No one dressed in such a definitively girly way could possibly be a boy, could they?

 
Les dressed quickly, two pairs of undies again, his training bra, and then the uniform blouse and dress. His wet hair hung past his shoulders as he went into the bedroom to wake Priscilla.

“Five more minutes,” Pris whined.

“Okay,” he said, standing by the bed. He glanced at the clock, seeing that he had used up more than half of their allotted twenty minutes in his own shower. With a sigh, he counted to five then bent over to drag his wet hair across Pris’s face.

“Augh!” she cried, flinching so hard she almost fell out of the bed.

Les stepped back, trying to look innocent as Pris sat up and glared around. “You!” Pris accused.

“Me?” asked Les, green eyes wide.

Pris glanced at the clock, yelped and dashed for the bathroom. Les stood, walked over, closed the door and sat back on the bed. He smiled, remembering once when his birth mom had woken him in the same way. Then he tried to figure out how to put on socks while wearing a skirt without flashing his undies.

Socks conquered, Les deciphered the mysteries of maryjane buckles, decided the bowtie and jacket could wait till after breakfast, and spent the next several minutes combing his hair and listening to Pris laugh while she got ready in the bathroom.

“I’m going to get you for that, Elle,” Pris promised as she emerged from the bathroom, wearing only one towel and with her hair dry. She dropped the towel and kicked it back into the bathroom then stepped to her dresser and pulled out undies. “When you least expect it, too,” she said.

Les had smiled at first, but then, startled by her behavior, he tried to look away and ended up twisting completely around on the bed to avoid seeing his naked roommate in any of the room’s mirrors.

“Maybe at lunch, an ice cube down the back,” mused Pris. She giggled. “You are such a surprise, girl. So solemn and shy then you pull something like that.” She turned around, fastening her bra behind her.

Noticing Les’s awkward position, she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh,” said Les. “I’m not just shy when I’m naked?”

Pris laughed. “Okay, now I know just how to get you!”

“Ack!” Les protested, and Pris answered with a cackle.

* * *

They trundled downstairs only five minutes late but not the only tardy ones. Doctor Owen was just settling into his position at the head of the table, admonishing the twins as he did so. “No standing on your chairs, girls. This is breakfast, not gymnastics,” he said with a grin.

Giggling, Lolly and Molly settled down.

Breakfast turned out to be egg-in-a-window with the bread toasted a perfect golden brown, served with a single piece of bacon, a dish of sliced apple and pitchers of various things to drink.

“Dig in, kids,” Owen told them. “Jessie, Kimby and Carol already ate and said a prayer.”

The egg dish was something new for Les, and he approached it cautiously, watching Pris to see how she ate it. The proper procedure seemed to be to pop the toasty little square that had been cut out to make the window into your mouth, all buttery and crunchy, then to use a knife and fork to chop the rest into bite-size pieces covered in slightly gooey egg yolk.

“Good, huh?” said Pris and Les nodded.

The salty bacon made a nearly perfect taste combination completed by the sweet-tart apple slices. The meal was so good, Les’s toes curled and uncurled in his maryjanes. “I don’t usually eat breakfast,” he commented. “Or just a Poptart or something.” He didn’t mention putting soda pop on cornflakes as a meal, and in fact, that had been for supper.

Owen looked annoyed but quickly smoothed his expression out. “A good breakfast is important,” he said mildly. “No wonder you’re so skinny.”

“She’s not skinny, she’s fashionably thin,” said Pris. “Dad, you should see, she looks fantastic in almost anything she tries on.”

Les blushed. Not only did he not know how to react to compliments, but he was also being praised for looking good in girl’s clothing; something he wasn’t sure was a thing to be proud of.

“Are we going to ride the bus to school?” Pris asked Owen.

“You are,” her father replied. “Jessie will be taking Elle in so they can fill out paperwork at the office. And she has to take a placement test so they can put her in the correct grade.”

Les’s heart sank. He knew he wasn’t a good test taker and his feelings about it must have shown on his face.

“She’s in sixth grade with me,” said Pris, defensively.

Owen nodded. “Most likely, but does she need any extra classes to get caught up with everyone else?” He looked over at Les. “I mean, your life has not been exactly stable, has it?”

“No, sir,” said Les. “We moved around a lot, sometimes five or six times in one school year.”

A moment of anger flashed in Owen’s eyes but was extinguished by a smile. “We’ll try to do better by you, honey. We’ve lived in the same house here since before Pris started school.”

“Molly lived on the moon once,” Lolly announced.

Maribel shook her head, smiling. “It was just a cul-de-sac called Luna Place.”

“Luna is the moon’s name,” said Lolly, grinning now. “And the moon is a place.”

Les laughed with the others at Lolly’s logic. It gave him an unexpected warm feeling to be sharing jokes around the breakfast table. At least, jokes that didn’t involve alcohol, mayhem or arrests.

“Can’t Elle go to school with me on the bus? She could go to first period with me and not have to sit around here waiting for someone to take her?” Pris offered.

“I thought that she and I could get acquainted this morning. It’s Wednesday, so I’m not going into the office and can wait till a bit later to do my hospital visits,” Owen said.

Les glanced at Pris, but before anyone could say anything else, Josie called from the hallway. “Phone call for Dr. Davenport from Dr. Davenport,” she said with a small laugh.

Owen smiled. “I’d better take this,” he said. Carrying his coffee cup with him, he went to the living room phone to accept the call.

*

Les and Pris went back up to the room they shared to finish getting dressed.

“Wish you could ride the bus today with me,” said Pris, tying her bowtie.

“Me, too,” said Les. “It’s neat having a friend my own age.”

Impulsively, Pris gave him a hug. “You didn’t have friends?”

Les shook his head, trying not to cry. “Not many, we moved too often. I was always the new kid.”

“And I bet because you’re so pretty that a lot of the other girls were jealous,” Pris guessed.

Les shook his head harder. “I’m not—” he tried to begin but couldn’t think of what to say.

“Oh, yes, you are,” Pris insisted. “You’re going to be the prettiest girl in sixth grade!”

“I’m not—” Les tried again.

“Uh, huh!” said Pris. “The middle school boys are going to be coming down the street to our school, just to see you!”

She said it with a twinkle in her eye and Les suspected he was being teased now. “Huh-uh,” he said, but he knew his face was red with embarrassment.

Pris laughed. “How can you not know what you look like? Was your mom beautiful, too?”

That stopped Les. He considered it. His father, when most annoyed with him, often accused him of being just like his mother. Meaning Mom-Mom, and he knew he did resemble her in coloring and features.

But he had always supposed that his dad meant that he was hard to get along with, like when he refused to steal tips off of tables in restaurants. “You’re a kid, you can get away with it,” his father had demanded.

“Yes,” he told Pris. “I do look like her. And she was very pretty. But it caused her problems….”

“Huh?”

“When other men would notice her, Dad would accuse her of flirting with them. Then sometimes he would hit her….” Les trailed off.

Pris’s appalled expression had stopped him from telling more. “Is that why you don’t want anyone telling you how pretty you are?” she asked.

“Part of it, maybe?” Les admitted. It hadn’t occurred to him before but being told he was beautiful was scary in more than one way.

Pris pulled him into another hug, whispering, “No one is going to beat on you here, Ellie. You’re safe.”

No, I’m not, he thought. But he hugged her back before pushing away from her. But he smiled.

Pris smiled, too, stepping back to look him over. “You are beautiful. And cute in the school uniform.” Then she laughed. “But you never learned to tie a bowtie, huh?”

“I can tie a bow but not under my chin,” he admitted, looking in the mirror at the mess he had made of the accessory. “Help?”

*

The other kids had all caught their buses, and Dr. Owen sat with Les in his home office, attempting to put the disguised boy at ease.

“Jessie called a bit ago, and she and Maddy are on their way here. Now, don’t worry, but Maddy says she wants to talk to you about something. I’m sure it isn’t anything too important, but it might be news about your folks,” said the doctor.

Les was not reassured. How could any information be other than bad news? And there was the obvious possibility that he was going to be found out as being a boy and would have to leave the Davenport home. He felt ice in the pit of his stomach and the wholesome breakfast he wasn’t used to having threatened to come back up.

“Yes, sir,” he managed to say, but his voice trembled.

“Just breathe easy, Elle,” Dr. Owen suggested. “Breathe in, one, two, three. Hold your breath, two, three. Breather out, one, two, three.” Owen demonstrated the exercise as he spoke and Les tried to copy him.

Amazingly, it seemed to be working, and Les felt notably calmer. He smiled at the doctor and got a smile back.

“Better?” asked the doctor.

Les nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s good, then. Whatever problem Maddy has discovered, if it is a problem, I’m sure we can deal with it.” Owen pulled up a paper from his desk. “I was just looking at the requirements for a student at Evandale Academy. They’re going to want you to take a placement exam, or several of them, really, because you can be on different racks in different classes.”

Les’s smile turned a bit nervous. He really had no idea how his school performance stacked up against whatever might be considered normal. Not good, he expected.

“There’s another requirement we’ll have to take care of. They want a physical examination. Either by their doctor or by someone else. I could even do it here….” Owen stopped because Les had turned white as a sheet.