A snow globe, of sorts, of an insulated world where dreams can come true over several holidays.

Academic, by Karin Bishop

Part 1

Prologue

My life changed during my seventh Thanksgiving. As with other holidays, we celebrated it with Boarders.

My father, Edward Houseman, taught History at the Morton Academy, a very prestigious and very expensive school in Connecticut. He was also the author of several books including Our Father’s Lives, about the Founding Fathers in the decades before the Revolution, which became one of the most popular entry-level American History textbooks.

My mother, Marion Russell Houseman, was one of the Russells, one of the two original families that founded the Morton Academy in 1882. The family had lost a great deal in the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and was somewhat faded, but Mom had been a Morton Girl and Columbia graduate with Honors in History, where she met my father, a quietly intense student from New Hampshire.

Yes; it was all very preppy, very New England, very Old School.

I was born Benjamin Russell Houseman, after a difficult pregnancy. I was carried high, with a heart rate of 150, and the ultrasound never showed any genitalia. Everything indicated that I would be a girl, but then everything indicated that I would never be born at all–my mother developed symptoms that indicated an ectopic pregnancy. Fortunately, a visiting doctor from England had only recently had a similar case and realized it was not ectopic but was dangerous. I was small and frail and things were touch-and-go for a time, but both my mother and I recovered by my first birthday. My mother’s overall health had been affected and she quietly moved from being an active tennis player to a stay-at-home homemaker. She began working on a history of her family and the Morton Academy.

The Morton Academy had been a girl’s school until the 1960s and co-educational ever since, although it was strange to consider the addition of male students as ‘co-eds’. It was originally a beautiful brick mansion some miles outside of Hartford that grew and grew over the years, and had quietly produced the wives of senators and bank presidents, and once co-education and feminism hit in the Sixties, it produced senators and bank presidents of both sexes–also two movie stars and a few novelists and one particularly notorious hedge fund trader.

As with similar institutions, it had split into three parts; Lower, Middle, and Upper Schools, which would translate in public school terms as elementary, middle, and high school. My father taught American History to the Uppers. Our house was two miles from the school, last of the Russell legacy, a rambling eight-bedroom affair that was on the state’s historic homes preservation list. Most of the rooms were storage for family and Morton memorabilia. Our lives centered around Morton.

There were two divisions of students; Day and Boarders. There were very few Day students because the tuition was upwards of $25,000 per year. Boarders were the rule, with tuition and board starting at $46,000. The draw was the school’s quiet prestige, outstanding academics, and the student accommodations were much more comfortable than other private schools. In addition, one of the alumni had become a microchip billionaire and had given a huge endowment of technology to the school. Consequently, the century-old school was now absolutely cutting-edge in computer-related fields.

My father used the powerful internet capabilities available to him to research his last book, Changing Fortunes, about how wealthy families had guided America’s cultural direction until the influence of New Money and the 1929 Crash affected their stewardship–as the blurb on the book cover said. It was short-listed for a National Book Award for Non-Fiction, although it lost to that one about Jackie Onassis–who had been a Holton-Arms and Miss Porter’s Girl.

Actually, there were divisions within the divisions of students. There were the wealthy and the super-wealthy, of course, but also the ones who were driven and the ones who were slack, the ones who wanted to change the world and the ones who wanted the safe comfortable world of their families’ estates, and so on.

Among the Boarders were students who were rarely at school; they spent every possible moment with their family. Usually this was out of deep love and close-knit families, but often it was an excuse for other activities. Skiing at Aspen or Cortina, snorkeling in the Maldives, attending the Oscars or Wimbledon. And of course, they were gone at every holiday, returning tanned and full of stories.

But there were also Boarders who had quite clearly been tucked away at Morton and rarely left the campus. They were out of the way because of family problems–divorces among the wealthy were usually spectacularly vicious–or because they were embarrassments to the family in one way or another. The dorky boy that just didn’t fit the image of the heir to a sportswear empire, for instance. Or the inconvenient child that got in the way of a single parent’s sexual escapades.

I document all of this because of the influence of my parents, genetically and socially, and my observations.

Chapter 1: Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving on the campus with those Boarders who stayed. At the time I was a small but precocious seven-year-old with few friends. I loved my father but spent more time with my mother; I helped her cook and loved helping her in the Library. On this Thanksgiving, I was helping out in the kitchen, carrying things in as best I could to the students and the few faculty families. There were only two Lower School kids there; usually the Forgotten Ones–as my father called them at home–were older. Six more were Middle and four were Upper. The Uppers usually found ways to get invited to friend’s homes.

One of the Lowers was a skinny red-headed boy who was fighting to keep from crying. Mom whispered to me that his parents were divorcing and this was his first holiday away from home. There was also a chubby girl with glasses and stringy black hair.

She appeared at my side as I slipped. I was carrying a bowl of mashed potatoes; somebody had splashed something on the floor and I hit the wet patch with my heel. I started to go backward and there she was stabilizing me. I grinned and thanked her.

She grinned back. “You can do the same for me some time. I’m Shelly. You’re Jenny, right?”

I started to correct her that I was called Benny but my mother had seen my near-disaster and called out, “Honey, are you alright?”

“Yes, Mom,” I nodded. “Shelly saved me.”

“Then bring the potatoes over. Mr. Hanson is starving!” she teased the gangly Upper boy seated near her.

I promptly responded and only when I set the potatoes down did I realize that I hadn’t corrected Shelly’s misunderstanding. And then I was fetching and carrying; my family and the few other faculty people had a rule that the regular kitchen folks should have the day off. Most of them were home with their local families anyway, but we did the lion’s share of the cooking and serving and it was a nice tradition.

My father was probably the most loved of the teachers present, at least by the four Uppers who knew him, but everybody seemed to know of him. He wasn’t the most senior present, though; that was a mathematics teacher named Mr. Stoat. I thought it was a Wind in the Willows type of name, and he was a beefy, red-faced man that Mom had said ‘was going through a tough time’. I didn’t know what but, at seven, I was already learning about divorce and drinking as the two most common ailments of adults. Mr. Stoat sat at the head of the table and often mopped his sweaty face with his napkin, deferring to my father to be the principal coordinator of the festivities.

We sat around and prayed, a non-denominational prayer delivered by my mother. Ordinarily this would be the role of Mrs. Carey, the head of the school, but she was having hip surgery. Since my mother was part of the school’s history–although no longer active at the school–it was fitting that she perform the duty.

Afterward, we went around the table with the ritual of each of us telling one thing we were thankful for. With a glance at Mr. Stoat, my father allowed that we had to be truthful but could be lighthearted. He began by saying he was thankful that the Patriots quarterback was healthy. This was kind of funny because my father was definitely not a typical football fan; he was an academic with a build that I’d heard called ‘slight’. But the New England Patriots–and the Red Sox–were his sports passions.

It cleared the air; usually people are embarrassed to say things like, ‘I’m thankful for the love of my parents’–the sort of thing that would be expected to be said but was clearly awkward given that the students here were the Forgotten Ones. One-by-one we went around the table. One teacher said she was thankful that her back problem was easing up. One student said he was thankful that he finally understood quadratics–although we figured that was trying to butter up Mr. Stoat, who only nodded. He’d said he was thankful for ‘this excellent Pinot Noir’.

I was probably a goody-two-shoes; I said I was thankful that I got to be with my parents but that I also got to have a larger family–all of them. That earned me some ‘aws!’ and a ‘that’s so sweet!’ from Shelly and a thrown crouton from an Upper who joked about ‘Hallmark cards.’

After he was disciplined with a slight cuff on the head, it moved on to Shelly.

“I’m thankful my mom’s in rehab.”

There was silence and I realized that nobody was sure how she meant it.

She looked up and said, “No, this is a good thing. She …drinks. So when she realized how bad it was getting, she checked into that place in Malibu.”

People then nodded their understanding that this was a good thing, and the conversation moved on. I was close enough to hear her quietly add, ‘Just hope it works this time.’

It was a long and busy meal with little conversation; we were largely strangers or co-workers, and I was the only one with his whole family present. But the food was good and other than the Lower boy knocking over his milk, everything flowed nicely. The students were elected to clear the table and while we were doing that, I came up to Shelly and said softly, “I hope it works for your mom.”

She gave me a sad smile. “Thanks, Jenny. Hope so, too. You’re pretty cool for saying that.”

“It’s, uh, Benny, actually.”

“Benny? What’s that short for?”

“Benjamin.”

“Why do you have a boy’s …” Her eyes widened. “Omigod! I’m so sorry! I thought you were–”

I raised a hand. “It’s okay; I’m used to it. No problem.”

As we went back into the dining area, I evaluated the situation. Morton Academy was elite but not super-strict, in the sense that while students wore uniforms and faculty wore coats and ties, they allowed longer hair and even beards and mustaches on the senior boys that could grow them–but only with faculty approval. My light brown hair was parted in the middle and swept back behind my ears. It was entering what Mom called its ‘Winter Long’ stage, where it was at my collar in back. The students at the dinner were in casual clothes–which didn’t mean jeans or sweats; it meant slacks and skirts–but most wore variation of the uniform.

For boys and girls, shirts were either white or light blue. The girls’ blouses had Peter Pan collars, and both boys and girls wore polo shirts in white or light blue. Slacks for boys and girls were Navy blue or khaki and girls wore Navy blue skirts, although there was a push on for khaki skirts for Spring. The school blazer was Navy and boys wore the school tie, a yellow-and-blue Repp style, or girls could also wear blue ribbon ties. The athletics uniform was blue shorts and light blue t-shirts and there were heather gray sweats. There were two sweaters, heather gray or Navy V-necks, and of course almost everything bore the school’s crest.

Shelly wore Navy slacks and a light blue blouse with a ribbon tie. I wore Navy slacks with the white polo. We were about the same height but she looked like she weighed two of me. That wasn’t a comment on how fat she was as much as a comment on how skinny I was, combined with her stockiness. I was already familiar with how strangers perceived me–they’d often told Mom, ‘Your daughter is so pretty!’–so I knew that I had a face that Mrs. Carey had once called ‘angelic’.

The funny thing was …I didn’t squirm when these things happened. I didn’t freak out; I didn’t yell ‘I’m a boy, darn it!’ at them. I didn’t really feel like a boy; I mean, I could look at Peter Hanson the Upper and think it was like we were two different species. Even the kid that knocked over his milk seemed alien compared to me. I was a small, quiet child of small, quiet parents and quite content with that. But Shelly’s thinking that I was a girl rocked me. It wasn’t the casual passing thing of strangers complimenting Mom; it was right up-front and in my face and the strangest thing was that I felt a connection to her or with her. There was just something about her eyes when we looked at each other …

Students drifted off back to their rooms and faculty left for their homes but we were faced with the large lump that was the senior faculty member. Mr. Stoat had accounted for at least a bottle of Pinot, I overheard my father say. So he coaxed Mr. Stoat up from his chair and to his car and loaded him into the passenger seat. My father had already gotten Mr. Stoat’s keys to drive him home, with Mom and I following in our family car.

We were right behind them at a red stoplight. Mom pointed out that my father was looking at us in the rearview mirror. We waved to him and he waved to us. The light turned green. He pulled forward with us following and suddenly a black sports car flashed in from the left, running the red light at full speed. Mom started to shout just as the car hit Mr. Stoat’s car at the driver’s door.

Chapter 2: Four Years Later

“God, I was worried you wouldn’t be here!” Shelly squealed with glee as we hugged for the first time that fall.

“Where else would I be?” I chuckled. “You look great!”

She did, too; her mother’s routine was to dump her in a ‘fat farm’ each summer and each fall she returned to Morton tanned and maybe a little less chubby. But our last year of Lower had been hell; we eyed the Middle kids with envy. Shelly wanted desperately to be popular but so far her closest and only friend was me, and I was no great shakes in the popularity department.

Shelly and I were the smartest kids in class and universally disliked and distrusted because of that. As more than one kid angrily told us, we ‘blew the curve’ for them. With my background, I was best in English, History, Art and Drama, French and Journalism. Shelly was the Science, Math, Health, and Information Technology whiz. Yeah, we were the class nerds. So other than one or two kids in each class who were friendly, we spent our time together. And we were content.

We spent so much time together you’d think we’d get on each other’s nerves or at least bored with each other, but we didn’t. Shelly had kept me going in the year after my father’s terrible death, and this past Christmas Shelly’s father walked out. He’d always been a sort of mysterious figure; I’d never met him although I’d seen photos of her mother. Tanned, taut, leathery, dripping with gold jewelry and absolutely devastated that she had to waste a moment smiling at the camera. There had been a young guy in the photo with her, ‘her driver’, although they’d been sitting by a pool, so no driving was being done. So it looked like a divorce made sense. The father wasn’t Shelly’s biological dad; he was her mother’s third husband–the second that Shelly had known–but she’d known him the longest and it was the speed with which her mother had dumped him that hurt. And her mother was oblivious to Shelly’s hurt; she was already preoccupied with landing the next one. Shelly noted that her mother ‘had the knack’ of marrying rich and divorcing richer.

But that Christmas split had rocked her. She was staying at Morton over the holidays, of course, one of the Forgotten Ones, in my dear father’s words. That was okay with us because we got more time together. With permission from Mrs. Carey and Shelly’s mother, she came to stay with Mom and me–after all, we had eight bedrooms! It was a very sad time for Shelly but a very happy time for both of us.

The second morning, Mom had sat us down and told us that, unfortunately, we were getting older. It was no longer ‘proper’ for a young girl and a young boy to be together as we were.

Shelly looked at me–one of her laser-direct glances–and turned back to Mom and said, “What about two young girls? Is that proper?”

Mom made a small smile. “Shelly, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Shelly nodded, her eyes wide. “And you know what I mean.”

Mom looked at me, saying nothing.

It was no secret that I should have been a girl. All of the old wives’ tales predicted a girl. Heck; all of the medical evidence had predicted a girl. I was small and thin; even with the most rigorous weight training program I might grow to be ‘slight’, as my father was. But I was delicate–really the best word for it. At ten, I was 4'3", thin-boned, with light brown hair pulled back in a school-acceptable ponytail now. Large blue eyes; clear, almost milky skin. A high voice. My testicles had not descended and my penis length was only two of my fingers’ width, although my mother did not know that Shelly knew that.

My mother did know that Shelly and I acted like two girls when we were home. Correct that–we didn’t act like girls; we simply were ourselves. And we were just two girls. It was getting increasingly difficult to separate how we acted when we were alone together, from how we acted at school. In other words, there was some bleed-through, as Shelly called it. We’d be at lunch and she’d say something and I’d giggle and a nearby boy would mumble ‘fag’. Once she’d been showing me some new earrings, holding her dark hair back, and I leaned close to see the tiny gold knots, and an Upper girl passed by and mumbled ‘lezzies’.

We had fun; we got each other, and we had each other’s backs. We competed one-and-two in every class but were both genuinely happy for the other.

We were best girlfriends; BFFs–except that I was male.

Mom sighed. “The two of you …you’ve been so happy together. But I’m afraid that as much joy as you’ve had, you’ll have as much or more heartache as you get older.”

There was a look of such sadness on her face; I knew her statement also applied to her life with and then without my father. I put my hand on hers. She smiled sadly.

“Oh, sweetie, you can always tell, can’t you?”

“I miss him, too,” I said, simply.

There was a long moment, and then Mom patted the back of my hand. “As I was saying, I think that you two had better realize the world will be changing for you.”

“We do,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Shelly said. Then she said, “Mrs. Houseman …you know that …” She frowned. “You know about Jenny.”

Mom nodded.

Ever since that first meeting at Thanksgiving when Shelly had mistaken the name Benny for Jenny, we’d kept that as a special name between us. In the mourning period for my father, I’d somehow moved from being Benny to being Benjamin to the rest of the world. But Shelly still called me Jenny and I loved her for it. She loved that I called her Shelly …also because her mother only called her Michelle.

Mom said, “This is an extremely …delicate situation, a very complicated adult situation you’re talking about.”

Shelly shook her head. “With all due respect, ma’am, I disagree. Jenny is …” She turned and looked at me and smiled, then turned back to Mom. “Your child is a girl. Female. Always has been and always will be.”

Mom sighed. “I will acknowledge that Benjamin is somewhat …feminine.”

I felt Shelly close to exploding and headed her off. “Mom? I’m more than somewhat feminine. There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you because …well, you’ve been so sad for so long. Or so busy.”

To offset flare-ups of grief, my mother would go on binges of projects, usually involving intense research. One time it was about the regiment that a Russell had served in during the Civil War. Another time it was the development of the tea ceremony in Japan. Once it was the evolution of Victorian-era wallpaper patterns–really!

Mom simply said, “I …have to keep the wolves from the door.”

The ‘wolves from the door’ was an old pet phrase of my father’s, even when everything had been fine. We really needn’t fear ‘the wolves’ as far as I knew; a friend of my father’s had set her up as a consultant and researcher–by internet and phone–and she had an actual client list and worked from home. The wallpaper thing had grown out of one such consultancy, for a Yale professor’s book on Victorian England; she’d been paid for her research but then went off on her own tangent with the wallpaper. There was money from my father’s insurance and some other money, and the Morton Academy paid the founding families dividends in perpetuity. And as a founding family member, I attended absolutely free, as my mother had. It was the only way we could have afforded the school, and I was receiving a superior education.

Shelly looked at me and then squeezed my hand. It was her ‘trust me’ squeeze. “Mrs. Houseman, I said you know about Jenny. But you don’t …excuse me; you don’t really know her. She’s too worried to tell you herself.”

Mom was rocked by the female pronouns; she actually twitched.

Quickly I said, “Mom, it’s true. I don’t consider myself a boy. I never have. I consider myself a girl.” I felt Shelly’s disapproval and shook my head. “No, it’s more than that. I am a girl.” Shelly nodded.

Mom said slowly, “Well, you do spend a lot of time …” She faded out. “Oh, dear; I wish your father were here.”

I put my hand on hers and said, “So do I, Mom. Every minute of every day. And I know you’re hurting and that’s one reason I never said anything but …” I looked at Shelly and back to Mom. “You said it yourself. Feminine. Not effeminate. And …more than ‘somewhat’.”

I looked at Mom to see how she was taking it. I added, “And Mom, if my father were here, I would tell him all of this right now. In fact …I probably would have told both of you years ago.”

“When did you …how do you …know …” Mom said, looking at me neutrally.

“The first that I learned there were two kinds of people, boys and girls, when I was really little? I knew. I mean, I knew that there were boys …sort of over there …and there were girls. Like us. I was just like you. I was going to grow up just like you.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Mom said, her lip trembling.

“I loved Daddy, but he was this …other, you know? And it was okay, because I saw how it was the two of you, together to–” I realized what I was saying would hurt. “Mom, I’m sorry; this is painful. But you have to understand. I saw that it was the two of you that made us all one. That’s why you’re hurting so much; it’s not just him that’s gone–it’s that part of you that he made up.”

Tears formed. Shelly produced a tissue from somewhere and handed it to her. Mom dabbed at her eyes and sniffed. “You’re only ten years old. How’d you get to be so wise?”

“She’s just like that,” Shelly said with a grin.

Mom gave an odd look at Shelly, who just shrugged.

I went on. “Mom, it was only when I started at Morton that I was forced to be put in the boy side of things. And in my head it’s always been forced.”

“You don’t say anything about it,” Mom pointed out. “You act as if everything’s normal.”

“That’s the acting,” I said. “Every day it’s rubbed in my face that I can’t be the girl that I am inside. And thank God for Shelly, because she knows the girl I am, and I can be myself with her. Otherwise I’d just …explode.”

Shelly said, “I knew it the first time I met her, back at that Thanksgiving. I know I misunderstood ‘Benny’ and said ‘Jenny’, but I could tell she was a girl. So it was kind of funny to see everybody treat her like a boy.” She chuckled. “Still is, kind of.” She grew serious. “But you said it, ma’am, we’re growing older and the world is changing and all that. And it’s time that she grows up!” Shelly pointed to me.

Mom looked at me and asked, “Are you dressing up like a girl?”

I blushed. “No, not really. I mean, I have tried on a skirt and …skimmers.”

“Skimmers? You mean the shoes?”

“Yes, Mom. Flats. But I haven’t worn anything outside or–”

Shelly jumped in. “Don’t blame her; I made her. I was going crazy because I could see how much it hurts her to be a boy every day. And I just thought I’d make her feel better about herself. So I had her put on the school skirt, you know?”

“How did she …he look?” Mom asked.

“She. Well, it backfired,” Shelly said, looking sadly at me. “I thought it would cheer her up, you know? But it made her miserable. It was like teasing. And I really didn’t mean that!”

“I know you didn’t, sweetie,” I said back to her. To Mom, I said, “It was like a peek at what could be–what should be–and it just …hurt.”

The three of us were silent for a time. Mom looked past us, thinking.

And at that moment, the phone rang. Mom answered automatically. “Houseman. Yes, it is. Oh, hello Mrs. Benton. Yes. I’ll put her–oh.” She listened. Her eyes darted to Shelly. “I see. Yes. An hour? I understand. She’s right here; should I–I see. Alright, then, Mrs. Benton.” She hung up and looked at the phone a moment.

Then she turned to us, frowning. “Shelly, your mother is sending a car to collect you in one hour. Please gather your things; she said she’ll be keeping you until school starts in January.”

“But I only just got here!” Shelly cried, and then shook herself. “Alright. Alright. I think I …I think I know what’s going on. I’ll pack.”

She turned to go to her room. I followed. “Shell? Can I help you?”

“Sure, Jen, it’s just …” She sighed and leaned against the wall. “I think she’s split from Tom. I thought he might be the keeper.”

“You liked him.” He was husband number four; now he was history.

She shrugged.“He was okay. Actually, more than okay; he was so okay that I wondered what he was doing with her.” She frowned. “What’s that thing they do, the settlers …come on, you’re the history buff–circle the wagons. That’s what she’s doing. Only it’s just protecting her investments, I guess. Or she wants me for sympathy. Or to have somebody else to yell at.”

“Aw, sweetie,” I said, going to hug her.

Mom came into the hallway. I turned to Mom. “It’s not fair. She’s only going to be hurt, and it’s Christmas time!”

Mom gave me another sad look. “I know, sweetheart. But I want to tell her mother when she gets here that Shelly is welcome here any time. Forget about what I was talking about earlier. You’re always welcome, Shelly.”

“Thank you, ma’am, only …well, two things. First thing, you were right. The times they are a changing, and please, please, please …let Jenny come out to live in the world. And the second thing is …you won’t talk to my mother. She’s sending a car; she’s probably in Manhattan or Malibu. Or in a bar.”

She’d said this last with such bitterness that Mom and I looked at each other, worried. Shelly went into her bedroom and began emptying the drawers that we’d filled only the night before. She did do one thing that shocked me. She’d brought a lovely Christmas dress for when we were all going to see The Nutcracker ballet in Hartford the following week. It was bright red with white faux fur trim. Actually, knowing how wealthy she was, it was probably real fur; some endangered white fur and outrageously expensive.

Shelly took the dress out of the closet, turned to her suitcase and then turned to me. Looking at my mother in the doorway, Shelly walked up to me and held the hanger up in front of me, in the way of girls everywhere holding up clothes to see how they’d look.

Mom gasped; her eyes went wide and her hand went to her mouth.

Shelly murmured, “She’d look so pretty …”

She looked at my mother with so much intensity, and only then took the dress, folded it and laid it in the suitcase. A few more items and she was done; she closed the suitcase. I ran up to grab it. And it wasn’t being macho–it certainly wasn’t–because when I dragged it off the bed it almost pulled me to the floor.

It broke the mood and we all cracked up.

Chapter 3: Middle School

Shelly had cried for the first time when we spoke on Christmas day. She’d always been strong, acting as if her mother’s continuing soap opera didn’t affect her. She said that it was different this time, though; she was very aware of my mother’s warning about things changing. And she missed me, and I suddenly realized that she had been looking forward to her time with us as a brief oasis of normalcy.

When she came back in January, she was subdued. And finishing up our Lower years was surprisingly tough. The reason was that with the three divisions–Lower-Middle-Upper–there were students that came for only one or two divisions as well as the few that went all the way, as I would because of the free tuition. Consequently, there was a last-ditch preparation for students that would be moving onto another prep school. Mrs. Carey, of course, wanted the other prestigious elite schools to be impressed with Morton Academy students. So we all paid for it with a heavy load of schoolwork.

That Christmas had been very flat and lonely, because of Shelly’s departure. She’d brought energy to our house and we’d planned to have so much fun together. And …we were going to try to get Mom to accept Jenny. With Shelly ripped from us so quickly, it wasn’t discussed any further. But several times I found Mom giving me long thoughtful looks.

And without discussing it, but by mutual subconscious connection, we did not go to The Nutcracker.

The school workload helped keep me distracted–even as I was increasingly distracted by the girls around me. Some of the girls, even at ten or eleven, were getting curvy or developing breasts. I felt a pang when Shelly showed me her budding nipples. She’d simply said, “Yours will, too, sweetie.”

But it seemed like it might be a childhood dream, never to be realized. Like some kids that wanted to be astronauts, or the next Donald Trump–aside from the few kids whose parents could buy Donald Trump–perhaps becoming a girl–actually living as a girl–would become a dream I set aside as I grew up.

There was a little transition ceremony, bridging from Lower to Middle–or ‘outta here’, as one boy snickered–and I felt a cold fire burning inside with envy and shame. Envy at the pretty white dresses of the girls, and shame for feeling that envy.

And then came summer, and Mom had managed a two-week arts camp for me in Vermont. The rest of the summer I read, I helped Mom at home and with her research, and I read. And in between, I read. The arts camp was full of genuinely arty kids and others, like me, that …well, weren’t athletic. There were nature hikes and such, but they’d usually wind up squatting on the ground and sketching wildflowers. I spent most of my time doing digital photography, uploading and fooling around in Photoshop. I had a small laptop at home but used the more powerful hardware and software to take several photos of me and ….selected campers. Well, they were selected because they were girls–but not for the usual pornographic reasons. I worked in secret, extra hours, with a file at the ready to drop into place if anybody came in. I did all sorts of things; I found some websites that sold girls’ clothing and was able to superimpose the outfits on the shots of my full body–sort of like high-tech paper dolls! The shots of the girl campers I would use to try superimposing my face in girl situations.

All of which was bordering on the perverse, I thought. But it was also painful. That cold fire of envy and shame never seemed to leave me.

Finally school started and I was waiting at the entrance as the limousines and SUVs pulled up with returning students. And then Shelly got out of a Town Car and I couldn’t help it; I squealed and ran to her and we hugged and giggled.

“God, I was worried you wouldn’t be here!” Shelly squealed with glee as we hugged.

“Where else would I be?” I chuckled. “Oh, Shell; you look fantastic!”

What had happened was not the results of the fat farm–in fact, she hadn’t even gone to one! As we walked to her room–the driver getting her bags behind us–she said that she’d been dragged from Manhattan to Paris to Rome to Aruba to Detroit–huh?–and some other places. She’d called me a couple of times and emailed a lot but they were pretty much ‘How’re you doing?’ because she wasn’t impressed with her own wealth and didn’t waste time going on about her lifestyle. The moving around was due to business, with her mother consolidating bits and pieces of the empire that she ignored the rest of the time, and also because she was just bored. And maybe there were eligible young men to be sought out.

But in all the dragging around, Shelly had been thinking about my mother’s statement that the world was changing, we were growing up …and Shelly realized that she couldn’t rely on her mother for, well, anything. Including her weight. So in Manhattan with lots of free time, she’d sought out a nutritionist, on her own. They’d put together a program of exercises specifically for her body and metabolism, and they put together menus that she could use for both hotel room service and restaurants, since they always stayed and ate at the most expensive places that were equipped to provide anything a guest desired.

Now, she was entering Middle as lean and as tight as any girl there. Her hair was very chic with a ragged cut–with all the wealth at Morton haircuts were fabulous! as girls often shrieked–and she kind of looked like the Twilight actress Kristen Stewart. But she didn’t look at all like the chubby little pre-teen of the past year. I suddenly worried that she was moving forward, away from me.

As soon as the driver deposited the bags and left, Shelly took my hands and sat me down on the bed.

“How are you, Jenny?”

I was so grateful that she’d called me Jenny right off the bat, like nothing had changed, that it brought a lump in my throat.

“Okay.” I smiled. “Better, now!”

She bounced on the bed. “And your mom?”

“Good. Doing a thing on Amazonian Indians right now.”

Shelly looked sad. “Still doing those projects?”

She meant the ones that Mom threw herself into to distract her from her grief over my father. But this wasn’t one of them. “No, it’s a contract project. She’s …well, she will never forget my father, but I think she’s more focused now.”

“Did she ever …” She frowned. “You never said anything about it, but did she ever talk about you being Jenny?”

I shook my head and studied my hands. “No. We never talked about it. Not once.”

“But she knows!”

“Yeah, but …” I sighed. “No progress.”

“And what about you?”

I knew what she meant. We still seemed on the same wavelength.

And suddenly I was crying. Sobbing.

We sat on her bed, her arm around me, shushing me and hugging me, handing me tissues from her purse. Finally I got myself together.

“Think I got my answer,” Shelly finally said.

I sighed deeply. “If I had one wish, one super genie-sized wish, it would be to have my father alive. If I had a second wish, I would have been born a girl. To be your best girlfriend.”

“Aw, sweetie! You are my best girlfriend!”

“Aw!” and we did another hug.

When we broke the hug, Shelly gave me a very strange grin.

“So …Jenny …” Shelly began, with the grin remaining. “What would you do to be a girl?”

“To be a girl? You mean, like, start living as one, all the time?”

“Yep.”

“Almost anything. I’d …” I sagged. “I want it so much. And I think Mom does, too.”

“Are you sure? Because I really like your mom and don’t want anything to hurt her, either.”

“Thank you for that, Shell. Um …I think that …well, you know how she was kind of resisting the idea, back at Christmas? Before you had to leave?”

“I didn’t think she was resisting as much as she was sort of stalling. Like she wanted to see what we’d say.”

“Yeah, I think so, too. Like maybe she knew more than she let on …And then your mother called.”

“And spoiled everything. Her trademark,” Shelly said with a disgusted look on her face. “I only survived my time being with her by not being with her, you know? I mean, there’s a part of me that really loves her, but that’s the old mom, before she got caught up in being rich and young.” She said that like it was a dirty word. “I even got the creepy thought that if she could find a gypsy witch that would allow her to switch places with me, she’d do it in a heartbeat, just to be younger.”

“Wow. That is creepy!” I giggled.

Shelly shrugged. “I just hope that one day she realizes that she doesn’t need to …to be the cartoon she is. God, she’s such a cliché!” She rolled her eyes and giggled. “So I stayed out of her way and …explored things.”

“Explored? Oh, like getting your own trainer,” I nodded.

“That and some other things,” she nodded in time with me, her odd grin returning. “Jenny, do you …do you trust me? Trust that I want you to be happy? And to be my friend?”

“Yes,” I nodded solemnly. “I was worried that you were outgrowing me. You’re so pretty now and …growing …” I sighed, looking at her.

Her breasts were no longer buds; she had creamy mounds at the top of her lacy camisole. With the chubbiness gone, she was curvy and seemed longer, if not taller. I was green with envy and also so happy for her.

Shelly took a very serious tone of voice. “Jenny, I have a plan for you. For us. For your mom, too, I think. But it’s secret, it’s liable to really complicate things before it makes everything wonderful, and you don’t have to do it. I just want you to know that I love you and think it’s the best thing for you.”

“Okay. What’s your plan? You want me to take up yoga or something?” I teased.

“No. I want you to become a girl.”

“Me, too!” I grinned. “So what’s your plan?”

Slowly and carefully, she repeated, “I want you …to become …a girl.”

To my surprise, she got up and went to one of her suitcases and dragged it onto the bed and unzipped it. She rooted around and took out two large white plastic bottles that rattled. She sat next to me, holding them.

“I know your height and weight–well, when school was over, anyway, and knowing you, you probably added a sixteenth of an inch and a quarter-pound!”

I laughed with her. “Maybe an eighth-inch and a half a pound!”

She sighed. “Oh, sweetie; I missed you so much! Okay, where was I–yeah. So I know your height and weight and pretty much your metabolism–I’ve been next to you for nearly every meal for years–and so I talked with …let’s just say a lot of specialists. You know I’m pretty sharp about science and health and stuff–”

“You’re the science whiz of the school and you know it!”

“Well, of Lower, yeah; Middle, well …we’ll see. But this became a project of mine, sort of like your mother’s projects, you know? To distract me from how crazy my mother was making life.”

I told her I understood and she handed me one plastic bottle.

Her voice had been alternating between joking and hesitant. Now it grew adult, almost business-like, as she pointed. “That is a bottle of androgen blockers. They will suppress any male characteristics and basically stop any male puberty dead in its tracks. In other words, you start taking them and you will not become any more masculine than you are now. Ever. No chunky muscles, no deep voice, no facial hair–none of the stuff that happens in Middle school.”

“Wow.” I stared at the bottle.

“Want to take them? If you do, it means you will not develop as a boy into a man.”

“Fine with me, but I don’t want to be a sixth-grade boy the rest of my life.”

“Medical science says that everybody produces the hormones of both sexes. Males produce mostly male hormones but some female hormones, too. Every man, from Marines to Brad Pitt; they all have a small percentage of female hormones within them.”

“I’ve read that somewhere.”

“These blockers will mean that your body won’t be producing …that’s not quite right. Your body might still produce male hormones–the ones that will give you chest hair and a deeper voice–but your body won’t accept the hormones. Basically, these pills tell your body to ignore the male hormones. They won’t have any affect and will just be peed out for the most part. But your body will be open to accepting the female hormones you already produce, so you’ll start sliding over to the female part of the scale.”

“Kind of in that general part of the scale already,” I joked.

She didn’t crack a smile but continued in her business voice as she hefted the other bottle and handed it to me. “But we need more than a slide. That’s where these come in. These are female hormones. Estrogen and some progestin. Basically the magic ingredients in birth control pills, but a bit more concentrated. Start taking these and your body will have the normal quantity of female hormones, the full complement, just like a regular girl. Combining them with the estrogen your body already produces–and the androgen blockers suppressing any male hormones–and voila! You will finally get your puberty–but it will be a girl’s puberty.”

I stared at the bottles and at her. “So you’re saying that if I take these, my body will turn into a girl’s body?”

“Pretty much,” she nodded. “You’ll still have a penis but it’ll get smaller and smaller. But your voice will stay high, you’ll get curvy, prettier, your skin will be even softer and smoother–your hair will probably be fuller and softer, too–and most importantly, your breasts will develop, and unless somebody literally looks into your panties, you will appear to everyone as a girl.”

“What about Mom?”

“She’s going to have to deal with the truth, the truth that you’re her daughter. It’s what we tried to do last Christmas until my mother blew it for us. Now, you’ve got a little bit of breathing room before really …confronting your mom. I mean, it’ll be gradual–all of these take months to really take effect–but be prepared that at some point you will have to appear before your mother as a girl and tell her it’s what you want for your life. That it is your life.”

“I hoped I already would have had that talk with her.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t happen and it’s questionable that it will happen, unless we force the issue. I mean that you have to be brave and know that there will come a time when you tell her that it’s too late to ever be a boy again, and that you never really were one to begin with. You’ll be taken to doctors who’ll run all sorts of tests and accuse you of stuff and yell at you for tampering with your body. And in the meantime, you’ll be taking all sorts of crap from Neanderthal boys about what a sissy you are. They’ll call you a fag and a lot worse.”

“But I’ll know that I’m not a sissy boy; I’m becoming a girl …” I was worried about the impending crap but dazzled by the possibility of living the life I wanted.

Shelly nodded. “All I can tell you, from everything I’ve read, is to keep your goal in mind, whatever it is.”

“I already know what it is. To live every day for the rest of my life as a girl, to grow up to be a woman. With my mother’s approval and support.”

“So …” She tapped each bottle. “These can make it happen. But you don’t have to go this route; you can tell your mom–I really think you should, anyway, and soon–and hope you guys can find a psychiatrist who won’t try to make you be a boy. You might have to go through three or four–with probably months and months of finding another one and waiting for an appointment–before you find one that will even accept that you should live as a girl. And then you’ll start probably at least a year–maybe years; I researched it–of therapy before they come to the conclusion that, yeah, you really are a girl. Because they’ll keep saying that you’re too young to know your own mind. Meanwhile you’ll be getting older and they’ll be waiting for you to say it was all a mistake and you want to be a boy. Which we both know you will never say. So they will finally agree that maybe you should try things as a girl. And only then would they maybe let you start dressing like a girl. Maybe get blockers, but you’ll have had those extra years of male development while you were waiting, before even starting to block.”

I was staggered by her bleak prediction. “That’ll take forever, and ruin my life, and …and Mom could never afford the cost of the therapy. Even though she’d want to, I couldn’t allow her to spend all that money. And it’s only delaying the inevitable! I will live as a girl!” I was breathing hard. “No, I know what to do.” I stood up, holding the bottles. “What’s the dosage?”

“Two of each to start and then one of each a day. Morning or night; your choice, but be consistent. Simple.”

I went into her small bathroom, took a small paper cup from her dispenser and filled it with water and set it down. I opened the bottles and threw the cotton batting into the wastebasket and shook out four pills into my hand. I turned and looked at Shelly, still on the bed. Her eyes were huge.

“Only if you want to, sweetie,” she said.

“I absolutely want to, sweetie!” I smiled.

I tossed the pills into my mouth and then added the water and swallowed all four at once.

End of Part 1