. “Just a bit long longer.” It wasn’t really unpleasant, being held. Lee Ann had been right. I’d resisted a lot of her ideas; maybe I should start listening more?

“OK, if you’re sure.”

The song ended not much later and we went back to dancing apart, but I was still a bit shaky, and he noticed. “Let’s take a break,” he suggested. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Sure, thanks,” I said. “Um, a Cherry Coke or a Root Beer would be great.”

He headed off for the drinks, and I returned to our seats. I was a bit wobbly on my feet; that slow dance had definitely affected me. The only ones seated when I got there were Greg and Terry, looking very much out of breath, and Susie and Phil. The latter were looking quite a bit more comfortable with each other than before. Phil looked like a guy who couldn’t believe his luck – well, then I was happy for him. Susie was a much better fixation for him than I was. At least she liked boys.

Bill showed up with my Cherry Coke, accompanied by Lee Ann and Geoff. After handing me my soda, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to drop into an empty seat next to me. Lee Ann took the seat on my other side and gave me an approving look. I suppose I had just taken a major step. I had danced with a boy; I had actually let a boy put his arms around me in a social situation without freaking out, without being on stage. I can’t say that it had ever been high on my list of goals, but just now it seemed like a pretty decent accomplishment.

It’s funny. When Nikki gave me “homework” about learning to pleasure myself, I was really eager to try it the first chance I got. That was when I couldn’t see any way to become male again; now, though, even though my chances still didn’t seem good, it felt almost like a betrayal of my male self to give in to the urge – as though I didn’t really care to change back. It was silly; I knew that. It would be just taking advantage of an unusual, and hopefully temporary situation. It wasn’t hurting anybody, and might make me feel better, but just then I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood right then; the day had been an emotional roller coaster for me, after all, and it was hardly resolved. What was I supposed to do about Vicky? On the one hand, she was an important connection to my past, and if all went well, an important part of my future; she was the only one who remembered the real me, and I could talk to her about things that nobody else would understand. On the other, she was incredibly allergic to any discussion of what I needed to do in the here and now to cope, to deal with the real possibility that I was never going to be Marshall again.

And should I offer to get together with her tomorrow night? I was feeling a lot of pressure to spend more time with my roommates, and maybe I should be encouraging Vicky to deal with the possibility that she was going to have to find another boyfriend. It hurt, thinking of her with Kevin or anybody other guy, but if I was unavailable, shouldn’t I be supporting her relationship?

Compared to all of these issues, the idea of touching myself down there was pretty straightforward, and even that was too much for me. Fortunately, I was exhausted, so I managed to fall asleep relatively early and didn’t have to keep agonizing over them.

It was Susie who gave me a part of the answer the next day. We were in the stands watching the football game again, and during a lull in the crowd noise, she commented, “You seem to be in a better mood, today, Marsh. Did everything work out for you?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I did go from no apparent chance to a small chance, so that’s a positive.”

“‘A small chance’ of what?”

“Just something I’ve been worrying about a lot. You know. Relationships.”

“As in, ‘Will a certain boy call’?”

I laughed. “Nothing so mundane as that. How are things going with you and Phil?”

She rolled her eyes in response. “He’s really difficult; no wonder you gave up on him. He just can’t read hints, can he?”

“I guess not,” I shrugged, remembering what Lee Ann had said when I got back from break. “He just won’t let himself believe that a girl as pretty as you would actually be interested.”

“Thanks. Well, we’re all going out to a dance together tonight. Maybe I’ll just pull him onto the dance floor or something. Are you going to join us this time?”

“Um…” I bit my lip, considering. “One of my girlfriends wanted to hang out with me tonight.”

“Somebody not in our group? Bring her along.”

I tried to imagine Vicky getting along with Lee Ann and failed. Still… “I’ll ask her. I don’t know if she’ll like the idea, but I can try.”

When I called her after the game, Vicky was hesitant. “You know how I feel about Lee Ann, Marsh.”

“That was a different time line, Vix,” I insisted. “This Lee Ann never met me as a guy, and never tried to steal me away, if that’s even what she was doing. She’s a nice girl. Give her a chance.”

“You sure? Who’s boyfriend is she playing up to now?”

“Nobody’s. Look, she has a serious off-campus boyfriend, and the guy she’s been flirting with doesn’t even have a girlfriend.”

“So she’s just leading him on, is she?”

“No, you’ve got her all wrong. She’s not… look, she even offered to fix the guy up with me.” In hindsight, that might not have been the best thing to say.

“With you?” she sputtered. “And what did you say?”

“What do you think I said? That I wasn’t interested. But the point is, neither is she, and she’s not trying to monopolize him or anything.”

“I see,” she said in a tone that evinced her desire to smack Lee Ann across the face. “And what does this guy think is going on?”

“Um…” That was kind of an awkward question, given what Geoff had told me. “He knows she has a boyfriend.” I didn’t think it would help my case to point out that Chandra had assured him that said boyfriend was ripe for dumping, as she had intimated to me as well. But that was hardly Lee Ann’s fault, was it?

“Hmm… maybe I will come along,” Vicky said. “Especially if this boy is there. He might need rescuing or something.”

I sighed. Her attitude was going to be a problem, but at least I’d be able to spend time with her and my roommates at the same time.

“Oh, one more thing, Vicky,” I remembered to say before hanging up. “If they ask how we met, tell them that we met Freshman week but didn’t actually become close until the summer.”

“What? Why not just tell them the truth?”

“That I used to be a boy?”

“Oh…. I guess not. That would be kind of awkward, wouldn’t it?”

“Terry actually knew Marsha at the time you and I were dating, so there’s really no other way to explain how she never met you without telling our secret.”

“OK, Marsh.”

I told her to meet us at the room after dinner and we hung up.

We had a fairly large group that evening: the three of us, Greg, Vicky, Susie, Phil, Chandra, Rajiv and Geoff, Fred, Sam, Lisa and Sheila. Greg and Terry quickly vanished to the dance floor, as did Chandra and Rajiv and Lee Ann with Geoff. As the last of these couples left, Vicky leaned over to me, her hand gripping my arm.

“You didn’t tell me that Geoff was her latest victim,” she hissed.

“I did try to warn him, but Chandra keeps encouraging him.”

“Is Chandra the girl with Rajiv?”

“Mm hmm.”

As we were talking, Susie did manage to get Phil to dance with her; I didn’t see how. But just a moment later, Lee Ann and Geoff came back with a boy I didn’t know.

“Guys,” Lee Ann announced, “this is Geoff’s friend, Bill Tendler. Bill, that’s my roommate Marsh, her friend Vicky, Fed, Sam, Lisa, and Sheila.” She looked around. “Susie and Phil are dancing?”

A number of us murmured in the affirmative, and then Lee Ann looked expectantly at the newcomer.

“Would you like to dance, Marsh?” he asked me.

“Um… thanks, but no,” I managed. Vicky’s hand on my arm tightened suddenly.

Lee Ann sat next to me on the other side from Vicky and whispered in my ear, “This has to stop, Marsh. Bill is no threat and he’s not going to come on to you. He has a girlfriend back home, and just needs a girl to dance with. That’s all. It’s about time you got over your fear of guys.” To Bill, she added, “She’d love to dance with you,” and launched me out of my seat at him.

Confused, I looked back at Vicky, who seemed to be in shock, then at Bill who was watching me curiously. My brain was definitely not working just then and I couldn’t think of any reasonable excuse, so I followed him with trepidation. Not only was I about to dance with a boy, I had just left Vicky and Lee Ann sitting next to one another. Oh boy.

It was hard to speak over the music, but Bill tried. “What are you majoring in?” he shouted at me, as we started to dance. I’ve never really cared for what passes as dancing these days. In my grandparents’ time, they apparently had fairly formal dancing with actual steps and you could tell who was dancing with whom because they were always touching. I think modern dancing started in my parents’ time, and nowadays it seemed that you sort of danced at your partner than with her. Under the circumstances, though, I was grateful. Bill was gyrating eagerly to the music while I moved tentatively back and forth in his general vicinity. That made conversation doubly difficult, of course.

“Biology!” I yelled back. And then, just because it would be impolite not to, I added, “What about you?!”

“Math!”

Naturally, the music had stopped just before he shouted that, and he drew a lot of stares. I overheard somebody remark, “Yeah, I always thought ‘math’ would make a good curse word, too,” which got more than a few appreciative chuckles.

The band started again, and Bill evidently decided that conversation wasn’t the best use of his time, and started dancing again. I joined him. It’s not that I disliked dancing; in fact, I was sort of enjoying the motion and the music, and after a while I started swinging my hips, as I had at the concert. Of course, the fun part of dancing was enjoying your partner as well, and that simply wasn’t happening tonight.

Then the music changed. The next song was slow, and Bill pulled me in for a slow dance before I could react. He was tall enough that I couldn’t even see over his shoulder; I found myself staring wide-eyed at his chest from an inch or two away, my arms pulled in on either side of my head.

He must have felt my tension. “What’s wrong?” he asked, talking to the top of my head.

“Everything,” I managed. “Could we please just go back to the gang?”

“Huh?” he asked, surprised. “If you don’t want to slow-dance, why don’t we just go back to dancing the way we were?”

“No, you’ve already manhandled me, and I’m really not comfortable being with you. Let’s go.”

“Oh, sorry,” he said, and released me. “I just thought…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought.” But he followed me back off the dance floor. “See, I’m used to dancing with Julia, and we always slow dance, and….”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I cut him off. “It’s done, OK?”

“Lee Ann’s going to kill me, and I don’t even know what I did wrong.”

“Look, you were just being… I mean, you weren’t thinking, is all.”

“Are you OK?”

“I’m fine,” I snapped. “But I’m also through with dancing for now.”

“Right. Sorry.”

By now we had reached the place where my friends were sitting. Vicky and Lee Ann were talking, and Vicky seemed wary, but not openly hostile, which I took to be a good sign. I didn’t see Sam and Sheila, so presumably they had paired off.

“Back so soon?” Lee Ann asked us. “How was it?”

I shrugged. Lee Ann had moved to sit next to Vicky, so I dropped into her old seat and watched as she shot Bill a questioning look and got a shrug from him as well, although his looked guilty.

“She didn’t appreciate the slow dancing,” he admitted when she tilted her head at him. He sat in the seat next to me, which was much closer than I would have preferred. As far as I was concerned, Lee Ann’s little experiment was over, and he should really focus his attention elsewhere.

“Vicky tells me you two spent a bit of time together over the summer, Marsh,” Lee Ann said, changing the subject.

I nodded, suddenly wishing that Vicky and I had discussed what it was we were going to say that we had done. Fortunately, she jumped in then.

“I told Lee Ann about spending time at your parents’ house while they were away,” she said.

“Right. She came over to keep me company,” I agreed.

“This was when your parents took that second honeymoon?” Lee Ann asked. “Cool,” she said in response to my surprised nod. Apparently that was something else in my family’s life that had gone unchanged; plus, she had obviously known about it, but hadn’t been the one Marsha had invited over. I wondered why. I made a mental note to ask Tina about it.

“Marsh,” Vicky said suddenly, “I’ve just remembered that I have an art project due, and I need to get back to it. Can you walk me out?”

“Oh, sure,” I responded, and excused myself.

“What?” I asked Vicky, once we were far enough away not be overheard.

She gave me a poisonous look, “What was that like for you, slow-dancing with a boy?”

“Not very pleasant, and way too long,” I answered.

“Uh huh. Take a look, Marsh,” she said, bitterly. “This is your future, if you don’t change back. Lee Ann is going to keep pushing you into situations like this. Your friends are going to expect you to date boys and dance with boys and fuss over boys, and do all kinds of things most girls usually do. Is that what you want?”

“I don’t see what else…”

“You don’t, huh? You said that you needed to start getting used to living as a girl, maybe. I just wanted to remind you why you’re not going to be comfortable. Don’t lose sight of that, Marshall. Being my boyfriend again is your only realistic future.”

We had gotten to the outside door, and Vicky paused before leaving. “Have fun with Lee Ann; I’m sure she has even more… creative ideas for you.”

“So now what?” Vicky asked me after Eric left.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Just having the feeling that there’s a chance, however slim it might be, takes a real weight off my mind. I’m just not sure what to do now. Eric’s going to be doing the bulk of the work, and it takes skills and knowledge that you and I don’t have.”

“We still need to interview some of the Strangers,” she reminded me.

I nodded. “There is that.”

“So, you want to take in a movie?”

I smiled. “That sounds like a really great idea.”

And it was. There was a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a lot of the students had come in costumes and brought props and were shouting at the screen. It was a totally fun experience and I didn’t have think about anything except being with Vicky and enjoying myself. The only weird part came when I walked her home, and once again the two of us hesitated, since we had been so used to ending that particular moment with at least a goodnight kiss, even if she didn’t invite me inside. Now, of course, none of that made any sense.

So when she asked, “Do you want to come in?” I stared for a moment, certain that she had made a mistake out of habit. But she saw me stare, flushed and then added, “I don’t mean it like that! I just thought we could talk some more.”

I nodded, and followed her inside. When we got to her bedroom, she sat on her bed and I took her chair. She seemed nervous, as though she wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure how.

“So…” she started.

“So…?” I prompted her.

“Um… how long do you think it’s going to take? You know, before Eric actually finds…”

“Oh…” I looked away. It wasn’t something I wanted to think too hard about. “It’s kind of hard to say. It pretty much has to be before he graduates, though, doesn’t it?”

She stared, so I explained, “He’s helping us because of his sister. Once he graduates, do we really have any hope that some other physics major will step in? I don’t think so.”

“Oh…”

“We’re already assuming that there’s something for him to find. We’ll just also assume that he can find them in time, that’s all.”

“OK…” The answer obviously didn’t satisfy her. Well, I wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about it, either. But it was all I had.

“And that sort of leads to something, else, Vix. I sort of have to think about what happens if it doesn’t work.”

“I don’t think we need to think about that now,” she said quickly.

“No, we do,” I insisted. “Just in case. Just to be safe. I don’t want to have to suddenly try to figure things out if I find out I really am stuck. As long as it looks like there’s a way back, I don’t mind exploring. There’s no real pressure. But there’s no way I’ll be able to do it if I have no choice.”

“Marsh, it’s already hard for me to keep up with you when you’re not trying to act like a girl. Look at me. I’m wearing skirts and dresses like everyday now, and I don’t really have enough. But you wear them, so I need to. And you sew. Cook, too, if I remember right.”

“Cooking isn’t–” I started, but she cut me off.

“I have to be girlier than you, Marsh. I have to be. That’s why I’m even dating a guy I’m not really attracted to – at least I know I don’t have to worry about you doing that. But it seems so much easier for you to be girly without trying. If you started actually working at it, I don’t know what I’d do.

It took me a moment to react to that. On the one hand, my heart leapt upon hearing that she wasn’t really attracted to Kevin. On the other hand… “I’m not really being girly, Vix. Wearing a dress? It’s just a costume – and one that fits the role I’m playing. And sewing is just a craft.”

“One that you’re apparently good at.”

“Tailors sew, and they’re men. I just get called a seamstress because I’m a girl.”

“‘Because you’re a girl,’” she repeated. “Is that how you think, now? That you’re a girl?”

“Well…” I started. “I’m not sure how else to say it. I mean, I’m not really a girl, not in my heart of hearts, but for now, I sort of am. If this thing with Eric works out, I won’t be anymore, but until then…

“That’s the key. I don’t know that it’s going to work. I hope so…”

“Me, too.”

“Yeah, but until then, I have to live like this, and I can’t really keep telling myself that I’m just playing a role–”

“You just did,” she pointed out.

“OK, maybe I’m still lying to myself, a little. This isn’t easy. To keep my sanity, I have to believe certain things. When I decided that there was no hope, I freaked out. I couldn’t think. It was like everything came crashing down, all at once. To be really honest with myself, I know that my chances aren’t all that great of getting back, but I can’t think about it that way. I have to believe that it’s probably going to happen, and that I’m just sort of dealing with the ‘what if’ case. But I do have to deal with it, because there’s a pretty good chance that it’s going to happen.”

She didn’t answer right away. She sat, brooding, on her bed for a moment. Then she turned to me. “But you do want to change back, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“And… you’ll want to be my boyfriend again if you do?”

The ‘if’ didn’t bother me as much as the last time she had used it; ‘if I change back’ is still better than it could have been. “Vicky,” I told her, “you’re very special to me. I miss ‘us.’ I want to be part of a couple with you again, and if there is anything at all that I can do to make that happen, I will.”

She nodded, apparently reassured. “OK. I really loved… I mean, love you, Marsh.”

“Yeah. Um… so about Kevin…”

She looked embarrassed. “Does that bother you so much, that I’m seeing another guy right now? I mean, you’re not around as a guy, otherwise…”

“Yeah, I’m… going to have to deal with it, I guess. I mean, yeah, it bothers me, but I have to say that it’s your right to have a boyfriend. Loving somebody means wanting them to be happy, right? Is he making you happy, Vix?”

“Well, it’s kind of early yet.”

“I just don’t know why you’d be seeing a guy you’re not really attracted to, is all.”

She squirmed at the question. “It’s not like I have a lot of choices. There’s too many girls here. There’s too much competition. I take what I can get.”

“Yeah, but you’re special, Vix. You should be able to get any guy you like.”

“You’re sweet, Marsh, but that’s not how it works.”

“Are the guys here all stupid, or what? I mean, I’m not crazy about seeing you with another guy, but… but, when I change back, that’ll all be undone anyway.”

She smiled. “Except that you and I will remember, right? You’re not worried that I’ll be so much in love with whoever I date that I won’t want to be with you anymore?”

Actually, I hadn’t thought of that, and now that she mentioned it, it did worry me, but I couldn’t really admit that, could I? “I’ll have to take that chance, I guess.”

“Thank you.”

We sort of looked at each for a while. A couple of months ago, being together in her bedroom would probably have led to us kissing and cuddling by now. Our rhythm seemed thrown off without it, and things were starting to feel a bit awkward. We’d expressed our feelings and hopes, and now one of us had to come up with something else to say, but anything I could think of them seemed so anticlimactic just now. How do you talk about classes, or even theater, after expressing wistfulness about a love that has to be on hold?

Vicky tried, at any rate. “So… how’s the play going?”

“Um… not too badly. I mean, it’s going really well. I’m having a good time, and Alvin really is a good director. I think it’s going to be great.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

“Yeah.”

I think both of us were reluctant for me to leave. It felt as though there were still things that we needed to say to each other; I just couldn’t think what. Neither could she, apparently. But if I left, would we ever think of them?

Possibly not. After several more minutes of awkward silence, I gave up. “I suppose…”

“Yeah…?”

“I should probably go home.”

“OK. Are we going to go out again tomorrow?”

“Shouldn’t you be trying to spend more time with Kevin?” I asked, surprised.

“I think he has another date tomorrow. That’s why he suggested tonight.”

“Vix, you should have told me. We could have rescheduled.”

“No…” she twisted her hands, awkwardly. “He asked me first, and I wasn’t comfortable, so I told him that you and I already had plans. That’s why I had to find you first thing today, so it wouldn’t really be a lie.”

I stared at her, incredulous. “Why are you even going to House Parties with this guy, if you’re not comfortable with him?”

“I told you, I don’t have a lot of choices. And I don’t want to be alone this year. I did that last year before I met you, and almost everybody else I knew had a date. It was horrible.”

I certainly agreed with that. That was going to be my own experience in a month, if I hadn’t changed back by then. It was yet another thing that I was trying not to think about. Still… “Vix, I think you either need to find a way to like being with this guy or cancel your date. You don’t really want to have to spend two nights with a guy you don’t like.”

“No, I’m sure it’s going to be all right. This afternoon wasn’t too bad, other than hurting my wrist.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“OK… You know, I really should be getting back home.”

“I guess so.”

“Take care of yourself. OK, Vix?”

“Yeah, you, too.”

She didn’t walk me out. I think we were both uncertain as to whether that was appropriate or not. And I walked home as I expected to be for some time. Alone.

Allie was just getting ready to go out when Vicky called her, but she was happy to help out. She called her brother Eric, who called Vicky back and agreed to meet us at the Grill. Fifteen minutes later, the three of us were chatting over sodas and ice cream sundaes.

“Thanks again for coming out to meet with us,” I told him after we were all settled.

He laughed. “I had expected to be alone tonight. Spending it with two lovely ladies is a definite improvement.”

Vicky simpered at the compliment, while I forced a smile and tried to figure out how I should have reacted. Forcing the problem out of my mind, I asked, “Did Allie explain what we wanted?”

“Well, she was in a hurry, but she said something about trying to find a research paper?”

“Sort of. We want to find any papers that might have been written by the guy who did the time travel experiment.”

“Oh. This is Strangers in the Mirror business? Allie didn’t say.”

“Is that a problem?” Vicky asked, concerned.

Eric looked thoughtful. “Well… I understand that Allie and some others have looked, but didn’t find anything.”

“That’s because they were looking for papers written by somebody named, ‘Davis’,” I explained. “I think that’s too limiting. I think we need to expand the search.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, that’s where you come in. I haven’t learned how to do that kind of research, and I wouldn’t know a relevant paper if I saw it. I figure that’s the kind of stuff that you, as a senior in the department, would know.”

He seemed amused. “And how do you propose to the limit the search?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have any idea how many physics papers are published every year? You’re not suggesting that I read every one ever written, are you?”

“I guess I assumed that you could look for papers on certain topic.”

“Ah, but what topics? Trust me, if anybody had ever submitted a serious paper proposing time travel, he would have been laughed out of the field. And if the reviewers were impressed, the news would have shot through every physics department in the world. Most of us are science fiction readers, after all. I think I can safely say, without doing any research at all, that no papers on time travel have been submitted to any reputable journal.”

I sat back in my chair. I had been so sure that my idea was going to work. “So you’re saying that this is a waste of time?”

“No, I’m not saying that at all. I just want you to realize the magnitude of what you’re asking. We have to have some way to narrow down the possibilities, or it really would be a waste of time.”

“Oh. So how should we proceed?”

“Well, the first place to start would be with any papers published by the department over the past, say, five years. We can probably get them from the department library; I think they maintain reprints of all the professors’ articles. That will take some time to go through. The problem is you are assuming that there has to have been a cover-up, right?

“Right, because otherwise there’s no way to find them.”

“I agree. But in that case, they would probably have pulled his articles from the library, as well.”

“Oh.”

“And there’s a problem with the whole idea of a cover-up in the first place. Professors generally teach courses and have grad students doing research for them, and those grad students tend to teach or run labs or otherwise interact with the undergraduates. It’s simply not that easy to make a professor disappear and not have anybody notice. Even if they got all the professors and all the grad students to go along with a conspiracy, what about all the other students? I’d think I would have noticed.”

I was stricken. “But… you just said that this wasn’t a waste of time.”

“Well, actually I simply said that I wasn’t saying that it was a waste of time. It might well be; I don’t know. Maybe there is a way to make a prof disappear without anybody noticing. I don’t know.”

“As long as we’re raising objections,” I said morosely, “a junior I know in the department says that time travel is impossible, anyway.”

He nodded. “Could be. As far as I know, there’s nothing in any theory we know of that would have a problem if time travel is possible, and nothing that would have a problem if it’s impossible. So I wouldn’t rule it out completely, but it does point up the basic problem in trying to guess what papers would lead to time travel.”

“You keep saying this isn’t a waste of time, but every point you make seems to push it further into the ‘impossible’ category,” I pointed out.

He didn’t answer immediately, but stood up. I thought I might have offended him, but all he said was, “You’ve finished your ice cream. Would you like another? My treat.”

Caught off guard, I could only reply, “No thanks, I have to–” I stopped myself in time, as the next words about to leave my mouth seemed to be, “watch my figure.” I’m pretty sure I’d heard Vicky – or maybe it was Jackie – say that in the past. My subconscious must have decided that that was the proper female response to the offer. I would really have to try not to get distracted, but how exactly do you stay on your guard all the time? “… Sure,” I forced myself to say.

He returned shortly with two fresh sundaes, and I saw Vicky, who had refused the offer, eyeing mine, so I offered her a share. While the two of us were digging in, Eric continued his thought.

“OK, so this isn’t going to be easy, but there are some things we can do. First, I need to know absolutely everything you girls remember about the experiment. I’ll ask Allie for her take as well, and I presume you can get answers from some of the other subjects. So… who’s going to go first?”

Vicky and I looked at one another for a moment, and then she started. “I remember them saying something about what if you could examine something in the past and how it would be different if it happened differently. Um, I think they said that I would actually be able to see it and would need to tell them what I saw.”

“And how did they say that you would be able to see it?” Eric prompted her.

“Well, they had me lie down on this table – it looked something like the tables you lie on in the doctor’s office. They put like a helmet or something on my head. Then there was this noise from below me, and… I think they said it would take some time before anything happened and that I was supposed to come back and tell them about…” She shook her head. I think the thing made me a bit drowsy, ‘cause I’m having trouble remembering some of the details. I woke up changed a few weeks later. I tried to find the lab again because I was freaking out, but I couldn’t. That’s all I remember.”

Eric looked at me next.

“Well, I remember the table pretty much the way Vicky does, although I don’t really remember leaving. It’s like I must have been in a daze for a while afterwards. I think they told me to imagine being able to see how a small moment years ago could make a difference in today. Oh, any they asked me a bunch of questions about when I was born and where, how old my parents were, if we had moved since they got married. Stuff like that.”

“Oh, right,” Vicky said. “They asked me those things, too.”

“Obviously, they needed that kind of information to figure out where and when we were conceived, since that’s what they were going to change.”

“Makes sense. Do either of you remember them describing the apparatus they used? Did they use some kind of technical term? You keep saying, ‘they.’ How many people were in the lab?”

“There were three guys,” I said. “One was the grad student who met me at the entrance to the physics building and there were two more in the lab.”

“And they mentioned something about fielding,” Vicky put in.

“Fielding?” Eric asked.

“I think so. Or maybe it was shielding.” She looked at me for confirmation. “Wielding?”

“I think it was shielding,” I said. “One of them said something about enabling the shielding. Is this helping at all?”

“Well, not as much as I could hope,” he answered. “I suppose it’s too much to ask that they explained the theory.”

I shook my head. “I probably wouldn’t have understood it anyway,” I admitted. “I haven’t taken any physics since high school.”

“I didn’t even take any in high school,” Vicky added.

“All right,” Eric said. “I’m not really surprised. The whole experiment is just so weird. I’ve never heard of a physics experiment using volunteers like this. Can you describe the helmet? Was there something under the table?”

“That’s where the helmet was before they put it on my head,” I remembered. I guess there were some wires, but I couldn’t really see them, but they must have led to some kind of device to preserve our memories across the time change.” Then something else occurred to me. “That’s probably why our memories of leaving the experiment are blurred. It couldn’t have been captured.”

Eric sighed. “OK, this isn’t really an awful lot to go on. I’m going to talk it over with some of my classmates. Maybe we can come up with a better strategy than just reading everything in sight, because that’s just not going to be useful.”

“So you have no idea how long it would take to figure things out?” I asked him.

“Not based on what you’ve told me, no. But as long as I can find time, I’ll keep looking until graduation. It’ll give me an excuse to read lots of different physics articles, anyway.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe we can make into some kind of a game, just to keep it interesting. Some articles can be pretty dry if they’re not your area of study.”

“Should we offer some kind of prize?” Vicky asked.

He laughed. “I don’t think thats necessary. I mean, we major in physics because we like physics. Now if you want to meet some physics majors, I could introduce you. We’re really nice guys. Um…” He looked at me. “Of course, if you’d like to go out to movie or something with me, that could be fun…”

“No thanks,” I said. His invitation didn’t seem as threatening as it might have; still, it was the first time a guy had actually asked me out, and I had expected to feel queasy at the prospect. I didn’t. I didn’t actually feel anything.

There was a brief moment of awkward silence, which Vicky broke. “Anyway, thanks for doing this.”

“Yeah, we really appreciate it,” I said.

“And thanks for the ice cream!” Vicky added.

“Yeah.”

He eyed us for a moment, as though he expected something more. “OK. Just see if you can get me any more information, OK? Um, can I walk you guys somewhere?”

“No thanks,” I said again. “We’re probably going to just hang out here for a while.”

“OK… I’ll be in touch, then. If I have any more questions, I’ll let you know.” And he left.

“Well?” Vicky asked after he was gone. “What do you think?”

“What a difference from Jay! I think he’s actually taking us seriously!”

“I know, right?”

“Even if he seemed a bit tentative, we’re actually doing something now! Finally! We need to do something to thank Allie. And maybe I can be a guy again. What do you think?”

“I hope so, Marsh. You know I do. So what do we do now?”

“Well, we need to go back to the Strangers and see if anybody remembers anything more; something that would help Eric narrow things down.”

I nodded. It might not be a great chance, but it was a chance. There had to be a trail we could follow. There just had to be.

I left Nikki’s dorm with my mind starting to function again. While my outlook was still pretty bleak, I had some specific recommendations for action – and that meant that I could focus on the here-and-now and not think too much about the future. I had gotten pretty good at not thinking about things over the past month.

I was standing outside my dorm room, fumbling in my purse for the key, when through the door I heard a voice suddenly raised in anger. It was Lee Ann.

“… cheating on her!”

I hesitated for a moment, and then unlocked the door. I felt nothing but disgust for whomever they were discussing. The guy didn’t even realize how good he had it, still being male, and here he was, cheating on his girlfriend. I may not be perfect, but at least I could console myself that I had never done that. I had never cheated on a girlfriend.

But as I opened the door, an unwelcome memory intruded. According to Vicky, I had lost interest in her when I met Lee Ann. OK, technically, I hadn’t cheated on her, but wasn’t it still a betrayal at the emotional level? I really didn’t need to think that way. Not now. I might start thinking that this turned-into-a-girl thing was a punishment or something, and that I deserved it.

The conversation stopped abruptly as I entered, and after a moment I realized that my roommates were staring at me.

“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Go on and discuss the jerk – I’m sure he deserves it.” I was halfway to my room when I realized that they were still not talking, and turned in surprise. “I could hear you out in the hallway,” I explained, taking their silence for embarrassment at being overheard.

But apparently that wasn’t it. “I was just worried about you,” Lee Ann told me.

“Me?” I responded, my curiosity pulling me a bit out of my thoughts. “What does this have to do with me?”

“I told her she was imagining things,” Terry put in, a touch of anger in her voice.

“You didn’t see how miserable she was,” Lee Ann shot back, sounding defensive. I, of course, remained clueless, and I looked back and forth at my roommates, looking for an answer that made sense.

After the two of them stared at each other for another moment, Terry finally started, “Marsh, it’s not that we’d have any objections…”

“… and we really understand…” Lee Ann added.

“Objections to what?” I asked, puzzled.

“Vicky,” Lee Ann said firmly.

“You and Vicky,” Terry added. “And Lee Ann thinks she’s cheating on you.”

“What? Cheating?! But…” In a sense, she was correct. I had felt as though Vicky was cheating on me by agreeing to go out with Kevin. Technically, though, she wasn’t. And technically, I hadn’t cheated on her, either, but it still hurt. Trying to dismiss the thought, I spoke the truth that I thought relevant. “Neither of us is into girls, Lee Ann.”

“I just thought…”

“Lee Ann thought that there was something odd about the way you were reacting this morning. And then there was the way you got really embarrassed when I asked you about Vicky…”

I shrugged and shook my head. At this point, I probably wouldn’t have minded if they were right, but that wasn’t happening.

“Marsh, I’m really sorry,” Lee Ann told me. “I hope you’re not offended.”

I shrugged again. Being thought a lesbian was so far down the list of my problems, I wasn’t sure it was even on the list at this point. Besides, lesbians were almost certainly higher on the scale of social acceptability than whatever I was.

“Well, at least you seem to be in a better mood,” Terry noted.

I nodded. “I had a nice talk with my friend Nikki, and she helped me.”

Lee Ann looked at me expectantly. “Can you tell us what’s bothering you? Is it the House Parties thing?”

I sighed. I had just done the “talk things out” thing with Nikki, and I wasn’t really in the mood to do it again right now. “I guess that’s part of it,” I conceded. Even it wasn’t a particularly big part. “I’m still working things out.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“It’s OK, Marsh,” Terry said when I hesitated. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Lee Ann nodded in agreement, which just made me feel worse. My roommates were being much kinder to me than I deserved. They trusted me, and I was keeping secrets from them, important secrets, secrets that I couldn’t reveal, both for my dignity as well as their peace of mind. I didn’t deserve to be treated so well.

And after all that preparation, they never asked again how I had met Vicky!

After dinner, I called Vicky to figure out our plans for the evening.

“Why don’t you pick me up and we’ll decide then, OK?” she suggested.

I was a bit surprised, and said so. “You don’t think it’s a bit weird, one girl picking another one up?”

“Um, no,” she reassured me. “It’s pretty normal, actually. Unless you’re not comfortable with the idea, seeing as… you know.”

“No, that’s OK. At least I know where your room is. It’s easier than trying to find you outside of wherever we’re going.”

Still, it felt strange, picking her up from her room. Strange because it was so familiar, and so little in my new life was. Strange because I had to pretend not to know her roommates as Vicky introduced us. And strange because the whole idea of picking up Vicky for a date was what I wished I could be doing in earnest, and yet had to pretend that it was just two girls getting together as friends. Somehow, it all just irked me even further than I already was.

“So, where did you want to go?” I asked as we left. “Did you want to check out the movies? What do two girls who are just friends do when they go out, anyway? Should we go get our hair done? Maybe go dress shopping?”

She stopped walking and confronted me, hands on hips. “I think you’re making way too much of this, Marsh. Didn’t you tell me you’d gone out with your roommates and some of the other girls on your hall?”

“‘Too much’?” I echoed. “Oh, sure, since it’s clearly not too much to have your entire identity stripped from you, to lose everything that you cared about, everything you enjoyed. Oh yeah, I’m definitely overreacting here.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it! What’s happened to you is horrible, but that doesn’t mean that you have to make it even worse.”

“‘Make it worse’? How could I make this worse?”

“By pretending that you’re not enjoying anything at all. You’re enjoying the play, aren’t you? At least you were a few days ago. And I knew you were enjoying the sewing – you said you would even want to keep doing it if you changed back.”

“If,” I muttered, but she kept right on going.

“I’ll bet there’s a bunch of other things you’re enjoying about being a girl, that you won’t admit, even to yourself. I saw you with that baby, Marsh. You were definitely enjoying yourself.”

“Will you forget about the baby? I’m embarrassed enough about that.”

“Fine. But don’t tell me that you’ve lost everything you cared about or enjoyed.”

“So you think that I’m better off this way? You prefer me this way?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I don’t. Marsh, you know I want you back, don’t you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know why, now that you have Kevin.”

Her tone turned soft. “Oh, Marsh, are you still agonizing about that? Kevin could never replace you in my heart. It’s just… I don’t have a lot of options, right now.” As she said that, she turned her hands over in a gesture of futility, and I noticed a bruise on her right hand.

I grabbed her hand and pulled her under a light. She had a pretty bad welt on her wrist. “What did you do to yourself?”

She looked embarrassed. “Oh, it was just something stupid. Kevin asked me out, you know, so that House Parties wouldn’t be our first date, and I told him I was going out with you, so we got together this afternoon.”

“Why this afternoon? House Parties is four weeks away.”

“Yeah, I told him that, but he sort of insisted. So we drove into town and sort of walked around.”

“He has a car? Terrific. One more thing he does better than me.”

“Will you stop it? This isn’t about you!”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. I just…”

“Anyway,” she continued, ignoring me, “we walked around and… you know how you used to joke about walking on either side of a lamp post and crashing us into it? Well, we were holding hands and I went to the other side of one from him, and he didn’t let go in time. So I wound up with a bruise.”

“What an idiot! How much sense does it take to figure out that you need to let go before running into a lamp post?”

“Yeah, well, I think he was already mad at me.”

“So the ‘something stupid’ was him, not you.”

She nodded. “I think that, no matter how angry you were, you would have made sure to let go.”

“Yeah.”

We had started walking again, even though we hadn’t agreed yet on where.

“I just wish you had some ideas, Marsh. Isn’t there something you can try?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Seems like every idea I have, the Strangers say that they’ve already tried. But you know, now that I’ve lost everything, maybe I’ll feel less pressure to come up with a sensible idea.”

“You haven’t lost – wait. How is that a good thing?”

I stopped and faced her. “My ideas don’t have to be sensible, now. So I can try anything. It can hardly hurt, right?”

“Does that mean that you have an idea?”

I shook my head and starting walking again. “Not really.”

“Oh.”

“Thing is,” I continued. “If we see this as a game, the first thing we do is assume away whatever makes it unwinnable. So the possibility that changing the past might have eliminated the experiment can be ignored. If it happened, we can’t do anything about. The only way to get anywhere is to assume that they’re still around somewhere.”

“Right.”

“Which means that they are in hiding. So how would we find them if they are hiding?”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But maybe there’s another way to go about this. Assume that the administration really did a good job hiding them, and stop trying to find them physically.”

“OK…”

Recasting the problem did seem to be helping me think about it. If my chances of success were pretty much zero, it meant that I could treat it as an intellectual exercise, a puzzle, rather than an emergency. And that was exactly the kind of thing that an aspiring pre-med science major should be able to solve.

“So how else could we find them? Papers, that’s how.”

“But didn’t you already do searches for papers?”

“Sure, using web searches and looking for the name ‘Davis.’ That’s obviously not the way. But scientists do research using papers all the time.”

“How?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “You usually learn that junior or senior year, and we’re all freshman and sophomores.” I looked at her as a sudden thought came into my mind. “You don’t suppose that’s why no upperclassmen were included, do you? So that we wouldn’t be able to find them?”

She shrugged, but I was mostly talking at her at this point. Our outing was turning into a problem-solving session, so when we hit the path that led to the Grill, I took it rather than one that would take us to an on-campus movie.

“You know, maybe looking by name was the mistake. Something like time travel wouldn’t be developed all at once, judging by the way science works. This guy must have published other work that hinted at time travel, or set the stages for it. That’s what we need to find.”

“Marsh, that’s it!” Vicky said enthusiastically. “That’s how to find them!”

“Maybe. I’m not getting too hopeful. Not yet. Thinking it’s just a game seems to be working for me, and I don’t know what the chances are. Besides, I wouldn’t have the first idea of how to actually find such papers. What we really need is an upperclassman who is majoring in physics, and the only one I know is so dismissive of the whole idea that I doubt he’d be willing to spend any time on it. I could ask him, I guess. Nothing to lose, right?”

“What about Allie’s brother?”

“What?”

“Didn’t Allie say that her big brother was a physics major?”

I stopped and stared. “I completely forgot about that.” Maybe there was a chance, after all, however slim. “Do you think he’d help us?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a smile, “but I think we’ve just figured out what we’re going to be doing, tonight.”

“OK,” Nikki said, as I settled in, her robe around my near-naked body. “Would you like me to make some tea or coffee?”

“I… guess some tea would be nice,” I admitted. At least it would warm me up.

A few minutes later, she came back with two hot cups and handed me one. While waiting for it to cool enough to drink, I inhaled the aroma of the herbs.

“Now,” she said, sitting next to me. “Tell me why you’re so convinced that you’re stuck.”

I looked at her in surprise. That wasn’t the direction I had expected her to take. “Well, I just told you. I’ve looked, and the Strangers in the Mirror have looked. They’re not in the physics building, which is where we all remember them being. There’s no record of any physics professor who might have been involved with such an experiment ever having been at Piques. If time changed so he never did it, there is no way back, and if he’s still around, we have no ideas on how to find him.”

“But you still want to change back.”

“Yes!”

“OK, so instead of giving up, why not keep an eye out for more ideas, and in the meantime try to see how you can accept staying this way, since you might have to.”

“Will have to, you mean,” I contradicted her. “I just don’t see any realistic solution.”

“Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t,” she said calmly, and sipped her tea. “But until you get more information, you can’t do anything about it, right?”

“Right.”

“So in the meantime, why don’t we talk about your other option? What don’t you like about being a girl? You’ve seemed to be pretty happy the past month.”

“I told you–” I started.

“Yes, I know. You thought it was just temporary. But if you hated something that you thought was temporary, wouldn’t you just grit your teeth and bear it? I’ve seen you happy, Marsh. Not just putting up with things, but actually enjoying yourself. So it must be possible for you to be happy this way, even if you are really are stuck.”

I shook my head. “Doing something for a short while is one thing. Sure, I could find things to be happy about, but that’s because I was only thinking of this as an experiment.” I sipped my own tea as she watched me. When she didn’t say anything, I added, “It’s like playing a character. I knew lots of girls in high school who thought it was fun to play loose women or prostitute characters on stage. That doesn’t mean that they’d be willing to live that way.”

“But do you really have a choice? Isn’t that what you just told me? That you’re stuck? So it seems to me, Marsha,” and I winced as she said that name again, “that your only real choice is whether to be a happy girl or an unhappy girl.”

I didn’t answer immediately, but stood up and paced the room away from her. After a moment I turned back and answered. “Obviously, I want to be happy, but–”

“You want to be a happy girl,” she insisted. “Say it, Marsha. You need to acknowledge this. Say that you want to be a happy girl.”

“Look, I need time. Accepting this isn’t that easy. I mean… I know I’m stuck. I know I’m… that I’m…”

“A girl. Say it.”

“It’s not that easy!”

“Sure it is.” She stood up and walked right up to me. “Say it. Say, “I. Am. A. Girl.”

Exasperated, I muttered, “I’m a girl.”

“I. Want. To. Be. A. Happy. Girl.”

“I… I can’t. I can’t say that. Please, Nikki.”

She sighed and went back to her seat. “OK, let’s try something else. “Tell me why you’re not happy today and she put up a hand when I started to answer. “Aside from being stuck as a girl. Is that the only reason you were so down when you came over? Is that the only thing bothering you?”

“No,” I admitted, returning to my seat. “I told my roommates that I was going to be spending time with Vicky, and that we were really close, and Terry wanted to know why she’d never heard of Vicky before, since she’s known me since we got here. I don’t have a good answer, and I told her that I’d met Vicky before I knew her because I didn’t know that she’d known me – I mean, Marsha – for so long. So anything I say is going to be a lie, since I can’t tell her about Marshall. I don’t want to lie to her.”

Nikki gave me an appraising glance. “I think it’s interesting that the first thing that you thought of when I asked you what was bothering you about being a girl was your relationship with your roommate. You’re definitely learning to think as a girl. I don’t know that a boy would have thought about relationships so quickly.”

“Well… if I were having problems with my roommates, wouldn’t I be worried about that? I don’t see how that’s a girl thing.”

She shrugged. “At any rate, let’s see what we can come up with. When did you actually meet Vicky?”

I had to think a bit. “I think Geoff was seeing her roommate, and Vicky didn’t have a boyfriend, so she tagged along to a dance. I had just broken up with Jackie, and I went to sit with Geoff and… umm I think her name was Cherise, and Vicky was sitting with them. I asked her to dance, and we just sort of kept on seeing each other. That would have been, like, the end of March.”

“And you dated over the summer?”

I nodded. “We were going out for about six months until we sort of drifted apart. At least that’s the way I remember it. Vicky says that I lost interest in her after meeting Lee Ann and so she let me break up with her.”

“She let you break up with her?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Does she have self-esteem problems?”

“I don’t know. I guess I never thought about it. Why does it matter?”

Nikki looked surprised by my question. “I was just trying to understand her, is all. Hmm… I suppose that’s not important now, but it does sound like an odd thing to say.”

“I… don’t feel comfortable talking about Vicky right now. I just want to focus on what I’m supposed to tell Terry and Lee Ann.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You might have a bit of work to do on your girl talk, Marsh. But OK. What if you said that you met Vicky at the beginning of last year, but only got close over the summer? Maybe you talked online a lot, and then lost touch at the beginning of the new school year?”

I thought about it. It seemed to be consistent with what I had already said. “Of course, that’s not exactly true, is it?”

“What’s true is that Marsha might never have met Vicky at all, right? As far as you both know? But isn’t it also possible that the two met as I said?”

The idea surprised me, and bothered me somehow, as though I didn’t like the idea that Marsha might have known Vicky, too. But I nodded. “I suppose it is possible. So it’s more of a guess than a lie, right?”

“Right. But haven’t you sort of been doing a lot of that lately, anyway?”

The accusation hurt, at least in part because I couldn’t totally deny it. “I think I’ve been trying to do that as little as possible. I mean, acting a role isn’t technically lying, is it? Besides, telling the whole truth would be so much worse, and I’d be making people miserable, and–”

Nikki put up her hand to stop me. “I’m not accusing you. You do what you have to do. I’m not sure where you’re drawing the line.”

“Well, I’d rather let people draw the wrong conclusions than outright lie to them, if I can. My whole life is a lie right now, sort of, and I’m just trying to get by. But yeah, I can use your idea. The fact is that we’re close, and that’s what really matters, right?”

“Right. So, problem solved. Would you like some more tea?”

I looked at my cup in surprise. I had finished it while we were talking, so I handed it to Nikki and she went to get refills. I rehearsed explaining Vicky to Terry, and felt comfortable with the result; it was about as close to the truth as I could reasonably get.

Nikki came back and handed me my now-refilled cup. “OK, one problem solved. What else is bothering you?”

I laughed. “Nikki, you don’t think you’re going to make everything all right in one sitting, do you?”

“Well, you’re already in a better mood, so I think we’re making good progress. We don’t have to solve everything, Marsh. Just make you feel better. Here’s the thing. You’ve got friends. You’ve got people who care about you. Me, your roommates, your sister, your parents… Isn’t that what really matters?”

“Well… I mean it does kind of matter if you’re a boy or a girl.”

“But why does it matter? What did you like about being a boy that you can’t do now?”

“Uh… I don’t know exactly. I just liked it. It was comfortable”

“No reason you can’t like being a girl too, right? You just need to work at it. So tell me something else that is bothering you.”

She looked so confident, and so concerned, that I couldn’t help smiling and trying to play along. I was definitely feeling less angsty already. I knew I was upset. I just couldn’t quite feel all of it. It gave me a bit of confidence to bring up a subject that was really embarrassing, but to which I really wanted an answer.

“Well…” I started. “You remember that I told you I was asexual? That I didn’t find anybody sexually attractive?”

She nodded.

“Well, that’s not quite true anymore.”

“That’s great, Marsh! Who’s the lucky guy? Or girl, as it may be?”

I hesitated, trying to think of the best way to say it – which for me basically meant the most dramatic way. But I didn’t have any great ideas, so I just told her straight out, “Me, actually.”

“That’s a good attitude, but who are you finding attractive?”

“That’s what I mean. Um… I seem to be attracted to myself. Or at least, myself in skimpy clothing.”

She tilted her head. “I don’t think I’m following you.”

I looked away, embarrassed. “I mean, that I was looking at some of the girls here; you know the way they dress…”

“Like normal college girls?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, mostly not like… this. You know… short skirts and… revealing tops.”

She laughed. “Well, certainly not quite the way you do.”

I took a breath. “Anyway, I sort of imagined myself dressing… like that. And I got turned on by the idea.”

Nikki raised her eyebrows. “You got turned on by the idea of yourself dressing like a lot of the girls on campus?”

“Um… yeah.” I could feel my face getting hot. “So I tried to… um… pleasure myself. And… I failed.” At her astonished look, I added, “In my own bedroom! Not in front of anybody!”

“O… K… But this wasn’t the first time you tried, was it?”

I couldn’t look her in the eye, but I nodded. “I had sort of been telling myself that it wasn’t really my body, but when I decided I couldn’t change back, I thought it would be alright. All I managed to do was get myself even more turned on.”

“That… must have been… uncomfortable,” Nikki said. Her words were sympathetic, but she sounded amused, and I looked at her sharply. She was biting her lip, clearly trying not to laugh. When she saw me looking, though, she put her cup down, stood and came over to give me a hug.

“I’m sorry, Marsh. It’s really not all that funny. I know this is painful for you, especially since masturbating is so much more difficult for girls. Um… would you like me to teach you?”

I hadn’t thought that my face could turn any redder, but it certainly tried. Automatically, I opened my mouth to refuse, but forced myself to swallow my objection and nodded, instead.

“OK. First, you should know that girls tend to be a bit more open with things like this. I think you’re not really used to that, right?”

I nodded again.

“Now, probably the most important thing is your mood. You have to be relaxed and comfortable and sure that nobody is going to walk in on you. Do you have a lock on your door?” At my nod, she continued. “You also really need to get to know your body. If you were afraid to touch yourself, you’ve probably never really studied what you have down there. And as interested as guys are in the female anatomy, most don’t have the patience to study it that well.

“Now, I don’t want to embarrass you too much, so I’m going to send you home with an assignment. I want you to take some private time and just touch yourself. See what feels good. You can even treat it as a science experiment and take notes, if that makes you feel more comfortable, but the idea is to learn about your body and your new parts. You might even want to use a mirror to examine yourself down there. We’ll talk about it some more, OK? But don’t get too wrapped up in this. It’s a perfectly healthy way to enjoy yourself, but it’s going to take some time to learn how to do it well.”

I dithered so long that Lee Ann and Terry noticed.

“Marsh?” Lee Ann asked. “Is something wrong?”

I stood up, trying to ignore the pounding of my heart. “I really have to go. I’m going to be late for bio lab.”

Lee Ann grabbed my arm. “Wait! Marsh, you need to tell us–”

“Back off, Lee Ann,” Terry interrupted. “There’s something going on here, and it doesn’t sound simple.” I looked at her gratefully and she added, “Marsh, it’s OK. I don’t know why you’re reacting like that to a simple question, but that’s your business. We’ll be here when you’re ready to talk.”

Relieved, I fled.

Today’s lab involved studying the muscle groups in the arm, which in this case meant that Ron and I were exploring each other’s arm muscles and tendons. I can’t say I really cared to have him fondling my arm, but it was in the interest of science, so I gritted my teeth and bore it. My reaction to touching his arm, though, was even more discomforting. His flexed bicep was so large and strong, whereas my own comparatively weak bicep was barely visible. It was yet another humiliation.

He seemed to notice something, because he asked, “Hey, are you all right?” more than once as we worked, and all I could really do was shrug. I was starting to hate all guys for flaunting what had been stolen from me. Finally, I snapped.

“No, I’m not all right! Stop asking me if I’m all right!” I yelled at him. “And stop flexing your muscles at me like…” Suddenly I realized that everyone was staring at me and shut up. Instead, I hissed at him, “You’re not impressing anybody, you know.”

He stared at me as if I were crazy. “I was just trying to make it easier for you to find the muscles so that you could identify them.”

“Yeah, right,” I muttered. “And I suppose you were fondling my arm like that because my muscles are so puny. You’re just–” I shook my head in exasperation.

He peered even harder. “Are you on your period or something?”

The look I gave him in response should rightfully have frozen his marrow. I really didn’t need to be reminded right then that I even had a period, much less was in the middle of it just now. I had the horrible feeling that I had forgotten to change my tampon this morning, and that I was probably leaking all over my underwear, and wouldn’t that just be a topper to the day?

But he backed off after that, and I only had to take notes on the muscles controlling the tendons in his hand before finishing the lab. At least that was less uncomfortable, although it still bothered me to be touching his forearm with all of its hair, and comparing it to my own practically hairless one.

I did notice that he was extremely deferential to me as we finished up; I wasn’t sure whether to be satisfied that I had gotten him to give me space or offended that he was treating me as a crazy woman. He did look as though he wanted me to assure him that we were still friends, and a thought crossed my mind that I probably owed him an apology. Next time, maybe.

Of course, leaving the lab just put me back to the same problem. I had to deal with this whole ‘being a girl for keeps’ thing and I might have just screwed up my relationship with my roommates. And speaking of all that, I did make a stop in the bathroom to take care of the embarrassing period thing. Fortunately, it hadn’t leaked yet. How I was going to manage this every month for the rest of my life without going crazy, I just didn’t know.

I was too frustrated to go back to my room, and I wasn’t prepared to face Terry without a decent answer to her question about Vicky. My usual pattern after bio lab for the past few weeks had been to head to the Physics building. I did start there automatically, but quickly stopping, realizing the futility of it all. There was just nowhere left for that stupid time travel lab to be. I’d checked every door, every office. I’d gone up every staircase, tried every floor the elevator reached. I had no ideas left, and every time I’d thought there was something else to try, it had turned out that the Strangers had already tried it.

I wandered around campus for a bit, trying to decide where to go, what I could do, and most importantly, how to explain my relationship with Vicky. I didn’t realize that I actually had made a decision until I found myself outside of Nikki’s dorm. And still, I hesitated. I was a big boy, and should be able to handle my problems on my own, shouldn’t I?. But you’re actually not a big boy any more, my subconscious reminded me, and that was enough. I climbed the steps to Nikki’s room and knocked on her door.

“Hi, Marsh,” Nikki said in a questioning tone as she opened the door. I stared at her for a moment before speaking.

“Hi, Nikki,” I said, all my emotions flat without any specific source of anger. “I’m wearing a dress. See the dress?” I spread my arms wide for her to see.

“Huh?”

I walked past her without being invited in and went straight into her sewing room. She had something or other under the needle; I had obviously interrupted her at work.

“Are you OK, Marsh?” she asked as she followed me.

I think I had been asked that question too many times, wondered about it too often. I shrugged. “Of course I’m OK,” I said. “I obviously just need to get back to my sewing. You want to teach me?”

“OK, what happened?”

I shrugged. “Vicky’s got a date. Isn’t that great? She’s going to House Parties with a boy. And he won’t even be wearing a dress. Only her. At least I think she will. Maybe I’m the only one.”

She came over and peered into my eyes and I just looked right back. Then I shook my head and looked away.

She took my shoulder in one hand and my chin in the other and made me face her. “Marsh, what’s gotten in to you? What happened?”

I shrugged again. “Does it matter? It’s over. I’m stuck. They’re gone. Hidden or just gone and I don’t know how to find them. So I’m stuck.”

She stared at me. “OK, now you’re starting to sound like Ben. This isn’t you, Marsh.”

“It is now,” I informed her. “Forever and ever. Meet the new me. Guess it’s convenient. I already know my lines. If I changed back, I’d have to learn Paravicini’s.”

“OK, stop this right now!” she said, her voice raised.

“I really wish I could,” I said, breaking away and sitting in the chair she had for her customers. “I’d give just about anything to stop being Marsha. I don’t think I like Marsha very much.”

She didn’t say anything, just left the room. A moment later I heard her outer door open and close. Curious, I peeked out of the sewing room. A moment later, she came back in, carrying a small pail. And threw a pail full of water in my face.

“What was that for?!” I howled. “Look at me! I’m all wet! Do you have any idea how cold it is outside?”

“Do I have your attention?” she said, dragging me back into her sewing room.

“Uh…”

“Sometimes, when I want to talk to Ben lately, that’s what works. Now sit and tell me what happened.”

“Uh…”

“There’s plenty more water, you know.”

“No!” I protested, sitting as ordered, “It’s already into my bra, and it’s very uncomfortable, and–”

“Then talk. What happened?”

“Oh. I…” I hesitated, but I was in no mood to be drenched again. “Vicky no longer believes that I can change back, and accepted a date with another guy. I don’t think I can, either. I mean, everything I’ve tried hasn’t worked, and I’ve been searching for the lab for weeks, and so have a bunch of other people. Most of them had already accepted that they can’t change back, and I don’t see how there’s any other answer. So I’m stuck as a girl. I’ll never be my old self, my real self, again.”

“And that bothers you.”

“Of course it bothers me. I’m a boy! I’m supposed to be a boy. I want to be a boy. But now I can’t be.” This time, I was conscious of the tone in my voice. “I don’t mean to whine, but I hate this. I hate what’s happened to me. I hate what I’ve been turned into. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”

She came over and hugged me. “Oh, Marsh, I’m so sorry. You were handling this all so well, I guess it didn’t occur to me just how much you wanted to change back.”

“Yeah, well, I was handling it because I didn’t really believe that I was stuck. I guess I just figured that it was going to be easy. I’d just waltz into the lab, tell them that they’d made a mistake, and they would apologize and fix me.”

Nikki shook her head.

“Yeah, I know,” I continued. “I was naïve and stupid. Now I’m… I don’t know. I’m lost. There hardly seems to be any point to anything. As long as I could believe that I was going to change back, this was almost like a game. I would get to see what it was really like to be a girl, maybe get some insights into the female mind, maybe be able to figure out things for when I changed back.

“Now… I just hadn’t planned for this. This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. I’m supposed to be Marshall, not Marsha. I’m supposed to be–”

“Obviously, not. If you were supposed to be, you would be.”

“Yeah, but my whole life–”

“… has obviously changed.”

I sat back. I didn’t seem to be getting sympathy any more. “You know, this is really uncomfortable. I’m sopping wet, and–”

“So why not just take it off?”

“Take it off?” I echoed.

“Sure. It’s just water. Take off your dress and we can hang it up to dry. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“But… OK. Can you give me a robe to wear in the meantime?”

She looked me in the eye. “Why be modest? We’re all girls in here.”

I stared at her.

“You need to face this, Marsh. You need…” She stopped and looked at me even more intently. “You need to face this, Marsha. You’re a girl. You’re always going to be a girl. You need to be a big girl about this, Marsha.”

“Why… why are you calling me that?”

“Because maybe you’ve been using your nickname as a way to pretend. Maybe it’s making things worse. Now, off with the dress and the bra and hang them up to dry!”

“Uh–”

“You’ve been taking the easy way out for too long. It’s time to face facts.”

“Simple as that, huh?”

She sagged. “No, it’s not as simple as that. If I had an easy answer, don’t you think I would have used it on Ben? But I’ve seen you happy since this happened to you. I think you’re stronger than he is, more resilient than he is. It might not work for him, but maybe it’ll work for you.”

I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but the water was annoying me, and maybe I could at least get that fixed, so I stripped down to my panties, very conscious of my nudity. I couldn’t think of a time before today when anybody but me had seen my bare breasts, and I kept one arm across them – or tried to. I had never done this before, after all, and they kept slipping. It took me several tries before I could get them to behave.

Nikki hung up my clothes and then watched me, obviously amused. “I guess this is a new experience for you.”

“You have no idea.”

“Maybe a robe wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

I started to nod, but that just made my left breast slip out from under my arm again and I had to adjust, while Nikki left the room. Fortunately, she returned quickly, and handed me a robe, which I donned with my back to her.

“For somebody who’s not used to being a girl, you’re awfully modest with those things,” she observed.

I shrugged again, although this time it was more of a lack of a response than indifference.

“OK. Comfy? Let’s talk.”