Ben easily survived his first terrifying night in the same house as his father in Ben’s original memory. Somewhere deep in his past Ben understood that the beating he received was nothing new. Nor had it been the worst one he’d ever received, to be sure. A sock in the eye for being a “God damned pussy” as Abs had growled, Ben felt he’d gotten off light. What worried him more was the intense recollection of past ‘whuppins’ he received when his father’s fist had slammed into his face like a small comet impacting the surface Earth.

 

Ben’s own memory had borne out several visits to the emergency room and just as many times when he should have been taken and wasn’t. His left leg ached from the distant haunting of a formerly broken leg. There had been a time when his skull had been cracked, from falling down a flight of stairs, great big meaty stairs with a name, Abs the staircase. Ben carried the dark souvenirs his father had given him that were beginning to point the way to a very certain future.

 

Worse, no one cared enough or felt they were strong enough to stop it. His mother tried, God bless her, but she was too small and too scared to really be effective. Her demonstration with Turk the jerk not withstanding, Susan knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if pushed, Abs would hurt them both. Turk was a coward and toyed with people like Ben for entertainment. Sure, Turk would be mad for weeks, but eventually he would learn to let it go as soon as someone else helpless came along. Standing up to Abs however was an entirely different matter, a matter that could potentially find them dead at the bottom of a quartz pit somewhere along the Appalachian Trail.

 

Ben had not come close to death, not yet. But Ben felt that was really only a matter of time. Abs didn’t want nor need an unexpected dead body lying around his living room. The ones that came with a plan for disposal were so much more convenient.

 

As Ben considered his new world and the enlightenment that came with it, he considered all his past complaints. He saw now he had never had anything to complain about before. He had of course, many times. And many times he had been very bitter in his complaint, always spoiling for the argument that society had made him an outcast.

 

He now found something very odd to be grateful for. With all the truly wonderful things he had been fortunate enough to have, a great friend, a car, good food and regular meals, a brain… A brain, mind you, that was capable of working through complex problems at a glance. With all this, Ben found himself being thankful that his beating had been a minor one. He was grateful he was walking and not wearing a cast, not suffering the pain of broken bones or ruptured organs. He was grateful for not bleeding.

 

When he returned to school Thursday, the day after the incident at the Glass’s home, he sported an enormous black eye. This was the only visible injury he boasted. The others were hidden conveniently on under his jeans and his too-large, second hand, thrift store T-shirt. The logo on the front was a skull circled by a wreath of red roses. Above it was lettered the legend The Grateful Dead.

 

When Ben had seen it where his mother had laid it out for him, his first thought was, Not just yet, almost… maybe tomorrow, but not today. Just grateful thank you very much.

 

Ben also understood, that in spite of the shiner, no one would ask how he had been hurt. This was the pattern for the perceived looser that was Ben Ackerman. Here, Ben had a criminal record. Most of it consisted of accusations of stealing food. He regularly came to school with no money for lunch. The State’s Free Lunch program provided a nominal meal, but by the end of the day, Ben was hungry again, ravenously hungry sometimes. Ben had been caught trying to steal food three times. He had succeeded countless other times however.

 

With this came a reputation for being a thief. With that reputation, came the lies about all things that had been rumored to have been lifted by Five Fingers Ackerman, things like BMX bikes, skateboards, dope, and cigarettes. Never mind the fact that Ben didn’t smoke. Those lies led to disdain, and more rumors and lies. It was a cycle that guaranteed Ben’s failure in life before his life had ever even really begun.

 

Yesterday had been a debacle. Upon seeing the black eye, Krik Oswalter, one of Robert Glass’s best friends and heir to Robert’s throne as the Captain football team, declared it open season on Ben. He had possibly the worse day in his life at school, in this reality or any. By the time he got home, he had a cut on the bridge of his nose from taking a locker door to the face. His hair had been washed twice. That’s right, in the toilet. Further, his ankle had been twisted so badly from being tripped that he was walking with a limp. Still, Ben got the distinct impression that things could get much, much worse.

 

The cut was minor. Once the bleeding stopped he was able to hide it with a small amount of petroleum jelly. He suffered through the discomfort of the twisted ankle at home so no one would see, especially dear old dad. The rest was cosmetic and took care of itself with a small amount of time.

 

Even these things had not been too disconcerting. What had bothered Ben was that there had been no Kim at school. As confused as he was, Ben began to wonder if there ever really been a Kimberly Glass at all. Perhaps there had been and she just no longer attended this school. Ben had to force himself to consider the possibility that the aberrant ideas in his head, the image of a fat, pimple faces boy he felt he should be able to name, had all been part of a dream. An elaborate dream, granted, one that his mind had designed to escape his true life, but possibly a dream none the less.

 

By the end of the day, he had found an image of her on the schools website during a computer lab. The caption under her picture had read simply, Kimberly Lynn Glass — Freshman — Captain Mather’s Cheerleading Squad. She was wearing her uniform, blue, white and gold, pictured from her chest up. Her smiling face and bubbly presence made Ben smile with relief, at least she was real.

 

Why she had not come to school was anyone’s guess. Only Ben couldn’t just ask anyone. Anyone wouldn’t tell him. That was the simple truth. By the end of the day, he had resolved himself to do the only thing he could do, that was to try again the next day. He boarded the bus home and sat as close to the driver as possible to avoid further trouble.

 

The loss of his car seemed like small potatoes compared to what lie in wait for him at home. Once there, he was able to remember to do what he could to make something for his father to eat, fully expecting him to complain angrily about how rotten the food tasted. Ben cleaned up as best he could, to save his mother the trouble and vanished into the hole that was his room. He did not come out until morning. His mother stopped in for about a half an hour, with her she had brought several cookies she had filched from work and two slices of pizza, a rare treat. Ben devoured them and only afterward thought about his mother. She assured him she was fine and had eaten two pieces herself at work. They shared the six cookies that remained and talked about nothing until Ben, secure for the first time that day fell fast asleep.

 

The second day as Ben climbed off the bus, he could tell that history was about to repeat itself. His bruised eye, now turning an ugly, sick, blackish-yellow seemed to be a beacon for all who would vent their pent up frustrations on the weak. It seemed to cry, Come and beat me! Look! Look! I’m here, come and pummel me!

 

“Uhhh” Ben groaned, resolved to the inevitability of his plight. Afraid to fight and unable to hide, he began his slow funerary drudge across the long wide apron in front of the school toward the building of doom. Ben lightly touched his eye, the dull ache there was irritating and hard to ignore. He flinched when his fingers made contact with the bruised flesh, “Ouch!”

 

Now, something was different though. The beacon he was afraid would attract so much attention didn’t seem to be the attraction at all. Everyone was murmuring, staring at him more oddly than he expected. Is my zipper open? The off hand thought was Ben’s attempt at self-humor. He found however that the answer was yes, his fly was indeed open and flushed bright red as other’s watched and laughed as he struggled to pull it back up. A few people laughed in the distance, others however continued to stare.

 

Once his fly was secure again, Ben found that whatever these people had been whispering about to begin with was still firmly on their minds. The secretive chatter continued unabated.

 

Whatever it was, Ben felt certain he would find out about it, probably the hard way, but then, it was tough being Ben Ackerman these days, then again, somebody had to do it. He glanced at an old beat-up Timex watch he had on his wrist, there was fifteen minutes before the first bell. He decided to wait for twelve and then go in.

 

Suddenly, he was thrust forward from behind. He crashed through a stand of waist high privet hedges as he pin-wheeled forward, caught his foot on the stalk of one of the hedges and fell hard, smashing his face on the ground and bloodying his nose. “Hey, Ackerman can fucking fly,” someone chortled behind him. “That’s not flying, that’s fucking crashing,” someone else cried. Laughter broke out and moved away before Ben

could see who had shoved him. His ribs sung an exquisite song of agony, and he lay there for a moment to let the pain of it subside before attempting to get up. He had faced a life time of this kind of treatment. He should be used to it by now. He wasn’t however, what he really wanted to do now was cry.

 

Ben didn’t allow himself to cry. He knuckled up and fought back tears of indignity as he struggled to his feet. His rib, one his father had damaged, maybe even cracked, would hurt all the worse now. He brushed off the leaves and grass, but was unable to remove the stains of wet dirt and grass from the knees of his jeans. ‘Great!’ he thought, ‘Thank God, now I’ve got shit stains on my clothes. I don’t know how I would have made it through the fucking day without something else for them to target.’

 

It had started already. He wasn’t even in the building and he had already hit the ground once today. What is it about me that everyone hates?

 

Just then a car drove by, playing the radio loudly, its newly rebuilt engine rumbling deeply through its muffler. The noise of it caught Ben’s attention as it passed. In the front seat of the car sat Robert Glass and his sister, Kimberly. The pain in his eye and rib vanished when Ben spied Kim looking in his direction. She seemed to give a double take, and then craned her head around in recognition as the modified station wagon passed the spot where he stood. Kim waived and smiled in his direction, but his insecurity had grown to such a state the he was unable to bring himself to waive back or even smile, less her enthusiastic greeting be meant for someone else. Still, he could see her confusion and something else mingled with it. Could it have been fear, when he failed to respond to her. Still his mind was overjoyed and his hear flooded with relief. Maybe it wasn’t just a dream. Maybe the pressing urgency of the dream had been real and the things he remembered about himself were more than just some sort of imagined and detached wishful residual image.

 

He watched as the car pulled into the drop-off circle and vanished around the corner. Shortly after, the station wagon pulled out and into the parking lot. It cruised up to and stopped next to a band of jocks, among their order, Kirk Oswalter, who was, no doubt, pontificating his greatness to the crowd of admirers gathered there around him.

 

Then something happened that caught Ben by complete surprise. Robert Glass stopped his car and to Ben, it seemed that Robert, who had graduated last year, was simply going to chat with his protégée, instead strutted menacingly up to Kirk and whispered something in the man’s ear. Kirk looked confused and just a little afraid. Then he shrugged and shook his head. Robert pointed his finger first at Marla Dalton, next at

Wendy Graff and finally pushed that same finger deep into Kirk’s chest. Robert’s face was set to a determined and angry glare as he backed Kirk into the trunk of Kirk’s Camaro. Kirk stumbled backward and fell, sprawling over the hood. When Kirk tried to push off the trunk lid and stand, Robert pushed him back down. There was a struggle that Robert eventually won in short order, pressing Kirk back to the surface of the trunk of his sports car ending the confrontation shouting “… my baby SISTER!”

 

Robert returned to his car, climbed in and started the motor. He said one more thing to Kirk though Ben couldn’t’ hear it. From behind his windshield, Robert leveled an accusatory finger at Kirk who looked angry and terrified in the same moment. Kirk then watched as Robert Glass sped away. Kirk stood and watched with a scowl, Marla flipped Robert the bird when as he drove away, choosing to wait until Robert had reached a safe enough distance that would prevent Robert’s return.

 

Ben watched as the two girls flocked around Kirk to comfort him. They were rebuked however, scattering from him when Kirk cried, “Get the fuck away from me!” Kirk then grabbed his belongings and charged toward the school building.

 

What was that about? Ben wondered, smiling to himself. He was comforted by the idea that Kirk had a vulnerable side, granted, it was to a much greater power than he himself possessed, but it was reassuring to see that Kirk was not all powerful. Ben gathered himself and slowly walked toward the building. He was in no hurry. He certainly didn’t want to run into Kirk now, so he planned a large margin of distance between himself and where he had to go.

 

Ben approached the school to go to homeroom class eight minutes before the first bell rang. He paced himself watching and evading people in the hope that he could avoid another confrontation and giving his aching ribs as much of a break from further injury as he could. He smiled for the first time in 48 hours thinking that at least the day had not been a total loss. He didn’t see Kim Glass racing across the drop-off apron behind him waving her arms and shouting his name faintly.

 

Kirk Oswalter however saw Ben, his back to Kirk, enter the school. After his confrontation with Robert about the man’s baby sister, Kirk felt like re-establishing his manhood. Ben was just the ticket for that sort of call. Yes Sir, Ben will do just nicely. And seein’ as how he’s the founder of my feast, so-to-speak, it would be rude of me not to offer him a nice steaming helping of what Bobby just gave me to snack on. Yup, come get some boy.

 

 

-*-

 

Kim woke slowly on the second morning of her existence with little of the confusion that had plagued her the day before. The previous night she had found that she had cried herself to sleep, resting her head on her beloved “Sparkle Bear” and woke to find she had fallen asleep fully clothed.

 

This morning the malaise of yesterday, of waking up without the knowledge of who she had once been trapped deep inside her present life had not been as lost to her. This is how it will be if I can’t get out of this. I wake up every morning as Kim, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to be her. The thought made her shiver with dread. She also recognized the urgent signs she was hours away from actually experiencing her first menstrual cycle. Inside she could feel the pain of her uterus as its outer layer prepared to shed.

 

“Ugh, God I have to end this.” She mumbled as she sourly threw the sheets from her body and rose to shower. The night before, Cindy had relented, allowing Kim to return to school having (in Kim’s fine opinion) finally come to a dawning of common sense. “Note to self, remember to take tampons today,” Kim said aloud. It was a trick she used to remember critical tasks with little or no planning involved, not unlike a string around her finger. Kim halted dead in her tracks in the middle of her room. “I can’t believe I just said that,” she said disbelievingly.

 

Yesterday had given her all the time she needed to invent every conceivable horror where the mask was concerned. Even the collective minds of Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Peter Straube would have trembled at the possibilities she was able to formulate to torture herself. The worst had been about Ben, where he might be and if fate had some how stepped in and made him a different person like everyone else. She was the one that had been transformed after all. Wasn’t it logical to assume that since he wasn’t under the influence of the mask as she was that he would walk away and then meld into this time line as if he’d always been a part of it?

 

There wasn’t much she could recall about Ben’s here and now life. She knew she had him in two late afternoon classes and in homeroom. She had been heart broken to discover (covertly) that Ben did not live next door. He apparently never had. If he had at one time, she couldn’t remember it. She couldn’t recall, however, just where he did live now or what the circumstances of his life were. This one aspect fueled the fires of conjecture for hours. She didn’t know how to reach him except at school. What if he didn’t remember her, what then? If either Ben or herself never made it to school again, she was essentially stuck like this until she could either find Ben or give up and accept what had happened.

 

A random spark of memory flashed in her head. It crippled her, making her home sick. “Oh no!” She whispered. She saw her father in a pasture. A radio remote control in his hand, in the air above them was a bright red and white model Cessna 182. “Let me try Dad,” cried the small voice of a small boy who stood next to his big brother, Robert.

 

She hardened herself against the image of this memory. She shut her eyes and ordered it to leave her be. “Not now, I need to focus. Go away.” But she didn’t really want it to leave. It was a fond memory, a ritual the men in the house had shared. Her father loved flying. He had been a pilot in his younger days. The expense of it, coupled with failing eyes had cost him his “ticket” as her father had called it. He resorted to flying models on the weekend instead. He shared this passion with his sons and while Robert had cooled some on the idea of flying, Tim had always wanted to be a pilot, just like his dad.

 

The memory however did just as Kim had commanded and faded from view, perhaps a little too quickly. Mentally she chased after the way a small child will chase a parent leaving for work, desperate and terrified they might never see them again.

 

In this life, Kim could now see that her father had not taken her flying. He had still been a pilot, but it was something shared with Robert. Kim had been her mother’s little doll. That memory made her want to cry. She did her best to shrug it off, but the ghost of it haunted her for nearly an hour.

 

Still reflecting on the torture of the previous day, she thought about how she could hear her mother speaking, making one call after another. Some of them were presumably about her. Occasionally the phone would ring and Cindy would have yet another, almost surprised sounding conversation with yet someone else. Or, for all Kim knew, these conversations were taking place with the same person, a recruiter for the Naval Academy for Girls perhaps, who knew for sure.

 

Around one o’clock, the angst-filled little voice in her head proposed yet another terrible possibility to her, it whispered to her, What if he’s dead? Kim, who had been trying to read a stupid ‘girl’s magazine’ as she thought of it, gasped out loud. She nearly fell off her bed. “He’s not dead.” Kim said in a trembling voice. Now, however, the voice would neither confirm nor deny its earlier claim. Not long after, the day found her crying once more, and searching for a way to get out of the mask. It remained futile to try; the mask remained resolutely hidden from her fingers.

 

Around 2:00 in the afternoon, the anxiety was almost more than she could stand, only this time she had practiced exercising restraint and composure. When at last she heard her mother making her way up the stairs, Kim crawled onto her bed, grabbed another magazine and pretended to read. Cindy cracked the door of Kim’s bedroom. Kim looked, saw her mother peering in and pretended to be indifferent, her heart pounding in her chest harder than a steam powered jackhammer.

 

“Hi Sweetie.” Cindy said tenderly. It was the last sort of greeting Kim expected.

 

Kim resisted the urge to run and humble herself in front of her mother. This would have been looked upon as more bizarre behavior. It might have also served to have thrown her deeper down the pit she was already in. Nor did she have anything she could confess.

In stead Kim simply said. “Hi.” cheerfully enough to seem sane but carefree enough to suggest she had nothing to hide.

 

“Can I come in?” Kim’s back was to the door, but she could hear that her mother’s tone was repentant and meek. What’s up now? I don’t think I can take one more fucking surprise Mom. I sure hope this is good. What Kim said was, “Sure.”

 

Cindy came in and sat on the edge of the bed silently while Kim pretended to read. Each could feel the tension of the uncomfortable silence between them. Kim was too petrified to break the ice, afraid to find out what kind of axe was going to fall on her skinny neck. On Cindy’s part, the phone calls had revealed much. It was the results of those phone calls that she had to bare her soul over.

 

At length, Cindy reached over and placed her hand over the magazine and gently closed it, “We need to talk about something Kim.” Her mother drew the magazine away from her and Kim bent her head in a dreadful pose.

 

She wished more than ever now that her ‘Kimmories’ were working overtime so she might have some idea about what her mother wanted to talk to her about. What now? Am I juvenile delinquent on top of everything else? “What did I do now?”

 

“You know perfectly well what you did young lady.” Kim cringed. Not so much at the unspoken accusation, but at the words ‘young lady.’

 

“Could you help me remember then please?” Kim begged.

 

Cindy paused for moment, took a deep breath and began, “It seems that during my calls the school, Mrs. Barns, the Girls Dean, informed me about how disappointed you must be about having to stay home.” Kim was frozen, she didn’t dare move or the house of cards she felt she lived in would surely cave in around her.

 

“And?” Kim asked. Now no one was more curious to hear the outcome now than Kim was.

 

“Aaaaannnnd, she told me how hard you were working to bring your grade point average up to a 4.0 before the end of the year, doing extra credit work, special projects, you know, that sort of thing. She told me that you’ve aced all your tests since the end of the last quarter and that you’re up to a 3.83 average as of yesterday. You’re going to make the honor roll.” Cindy squealed with delight and wrapped her daughter up in her arms and damn near squeezed the light from her.

 

Kim’s jaw was agape. She couldn’t believe that something had actually happened to give her a helping hand. Waytogo girl, she silently congratulated her predecessor, I’m sorta sorry for all those nasty things I thought about you.

 

Kim open pie-hole turned to a thin, weak smile and had to turn her head to keep from laughing out loud when she glimpsed tear glistening in the corner of her mother’s eye. To her mother, Kim appeared to be crying. She was instead, trying her best to suppress gales of hysterical laughter.

 

“Oh Honey, I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. I feel just awful. Mrs. Barnes said that this shouldn’t do any harm to your grade point average. I can always go down and argue that I didn’t know anything about this. I hope you know that if I had I would never have done anything to have held you up. You do know that don’t you? What I want to know is why you never told me?”

 

“It’s kind of hard to surprise someone if you tell them what the surprise is, don’t you think?” Kim was as stunned as her mother was humbled. Kim had no idea where the answer had come from. She only knew that she hadn’t missed a beat in answering. She had not had to guess or invent an answer AND she felt a certain amount of self-righteous indignation at the idea that her mother had pried it out of the various resources she had at her disposal as a parent. To Kim it felt as if the answer were HER answer. Not some contrived, trite string of words intended to make her mother feel guilty or to facilitate a means to an end, namely her freedom from her feminine prison. Kim knew it was exactly what the ‘other’ Kim would have been planning before she (Tim) had been inserted into this life.

 

Even that synopsis didn’t feel right to her. Slowly, Kim was becoming aware that there was no ‘other’ Kim. What she felt was the residual memory of a life that had never happened but had still had to play out. This way there would be a life for her to inherit once she had been transformed. She had dragged it here with her when Ben and Tim caused the world to shift in time. Now, all that was left of Tim was the memory of that boy who didn’t want to be a girl, was repulsed by everything it was to be a girl. He had wanted to BE WITH a girl, marry a girl, have children WITH a girl, but never wanted to BE a girl.

 

Now the fact was that she was and had always been one. The dilemma was, how to reconcile that in her mind or return to what she felt her proper place and time was? Was that even possible now? Kim couldn’t say. She knew the he part of her was being destroyed from within and if she didn’t find an answer soon she would either be absorbed by the girl called Kim, lost forever in a world that was very different from the one she’d come from.

 

Cindy was talking, apologizing profusely, and cuddling with her last born child, her daughter. Kim didn’t hear what she was saying. She was lost in her own train of thought immersed with a mental image she could not break from. She stood on the muddy bank of a great wide river its calm, slow current so inviting, the water on her feet so cool in the midst of the deep Tennessee heat. At her back were the sweet oak and Lop Lolly Pine woods so prevalent in Southern Tennessee.

 

She took a step out into the river and felt the dark, tea colored water slip fluidly up her ankles. Her toes squished into the soft mud-sand bottom and she wiggled them and giggled at the way it tickled the tender spaces between her toes. It was so deliciously cool. Butterflies were spawned in the pit of her stomach where they fluttered excitedly all about her insides, making her feel like the small girl she had been not so very long ago. Gradually she took another step as the excitement built.

 

But as she eased her hips down into the cold water, she discovered there was no longer a bottom. She had stepped off a bank ledge into the deeper water. Her momentum was sweeping her out in slow-motion. Her torso already forward, so even pulling her one leg back still set her center of gravity out in the current. Kim also found that the current was not calm but swift, alarmingly swift and she was dragged out and away from the bank she had waded in from.

 

Now, out in the river, she thrashed to find something to cling to. The current pulled down at the plain, white cotton dress she wore. Sodden, it threatened to weigh her down and bind her legs, preventing her from swimming. Gasping, she fought to find something that would keep her afloat. At last she saw ahead, a large fallen oak, its dark, water soaked branches protruding from the river like the bones of a long dead hand. The tree frightened her. They harbored snakes and rats from the river, but what choice did she have? The water would swallow her if she didn’t ignore her fear of river critters and embrace her fear of death.

 

Kim drifted closer and soon was caught by the unseen branches below the surface. She tipped over briefly, soaking her head but managed to right herself choking and coughing up brown water. At last she was able to grab the branches and steady herself. Still the current pulled and tugged and bent the branches she clung to.

 

Suddenly, there was an unexpected separation, a kind of parting or release of dead weight and she thought for a moment that her cotton gown had been torn free of her body. When she looked however, she saw that it was, in fact, a boy, a young man with a large round face peppered with acne. His terrified face turned up to hers. He had managed to grab a branch and was clinging on for dear life.

 

The current however, appeared to strong for him. He was completely submerged to his neck while Kim was nearly half out of the water now, where the drag of the current would not be as strong. It was clear that the temperature of the water was also exhausting his body.

 

“Tim?” she could hear herself cry in this waking vision.

 

“Don’t let go of me…” He cried back, his voice full of desperation. He looked briefly down river to draw Kim’s attention to the perils down there if he were allowed to slip away and then looked back at Kim. Fear had caused his eyes to become milky and he shivered endlessly against the cold of the water. “I can’t swim in this water.”

 

Kim scrambled to try to help him. She couldn’t let the boy drown. She knew him, was intimate with him. The boy was her. She was this boy.

 

The drag of the water on her body prevented her from lowering her self too far into the water. She was afraid that if the water got a hold of her, she too would be torn from the safety of the tree’s branches. Still she got as low to the water as she safely felt she could without risking… Risking what? If he drowns, don’t I drown too?

 

“COME ON KIM, YOU BITCH, I’M DROWNING HERE!”

 

Kim was taken aback just a bit, “That wasn’t very nice,” Kim explained to her alter-ego, offended and hurt.

 

Tim looked back in utter amazement and replied, “Fuck nice,” the round faced boy barked! The branch that Tim was clinging to suddenly cracked under the strain of the water and weight.

 

“HURRY!” Tim screamed and Kim renewed her efforts.

 

“I can’t reach you. Swim! SWIM TO ME!” The branch broke before either could act.

“Noooooooo.” Kim screamed as Tim was carried away. “TIM!”

 

The body of the boy she was so familiar with tumbled over a half submerged rock and Tim let out a wail of pain as he somersaulted backward over the rock. He submerged beneath the eddy behind the rock and then came splashing and gagging to the surface again, as he inched ever further away. “Help me Kim!” but Kim couldn’t move, she was terrified, “KIM!” Again Tim hitched as his body caught something below the surface; he then bobbed and vanished below the water amid wild splashing.

 

He resurfaced now several yards away where the river was at its most turbulent and swift current. Tim screamed in the distance, “Not fair! I was here first. Not fucking fai…” Tim submerged the water laden branch becoming a weight. Even the bubbles of Tim’s last exhale were carried off before she could see them surface.

 

“So, if there’s something you want to tell me. If you want to scream at me…” Her mother was saying when Kim had emerged from the terrible sight of watching her male self float away down the rain swollen Tennessee.

 

“What?”

 

Cindy sighed, “I deserve anything you want to throw at me. Let her rip.” Cindy closed her eyes and waited bravely for the assault.

 

Kim thought about it. She was certainly mad enough to do it. After all, she had not asked to be put into this body or this life. Nevertheless, she found she could not fault Kim’s mother, her mother for looking out for her, for loving her. “Thanks for checking my story. I guess a spoiled surprise isn’t as bad as the Naval Academy.”

 

“You saw the pamphlets?” Cindy asked with genuine surprise.

 

This news was a shock to Kim who had simply been joking. “MOM?” she cried, but even as she did, she could see the smile on her mothers face. It was going to be hard going back now, knowing what she would be taking from her mother. Especially now after seeing how much Cindy reveled in having a daughter.

 

For a moment, just a split second mind you, she considered abandoning this entire quest. Who knew what else might become ‘unhinged’ if the pursued it? The idea died quickly however. Tim’s desires and revulsion at being female finally won out.

 

Today, Friday, two days after becoming Kimberly Lynn Glass, she was ready for it to end. She was beginning to blend in too much now. It had to stop.

 

From the inside out, it was now becoming impossible for Kim to know where Tim ended and she began. Ben would have noticed profound changes in her habits and personality right away. Had it not been for the paradox of her Timmories, she would have just gone about her day as whoever this girl was in this life, oblivious to anything else. She knew, however, that she had been placed in this vessel from some other point and had been unceremoniously locked inside with only one way back out.

 

She leaned forward toward the mirror, arms still around her waist, “I’m not staying like this,” She spitefully told her reflection, “You go back to being a theoretical “what-if” today.”

 

Kim?” her mother called from the base of the stairs. Her mind told her that her mother would wait there until Kim hung her head over the rail to prove that she was in deed up and getting ready for school. Even after yesterday afternoon, Cindy still had that control mechanism somewhere in her psychological profile.

 

Kim dashed to the door and flung it open. “I’m up Mom, down in a few, I need to shower.

 

“Well, it’s almost time Kim, you’ll have to hurry. What do you want me to make for a nosh on the way?”

 

“I’m not hungry Mom.” Cindy seemed about to say something, but was cut off by the sound of Kim’s door slamming.

 

“Okay then, toast.” Cindy said quietly to herself and wandered off into her kitchen.

 

Kim started her shower, uncomfortable with her body she waited to strip off her underclothes until the last minute. When she turned, there again was her reflection in the mirror. It was a dream that she (as Tim) had dreamt many times as a young boy. This was almost the dream come true. To have simply been able to have been around someone that looked as she did now would have been more than Tim could have ever felt he had a right to have. The simple fact was that she didn’t want to be on the inside of it, she didn’t want to BE the dream.

 

Her ample breasts, covered by two white satiny cups with a small pink bow set in the cleavage. Oh, how absolutely cute is that? She thought bitterly. Trying to ignore her physical changes, she caught a waft of the sweaty smell coming from the fabric of her bra. Kim noted that it wasn’t a vile smell but in the same respect it wasn’t clean either.

 

“Peeeee-u,” she said wrinkling her nose. “The girl needs a shower.”

 

She showered quickly. Then dried, and wrapped the towel clumsily around waist, and with boobies jiggling, she stepped out into her cool bedroom. Almost instantly, her nipples hardened and began to prominently protrude forward. The feeling was just a bit startling and somewhat alarming. Stopping she readjusted her towel higher on her body, covering her breasts, a chagrinned smirk on her face and proceeded to find something to wear.

 

Kim stepped out into her room to find her mother had laid out a pair of jeans, a black top covered with pink flowers scooped out at the neck, some black panties and bra. Hum… different colored underwear, shit when you have to micromanage down to your underwear, you can be pretty sure that your life is too fucking complicated.

 

Kim dressed, slipped into pink ankle socks and white tennis shoes with pink trim, grabbed her books and trotted down the stairs. Cindy slipped five dollars into her hand for lunch which vanished into her front pocket, “Thanks Mom.”

 

Kim moved toward the door and her mother stopped her as she reached around behind her and lifted a plate with four triangular pieces of browned and buttered bread, “Toast,” Cindy again declared. Kim grabbed a single piece, took a quick bite and dropped the toast back on the plate,

 

“Thanks Mom.” Kim called out, crumbs spraying from her mouth as she dashed out the door.

 

“But…” Cindy cried looking desperately from her daughter to the plate. Kim was out the door and on her way out to her brother’s car. Today, she felt good. She could almost appreciate what it might be like to actually be Kim for a while.

 

“Have a nice day!” Cindy called out as Kim left the door. Bobby was waiting in his refurbished and cut down 66’ Colony Park station wagon; car warmed up and in idle.

 

She took her place in the passenger seat and strapped the seat belt around her waist. “Good morning brother O’mine,” she said cheerfully.

 

He had a very serious air to him, “Well Kim, that’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while now…”

 

Kim stopped and stared at him cautiously. What now? She wondered, “Talk about what?”

 

“Well, see it’s like this, you’re adopted,” Robert said with a grin.

 

“Shut up!” she cried, giggling.

 

Once there were on the road and alone, Robert confided in her, “Kirk was hurt you didn’t take his invitation to the prom.”

 

“You didn’t tell him, did you? Oh, Bobby he didn’t have to know about that yet.”

 

“Hey the guy deserves to know. He’s a friend of mine and I… Well, asking Ben to take you… He didn’t even ask, you had to Kim.

 

Kim turned to face him in the seat, “And I would have told him, when he needed to know Bobby. God Bobby, Don’t you think something like that was my responsibility?”

 

“No! Not when it’s my best friend, not when you’re turning down you’re one true opportunity to have something valuable in this life. I mean, just look at the guy. He could have any girl in school and he wants you.” Bobby said angrily, “This is why I feel I have to protect you the way I do Kim. Its stupid mistakes like this that forces me to take control and point you in the…”

 

It was time to let AutoKim take over. She relaxed, opened her mind and let her mental triggers do their handy-work, “I don’t like him Bobby. And for your information, he does have any girl in school. I don’t care what he thinks or what you think about it. Besides, he gives me a major case of the spinal creeps.”

 

Robert squinted his eyes, confused. “Kirk? Ah… he’s Okay, just eager and motivated. He likes you Kimmy, and that’s all that really matters. He’s going to be a huge football star one day. And I do mean huge…” Robert rotated his hips in driver’s seat to give a visual to his metaphor.

 

Kim saw this and wrinkled her nose, “Gross. What makes you think I would ever sleep with that pompous overstuffed meatball?”

 

“Because he’s the closest thing to a real man you’re going to find in this town next to me. Since I’m off limits, thank you…”

 

“No thank you… again that’s just too gross for words.” Kim interrupted.

 

“I agree, so that leaves my buddy and competitor, Mr. Kirk Oswalter, future gridiron superstar.” Kim didn’t answer, she remembered Bobby pushing the Oswalter product on her last year when Kirk took an interest in her. It had been a light push. Kirk was after all only a year and a half older than she, but Kim had been fifteen then and Bobby knew that something like that wouldn’t sit will with their mother.

 

Gradually Bobby had increased the pressure for his buddy and former teammate. As Kim could remember, there was barely a week that would go by that Bobby would try to sell Kirk as some glorious and fantastic new product for long term security and romance.

 

Finally Bobby broke the silence and said, “He wants to tale you to the prom Kim. It’s not too late.” Robert kept his eyes forward.

 

Kim looked at Robert and assured him, “Yes it is.”

 

”You turned him down in favor of that dweeb, Ben. He wants to ask you again, the right way.”

 

“He doesn’t have to appease my vanity Bobby. I’m not asking anything from him. I don’t want what he’s got. I just don’t. What I want is for him to leave me alone.”

Robert remained silent and after a time, Kim asked, “No comment?”

 

“Nope!”

 

“I’m surprised.” Kim admitted.

 

“So am I Kim. I guess that’s why I have nothing to say,” her brother informed her. Kim had felt like a stranger in someone else’s home the night she put the mask on, now however, she could feel the love that both personalities had for Robert. The feelings were exactly the same. This surprised her most of all. She felt that as a girl, she would feel differently about her brother. If asked to explain how, she wouldn’t have been able to give an answer. Talking to him now, it was not Robert that had changed. This was the same old Bobby, in this world or any other would. The fact that she was now his sister and not his brother had changed the way he treated her.

 

“I don’t like Kirk, Bobby.”

 

“Okay.” Robert simply said.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kim asked back annoyed.

 

“It means Okay Kim, you don’t like Kirk. You like Ben. Personally I think you’re better than that. But it’s your choice,” Robert fell silent again.

 

“I don’t like anyone. I just feel more comfortable around Ben, that’s all.” She crossed her arms and huffed. How did he get me so defensive? “And what do you mean, ‘deserve better than that’?”

 

Now the surprise was evident on his face, “Have you seen yourself lately Kim, you’re PHAT.”

 

“Excuse me?” She didn’t want to be annoyed or cross, especially about a vanity issue. She couldn’t seem to entirely control it. It seemed to Kim that when she was around people, she was going to interact as Kim, whether she liked it or not. She simply had no control over it.

 

“Not fat! P H A T, Pretty, Hot And Tasty. Look Kim, even as your bother I can see it. Shit, you grew up in to beautiful girl and you’re more like a grown woman everyday I see you.

 

“Oh.” Kim replied flustered.

 

“Kim, I know you know this so I’ll just come out and say it. You’re hot. You’re going to grow up to be even hotter. Sometimes I’m sorry you’re my sister.”

 

“Bobby!” Kim screeched in surprise, disgusted by the idea her brother was suggesting.

 

“Well, look at you. Geezzzzzz. Can you blame Kirk?” Robert finished.

 

Kim thought about her answer, “You know he talks about me.”

 

“Sure I do, he talks about you to me all the time,” Robert admitted.

 

“No Bobby, he talks about me to others,” Kim turned three shades of red at the thought of what she was about to say. Before she could say it however,

 

Robert broke in. “He likes you Kim. He wants to be by your side and protect and care for you. I think he’s in love with you. I think…”

 

There was surly more to follow, but now Kim just didn’t wanted to hear what a snow job Kirk had given her brother. “Don’t think Bobby, just listen. You’re not at school anymore, so he feels safe talking about me.” Kim shifted in her seat a bit, “He’s telling people he wants me alright, he’s telling them he wants me in the locker room, out at the lake, in the back seat of his car.” As harsh as it was, she dropped the “F” bomb on him to drive her point home, so to speak. “He wants to fuck me. He tells them how he wants to fuck me, how long he wants to fuck me and WHERE he wants to fuck me Bobby,” she watched him squirm for a moment then added, “Paints a nice picture of your sister doesn’t it?”

 

The car Robert was piloting wavered over the centerline and back again unexpectedly, Kim squealed in surprise as it did and was quiet. “He… he wouldn’t do that Kim. I’m surprised at you. He just wouldn’t do those things! Not about you.”

 

“Oh, but you know he’s said it about other girls hasn’t he? You don’t think that the jocks talk to their girlfriends. Bobby, their placing bets on when he ‘nails me’ as they put it. Wake up Bobby, what makes you think I’m any different in his eyes.”

 

“Kirk’s not like that…”

 

“Yes he is Bobby, so are you!” Kim surprised him badly with that one.

 

Robert slammed on the breaks and brought his station wagon to a screaming stop, “Take that back Kim, right now,” Kim recoiled from the angry demand. She couldn’t remember seeing Robert this mad in this reality or any other for that matter.

 

Kim manned her guns however and refused, “No Bobby, I’ve heard the talk about Susan Richards and Verona Cline. I’ve heard how you wanted to ‘get into their pants’ and that’s putting it nicely isn’t it?”

 

“Who told you that?” he demanded to know.

 

“It doesn’t matter. The fact is that Kirk wants me only as a fuck toy.”

 

Robert winced at his baby sister’s fowl mouthed metaphor, “Kim, I’m warning you. Don’t say that again.”

 

“What’s wrong Bobby, afraid your little sister is going to grow up and find out what fucking is really all about. I already know!”

 

“You haven’t… Ah, You…”

 

“No Bobby, I haven’t had sex yet,” Kim lied. The lie had a two pronged purpose. First, just the realization, that as Kim, she had already had sex and that it had been with a guy was enough to cause a stroke. In fact, Kim’s left eye lid had developed an almost imperceptible tick as a result of the information. With the realization also came the memory of the act with a host of conflicting emotions surrounding it. The lie simply allowed Kim to remain in mental denial a while longer. Second, and even more important, it wasn’t any of Robert’s business. “I don’t need to have sex to know about it or are baby sisters forbidden by law from acquiring that kind of knowledge?”

 

Robert smiled at the idea, “If they aren’t, they should be. As for you, consider it a taboo subject, at least until your 45.”

 

Ignoring him, Kim continued, “I’m not a kid Bobby, I’m human and one day I’m going to do it. I just want to do it with someone I believe cares more about me than… let me see how did Kirk put it, Oh yeah, I remember, ‘The snatch that stashed inside my pants’. That’s a nasty way of putting it, but I think it makes the point quite nicely.”

 

Robert’s fingers were dug into the foam steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. Kim couldn’t tell if he was upset with her, Kirk, someone else or everyone.

 

“Bobby?” she asked meekly. There was no pretence in her behavior; she simply understood this was the best way to approach him when he was angry.

 

“What!” He snapped.

 

“Are you angry with me?” Kim asked.

 

“No… Yes… No… Ah Hell, I don’t know. Embarrassed more than anything I guess.” He took a deep breath, exhaled and turned to Kim, “You’re right, what you said about me, that was right. But it’s just guy talk you know… I never would have done anything to have humiliated Susan or Verona. I just thought I was being, you know…”

 

“One of the guys,” Kim finished and Robert nodded shamefaced. As she watched the blush on her brothers face spread, she became aware of something she found completely overwhelming. More than an idea or something that could be articulated, Kim understood that her brother respected her ideas, her thoughts more highly than many of his peers. It’s because I’m honest with him, I tell him exactly what I think. He likes that in people. Even as Tim, Robert didn’t spend much time to understand his younger brother. Robert always thought him… quirky, even a little odd.

 

Here, things were different. Even if she felt she was pushing his patience, she still wielded a kind of power over him. It wasn’t limitless and it had to be used sparingly least he grow tired of its influence, but it was there just the same. She understood its name too, respect.

 

Kim pushed on with her lecture letting instinct and memory lead the way. “You may not have set out to humiliate them, but they heard about some of the things you said, and I was being nice by not mentioning it to you in detail, you know that don’t you?” Her brother groaned and slammed his head on the steering wheel in frustration. “I don’t want to go out with someone that thinks of me as something he can rub his penis between. I’m a person Bobby. Not something he can use to relieve a woody with. That’s all I’d be in his eyes.”

 

“You know Kim, that’s just locker room bullshit. All the guys do it; most of them don’t mean any harm by it.” Bobby said but his heart didn’t seem convinced by the lame excuse. In fact, Robert was boiling inside. He couldn’t imagine how Kim must feel, but he knew she was right about the rumors. It happened everywhere. Now his sister was the subject of that filth.

 

It should have been obvious to both of them that she was going to become the subject of such ideas. She was gorgeous. It had probably happened in junior high as well, but high school was decidedly different. That was the place where children grow to find the limits of who and what they will become. Experimentation with the societal elements of what’s acceptable and what isn’t often backfire horribly leaving a wake of hard feelings for those victims of the experiment.

 

It was difficult for her brother to lump Kim into the body of girls he had known as such a different breed of people. To Robert she was simply his sister, just another one of the family. It didn’t hurt that she was totally unpretentious, polite, and sweet to a fault. She never really primped or fawned over her good looks. If her hair got mussed or tangled, she was just as happy to leave it as it was until she could care for it correctly. She was so different from all the girls Robert had known, it just never occurred that someone else might see her as he had seen all the other girls in school, merely a conquest.

 

That’s not to say she didn’t care about her looks. She did! She took care to watch what she ate, she exercised and was an active teen. Kim took care to look good and dressed well, if not a bit provocative. That was just his sister’s style. She liked the racy look, tight clothes and current styles made her feel in step with something she couldn’t or wouldn’t define except to say that it defined how she felt inside. That couldn’t be helping the way the guys were seeing her. So in large part, was Kim to blame as well? Robert didn’t think so. Wasn’t it her right to dress the way she felt best dressing? The world was saying no. For Robert, it was a double standard that he wasn’t comfortable with when it came to Kim.

For the most part she was sweet, little innocent Kimberly. She liked everyone, as evidenced by her long term friendship with Ben as strained as that was at times.

 

It broke his heart to think of Kim being spoken about like that by people she had to interact with. A vision came to him, a vision of Kim walking the halls at school. In the vision she was wearing one of her ridiculously short mini-skirts, but something was amiss. The hem of her skirt was caught in the waistband of her underwear in back. Everyone was laughing as she walked by. One or two of the guys standing around would race up behind her and pretend to air hump her. If she were to happen to turn around and see them following her, she would only smile her most genuine smile and keep moving toward her next class oblivious that she was literally, the butt of all the laughter. That was his little innocent sister, always thinking the best of everyone, everyone that is except Kirk.

 

“When you say, ‘didn’t mean nothing by it,’ you really mean like hurting someone’s feelings, making her look stupid or foolish in front of the school population on her first year? You mean taking the honest feelings of someone that has a crush on you and crushing them back for giving you that gift? You mean things like that, right?” Kim asked innocently.

 

“Shit, when did you start thinking so hard about this crap?”

 

“Oh, its crap is it? I’m sorry Bobby I didn’t mean to bother you with all this girl crap.”

 

“Kim… come on.” He reached out to pat her shoulder but Kim moved out of his reach.

 

“No, Bobby really, I’m sorry to bother you with this. I’m obviously making more of this than I need to.” Even Kim was surprised by her reaction to this. She genuinely felt hurt by her brother’s response. Even more confusing was the depth to which she had become engaged in this subject. Where is this coming from?

 

But she knew where it was coming from. More and more of Kimberly was coming back to her every second she remained in this body. Soon, she suspected, going back to being Tim would be just as traumatic as finding herself as she was.

 

“Look it doesn’t make it right, it’s just one of those things guys do. Hell, Kimmy, guys would love for women to talk about them that way. We’d be in heaven if women were slutty and trashy and came on to us that way.”

 

“So let me get this right…”

 

“Ugh!” Robert exclaimed aware he had inadvertently opened the lid to Pandora’s Box.

 

“If while you were dating Robin last year, she started talking to the other girls about how she wanted to ‘nail you’ or if she were to come up and say in front of all your friends something like,” Kim put on her raunchiest attitude, “‘Hey there sugar dick, Mmmmmmm, you know I just can’t get through the day without a nice squeeze Baby. Come on over here and let Mamma get a hand full of that…’ then slap you on the ass. You’re saying that you’d be Okay with that?”

 

“Uh… Robin wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

 

“Oh,” Kim asked, again in an innocent voice. “Why ever not?”

 

“Okay, I see your point.” Robert finally admitted.

 

“There’s a double standard out there Robert. It’s in plain sight of everyone and you guys just explain it away as being something guys do.”

 

“Well Kim, there are some things that only guys do.”

 

“Grrrrrrr.” Kim growled. It was a habit she had developed as a little girl that had developed into an involuntary response to things she got very angry about. “Okay, like what?”

 

“Football!”

 

“Stupid sport, next.”

 

“Baseball.”

 

“On the same list, and not true by the way, lots of girls play softball.”

 

“I don’t know how you can say those are stupid sports. You’ve never said anything like that before. And as Captain of the cheerleading squad I’m frankly just a little surprised, Kim. Okay how about this military, combat!”

 

Kim was no longer listening. She had fallen wretchedly silent. Her face cloudy and full of fear, ‘I’m Captain of the… of the… of the WHAT!’ She wanted to shriek. ‘I hate this…If I have to wear this face, then why can’t I have all the memories I need all at once, why am I being rationed out memories as triggered? I don’t know how to cheerlead! What the fuck am I going to do now?’ But as she searched the Kimmories that had suddenly been bridged by Robert’s admission, she found she did know how to lead cheers. The lyrics, words and moves to all the cheers in their catalog came back to her in horrifyingly vivid detail.

 

Then as they approached the school, something, or rather someone caught her eye that took her mind off all the information inside her mind. On the sidewalk stood a boy that had looked very much like Ben, with the obvious exception that Ben didn’t wear a book bag and was usually better dressed than the boy she had seen. Kim turned in her seat to face the direction as they passed to get a better look at the boy before he faded out of sight. On second glance, she was surprised to find the boy covered with what appeared to be leaves here and there stuck to his shirt and pants, as if he’d been rolling on the ground. It sure looked like Ben to her.

 

She tried to get his attention by waving to him, and although she was not aware she was doing it, she smiled sweetly at him. But the boy didn’t respond. In fact, he looked down at his shoes, there seemed to be something intensely interesting there that he didn’t want to take his eyes away from. As the car pulled around the corner of the drop-off-circle, the boy in question was still looking at that something on his shoes.

 

“Kim? What about the last one?” Robert was asking. He turned as saw her facing the back of the station wagon, “What are you looking at?”

 

“Huh? What? Did you say something?” Kim came back unwillingly; she now wished she’d never started this conversation. She couldn’t even remember what the conversation had been started over in the first place. The predicament she was in was now far too accentuated in her head for her to continue as she had only moments ago without seeming upset or odd to her brother. Best to stop now before more flags were raised.

 

“Military, Kim. Forget sports, forget things like construction or things like that… what about combat?”

 

“Uh… I don’t know.” She prayed now, that among other things, she would be out of this realm before she had to put on a cheerleader uniform and lead her squad in practice. School loomed in the foreground. It didn’t appear to have changed to her, but who could tell? Robert pulled up to the curb in the drop off circle as Kim gathered her things. Now, going to school didn’t seem like such a good idea. Whatever else might have or might not have changed, one thing was certain, she was a very different person. God only knew what that might lead to.

 

Resolute to getting back to her former life however, she opened the car door to get out, “Thanks Bobby.” She said touching his arm. Robert smiled but it was a pained smile. “

 

He was about to pull away when Kirk drove past in his Camaro. “Hey… wasn’t that?”

 

“Yep,” Kim followed the cars tract with her eyes, “He’s parking over there with all the jock’s and jockette’s.” Kim said with a sneer.

 

Robert looked at her with a funny puzzled look on his face, “Kim, you’re a jockette, remember?”

 

Kim snorted and said, “Yeah, please don’t remind me.” She backed away from the car. “See ya.”

 

“After school, I’ll be here at 3:00 to pick you up,” Robert glanced over his shoulder to where Kirk and his cronies were parked. “Think I’ll pay a little visit to Kirk over there.”

 

“Don’t embarrass him Bobby, please.” Kim begged.

 

“Now you’re concerned about him? If half of what you told me was true, I see that as a cause for his absence from the Home Coming game due to an unexpected leg, neck, back, arm, shoulder, and ass injury.” Robert grinned at his sister. Without waiting for a response, Robert pulled away. She watched as his car pulled across the space where Kirk’s car was parked effectively blocking it in.

 

Kim quickly turned and walked toward the school. Robert had a temper, especially when it came to people messing with his baby sister. Among her conflicting memories was one she remembered of her brother chasing down the Tarzac kid, ambushing him in the middle of the street when they had been younger. Robert had beat the kid until he had, as Bobby put it, ‘screamed like a little girl,” for harassing and frightening Kim just a few years ago.

 

The memory of the beating that boy had received, though well deserved for the fright Warren Tarzac had given her had, none the less been excessive and horrifying. Kim didn’t want to see something like that happen again. Kim shut the ‘Kimmory’ down before the movie could begin to play in what she was sure would be terribly graphic detail.

 

Kim did her best to move quickly away and back to the edge of the school where she had seen Ben standing, looking lost and confused. There was no cheerfulness in the air. Kim moved with deliberate determination, her eyes set forward, scanning the sidewalk in the distance for the disheveled boy in the worn T-shirt and faded jeans they had passed on the way onto the property.

 

An over-enthusiastic feminine voice called out, “Kim?” but it spawned no recognition in Kim to turn and acknowledge its owner. “Kimberly?” it called out again, then there was a tugging at her sleeve. “Kimberly,”

 

It was Melinda Gilman. Kim remembered her from both this life and the one that no longer existed. A hated enemy for Tim, she had been the source of many indignities he had suffered in school. Melinda had hated Tim for reasons unknown expect both boys had not been ‘cool’.

 

Here however, Melinda had been sort of a friend. Kim could see however that there was some sort of sinister feel to that friendship. Pleasant on the outside, both Melinda and herself harbored dark feelings for one another. And that’s the way it is with girls… Kim’s mind told her. Most of the girls here feel that way about the others. It’s a sort of… rivalry thing. Even that wasn’t quite right, but it was the closest label she could put on it. Girls are far more competitive than boys give them credit for being. A rivalry doesn’t end with a confrontation. Boys can slug it out and twenty minutes later, forget there had ever been anything to fight over. Girls were far worse. Their memories were long and their spite harsh and bitter.

 

Kim understood that Melinda was a shallow girl whose main motivation was to find and capture the most eligible and wealthiest boy in school and eventually marry him to secure her future. This fact had probably been no different in Tim’s world either but had been an element unknown until she had become Kim. To Kim’s disgust, when she spoke of such things, she had a knack for making it sound like a 401(k) retirement plan.

 

Melinda pulled up along side Kim as she walked toward the school doors. Kim understood that the façade was merely designed to lower her adversary’s guard for some other purpose. Melinda wanted information. “Hi Mel,” Kim offered kindly, but to Kim the statement smacked of sarcasm.

 

“I don’t know why you call me that. You know I don’t like the name Mel, it makes me sound like some old bald fat sailor.” Melinda returned, making Kim grin just the slightest bit.

 

“Yes, I know,” Kim admitted with a happy smile.

 

“I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were doing that just to annoy me.”

 

“Well then Mel, it’s a good thing you know better isn’t it?” Kim said cheerfully.

 

“Mmmmm, er yeah,” Melinda said sounding slightly confused. “Anyway,” Melinda said, blissfully dismissing anything that wasn’t useful to her primary purpose. “The word on the street is that you blew off Kirk for the prom.”

 

Kim stopped and turned to face Melinda, “Is there a reason the street needs to know?”

 

“No, no reason. I was just curious why anyone would brush Kirk off. I mean, I told everyone that it had to be a mistake, you know? Some kind of vicious rumor…”

 

“I see…” Kim replied not tipping her hand. She resumed her march to the school leaving Melinda standing, staring after her.

 

Melinda finally raced to catch up with her. “Well?”

 

“Well what?” Kim asked.

 

“Did you? Did you tell Kirk you didn’t want to go to the prom with him?”

 

Kim stopped just shy of the steps to the front door, “No, I didn’t.”

 

Melinda looked absolutely crushed, and Kim decided to draw this out just a moment or two longer. “I thought so, that damned Tracy Seeds, I swear,”

 

“My brother did!” Kim interrupted, stopping Melinda in her tracks. “Bobby did because I never told Kirk I was going to go to the prom with him.”

 

“Oh,” Melinda said in wide-eyed surprise.

 

“Ben Ackerman asked me to go with him and I accepted,” Kim turned and mounted the steps and vanished into the school, leaving Melinda on the walkway in stunned disbelief unable to speak.

 

Kim continued to scan the influx of teens for Ben’s familiar scruff of uncombed hair and his dark mysterious eyes in the faces of the kids that passed. It was soon apparent that something else was happening. Almost everyone was looking back at her for some reason. There were waves and hellos and greetings from almost every eye, hand or mouth that passed within twenty feet of her. The distraction was enormous and disconcerting. Before long she was avoiding making eye contact. Still the calls continued.

 

If Kim wasn’t the prettiest girl in school, she was at least in the running and raked high in the top five. This was a point of self-conscious contention with her as she entered the school. Even with her eyes averted she could sense other eyes upon her. Most were male eyes. This simple fact made her the most uncomfortable, but there were those girls in the school that disliked her because of her natural good looks. Every so often she could feel the dislike of those eyes on her, burning a hole in her, willing her beauty to burst into flames.

 

Left and right, the voices of people that knew her offered greetings, and wishes for a good morning as she moved along the hall. With each voice, a flash of memory, but the flashes were coming too close together to make any cogent sense to her. Soon she felt totally overwhelmed as a starlet might in a sea of camera flashing paparazzi for the first time.

 

Kim found a stand of lockers that was unoccupied with fellow students and ducked between them to give her flash-blind brain a rest from all the transient, disjointed memories. She lay with her back against the locker, the raised clasp of her bra conspicuously pressing into the center of her back. She hid her face behind her school books to shield herself from a world that seemed to have little or no regard for her stress as it continued to go on with its business all around her. She could not recall a time when she had ever felt lonelier in either existence.

 

Even trying to hide, the greetings from an unknown world filtered in from somewhere beyond her shut eyes. Please, please, please… just leave me alone!

 

Then the sounds of a world that had never existed filtered through the noise,

 

“Come on!” cried a voice. Then came the sounds of someone stumbling with papers and books spilling across a carpeted floor.

 

“What a dweeb,” came the cry from one. There was laughter by several, “Looser!” The sound of it made her quake with its bitter familiarity as the harsh and hateful calls moved away out of earshot down the hall.

 

Kim peeked above her books and saw a clumsy figure on his knees amid the ruins of a once well organized note book. The papers and text books were strewn out in a debris trail that extended out into the traffic area of the hall. Those still making their way to class were marching on the papers of completed work, some even taking time to grind the material into the carpet with a few good twists of their feet.

 

From her vantage point, the actions of these people seemed so much more extreme than anything she and Ben had ever experienced before. Ben would reach out for his work, trying to selectively rescue those papers that seemed in the greatest danger from passers by. As quickly as he could gather those already torn and smudged by those that were working them into the floor, someone else would begin destroying another page someplace else. Now with a distraction, the vast ocean of attention that had been turned her way was now focused on Ben and the devastation of his school work.

 

Ben made grunting noises as he attempted to reach out and save what work he could. Kim dashed out into the hall and dropped to her knees and began helping. “Stop it!” she cried out. “What in the Hell is wrong with you people?” It wasn’t long before the kids were starting to give both a wide birth, no longer willing to attack if Kim was set on helping the geek put his belongings back in order. Many gave her a curious look however, unable to reconcile why she would be helping such a looser.

 

She had her fingers on one of the last pages in the hall, one others had missed when a large athletic shoe landed on it with deliberate intent. “On a mercy mission again Kim? Is the looser the subject of one of your Pity Crusades?”

 

Kim visually followed the leg up to where the voice had come from. “Its not pity Kirk!” She snapped at him, “Ben is a friend of mine. I’m doing what friends do.”

 

Kirk stood six feet three inches tall, his massive frame was draped with nearly 200 plus pounds of muscle. With bone, skin, organs and fat, Kirk weighed in at a whopping but lean 280 pounds. Kim tugged on the sheet of paper under Kirks foot and Kirk lifted his foot and released it to her. “You’re really going out with this puttz?”

 

Kim snatched the paper Kirk had been standing on and put it with the rest of Ben’s work she was cradling. “Why do you think that’s any of your business?”

 

“I just want to hear you say it, that’s all,” Kirk said throwing his hands up to illustrate how defenseless he was. His defenselessness turned quickly to evil glee when with a sneer he said, “I want you to tell me in front of all your friends that you, Kim Glass is going out with the lowest form of life on the planet.”

 

“Stop it Kirk.” Kim demanded. Kim struggled to maintain her balance as she stood with an armload of paperwork. Kirk offered her his hand but she pulled away from it with a quick jerk, “I can manage on my own, thank you!”

 

“Oooo Hooooo! Defensive aren’t we?” Kirk observed

 

“Just go Kirk, leave him alone.” Kim shouted. She was close to tears. Her heart broke for Ben who was still trying to remain invisible. His head turned shamefully away to avoid the baleful stares of those that looked on. She understood what was going on in his mind. His life had come down to having to be saved by a girl. A girl who was smaller than him, weaker than him, but could still defend him and guard against anyone else hurting him.

 

“Not before you say it Kim.” Kirk demanded.

 

“Why is it so important to you that I come out and say it?” Kim asked bewildered why anyone would do this to another human being.

 

“Are you ashamed of going out with him? If you not, why shouldn’t you say it. I just want to hear it. I want to hear my girl tell me she’s dumping me over this piece of human tras…”

 

Kim flushed with anger, “Since you put it that way, you bet I am! I turned you down Kirk. You wanted a public announcement. I turned you down so that I could go to the prom with BEN ACKERMAN.” Kim shouted, cutting Kirk’s thought in two. “The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I didn’t get the opportunity to tell you first.”

 

There was a flash of recollection in Kim’s mind. It wasn’t just one memory but a string of several small clips, images, feelings and words. All of these images and feelings were playbacks of Kirk. Kirk putting his arm around her waist at sporting events, feelings of revulsion and disgust at the act. There were feelings of being ambushed by Kirk. Times when he could not make his presence known but show up where Kim was unexpectedly escorting her around, Kim helpless to extricate herself from his company. There were memories of hearing that Kirk was telling everyone that they were together, there were arguments about the subject that always ended the same way, with Kirk dismissing her protests and telling her that she was his and she was going to remain his unless she wanted to get hurt. This eclectic assortment of memories all painted the same story, Kirk was stalking her, holding her hostage and warning everyone that she was his. That’s why she didn’t have any boy friends.

 

Kim’s face became grim with determination, “And you know what Kirk?” Kirk began to gather his entourage to leave, “I’m not your girl. I never have been! It’s just some sick fantasy you’ve cooked up inside that pressure cooker you call a brain. I’m no ones girl until I say so! I should have said so a long time ago. You made up all this shit you’ve told people since the beginning of the year. You made it up and I’m the one that had to sit quietly and pretend that I liked you to save you’re precious ego and your spotless womanizing reputation. So I’m going out with Ben because I like Ben, and I don’t like you!”

 

Kirk had stopped, his back turned to her. When she finished, Kirk turned slowly and Kimberly was suddenly very afraid. “Kirk walked to where Kim now stood. He stood close enough so that she could smell the cigarette smoke on his rancid breath. She could feel the residual heat of his body on her face. His face was a boil that needed lancing, a hot read thing full of puss and poison. Kirk suddenly smiled, “I bet you wish that were true. It would be a lot easier for you to believe than accept the fact that I dumped you.”

 

“You WHAT?” It sounded to the gathering crowd that Kim was surprised that their affair was now over and she was the last to hear about it. Kim understood she’d been drawn in to the farce. “Dumped me? You and I, we were never...” Kim stopped in mid sentence and switched oars, “You know what, you’re right. Okay, you dumped me. Either way, you and I, simply, are not anything.”

 

Kirk on the other hand was circling her within their circle of friends, arms stretched out a shit eating grin on his face as if to say, Did I not tell you she was fucking crazy? Is this not the proof? That circle of friends were all nodding their heads in agreement to this most loud of silent questions.

 

Kim watched him circling for a moment but soon returned her attention to Ben. Her peers were beginning to move off toward classes as the warning bell rung. Kirk broke off his victory dance and bent low where Kim was crouching next to Ben, “Come on Ben, let me…”

 

Kirk began whine, mocking Kim as she spoke to him, “Come on Ben… Pretty please.”

 

Kim turned as slapped at Kirk’s chest. “Leave… him… alone…” she emphasis each word with a slap. Kirk scrabbled backward, laughing at the weak slaps until he lost his balance and ended up on his back defending himself with his arms. At length, he finally had had enough and grabbed her wrist and pulled her close to him, as he lay on his back on the floor.

 

Kim gasped at the suddenness and fury with which Kirk handled her. She tried to pull away but his hands were more like iron shackles, “Let gooooo.”

 

“Shut up Kim,” Kirk growled low and quiet. In all her memories, Kirk had never before been this aggressive. “That was very cute what you did today, with your brother. Very cute, but he don’t scared me Kim. You are MY girl.” Kirk hissed. Then he shook her as he said it, “My girl! Don’t fucking forget it Kimberly. It doesn’t matter what your brother says, what you say, and least of all what that piece of dog shit says,” Kirk gestured to Ben who was still on the floor. “You may think you’re going out with the grease spot over there. I’m telling you, you’re not. Remember it Kim, I’d hate to have to remind you.”

 

Kirk locked his eyes to hers for just a moment and Kim could see the eyes of a crazy man stirring behind the former clear blue eyes of a boy trying to become a man. He jerked her once more, then suddenly released her, pitching her back off him. He was done with her. Kirk stood, brushed himself off with no more concern than a man who had just gotten dust on his jacket and then sauntered off without so much as a glance backward.

 

Kim watched him, enraged and embarrassed. Behind her, Ben was still arranging his paperwork. “Kim,” he said pausing.

 

She turned and acknowledged him, “Yeah Ben… Oh my God,” Kim cried noticing for the large yellow and purple shiner for the first time. “Ben, you’re hurt.”

 

“I fell down,” Ben said as nonchalantly as someone ordering buttered toast.

 

“What did you fall down on, an anvil?” Kim said examining the eye.

 

“My dad’s fist.” Ben said glumly. Kimberly froze. A rush of memories attacked her mind. Each one was terrifying. All included Abs and Ben. One included a rather nasty confrontation with her father a long, long time ago. As she cradled Ben’s face, Ben finally let go of the fear that had been stranded within him for the past two days. He sobbed helplessly as Kim did her best to hide Ben’s shame from the passing students.

 

“Shush, it’s Okay. We can fix this.” Kim whispered to him. If she felt she had needed some leverage to convince Ben to get them out of this mess, she now believed she had just what the doctor ordered.

 

Ben looked at Kim with a pathetic stare, “I just want to go home Kim. I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help, but I am. I just want to go home.”

 

Kim smiled sweetly at him and on impulse, kissed his forehead tenderly. “I know you do.” Kim glanced about. The halls were clearing of students. The bell for first period was about to close. It was now or never. Kim turned back to Ben and whispered, “Come on Ben, let’s go home.”