“It’s hard to refer to you as ‘mister’ when I have contrary evidence,” said Dr. Verre.

I heard someone say, “I think she fainted.” It sounded like the old woman with a note of amusement.

“Well, for goodness sakes,” said the doctor. “Are you all right, Miss Hunter?”

“I’m—I’m not sure,” I heard my voice respond. “Did you—what did you…call me?”

“Oh.” Now she sounded amused. “Well, it’s hard to refer to you as ‘mister’ when I have contrary evidence in front of me. Give her the mirror, Marie.”

Granny put a mirror in my hand and moved it to where I could see what the doctor was doing. She had some peculiar-looking instruments in her hands, but, as I had in the bathroom back at Joanna’s, I could see clearly where my dick and balls used to be. They were gone.

“If you faint again, I’m going to use the smelling salts,” warned Granny.

I shook my head. Instead of feeling light-headed, I felt sick at my stomach. But I watched as Dr. Verre put a gleaming instrument up inside me and squeezed the handle creating an astonishing sensation. The metal was cold and uncomfortable but it was the feeling of being opened up that made it freaky.

With the mirror, I could see a narrow pink tube up inside me. “This is your vagina, Miss Hunter,” the doctor said. She used more tools that reminded me of dentist equipment. “At the inner end is your cervix and beyond that….” She paused, continuing her examination. “And yes, you appear to have a uterus.”

She nodded. “I palpated the shape of your womb and your ovaries when I did the abdominal exam,” she said. She turned to the older woman, Granny Marie. “I think we’ll want to do a full ultrasound but that lab is not open on Saturday.” Then she looked me directly in the face. “Miss Hunter, you are apparently a fully functional female. You can expect to have your first period in the next several weeks. Unless, of course, you get pregnant.”

I didn’t know whether to faint again or just throw up, so I settled on screaming.

*

My scream came out high-pitched and ragged like I didn’t have enough air. It ended with choking and coughing as Dr. Verre withdrew her instruments from the examination of my insides. She made a noise herself, something like a soft yelp of surprise. She rolled backward on her office chair, looking up at my face.

“Just breathe, honey,” said Granny, serving as nurse. “You’ll be all right.” She moved up to take my left hand.

Megan must have come back into the room because suddenly, she was beside me, holding my right hand. “Shh, sh, shhh,” she soothed.

The exam may have continued. I think it did with me lying on the table, feet in the stirrups, legs spread open. I had never felt so vulnerable, not even when carrying a handoff into the line of scrimmage while surrounded by looming defenders twice my size.

*

The world hummed and buzzed, continuing to turn on its axis, I suppose. I eventually ended up sitting in another office chair, Megan standing beside me, still holding my hand while the doctor droned on, making her report on my impossible condition.

“Other than your rather masculine musculature and evidently immature male skeleton, Miss Hunter, you appear to be a healthy young woman,” she said. “Of course, we’ll need to see the lab work, do an ultrasound on Monday. I’m especially curious to see your hormones. We could order x-rays, that lab is open on the weekend, but that wouldn’t really tell us anything we don’t know. Soft tissues don’t show up on x-rays.”

She paused. “And I don’t like x-rays used on healthy young women of child-bearing age.” Even though that was said in almost an aside, it struck me like an icicle down the back of my shirt.

She turned to shuffle papers on the counter beside her before picking out one paper to examine. Then she turned back to me and opened her mouth.

But I didn’t want to hear anymore of what she might have to say. “Change me back,” I said. I felt Megan squeeze my hand. “Just change me back. Give me back my…my dick, my balls.”

Dr. Verre glanced at Granny. “That’s…,” she began. The older woman interrupted. “We can’t, child,” she said simply.

I took in all three of them with a glare. Megan had told me they were a family of witches, so they must have had something to do with a transformation that couldn’t be explained by science. “You must be able to,” I insisted. “You changed me in the first place!”

All three of them shook their heads!

“We wouldn’t have the first idea of how to do that,” Granny explained in her soft accent. “Our magic is just in finding out things about the world and helping people find out things about themselves. It’s more like psychology than sorcery.”

My face twisted around my grief and anger. I wanted to lash out and hurt these women. Even Megan, who was still by my side, stroking my back and murmuring to me. “Petey,” she said several times, just my name. “Petey. Petey.”

I shook my head, looking down at my lap. Sometime during that period, I had changed back into my street clothes, though I didn’t remember it. The way my pants fit now felt strange. “I have to go,” I said.

“Go where?” Megan asked.

“Team meeting,” I reminded her.

She frowned. “I thought that was at two?”

I guess she hadn’t forgotten. “It’s after noon. I should let my parents know I survived the party last night.” Did I? Maybe not.

“Are you…? Will you…? Should I…?”

I shook my head again. “Hell, no. I’m not telling anyone I don’t have to. I’ll be okay, and no, I don’t think you should go with me.” I glared at her—unfairly, sure, but life was unfair, and didn’t I know it?

She tried not to show that she felt hurt by my rejection, nodding with her lips in a tight line. I didn’t even consider that I was more or less stranding her at the hospital, and she didn’t bring it up.

Dr. Verre regarded me. “We can’t do anything for you, Miss Hunter. But we wish you well. As long as I can keep you off the books, I’ll offer you medical help.”

Granny looked as if she were going to say something, glanced at Dr. Verre, then at Megan and nodded. I didn’t understand that exchange but also didn’t care so much.

“I’m out of here,” I said and turned to leave. I’d had about as much as I could stand of being called ‘Miss Hunter,’ anyway. I might have screamed at them to stop that but I didn’t know if I could raise my voice without breaking into more tears.

Megan took my arm, but I shook her off. “I need some time alone,” I said, trying to sound harsh, but my voice almost broke. She looked hurt, and I had an unkind thought: it served her fine, and I didn’t care.

Of course, I did care, but she nodded and didn’t try to talk me out of excluding her. “Do you want me to meet you at the Barn?” she asked, meaning Barn o’ Pizza, where the after-game team meetings were held on Saturdays. I shrugged, not trusting my voice to speak.

*

I got out of there and found myself on the road to the Mogollon Rim, which meant I had driven right through town and made a right turn onto the highway in the middle of downtown without remembering any of it. My eyes burned, and my teeth were clenched.

I checked my speed. Nothing excessive, but I was coming up on the limits of Zane City with their notorious speed trap, so I slowed down. I was already half an hour out of Friendly—what had I been doing, where did I think I was going? I took four turns at the first opportunity and headed back toward Friendly.

I tried to wipe my eyes, and I coughed up some of the stuff you get in your throat when you’ve been crying. I should have stopped and used tissues, but I didn’t, spitting phlegm and mucus into a paper cup that had been in the console.

I realized I was heading home when I turned off the highway on Manzanita Drive. It wasn’t my usual way home, but I’d been starting from Zane instead of the school or Jake’s or any of my other usual haunts. There was no direct route home, anyway, since my parents’ house was in the middle of the twisty streets of the Timber Heights neighborhood.

What was I going to tell my folks? I did stop the car then, pulling over to park beside one of the little wooded areas that dotted Friendly. I sat in the car with the windows open and tried to think. I didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to me because—because it might reverse itself as suddenly and with as little reason as it happened in the first place.

People just don’t suddenly change their sex with no surgery or chemicals or anything. It couldn’t happen, but it had. Science couldn’t possibly explain something like it, but the only people I knew of with any claim to doing magic denied responsibility.

I sighed. I didn’t feel like a girl, except when my lip trembled like it was doing a lot lately. I’d never cried so much in my life, not at one time, and not even added all together for as long as I could remember. Four years ago, my grandmother and my dog had both died the week before Christmas, and I had hardly cried at all.

I’d been sad, and I had grieved for Grandma Hunter and for Piffle, a rat terrier we’d had all my life. The pain had been like a stone in my chest, it hurt, but I didn’t remember crying except at the funeral for Grandma or even in my room alone where no one could see me. Now I cried. I wept for myself.

I thumped the steering wheel with the flat of my hand and screamed in fear and anguish. “This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening!” Then “Why me! Why did this happen to me? Did Megan do something to me?”

The blast of rage I felt just then left me shaky and disoriented. I didn’t think I’d ever felt that mad about something. Was I losing my mind, too? “God,” I whispered, “don’t let me turn into some kind of monster over this.”

I’ve never been a praying person. I’m not sure I believe in prayer as an effective way to communicate with a Supreme Being. I believe in God, but I’m not sure I believe in any religion’s ideas of what God is like. It seems to me that anyone big enough to keep the galaxies turning would not be concerned with my small problems.

And right then and there, I started to feel better. I sniffled and cried for several more minutes, snot running down my face, and all the tissue and handkerchiefs in the car got soaked. Even my shirt was wet and snotty. I was still upset—it was so unfair—but I was eighteen, old enough to know that life is not fair and never has been.

When I stopped blubbering, I sat quietly in the car and watched the blue jays squabble with a squirrel. I could actually smile at the birds. “Okay,” I said aloud, “I’m going to live, so I have to deal with this.” Counting on being able to change back didn’t seem to be wise, since Megan’s family denied that they could do it, and who else did I know that had any connection to magic?

I sighed, decided I was thirsty, started the car up and drifted back toward the highway. I drove around the block, through Taco King, got an order of fries and a cup of water and made my way back to where I had parked before.

Am I still a football player, I wondered? Well, as long as no one finds out…. But could I really keep it a secret? This was important because football was part of my plan to go to college. I didn’t have any delusions that I would ever play in the NFL, and certainly not now, but some little college somewhere might be delighted to have a running back like me.

But now? Maybe not. Probably not. Damn.

Because it wasn’t just me, Jake was kind of counting on a football scholarship, too. And he was good enough, he could even aim higher like maybe a Division I school. But he needed the kind of visibility that our winning, or at least placing in the state competition would give us.

We did it last year, and this year, Jake was starting quarterback. If we could win our conference, we could go on to the state tourney again. Things got complicated there. We’d been promoted to Division 4 this year which meant we could qualify to play against the big-school teams in what was called the Open Division. We were all excited about that.

But if we could…it might give several of us on the team a shot at getting scholarships, not just Jake and me. We wouldn’t have to win the tournament, just making it past the first round might be good enough—but it didn’t hurt to dream.

I counted them up. We had six more games in Northern League play, then four more in the tournament to be state champions. I grinned. We’d already won two games in League; ten more couldn’t be that hard. Would they let a girl play football? If I never changed back, that is.

But what if I didn’t tell anyone?

I pulled the mirror around so I could look at my face. I didn’t look any different. Same dark hair, same blue eyes, same slight cleft in my chin, and I still had the sharp cheekbones that made me look more Indian than I really was. I felt of my bicep; I still seemed to have my muscles, though I’ve never been a giant of a guy like Jake.

I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t still play football if no one found out—besides Jake, Megan, Joanna, Dr. Verre and Granny, all of whom already knew. That might be too many people. Especially Joanna.

Wait, wait. All five of those people had seen the proof. Would anyone else believe such a thing without seeing it for themselves? I didn’t think so.

I still wasn’t sure I believed it myself.