Printer-friendly version

I was a girl. I’d always been a girl. I’d always dressed like a girl. But then I went to school and they told me I was a boy.

Skirting the Dress Code, by Karin Bishop

Part 4

Chapter 8: Inappropriate Attire

Visible tattoos are not permitted, nor are any temporary or permanent skin markings which are visible.

At home Friday night, Mom pronounced Shannon ‘acceptable with provisions’, those being that we didn’t know what kind of home life she had—in terms of my visiting her house—and how ‘wild’ she was. I resisted rolling my eyes at that comment because I just didn’t get a wild or crazy vibe from Shannon. I told Mom that Shannon’s home life credentials were top-notch; her father was a lawyer and her mother—who really was Norwegian!—worked as a translator. She was currently working on the third book by one of the hot new Scandinavian mystery writers. Mom had read the first two, and suddenly shifted from ‘acceptable with provisions’ to actively hoping to meet Shannon’s mom!

However, as to the ‘wild’ thing …we had another of our Serious Talks about not getting too carried away by the difference between elementary home schooling and a public middle school. And how, despite parents who looked good on paper, the home lives of kids I met could be heaven or hell. Mom told of a girl she’d known in high school who’d had college-professor parents but was rebelling against them with wild behavior. I pointed out that she’d been in high school, and how wild can you get at twelve or thirteen?

And, of course, the Universe answered, with two thirteen-year-olds making the late news because they held up a liquor store. Mom just raised an eyebrow and I nodded, sighing. I tucked my nightie around my toes and thought about my new life. I’d been in this safe cocoon with the same twelve kids and ten families. Now there were eight hundred kids and it was a bit overwhelming. But I just wanted to live my life, fully accepted as a girl, and pray the doctors could end any questions.

Saturday morning was household chores and laundry, and at one point I was folding sheets and caught Mom staring at me.

“What?”

“Nothing. Everything,” she chuckled. “I just saw how fluidly you move and wondered where that grace came from.”

“Same place as my stunning beauty—from my mother,” I teased.

“That’s the other thing. You are quite pretty, Laurie. And I know we were having fun, but seeing those boys looking at you yesterday …I know you’re mature for your age, and all that, but you’re still just a young girl and I know those looks. And you had already checked them out. Or Shannon had.”

“Actually, it was me, and I’m kind of ashamed why I did it.”

“Anything you’d care to share?” She sat on the edge of the bed.

I sat next to her. “Shannon and I just hit it off right away. I mean, we’re like on the same wavelength about things, and seem to have the same sense of humor …”

“Sounds terrible …” Mom teased as she tucked back a strand of my hair behind my ear.

“But there’s still this …black cloud sort of hanging over me, about Laurence.”

Her jaw tightened and she nodded.

“And I guess I’m a little wary. Shannon doesn’t seem to mind it one way or the other, but I’m aware that other kids might say she’s a lesbian or a pervert or whatever for hanging with me. And I got worried, both about her and about me …”

“Do you think she’s a lesbian?”

“No. Nothing she’s said or done has indicated it, other than be my friend right from the start. But I saw those boys and thought I’d …test the waters, so to speak. See if she was interested.” I grinned. “She was!” I slumped. “And I felt terrible doing the testing thing. But,” I shrugged. “Now I know.”

Mom said, “I pretty much figured that. But you do understand, you had already noticed the boys and noticed they were cute before you tested her?” I nodded. Mom grinned and nudged me with her shoulder. “That’s the part that worries me!”

Saturday afternoon I went to The Beacon. I got in four hours of basically being a ‘go-fer’ for the administrators, Brenda and Larry. They were fascinating people to me. Brenda’s husband had died somehow and she was suddenly a young single mom with a baby and fell in with a bad crowd and did drugs. While loaded, her baby suffocated in the crib. She did some jail time and ‘kind of fell apart’—her words—and lived on the streets. But she found some chalk some kid had left in the park and started drawing, at first on the sidewalk and later on walls. Some store owners actually encouraged her to draw on their building because they liked her pictures. There was a photo taken of her in the local paper and after that, one thing led to another. She got a job, kept drawing, and then illustrated a children’s book that became a hit. Now she had a small apartment and was doing illustrations for huge best-sellers in children’s books, but still runs The Beacon with Larry.

Larry’s story was similar to my uncle Stuart’s. He came back from Somalia and Sarajevo—he’d say ‘They both start with the same letter as ‘sucks’ (but I think he toned it down for my ears)—with PTSD. There was some better understanding of it by the Nineties—not like the Viet Nam vets like my uncle—so he got help before falling too far. He wanted to pay that back, and found that he had a knack for community activism and one thing led to another and he was the head of The Beacon.

I was bringing a box of donated books in from the loading dock when Brenda did give me a warning I hadn’t expected—but welcomed once I heard it.

“Laurie, sweetie? Can I see you in my office for a minute?”

I wondered what I’d done wrong and sat, waiting to find out.

Brenda said, “Laurie, I should probably pass this on to your mom but I think you’re old enough and mature enough to handle it. You, um …are very pretty.”

“Thank you, Brenda,” I said, waiting for whatever was coming.

“No, that’s the problem!” she chuckled. “You’ve been coming here—and bless you for it!—for two years now. You started when you were just a little girl. Pretty, but like a stick, you know? Oh, not too skinny, but straight up and down and flat as a board and …” She frowned. “You’re becoming a beautiful girl. I mean that, honey. A beautiful girl. And your body is already getting curvier and you’re getting boobs and …” She waved a hand. “And you’re so damned cute …”

I had an idea where it was headed. “I should not be so cute; is that what you mean?”

She looked relieved. “Yes! Thank you for getting it!” she smiled. “You’re in a camisole and skirt and I know we’ve got you doing hard, sweaty work, but …”

“Jeans and a blousy shirt, maybe?”

She pointed at me with a grin. “That’s the ticket!” Then she leaned forward, serious. “See, some of the guys here, they’ve got real problems. I mean, real …problems. And I don’t want anybody to hurt you or make you uncomfortable. And I don’t want them …riled up, either.”

I chuckled. On her look, I said, “Oh, ‘riled up’. Mom says that sometimes. I know what you mean.” She nodded. “Have I been bothering anybody?”

“Bothering, no. But I have seen some of the new guys give you a look that …well, let’s just say that it wasn’t proper. The older regulars …well, they’ve known you since you were a little girl. They feel kind of protective of you, like you’re family. Fact is, it was Ken who brought this to my attention. One of the new guys made a …comment about you. Ken set him straight.”

“I’ll have to thank him,” I said, feeling grateful to Ken for watching out for me. He was a vet in a wheelchair, missing one arm and a leg. Played wheelchair basketball and refereed a local kids’ league now.

That night Mom and I went out to a movie. She loved foreign films and has passed that on to me, and every so often we go to a small, out-of-the-way theatre that shows them. This week they were showing the films of one of Mom’s favorite directors, Francois Truffaut—even though I didn’t speak French, saying his name made me feel sophisticated! We saw The Story of Adele H. Mom had told me the story, and I cried with the passion of the movie, and afterwards Mom suggested a ‘nightcap’, meaning lattes at a corner bistro. I had worn a white eyelet gypsy skirt and a camisole, scarf and vest, and piled my hair up loosely—before we left for the theatre, Mom had said, “The heck with whoever sits behind you; it’s cute!”—and we sat there sipping our coffee and I felt so grown-up and mature and I knew it was just the combination of the foreign film, the European-style bistro, my clothing …but besides feeling older, I felt strangely content, at peace.

I felt very good about myself, and my chances in the world.

Things went strange at that point, because some young men came in and ordered, turned and surveyed the room and smiled at us. Mom was sipping her coffee and merely eyed them over her cup, and I didn’t see it all because they were on the side of me. But I guess I looked much older than almost-thirteen. And Mom is still very attractive—she was young when she had me—and I’m really proud of how pretty she is. She wore a denim skirt and a light brown embroidered top; in fact, before we left home we’d laughed that I was dressed like the adult and she was dressed like the teenager! We did not dress to attract males …yet, here we were, being seriously scoped out by twenty-somethings.

Mom gave me a look.

“What?” I asked softly. “Do we leave first or last?”

She smiled. “That’s good; you’re thinking. First, I think, as they’re still waiting for their drinks and you’re just about finished.” She gathered up her purse. “And we’re gone.”

We walked to our car without incident, but once we were moving I realized that I’d been a little freaked.

Mom said grimly, “Downside of being a woman, honey. But you’re aware and you’re thinking and that’s probably ninety percent of staying safe.”

“Mom? I …It’s weird. You had no choice; you were born female and had to learn life as a female all along. I’m still learning, but even though, in a sense, I do have a choice? I really don’t.”

“Because you’re my daughter. Because you are female.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have any more choice over it than I did,” she grinned.

“Just so you know …”

She smiled warmly. “I’ve known since you were born, sweetheart!”

* * *

Sunday was lazy. I had no homework and we’d never been ‘church’ folks, although we talked about it from time to time. Rachel called around one and we chatted; she was as bored as I was so I checked with Mom and then told Rachel to come on over. She showed up in jeans and a tank top; I had capris and a tank and it just showed we were on the same wavelength, I guess.

She flopped down on my bed as usual and we compared our first week at our two schools. Rachel was out as a lesbian but was not overt and was not ‘cruising’, although she did say she had spotted two other ‘girls’—a silly term since they were all girls; it was a girls’ school, after all!—but she meant gay. She couldn’t tell if they were either out and wary or still closeted. And Rachel being Rachel, she thought she might have ‘a mad crush’ on one of the older girls.

I told her about my week; about the teachers and Mr. Abrams being the only known problem. Next I told her about Shannon and Drake. She said Shannon ‘sounds like a cutie!’ and I told her that it really didn’t matter, but I was pretty sure she was straight. We talked a little about the difficulty of having straight friends and gay friends, mixed; and then she wanted to know all about Drake. There wasn’t much to tell, but she was grinning and nudging me.

“But you like him, I can tell, Laurie!” she teased. “Go for it! Nothing is going to cement your position as a normal girl like having a cute boyfriend!”

“It’s not like that, Rach. I mean, yeah, he’s cute, and I think he likes me, but …” I shrugged. “I don’t want to cement his position as a ‘fag lover’.”

“What?” she growled.

“Yeah …” Then I told her about the graffiti, and befriending the custodian, which she thought was brilliant because he could keep an eye on things.

“Those guys are like invisible people,” she said. “It’s such a drag; people don’t even really see them. But I bet he sees all sorts of stuff!”

But her anger was still up about graffiti boy. “I would castrate that guy if I found him!”

“Which is probably a good thing that you’re in a girls’ school,” I said, which caused her to crack up. But she was still miffed.

Since Rachel was out but not flashy about it, she was exposed to homophobia because the speakers had no idea that she was gay. She hated them and called herself a ‘phobe-o-phobe’, until I pointed out that ‘phobe’ meant ‘fear’. She didn’t fear them, just hated them, but I pointed out that it was different for gay males and transgendered people, because straight females—while capable of being vicious—usually did not physically assault or kill gays. She nodded.

“Still …I wish there was some way to get that guy. Some way to pressure him.”

“And do what? Assuming it is a guy, by the way, although I think it is.” I tried to reason with her. “Look, Rach, I don’t want to pressure the guy. I don’t want him to back down, or use some elaborate extortion or blackmail thing to keep him off my back.”

“Why not? It might teach him a lesson.”

“It would only teach him to hate and fear even more. Or teach him to strike first before the blackmail begins. No, I want him to accept me.”

“Laurie, he ain’t gonna do that. These guys are born and bred to hate. I mean, he’s only, what, thirteen or fourteen, tops? I bet he lives in a toxic environment. I bet everybody in his family is like that. He’s not going to suddenly accept transgenders.”

“In the best of all possible worlds, that’s what I’d want, but I agree with you that he ain’t gonna do that.” I grinned after mimicking her. “But if I can get him to accept me. I mean, accept that I’m a girl. He’ll probably go on hating and fearing gays and TG-folks but if he just figures they’re wrong about me and I’m a girl, he’ll just back off.”

“You know what I think? I think a lot of those guys are repressed gays, and can’t handle it, so they overreact.”

“Yes, Miss Freud,” I nodded, although I wasn’t sure of her statement.

Just then my cell chirped; I frowned at it because Mom was downstairs and Rachel was sitting next to me. Nobody else called except for the occasional misdialed drug deal. I didn’t recognize the number but it turned out to be Shannon.

“Laurie! Hi, it’s Shannon. I’ve got some news to tell you; you got a minute? Where are you?”

“Well, I’m at home—”

“Great! How about I come right over? Gotta tell you this!”

“I’ve got a friend here—”

“Great! Love to meet him. Bye!”

“—her,” I corrected to a dead phone. I looked at Rachel. “Well, you’re about to meet Shannon. She said she’s got some news and seems all wound up about it.”

“Cool. And we’ll just see if your cutie is straight!” She wiggled her eyebrows at the last.

Shannon arrived in five minutes; she only lived a few blocks over. Mom let her in my room and gave me an incomprehensible look over Shannon’s head. I did the introductions and Shannon flopped on the bed next to Rachel; I wound up on my vanity bench.

“I think I know who’s been marking up your locker,” Shannon grinned. “And I should have known! Brady Kellner!”

I blinked at her.

“Brady Kellner!” she said again, nodding, as if it were plainly obvious. “Doesn’t that make sense?”

Rachel and I looked at each other. To Shannon, I said, “I don’t know who that is.”

“Come on! Brady Kell—oh, crap! I forgot you didn’t come from the same schools as the rest of us. Brady Kellner is this super-jock, the third or fourth Kellner in the school system, big brothers were All-City or State Champs or some such thing. Total testosterone family.”

Rachel shared a look with me and said, “It fits, but why do you think it was him?”

Shannon looked between us and frowned. “I gotta say upfront that I’m not into gossip or tweeting every little thing, but because this is about you, I kind of put feelers out.”

Rachel whipped out her phone and pretended to tweet, mumbling comically in a Valley Girl voice, “Hey! I just heard Shannon’s putting out feelers …”

We laughed and Shannon grinned at Rachel and I figured things would be fine between the three of us. Then Shannon went on with her story.

“Marcia Pressman heard him saying something on Friday about ‘doing that little fag’s locker’. I heard that last night but was going to tell you tomorrow. But I just got off the phone with Kevin Wheeler, in my Algebra class, and he said he saw Brady. Kevin spilled something on himself in Science and got a pass to go wash up, and he was leaving the Boys’ restroom near your locker and heard Brady say, ‘There!” and turned and Brady was just putting the final flourish on the graffiti. Brady didn’t see Kevin and when Kevin passed he thought Brady was stupid enough that he didn’t use a Sharpie; he must’ve used like a whiteboard pen because it was kind of runny. So it’s Brady.”

I smiled and reminded them of Vladimir putting Anti-Stick on my locker, so it probably was a Sharpie. But Rachel was fuming. She wanted to ‘take Brady out’. I told Shannon about Rach being a phobe-o-phobe and she said, “Fear-o-fear? I know what you mean, but there’s gotta be a better term.”

We kicked around some ideas and I kept directing them away from revenge and towards acceptance. At one point, Rachel turned to me.

“Hey, Laurie? Remember I said that Shannon sounded like a cutie? She is. And you’re right—she’s straight, damn it.”

Shannon stared and I explained; then Shannon laughed. “And here I was trying to be all worldly and bi-curious and all.”

“You’re not, are you?” Rachel asked, and then answered her own question. “No, damn it; you’re as straight as this one is,” she pointed to me.

It was Shannon who came up with the idea of ‘mistaken identity’, or as she liked to put it, ‘miss-taken identity’.

“Since you’re not looking for acceptance for the transgendered community, it might be easier to just get Brady to think he had the wrong locker.”

Rachel said, “It’s not enough to think it’s the wrong locker; he’s gotta think he’s got the wrong girl.”

I said, “All my teachers call me Laurie; Laurence seems to be a dead issue until we graduate and by then I should have gotten the legal name change. It’s only Mr. Abrams that seems bothered, and he might be coming around.”

We talked about that, and about my two-week grace period, and about the clothing I’d worn. I’d picked up the tempo already; at first I hadn’t planned to wear a skirt until the end of the second week. So it let my friends and I go through a wider selection of clothes for the upcoming week.

After they’d left and I had dinner with Mom, she drew me one of her wonderful bubblebaths with scented candles and I luxuriated, thinking about how lucky I was. The odd look Mom had given me when she let Shannon in had been about having two friends in the same room; they might not get along and I’d be stuck in the middle. But they seemed to hit it off—Shannon especially warmed to Rachel after being designated a straight cutie!—and everything seemed fine. And I wondered if I’d see Drake tomorrow …

* * *

Mom and I had gone back and forth about my wardrobe and the result was that I came to school on Monday in a tiered denim skirt and blue gingham blouse, a sort of long-tailed camp shirt. I wore my hair full with a thin dark blue band across my crown. Dangly earrings, blue scarf. Black flats with little satin bows.

As I left 3rd period Math, Miss Inouye smiled and said, “Cute shoes, Laurie!” and I thought, see how easy acceptance is? And that carried me into Study Hall. Unlike Friday, Mr. Abrams was already at his desk as we entered. He frowned at me walking in wearing the skirt, and then did a sort of frown on his own frown. I sat, wondering what that was about, but I figured that the first was the automatic frown of ‘There’s that boy that’s pretending to be a girl wearing a skirt!’ and the second frown was ‘Wait a minute; we talked and she’s a girl so it’s okay.’ Hopefully, anyway. In either case, there was no incident or summons to his desk. At the buzzer announcing Lunch, I gathered my books and left, thinking, ‘See? That’s how easy acceptance is!’ and then I got to my locker and somebody—most likely Brady Kellner—had hit it again, but only got as far as ‘cocksuc’ and no more. Busted? Bored? What?

And of course, even before I got to our table, the buzz all around me was, “Did you hear they caught Brady Kellner drawing on lockers? Just before lunch!” and Shannon looked at me and all innocent said, “Brady Kellner? Imagine that!”

I plucked her elbow. “Did you have anything to do with Brady?”

“No, Laurie, really, I didn’t.” She looked around. “However, I did get it to Callie Overton that I’d heard …You don’t know her either, do you? I keep forgetting.” She looked around again and pulled me over to a locker. “Brady is tied for number-one jock with Ken Overton. Always been that way. Ken’s actually an okay guy but his little sister is a gossip. I worked it so that gossip reached Callie that somebody saw Brady writing hate stuff on lockers. Notice the plural. And she told her brother, or spread the gossip enough that it reached enough ears that there were enough eyes following Brady and voila!”

“Yeah, voila, but he still has it in for me.” I fought the urge to bite a nail. “I’m going to the Office. I have an idea.”

I was glad Brady wasn’t visible when I got to the Office. If he’d been sitting there, waiting to go in and I walked in, it might have been ugly. Mrs. Danby looked like she expected me. “We caught the guy, Laurie. Vlad did. So that’s over.”

“No, it isn’t, Mrs. Danby. Where is he?”

“Just gone into Principal Halloran’s office with his father.”

“Is there a possibility that I could speak to Mrs. Halloran for a minute? I mean one minute, like just sixty seconds.”

“You can certainly wait until she’s done—”

“Sorry, Mrs. Danby; this is urgent. Super-urgent. It has to do with Brady.” I looked at the door.

“Can you tell me and I’ll check?”

“I could, but it might be too late. This is really a time thing; I hoped I could speak to her before she got Brady.”

Mrs. Danby eyed me sternly and then said, “I’m going to trust you on this, Laurie, because I have a hunch about you. Please don’t let me down.”

She went to the door and stuck her head in. I heard her say something about, ‘extremely urgent’, ‘medical decision’. In a moment she widened the door to allow Mrs. Halloran to step out and then closed it behind them. Mrs. Halloran frowned when she saw me.

I quickly said, “I’m sorry for getting Mrs. Danby to lie for me, Mrs. Halloran, but this is really important.”

She looked really pissed. “I have matters well in hand, Laurie. I have Brady and his father in my office.”

Before she could say anything else, I nodded and quickly said, “I promised Mrs. Danby this would take sixty seconds. Okay, as I see it, there are two things involved. Brady defacing school property, and Brady targeting me for a sort of hate crime. I’m not saying it is, but I’m the target, right?”

Mrs. Halloran’s face had gone from pissed to ‘I’m listening’ and she glanced at Mrs. Danby and then nodded to me.

I went on. “Punishing Brady for the locker graffiti won’t prevent him from doing it again, or something worse; he might escalate to violence. But if you remove the target, you remove him wanting to do anything—no graffiti, no fighting, whatever. Right?”

She was thinking over what I said and nodded. “That’s a pretty fair assessment.”

“Okay. I’m not going to transfer out of here. But if you remove the reason Brady targeted me, it might work. As long as he thinks I’m a boy masquerading as a girl, I’m a target and he’s going to act on it. He can’t not act on it; from what I’ve been told, it’s a mark of manhood in his family.”

Mrs. Danby’s mouth twitched and she had a hard time meeting Mrs. Halloran’s eyes. But Mrs. Halloran nodded, so I knew she’d hear me out.

“So my plan is …well, pretty much dumping it on your lap how you want to proceed. But if Brady were somehow to be told—or better yet, to overhear—that there was a transgendered girl registered but she never showed up, and that I’m a completely separate girl with a records mix-up, but still very much a girl. Then it’s understandable to his dad why he did what he did but he’d been given erroneous information. Saves his butt at home. He won’t bother me anymore because he ‘knows now’,” I used air quotes, “that I’m a girl. And the object of his hatred isn’t even in this school.”

Mrs. Danby spoke up. “If I may, I think I know how to do it.” She turned to Mrs. Halloran. “How about this? Go back and apologize and say you had a boy with an epileptic seizure and had to sign something for me. A minute later I’ll call and we pretend it’s the Superintendent calling and you speak so they can hear you, because it will be about them.”

I said, “Like whether it should be simple vandalism or classified as a hate crime?”

Mrs. Danby grinned. “That’ll scare ‘em! And then you tell the Superintendent that it was mistaken identity anyway. Let the Kellners overhear every word.”

Mrs. Halloran looked at both of us, her eyebrows raised. Then she turned to me. “I’m going to check your records again, Laurie, to make sure you’re not really forty years old!” She grinned and nodded. “Back into the fray. Let’s hope this works.”

I spoke up. “Mrs. Halloran? Vlad said he wanted a test case for the Anti-Stick, and so he was waiting for the first marked lockers of the year, which is why I have the coating on my locker. Works great, too. But let them think there’s other lockers that have the coating; the word might spread and reduce any future tagging.”

She nodded. “Definitely forty or forty-five,” she grinned and went in.

Mrs. Danby looked at me, hunched her shoulders in a giggle completely out of character for a School Secretary and nodded me over to the phone. We sat for a minute and then she called. I only heard her end of the conversation.

“Principal Halloran? I’m sorry for the interruption, but the Superintendent is on line one.” A pause. “Yes, ma’am, but he is calling about the locker vandalism. Should I put him through? Yes, ma’am. Line one.” She pushed a button and sat back; I realized that she’d been on speakerphone in the office when she’d called, which was why she’d sounded so official. Now she was herself; again, I could hear her side but really wished I could have been a fly on the wall in the office.

“Are they paying attention?” She grinned. “Good. Okay, I made notes of the points Laurie brought up. Um …simple vandalism versus charging a hate crime.” There was a long pause as Mrs. Halloran improvised her end of the conversation. Then Mrs. Danby said, “Are they listening?” She grinned and nodded to me. “Good, good! Okay, uh, the funny thing is that Brady got the wrong person, a regular girl, not a transgendered student. The transgendered girl registered but didn’t show—” She waited, looking at me and pushing ‘mute’. “She’s laying it on good and thick.” She unmuted. “Perfect. And Laurie just has a simple typo in the first name column, being sorted out and so on …” She nodded. “Oh, persuade the Superintendent it’s just simple vandalism and best for everybody to move on, and so forth.” She listened, nodding. “Okay, and mention how well the Anti-Stick worked and recommend it for all of the lockers instead of a selected few.” There was a long pause as she listened. She looked at me and raised her eyebrows and nodded. Job done.

“I think that’s everything,” I said. “I’ll go now.”

She pushed ‘mute’. “Brilliant idea, Laurie. You have a great future ahead in espionage.”

I grinned. “I’ll take that up with my guidance counselor. Thank you so much, Mrs. Danby!”

She unmated and waved as she began speaking to Mrs. Halloran again. “I think we got everything. Do you need to put the fear of God into them any more than you have?” She was still grinning as I left the Office.

* * *

I had a tiny time left for lunch but just swallowed my last bit of sandwich at the buzzer. Shannon wasn’t around but I saw Drake across the way, smiling and nodding. I smiled and nodded back.

On to my last three classes and things ran smoothly. Whatever was bugging Mr. DeLauro didn’t seem to be a factor. It was my second day in a skirt and no problems.

Drake was holding a seat for me on the bus, and I slid in gratefully. He smiled. “And how was your day?”

“Okay. Some bozo marked up my locker again but it was wiped off later.”

“That was Brady Kellner. He got caught.”

“Caught? So what did they do to him?” Me being all innocent and everything …

“He got a one-day suspension and his parents have to pay something for the cleanup. But your locker is one of a bunch that have some special stuff on them so graffiti slides off, or something.”

I nodded. “When my locker got tagged last week, the janitor was putting something on after he cleaned it up.”

“Custodian; he doesn’t like to be called a janitor.”

“Sorry.”

He shrugged. “You didn’t know.” Then, thoughtfully, he said, “I’ll bet that’s how they picked out which lockers to test. Too cheap to do them all, so wait until the first ones get tagged and then put the stuff on ‘em.”

“Makes sense,” I said, thrilled at how quickly the word had spread! I’d just come up with that idea on the spur of the moment, and already Brady had passed it on through the guys’ network and Drake knew about it! this was kind of scary-powerful. I just hoped that Brady got the main point, and thought I was a girl that he’d mistaken for a transgendered boy.

Drake told a funny story about something a friend of his had done over the weekend. And I was just smiling and nodding and going, ‘yeah’ while he talked but then he said, “I haven’t seen you in a skirt before. You have really nice legs.”

I blushed. “Thank you.”

“No, I mean it.”

I nodded. “I believe you. Thank you.”

He was silent, thinking he’d gone too far, until it was his stop. I smiled at him. “See you tomorrow. Are you riding in the morning?”

He grinned, relieved. “Are you?” I nodded. “Then I will. See you then.” And I got out and he went past me. I couldn’t help it; I looked and he does have a cute butt!

At dinner, Mom was cracking up as I told her about my ‘plan’ with Mrs. Halloran. Then she said, “Tell you what; I’ll drive you in tomorrow and go talk with Mrs. Halloran—”

“Mom, no! I told Drake I’d be riding on the bus and he will be, too!”

She raised her eyebrows. “Ah, that’s the way of things, is it?” Then she nodded. “Very well. But I’ll call Mrs. Halloran and make sure your little scheme seemed to work.”

End of Part 4

---

If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudo!
Click the Good Story! button above to leave the author a kudo:
And please, remember to comment, too! Thanks.