Another girl stepped out of one of the stalls just then and went to wash her hands, looking warily at me. Tracy said to her: “This pervert is using some Twisted trick to make us think he’s a girl, so he can sneak in here and spy on us.”

“No, I walked in here openly so I could empty my bladder.”

---

Twisted Throwback

part 11 of 25

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than "Twisted", "Twisted Pink", etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014.

Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta-reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial.

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A couple of hours later we saved the game and pulled off our helmets. “Man, your Kiera kicks ass!” Lionel said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“And... you and Vic really got into the Oscar and Kiera thing, didn’t you?”

“It was just good roleplaying,” Vic said, and I looked away from him.

“I’ve really got to go,” I said, and pulled off my gloves and dashed into the bathroom. I wondered why Vic, knowing I was planning to play Kiera, had chosen to play Oscar? But if Lionel asked him that, they were done talking about it by the time I got out of the bathroom, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask him myself.

Vic needed to go right after me — Lionel was using the bathroom in his parents' suite, we all needed to go pretty urgently after two hours in VR. I wandered back into the living room and picked up the neglected bowl of cold popcorn, nibbling a couple of pieces as Lionel came back. “You were really great as Kiera,” he said again. “I’ve played a couple of the girl characters in some of the earlier games, just to unlock parts of the game that the guy characters can’t get into you know, but Kiera seemed kind of wussy and I didn’t see any point...”

“I used to think so, before.”

“Are you going to always play girl characters now, like you always played guys before?”

“I haven’t thought about it. Maybe once you really get it through your head that I’m a girl now, not just dressing up as one, I might play a guy once in a while... but I don’t think I’m going to be playing as much as I did before.”

“Part of your Twist?”

“Yeah. You know how my tablet’s memory got wiped by the electrical surge from my Twist? I still haven’t gotten around to reinstalling any games on it — haven’t touched the games on my home system either.”

“Huh. That sucks... you were really good at it, and you still are.”

“Thanks. I enjoyed playing with you and Vic, I just don’t think solo games interest me anymore.”

Vic came back from the bathroom then, and our eyes met for a moment before I looked away.

“I guess I’d better get home,” I said, checking my tablet and seeing there was a message from Mom. I picked up my bag and was about to leave when Vic said,

“Want a ride home?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I’d walked from my house to Lionel’s and back any number of times over the years, but it was a bit of a trek, especially dressed the way I was — I’d worn my dressier shoes this morning because of the appointment at the courthouse.

“See you tomorrow,” Lionel said, and his mom, who’d been in the kitchen fixing supper, came out and said goodbye as well.

I got into the passenger seat of Vic’s car and rode toward my house in silence, at first. After a couple of minutes he said: “So, what have you been reading?”

I sighed. “Almost all stuff for school, the last week or so. Either reading for classes, or research for term papers.” Mainly my Modern History term paper, but I’d done a little work on my term paper for Literature as well. “I started reading Kurt Randall’s new political thriller a few days before my Twist, and still haven’t finished it — I’ve barely read five pages of it since then.”

“Huh. You think that’s 'cause of your Twist, or just being busy?”

“By now I’m pretty sure my Twist made me obsessed with school. I don’t know how that’s going to affect me after I get done with college... maybe I’ll just be reading nonfiction in all my spare time, or maybe I’ll have to get a doctorate and go into academia.”

“Or you could stay in school indefinitely,” Vic helpfully suggested, “keep changing your major, and use every loophole the student handbook to avoid graduating, like that guy in Doorways in the Sand.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll take it under advisement... Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s made me less interested in fiction, or just more interested in nonfiction, or more obsessed with school per se... maybe I’ll go back to normal during the holidays.”

“Man, I hope so.”

We were already turning onto my street; a few moments later he pulled into my driveway, and I got out.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I’m glad we could finally hang out.” I stood there for an awkward moment longer before I turned and went into the house.

It had warmed up a little in the course of the day, and Mildred was in the kitchen helping Mom with supper; she was getting the roast out of the oven when I walked in. “Can I help?” I asked.

“This is almost done,” Mom said. “But you can set the table, and then go tell your father and uncle supper’s ready. They’re in the back yard.”

A few minutes later we were all sitting round the table, and Dad was asking the blessing. When that was done, Mom said to me:

“I did some looking around, and I found a salon in Little Five Points that caters especially to Twisted. Uncle Jack’s going to take you there on Thursday, after your doctors' appointments.”

Little Five Points is a neighborhood in Atlanta, east of downtown and west of Emory Village; it’s home to more Twisted than any other neighborhood in Atlanta or other nearby cities.

“Great,” I said. “Did you tell them about my trick and stuff?”

“Yes, and they said they can work with it.”

“Thanks, Uncle Jack,” I said.

“You know I’m making a great sacrifice,” he said with a mock-solemn expression. “Walking into an estrogen-soaked place like that, even for a few moments... I might step out and go for a walk while you’re getting your hair done, though.”

“If you can’t stand the estrogen, stay out of the salon,” I said, but I wondered: how long was it going to be before I got the estrogen I needed? How much more damage were my unwanted male glands going to do to my body before I could safely get rid of them?

“John,” Dad said with a serious expression, “I trust you are joking. Little Five Points is not an unusually dangerous neighborhood, yet I am sure you would not leave Emily alone there merely from a distaste at spending time in a women’s salon.”

“Of course I was joking,” Uncle Jack said, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think he’d leave me alone there after that warning, anyway.

Mildred and I spent a little time practicing our tricks that evening. I still couldn’t get her to see the real me in the mirror; she could get me to see the particular kind of snake she was thinking of a little more than half the time.

---

Wednesday morning, the sky was sunnier than it had been since Friday; I hoped it would warm up a lot during the day and be good weather for Mildred. She’d told us last night that the bus wasn’t heated well enough, and she’d gotten all sleepy and sluggish on the way to school and even to some extent on the way home. So today Mom drove her to school, after Dad started her car to heating up twenty minutes before Mildred got in it. I took the bus as usual.

I needed the bathroom between Physics and Calculus, but when I walked in, there weren’t any empty stalls. I thought about going to the other girls' room in the east wing, but I figured by the time I could get there one of these stalls would empty.

Tracy Esmond was adjusting her makeup; she saw me over her shoulder in the mirror and shot me a venomous look. “Pervert. What are you doing in here?”

“I’m a girl. This is the girls' restroom. You took Biology last year, right? There are these organs called the kidneys, and they —”

“I know enough biology to know a boy doesn’t belong in the girls' room!” Another girl stepped out of one of the stalls just then and went to wash her hands, looking warily at me. Tracy said to her: “This pervert is using some Twisted trick to make us think he’s a girl, so he can sneak in here and spy on us.”

“No, I walked in here openly so I could empty my bladder.” I stepped into the empty stall and closed the door, but I could still hear Tracy and the other girl talking for a few moments.

When I came out, Tracy and the girl she’d been talking to were gone, and there were a couple of other girls washing their hands and adjusting their makeup. I washed my hands quickly and left.

During lunch, I sat with Sarah, Olive and Morgan; when I joined them Sarah and Olive were talking about something that had happened in their second-period Algebra class. I half-listened to them while I ate and read some background articles on early twenty-first century Oregon politics for my term paper.

“So, Emily, how are your old buddies treating you?” Sarah asked when they’d exhausted that bit of scandal. I looked up at her.

“Pretty okay, I guess. Lionel still doesn’t get it, I think, but he’s trying. Vic understands better — understands I’m really a girl, I mean. We had a good game session last night.”

“What kind of game?”

I told them a little about Phantoms of Phobos V; I was too embarrassed to go into detail about how my character and Vic’s used to be lovers, and how we’d roleplayed that romantic tension between them, and the parts I did feel comfortable talking about didn’t make it sound very interesting to Sarah and Olive.

“I played one of the earlier games in that series, I think the third one, with my boyfriend Cory a year or so ago,” Morgan said. “It was pretty fun, but after he broke up with me I haven’t had much chance to play that kind of game. Sarah and Olive aren’t into it.”

“I’ve played some historical simulation games,” Olive said, “but the sci-fi games don’t interest me.”

I wondered if I might be more interested in historical simulation games than I used to be. “I’d be willing to play one of those with y’all sometime, maybe,” I said. “And, Morgan, if you want to join me and Lionel and Vic for Phantoms of Phobos sometime, they’d probably be okay with it.”

“Maybe...” she said hesitantly. “Let me think about it.”

During Mandarin, Tracy and her friend gave me angry glares several times when Mr. Bao’s back was turned, but they didn’t say anything. As I was getting up to leave after class, Rob Dyer came over and gave me a smile. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You look really nice today. Every day since your Twist, really. I don’t want to offend you by making bad assumptions — I know Twists affect people in all kinds of different ways — but if you don’t have any plans for Friday night... would you like to have dinner, maybe see a movie?”

I gaped at him for I’m not sure how long. He was asking me on a date! I remembered how he’d looked in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt yesterday during gym, and I saw how sharp he was dressed today, in pressed white slacks and a light blue button-up shirt, and before I could think through whether it was really a good idea, I said “Yes!” Then second thoughts immediately crowded in, and I stammered for a moment before I managed to add: “I mean, I’d like to... I should ask my parents if they’ve got some kind of family thing planned Friday. And, um, we haven’t really talked about dating and stuff since I Twisted, and I’m not sure... I mean, I’m seventeen so they ought to let me but I’m not sure what my curfew will be or anything...”

“So, talk to them and let me know?”

“Yes. I will do that.”

“And think about what restaurant you’d like. See you in gym.” And with another glorious smile he turned to go. I somehow managed to gather up my things and get to Literature barely on time.

I wasn’t sure what to think or do. I liked Rob; he was easy on the eyes, and he’d stood up for me when Tracy and her friend were talking trash about me, and he was pretty smart. But I didn’t know him well; when I was a guy our interests had never been similar and we’d moved in different social circles. And once I thought about it, I was pretty sure it would be a bad idea: my feminine appearance was apparently nice to look at, to judge from the comments I’d heard, but it wouldn’t stand up to physical contact — maybe not even holding hands or a light kiss. On the other hand, he was bi, so maybe the discrepancy wouldn’t bother him. (Maybe it was even part of the attraction. That thought made me squirm; I hoped not.)

I should probably beg off, tell him we had a family outing Friday and I couldn’t go out with him then. But then he’d just suggest another day; I had told him, truthfully at the time, that I’d like to go out with him.

Despite all that, my Twist-obsession with school stood me in good stead and within a couple of minutes of Ms. Muir beginning her lecture, I was able to put my uncertainty about Rob — and dating in general — aside and focus on the story she was talking about.

“What do you think the attitudes of the characters in ‘Bread and Bombs’ tell us about the War on Terror that was going on at the time the story was written?” Ms. Muir asked. “Remember, you can’t assume that the author agrees with any particular character’s opinions, even if they’re the main character...”

After class, I talked to Sarah on the way to gym. “How much do you know about Rob Dyer? Have you ever gone out with him, or known anybody who has?”

“Not me,” she said. “Olive went out with him a few times freshman year. She said he was a nice enough guy but they didn’t click.” Then her eyes widened. “Did he ask you out?” She must have learned what she wanted to know from my expression, before I could say anything: “He did! Did you say yes?”

“I kind of said maybe.” I told her some of the excuses I’d made for why it might not suit for us to go out Friday.

“Be careful,” she said. “I mean — he might get mad when he finds out you’re not all girl yet.”

“I’m going to tell him before I definitely agree to anything. But I think he might already know — certainly some people know who I haven’t told.” I started telling her about Tracy, but we got to the gym before I finished, and went different ways, to the girls‘ locker room and the women coaches’ shower.

Today Coach Guardini gave a lecture on different muscle groups and the types of exercise that affect different ones, and then taught us different warm-up stretches for use before different types of sport or work. We were spread out in a kind of grid across a large part of the gym, and Rob was in the row ahead of me a little to my left. I tried not to stare at him, but I kept glancing at him again and again, and a couple of times he turned and saw me, and smiled broadly and winked. I turned away, but a minute or two later I found myself looking at him again.

Then the coach set us to running laps around the field for the last twenty minutes or so. It had warmed up a good deal, and I hoped Mildred would enjoy the weather after school — her P.E. period was late morning, and it might have been cool enough then that she had to stay inside even if the other kids went out on the field. I kept pace with Sarah, though I could have outrun her if I tried my hardest, and after a few minutes Rob passed us, slowing down for a moment to smile at me as he did so.

“He is nice to look at,” Sarah said to me between pauses for breath.

“I just noticed that yesterday.”

After that, we went off to the showers. When I walked past the door of the girls‘ locker room toward the coaches’ office, one of the girls called to me: “Why aren’t you changing with the rest of us?”

Another said: “Didn’t you hear? His Twist didn’t really make him a girl, it just made him want to dress like one. They’re letting him use a private room so the boys won’t beat him up for it.”

I turned back and said: “That’s not exactly right. My brain is all girl, I think like a girl, but the Twist didn’t change my body all at once.”

The first girl looked me up and down curiously. “How much did it change you?”

“Enough that I can’t shower with the boys, not enough that I can shower with you. Yet.” I turned and went through the office to the women’s shower.

When I got home, I found Uncle Jack sitting on the porch with his tablet, working on a translation assignment.

“How’s life treating you, Emily?” he asked. “Nice day today.”

“It is,” I said.

I went upstairs and changed into more comfortable shoes, then did homework until Mildred came home a few minutes later. I stepped out of my room to see her coming up the stairs with a plate of reheated sausages from breakfast; she looked as chipper as I’d ever seen her since her Twist.

“Guess what!”

“What?” I asked.

“Bobby sent me a message!” She went into her room, and I followed her. I think she’d programmed her heaters to turn on an hour before she got home from school; it was pretty toasty in there. She put down the plate of sausages, bit off a large chunk of one of them, and chewed it while she pulled her tablet out of her backpack and tapped through to the net messages. She swallowed a mouthful and said: “I won’t let you read it, but I’ll read you part of it... Here, he says: ‘The secretary at the Twist clinic told me you wanted to talk. Yes, I remember you. Your Twist looked pretty awesome; have you figured out your trick yet? I found some new things I could do with mine, like turn switches on or off without touching them, or...’ Um, and then he says he lives in Woodstock. That’s not all that far!”

“It’s a little closer than Atlanta, anyway. Still a couple of hours away, but you might could get Mom or Dad or Uncle Jack to give you a ride to have lunch with him or something.”

“They don’t want me dating yet, but maybe if I frame it as two kids with weird Twists helping each other...”

“That might work.”

“And he sent me a picture, and he asked me to send him a picture of me!”

“I told you he thought you were pretty.”

“And, um... he kind of asked about you too. Whether you’d figured out your trick or your Twist compulsions yet. What do you want me to tell him?”

“Tell him we figured out from my brain scans that I have a girl brain, and that I’m going to get the rest of my body changed to match it eventually.”

“And I’ll tell him your trick is to look pretty.”

“What did he say about how the kids at school are treating him?”

“He didn’t, exactly. But... I think they’re being kind of mean to him, ‘cause he says his parents are talking about moving at the end of the school year or the end of the semester. His dad wants to move into an apartment in Little Five Points, so they won’t have to get new jobs or move far away from his family, but his mom wants to buy a house in Spiral — I guess they can’t afford a house in Little Five Points as nice as the one they have in Woodstock — partly ’cause she has relatives out West and wants to live closer to them.”

“I hope they can work it out. And I hope you can meet up with Bobby sometime... How are the kids at school treating you?”

“...Maybe not quite as bad as last Friday. But still not good. Irene sat with me at lunch, and we talked about normal stuff, but most of the girls I used to hang with are avoiding me when the teachers are listening and making snarky comments about me when they aren’t.”

“I’m sorry... I hope it gets better. I’ve got some news too.”

“What is it?”

I told her about Rob asking me out, and my confused, vacillating response. “What do you think I should do?”

“He sounds pretty nice, but... what does he think about you being, you know, not physically a girl yet?”

“I don’t know! I should have talked to him about it then and there, but we didn’t have a lot of time to talk between classes, and besides I was... in shock. I didn’t think anybody’d ask me out, not the way I am. And I’m not sure if he knows yet — some people do, but not everybody...”

“You should tell him before he finds out from somebody else.”

“I will, if it’s not too late. But I think he might be okay with part of me still being male. He’s bi... do you remember Charles Kreutz?”

“Vaguely.”

“Yeah, you were pretty little when me and Vic used to hang out with him. We kind of drifted apart as we got older, but we’d still say hi when saw each other at school... He and Rob were an item for a couple of years, before his family moved to Raleigh.”

Uncle Jack knocked at the door, and Mildred said: “Come in.”

“Hey, girls. Your mother wants us to fix supper before she and your dad get home, so we can eat before church.”

“Sounds good,” I said, and we went downstairs and started getting ingredients out of the cabinets and refrigerator.

When Mom and Dad got home, we ate supper in a bit of a hurry and then went to church; Mildred wasn’t hungry after her snack, and I noticed she hadn’t finished her sausages either. She told Mom and Dad about the message she’d gotten from Bobby (she didn’t tell them as many details as she’d told me), and kept glancing at me, apparently wondering when I’d get the nerve to tell them about Rob asking me out. I was wondering the same thing.

During prayer meeting, Dad prayed aloud for the school board, the school principals, and the teachers — I knew he was thinking about Mildred and her problems with bullying, and maybe about me, but he didn’t mention us directly. Ms. Taylor prayed specifically that the teachers at the middle school would crack down on bullying, and that the bullies would repent and change their ways — I felt Mildred squirming in her seat next to me. I didn’t pray aloud, but I asked God to help me figure out what to do about Rob — and what to tell Mom and Dad about him.

When we got home, I said: “Dad? Mom? There’s something I forgot to mention during supper...”

“What is it, dear?” Mom asked.

I took a deep breath. “A guy asked me to go out with him Friday and I haven’t said yes or no to him yet but if I say yes would it be okay and how late could I stay out?”

Dad blinked. “Who is this young man? Do we know him?”

“Rob Dyer. No, I don’t think so. I’ve sort of known him since middle school, but never very well.”

“And now that you are as you are, he is romantically interested in you.”

“Uh, yeah, apparently. He said I looked nice since my Twist, and would I like to have dinner and go to a movie Friday.”

“I’m worried,” Mom said. “Does he already know about your... condition?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ll tell him tomorrow. I was kind of too flustered to think of it right then, and we didn’t have time to talk for very long anyway.”

“Do tell him,” Mom said. “Or — if you turn him down, you wouldn’t have to tell him.”

“He’ll hear from somebody anyway; I’m going to tell him whether I agree to go out with him or not... So is it okay?”

“Let us discuss it,” Dad said.

---

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon