If this is going to work, then perhaps you should call me Donna.

Nothing happened with the pageant for a couple of weeks, and I thought that it might have all gone away, or that Sarah had second thoughts about getting me involved with it. It was an exciting time for me either way, as I was a freshman in high school. I had filled my schedule with art classes, just doing the bare minimum of other classes to fill the requirements I would need for graduation.

It worried me a bit, when I thought about the pageant, as I wasn't taking any AP classes. I'd wanted to get into the Studio-Art program that my school offered, but the Mrs. Parsons told me she'd never allowed a freshman into it.

So, I made sure to take a full load of Art course work. Well, as full as I could. Math, English, and a Science each took a spot in each of my semesters, or they did in my freshman year.

Sarah had given me the great idea to take those courses in summer school the following three summers. It wouldn't work for my first year, unless I wanted to complete two years worth of the courses in a single summer, something I was completely against.

If this makes me seem like an over achiever, let me explain it better: I love art. The time I spent unable to play at recess really opened up a world to me that was well beyond any I'd ever thought could possibly exist.

It was also something I was good at.

I had a talent for both the technical aspects as well as the composition aspects of this world.

The school I went to had an extensive art program. It likely had to do more with the amount of money that parents donated to the programs than anything else. Living in an affluent neighborhood had its perks.

We had a metals workshop, a traditional sculpture studio, five industrial sized kilns, and seventeen teachers, and one me.

I was currently in an introduction pottery class, a sculpture class, a lighting and composition class and 'advanced art skills' which is essentially a sketching class. Next year, in addition to the AP Studio-Art course I hoped to be in, I would be taking a full schedule in the art department.

Or, at least, that was The Plan.

When you're fifteen, unless someone has beaten it out of you, life is without limits, and there is literally nothing that will keep you from your dreams for the future. You plan on going to college, getting married, having 2.5 children and literally everything working in your favor.

There is no chance of failure when you're fifteen. You will be a famous artist, a rock artist, a lawyer, or whatever.

My plan was to get through high school with a minimum of fuss, get into a Bachelor of Fine Arts program in college, and afterwards I would make a living selling my art.

Such was life as a fifteen year old.

It was a Thursday after school a couple months before school got out for the summer that I first met Dr. James Funk. Yes, he was Dr. Funk. I never forgot him, or his name, for another reason, however.

He was sitting in the lounge talking with my mother when I came in.

"Is this him?" Dr. Funk said to my mother, while gesturing toward me.

"Yes. David, this is Dr. James Funk. He's in charge of the Miss America pageant in Florida."

"Hi," I said lamely.

"Why do you want to be a Miss America Outstanding Teen?"

"Truthfully, Dr. Funk, I don't."

"But..."

"Let me explain. I want to be in the pageant, but I have no aspirations of winning. My best friend, Sarah, wants to compete. She needs to have someone there with her, and because no one else is willing, it falls on Mama."

"You could always just come and not participate."

"Yes, I could hang around all those teen girls with my easel out painting. Or I could sketch in my pad. Either way would end up with security being called on me a couple of times a day."

"We could..."

"Dr. Funk, if you were me, would you voluntarily sit there doing nothing?"

"Well...I never thought about it that way. I just could never compete..."

"Are you better than the girls in the pageant?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are they less than you? Are they inferior? Would it be in some way demeaning to compete against them?"

I find myself borrowing from Bronte at this moment. Imagine if you will, dear reader, the scene I have placed before you. Seated in a well appointed lounge on the ground floor of my home are three people. My Mom is seated in a cream colored chair, a drink in her hand. I hope it's her first, but I don't know having just arrived home.

Her chair is at the head of a small coffee table.

A pretty boy or girl who seems to be no older than twelve is seated on the cream colored sofa to the woman's right. The sofa seems to be engulfing him, but he is seated primly with his knees together and pointed toward his mother. His legs are crossed at his ankles.

I never thought how my mannerisms at that point suggested anything about my presentation.

An older gentleman, by which I mean late forties I was fifteen after all, is seated on the opposite sofa, also in a cream color. He is holding a glass of what appears to be iced tea, but is not taking a drink.

Now, the youth has just taken the older gentleman to task as if the youth were the elder. What would you do, dear reader?

Dr. Funk laughed, "You would seriously wear a dress, present as a teen girl, and participate in the pageant? I don't think I could allow..."

"The rules state that at all times a contestant must, in essence, present as a lady. In their carriage, dress, and speech, they must in no way do anything that would suggest to one of the judges that they are not what they appear to be: a demure and pretty young woman."

"That's true, but..."

"If I fail to do that, won't the very contest itself weed me out? Won't I get low scores and then be disqualified from continuing forth in the pageant?"

"That's not the point."

"So, what you're saying is that I'm not equal to the ladies in the contest?"

"It is supposed to be for girls only."

"I understand your position, but I've been mistaken for a girl frequently in the past."

Dr. Funk looked angry for a moment, and then laughed again. "You know, for someone who doesn't really care about this pageant, you've certainly done a lot of homework and seem awfully passionate about it."

"Dr. Funk, let me pose a question to you. Have you ever had a friend that you would do anything in your power for, up to and including giving your life for them?"

"I have people who I care that much about. Most of them are family..."

"Then you understand how I feel about Sarah. If keeping her safe and happy means wearing a dress, then I'm wearing a dress, heels, and makeup."

Dr. Funk sat there quietly for a minute or two, looking at me with a contemplative expression on his face.

"Well, if we did let you participate, and that's a big if, then you'd have to look and act like a girl the entire time you were at any pageant venue. This includes at the hotel."

"I understand, sir."

"And you can't be doing this for publicity. If, on the off chance, you were to win, then you would have to show up for all MAO Teen events as a girl."

"May I suggest, then, that only the organizers be told? None of the judges or other girls be told who I am."

"That was actually my next requirement," he said with a smile, "if anyone discovers that you are a boy then you also agree to withdraw from competition."

I sat there quietly for a moment and then nodded my head.

"I can live with that requirement," I said.

"Now, I can't guarantee we'll let you participate, but if we did then it wouldn't be until next summer. The entire committee would have to meet on this, and we just wouldn't have time to deliberate properly before the deadline for entries has passed."

"Sarah will be really disappointed."

"Not you?"

"I need a lot more practice at acting like a girl before I would feel comfortable competing as one."

"I believe you will come to realize you need less practice than you think," Dr. Funk said with a little smile.

"What do you mean?"

"Have you ever heard of the term 'transgender'?"

"No..." I said, drawing out the sound.

"It is someone who is born with sexual characteristics in opposition to their gender." At my confused look he rephrased it for me, "It is someone who feels that they should be the opposite gender, in most circumstances."

"And you think..."

"That you are a pretty girl for a boy. Mrs. Lowell, we'll be in touch."

His statement confused me. How could I be a girl? I knew what I had between my legs, and that was all boy. Sure, it was small for a fifteen year old, but all of me was small. I'd just passed five foot tall at the beginning of the year.

I'd assumed that people confused me with being a girl because of my slight frame and small size. Could Dr. Funk be right? I admit now, looking back, that the fact he was a doctor, of what I was unaware, added weight to his words.

I didn't feel like a girl. I'd never felt any different. I felt...normal.

What did that prove, really? I had a friend in middle school who hadn't known he needed glasses until he did. Ok, that wasn't too clear. He made it through all the vision tests that they held in elementary school. Unless your vision is really bad those tests are worthless.

I don't think that most kids realize that they're supposed to fail an eye exam so we do what we can to succeed.

It wasn't until he was participating at an eye exam table at a health fair that he realized that he had a problem. He missed the health fair because he was out getting a real exam and fitted for glasses.

could this be the same thing? I didn't know I actually believed it was possible for me to identify as a girl, and yet my entire life I was sure I was a boy. The problem, was, how do you really know if you're a boy or a girl?

It's not like you know how anyone else thinks. It would sort of be like trying to tell what color a balloon is by touch in a dark room.

Wouldn't it?

Maybe a trial would be necessary for me to tell.

That day it took me a few hours to arrive at this conclusion. Mostly I was simply confused about what I was really feeling. I wondered if he might be right. I decided he had to be wrong. In the end I was no closer to knowing anything about myself than I was when he left.

At the end of it all, I decided that if I were allowed to participate in the pageant, then I would let it be my test of whether or not I was a girl. Mama had said something about practicing, and so had Dr. Funk, but I needed this to be a real test: was I a girl or a boy.

Of course, I wasn't thinking about the fact that I had to study for every test I'd ever had in school.

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"Mama, I don't want to go to your tea party."

"It'll be fun, Donna. You'll see. You just need to give it a chance."

"But, this dress is pink," I intoned with as much horror as I was able to imbue in the word. "I don't even like pink. Do you know how bad this particular shade goes with my hair?"

Mama just smiled at me, "Which isn't that problem with your blonde wig. It looks fine on you."

I grumbled something about the wig being scratchy, which it was, and being hot, which it also was, but Mama just shushed me.

"Being a woman is a pain most of the time. I've heard you mentioning that you want to make a real trial of this."

I tugged the skirt into place because I was fighting against the inclination to adjust my bra for the tenth time since we left the house. Mama had spared no expense, and I was wearing a human hair wig, B cup gel inserts in a mastectomy bra, and a pink sleeveless sundress with a square neckline and two inch wide straps.

The problem wasn't that the clothing was uncomfortable. On the contrary, except for the wig, it was very comfortable. Sure, the weighted bra was a little weird, but all in all it was just clothing.

I realized that I'd worn skirts and dresses a number of times in the past. Like when my mother got me in that girl's tennis outfit, or the first time that I met Sarah. It was enough to make you think, though. Maybe it wasn't that I was a girl, but more the way I was being raised? Mom was the only one there with me. I didn't have any male role models in my home. Maybe I was just picking up mannerisms from Mama and Sarah because those were the people I usually hung around.

The problem was that I didn't really want to hang out with anyone else. I had friends at school, sure, but they were school friends. I just couldn't see myself hanging with them outside of school.

Don't get me wrong; I didn't consider any of them to be inferior to me in any way, and in fact was a bit jealous of a couple of the guys. They were true specimens of teen male health.

There was a sort of longing in me whenever I looked at those guys, and I assumed it was jealosy over how they looked, and my growing fear that I would never look like that.

The problem was, though, that if I rejected this outright, I didn't feel like I would ever really know what I was missing. I needed to give it a fair shake, as my dad liked to say.

To slip into a tangent, I have had contact with my father my entire life. Oh, not more often than once every six months or some, true, but we did spent time together. Two weeks in the summer and a week or two at Christmas. I'd meet this year's model, be somewhat miserable without Sarah, and go home happier than when I left. I only fail to mention him because he really didn't enter into the story.

I never mentioned anything I was going through to him, and he never asked. As far as I was aware he and Mama parted on amicable terms, and talked to each other about me. I just didn't talk to him about me.

The tea room that we went into was truly a haven of femininity. There were vases of roses on each of the white damask covered tables. The ladies, for that was what they seemed to be to my young eyes, were all dressed up in pretty sundresses just like my mother and myself. I was the youngest person there. The closest was an eighteen or nineteen year old who was...kissing...her companion.

"Mama, what sort of place is this?"

"Somewhere I've wanted to share with you for a long time. It's a place I get to be myself. I'm a lesbian, dear one."

I just stood there gaping at my mother. I couldn't believe what she was saying. How could she...

At fifteen, having been to many years of gym, I was initiated into the basics of human sexuality. Sure, I had some skewed concepts of different things, but I knew what a lesbian was.

One of the things I didn't understand was how my mom could be a lesbian. It sort of went against everything I understood about the concept.

I allowed her to lead me to a table off by itself. It had pretty yellow roses in the vase sitting on the table.

"Felicity, how nice to see you again. It's been a while. Are you here looking for anyone in particular, or just anyone at all?"

A very elegant looking woman in a pale blue dress with a floral print on it was standing at our table, smiling at Mama.

"Not actually looking. I wanted to introduce you all to my daughter."

"Is she..."

"No idea. She seems to have no preference as of yet, and she's a little too young anyway. She turns sixteen in the fall."

"Well young lady, the woman said offering me her hand, welcome to our little club. If you're ever curious about what we do behind closed doors, this is a safe place to swim, at least after you turn eighteen."

I looked at her a bit confused before my Mama translated, "She means she finds you attractive and wouldn't mind getting to know you a lot better."

Mama turned back to the other woman, about to say something, but I interjected, "Ma'am, I'm sorry, but even if I were sure I were interested, I plan on saving myself for marriage."

"A woman after your own heart, eh Felicity. Well young lady, I'd be happy to date you as well. You're really pretty. But, like your Mother says, not until after you're a little older."

I smiled up at her and she walked away. The rest of the afternoon was surreal in the same sort of way. Mom introduced me to all of her friends, who all seemed to ask if she was back on the market, and they would compliment me on how pretty I was.

Somehow I'd passed in a room full of women who were looking at more than my clothing. I felt confident for the coming challenges that might await me at the pageant. Well, would await me if I actually was allowed to participate.