“That dress matches your eyes!"

 
When Les came out of the bathroom, Pris muted the TV and simply ignored it after that. More importantly, she had opened the door of the closet and piled clothes on the two beds.

“Mom said you didn’t have anything to wear except what Aunt Maddy bought for you, the cops misplaced your things.” She dropped another double armful of clothes onto the bed he had been sleeping on.

“You can go through this pile,” she said, motioning at the same bed, “and keep anything you like. Most of it won’t fit anymore, or I just don’t like it now.”

“Uh,” said Les, staring at the colorful aggregation. He shook his head.

Pris stopped to look at him. “No?” she asked.

“I can’t take your clothes,” he said.

“Sure you can,” she protested. “I bet I haven’t worn more than half a dozen of those things in the last year.” She gestured. “Look at this stuff… And you need things to wear. You can’t be Ariel all the time.”

Ariel? Oh, the shirt. Les felt his head wobble like a bobble-head doll. “Uh, I might not be here long….”

“Then again, you might be here for months, or even longer. I already have three sisters that came here temporarily, and my parents adopted them. You could end up being my new sister, too.”

Les shook his head. “No, I couldn’t. I can’t be your sister.”

“Why not?” Pris demanded.

He boggled at the question. “Because…. Because I’m a boy!”

Pris broke into a huge grin. “That’s original!” She laughed a little chuckle, then a bigger belly laugh.

Les turned bright red. Had he messed up? Would he be kicked out? How could he share a bedroom with this girl?

She pointed at him, still laughing. “Your face,” she spluttered.

He frowned, he was no stranger to being laughed at, but Pris didn’t seem to be sneering; she appeared to be genuinely cracked up that he would claim to be a boy.

Pris fell against the pile of clothes on her own bed, wiping at her eyes. “Hoo, boy,” she said. “You look like such a stick, but you are funny, girl!”

Les tried to smile which set Pris off again, hooting her amusement this time. Clutching his hands in front of him, Les looked at her imploringly. A nervous giggle escaped him. Pris fell to the floor cackling, sliding off the bed to land with a thump and an “Ouch,” in the middle of her hilarity.

Finally, Les laughed, too. More of a giggle, really. Pris looked ridiculous, clothes tumbling off the bed around her while she tried to hold them back, unsuccessful due to her laughter.

Once he started laughing, he couldn’t stop. There might have been a note of hysteria in his snorts and gasps. He sat on the other bed amid feminine treasures of juvenile finery. He and Pris laughed for at least a solid minute.

Les lay back on the bed where he couldn’t see Pris, trying to get control of his gasping. He hiccoughed.

“Hey,” said Pris, calmer now. He lifted his head to look at her. She crawled across the floor to sit near his feet. “Hoo, boy, that was a good one.”

Les giggled, still nervous, and Pris almost started up again.

“No, no,” she said. Getting up on her knees, she looked at him as he lay there. “Let’s sort these, just throw the ones you don’t want off the bed, and they will get sent to some charity. But you have to have something to wear while you’re staying here,” she added reasonably.

He sighed; she was right of course. He needed things to wear, and if he were going to be a girl in this household, he would have to wear girl clothes. Maybe his parents would come to rescue him soon. He snorted at that thought.

The first thing to do he decided was to take all the dresses out, and anything pink, or ruffled, or with glitter on it. Accordingly, he picked up an aqua-colored dress with a ruffled hem and glittery pink trim and made to drop it on the floor.

“No-o-o!” Pris yowled. “That dress matches your eyes! You would look fantastic in it! You can’t throw it away without at least trying it on!”

“I don’t wear dresses,” said Les, hoping that would be enough reason not to have to wear the thing.

“Because your parents didn’t buy nice ones for you, I bet!”

Well, yeah, sort of, thought Les. He found himself grinning. He nodded and shrugged.

“This was one of my favorites, but it’s too small for me now.” She glanced down at her chest. “But you’re like super-skinny. I bet it would fit you and look great.” She put the dress back on the bed, “Let’s make this pile for stuff you will try on before deciding, okay?”

“Ha,” said Les. “Okay. But I don’t even know how to wear a dress!”

That stopped Pris for a moment. “What do you mean, you don’t know how to wear a dress?”

“I’ve never worn one,” said Les. “Well,” he suddenly remembered an embarrassing picture in Mom-Mom’s album of himself wearing a christening gown. “I guess when I was really small.”

“Elle!” Pris exclaimed. “What do you wear to parties or church or school? My school has uniforms, and all the girls wear dresses.”

Les had to sit down. Hadn’t Jessie said something about he would be going to the same school with Pris? He shook his head, “Never went to church since I was small either.” Mom-Mom had been some sort of religious, not Catholic, but one of those denominations where people did get all dressed up to attend. But she left five years ago, taking him and the baby. Then the baby died, and they had put Mom-Mom in a home and sent him back to his father.

Les felt his lip trembling. The baby had been a girl, named Hanna. She was just three when she died after being sick almost all her life, leukemia they said. It was all too horrible to think about.

He became aware that Pris was sitting beside him again, holding his hand with one of hers, her other hand around his shoulders. Neither of them said anything for a time while Les wept for his Mom-Mom and his baby sister. And himself.

He hadn’t cried for Mom-Mom and Hanna for a long time. Mostly, he cried when he was afraid, not because remembering hurt. A while after they both stopped crying, Les went to the bathroom to blow his nose, wash his face and drink more water.

He’s shut the door behind him, but Pris knocked, and he opened. She thrust the blue-green dress toward him. “Try it on?” she suggested. “I think you’ll be so pretty it will cheer you up.”

He doubted that, but he took the dress and nodded to Pris before closing the door again. Let her think he had an odd privacy kink.

It seemed simple to put on, more or less like a long t-shirt with a single hook at the back of his neck. Stripping out of the jeans and t-shirt, he slipped into the dress, fastened it while looking in the sink mirror then turned to examine his reflection in the full-length on the back of the door.

“Holy cow,” he said. The dress looked very nice on him. “What?” he said. He turned sideways, then the other way. He had never looked so good in his entire life. He didn’t look like a boy wearing a dress. He looked like…. He looked like a girl wearing a very pretty dress, one that came to just below his knees ending in a lacy ruffle.

He debated taking the dress off and telling Pris it didn’t fit. But it did fit, and something about the cut of it made him seem to have curves. He blinked several times, but the view did not change.

He tried to think of a reason not to wear the dress. But what kept occurring to him was that if he were going to have to pass as a girl to live with the Davenports, the dress would be his friend. No one looking at him in pale aqua with the little ruffle at the hips and the pink threads in the seams was going to think of him as a boy.

He sighed. Better get used to it, he told himself. But what’s going to happen when Dad or Mom does come after me? His stomach twinged, and he frowned at the girl in the mirror. Worry about that later, he decided.

He tried striking a couple of poses: hands on hips, one finger touching his chin while he looked thoughtful, another with both hands behind his head.

“Holy cow,” he said again. He giggled, feeling a bit silly, but still amazed that he did not look silly.

He reached out and opened the door so Pris could see how he looked.

She looked up from where she was still sorting clothes. First, her jaw dropped open, then she grinned. “You’re going to need shoes with that. What size do you wear?”