Jane -05- Night (Patreon)

After Mom and I brought out trays with sodas, taquitos, salsa, sour cream and guacamole, we all watched the end of the Angels game — they won. Junior made room on the couch for Mom and I shared the lounger with Daddy, sitting sort of in his lap. I hadn’t done that in years.

“Your hair is nice, Punkin,” he said once.

“Thanks,” I said. 

“You don’t seem so upset as earlier?”

I shrugged. “Being able to hit Moose with a spoon and not get hit back has some value,” I admitted.

He laughed, putting an arm around my waist and I leaned back against him. He felt warm and solid.

When the game ended, Junior commented on my hair too, while he and Moose cleaned up the living room. “You look great, chicklet,” he said. “Kind of like a sleepy elf or something.”

I shook my head but told him, “Thanks.” An elf?

Moose got his revenge, though. Just as I started down the darkened hallway to my room, he zoomed out of nowhere and grabbed me.

“Yike!” I squealed. 

He let me go and rubbed both hands through my hair, chortling. “Can we get some whipped cream with the strawberries, sis?” he asked, sniffing of my hair.

I whirled around to kick or slap him but he had already retreated, grinning.

Mom and Dad said nothing about the horseplay and I figured it was fair enough. I had set him up with the wooden spoon trick, after all. So I just said, “No more sweets for you tonight,” and pretended to stomp off down the hall. Morgan is a goof but I love him.

My brothers’ easy acceptance of my change in status did puzzle me. We had always been very different in personality and outlook, but I had just put that down to them being older than me. And bigger, much bigger.

When I had been younger, I really looked up to them and made a nuiscance of myself trying to be with them all the time. Especially Morgan. But by the time I started second grade, it became obvious to me that we had few interests in common. They liked physical action, even if it were dirty and a little dangerous, as long as it involved being outside and making lots of noise.

I liked quieter, more indoor activities. Like reading books or learning how to bake bread from Mom. I guess I had always been a bit girly that way. Maybe Moose and Junior found it easier to relate to me as a little sister than as a weird little brother.

I decided that if I thought too much about that I would either start crying again or laugh myself sick and back in the hospital. Maybe with a new jacket that tied in the back.

Sniffling just a little, I turned left at the end of the hallway and opened my door.

* * *

In my room I had to turn on a lamp because the sun had gone down behind the western mountains at the far end of Fordyce Valley hours ago. I pulled both sets of curtains closed, too. Usually, I only closed the outer set to keep out most of the light from the barns but I felt the need for more privacy now and the more opaque inner curtains made me feel — safer.

But I stood there for a moment, holding the drapes away from the window so I could look out on the night.

I could see shadowy cows standing around in clumps in the fields going up the slopes of the nearer hills. These were the dairy herd. Farther away, the beef cattle, mostly steers, would be keeping each other company in the same way as the darkness grew. They didn’t have anything to fear — there were no wolves these days and the few cougars or black bears in the mountains would keep their distance from the ranch and its people.

After a bit, I turned away from familiar view and began getting ready for bed.

Aunt Nora had said I should wash my hair every evening, so I decide to take a real shower. I laid out a clean pair of shorts and my pajamas, then stood there looking at the underwear for a moment. For maximum weirdness, I decided that I would feel just as strange wearing boy-style shorts as girl-style undies…. 

What the heck? It would make Mom and Dad happy that I was really giving this living as a girl thing a try so I replaced the shorts with a pair of panties, making a face at myself in the mirror when I did that. 

Which reminded me to take off my necklace and bracelet and leave them on the dresser. I didn’t have a jewelry box but I didn’t need one. Yet. I still felt a little creeped out wearing such stuff (pretty!) but having more than two pieces to choose from would be nice, I supposed.

Soap and towels would already be in the bathroom, along with the shampoo and conditioner Aunt Nora had given me. Just before I started down the hall to my bathroom, which also served as the guest bathroom, Mom tapped on the door and came on in.

“I bought something else for you at Penney’s,” she said, smiling and presenting me with a package, something pale blue wrapped in clear plastic. 

More surprises. I started to ask ‘what now?’ but saw that the package contained a girl’s nightgown. I blushed as I accepted it. “Thanks, Mom. I guess my boy’s PJs wouldn’t be right if I’m really going to give this a try, huh?” One more piece of ice for the collection in my belly.

“There’s tons of stuff you’re going to need,” Mom said. “But we can go as slow as you like.”

I shook my head. Not “as slow as I liked,” but more like “as slow as I was willing to throw a fit about,” but I knew she had good intentions.

I opened the nightgown package, remarking, “Technically, this is a dress.”

Mom looked surprised. “I didn’t think of it that way. Uh — at least, it isn’t pink?”

We laughed softly then hugged. 

“I’ll wear it,” I conceded. “No one will see but family and I guess I have to start trying dresses sometime.”

“It’s pretty plain but it’s nice enough and also opaque for walking around the house,” she said.

I stepped back into my room and Mom followed me in. She noted the curtains and drapes being pulled but didn’t say anything about it. I opened the package of the nightgown and held it up. It would easily fall past my knees and almost to my ankles.

“How could this not be a dress?” I asked Mom.

She just smiled.

I shook my head. It would be funny if it weren’t happening to me. 

I had discovered that I actually could like some things about being a girl. I felt closer to my parents now but that might actually have happened just because I had been sick for a while. Teasing my brothers with impunity was only a small perk as was getting out of certain sorts of work that I disliked.

I had discovered that I liked jewelry which puzzled me. But wearing girl’s clothes made me feel, well, weird. And I knew that Mom, and possibly Dad, would keep pushing on this.

I put my pajamas back in the lower drawer of my dresser and tossed the wrapper from the nightgown in the trash. 

Mom started looking through my closet but said nothing. 

“Don’t start throwing stuff away until I decide….” I trailed off. “Just don’t, okay? Not yet.”

She nodded. “Some of this you’ll want to keep, anyway. As long as it fits. But you’re going to need a whole new wardrobe, Audrey.” She came over to me then and gave me a peck on the forehead (though short compared to Dad or my brothers, Mom was more than half-a-foot taller than me). “I’ll let you get your shower and see you in the morning, honey,” she said and left.

I grabbed my stuff, followed her out and down the hall for my bath.

*

Getting undressed, I rediscovered my bra. I had honestly forgotten I was wearing it. I hung it carefully on the towel rack furthest from the shower so it wouldn’t get wet accidentally. 

The ranch house had an oversize hot water heater, so the proper temperature was almost instantly available. I stepped under the shower and used the shampoo Aunt Nora had given me. Twice like it says on the label, both times using some of the lather on my upper body. Then I used conditioner and left it in for a bit while I cleaned elsewhere.

The soft terrycloth washrag seemed rougher than before, especially around my nipples but I cleaned neck, ears, elbows and hands before using the rag below my waist. It had only been a few weeks since I had lost a layer of hide in the Crisis, and my skin was soft and tender everywhere. Even my feet.

I rinsed my hair and everything else with cooler water then stood still for the blast of cold that made one feel really alive. I used two of the big fluffy towels to get dry, trying to pat instead of rub. I’d found out in the hospital that rubbing my new skin when it was damp with anything as rough as a terrycloth actually hurt.

I wrapped the dryer towel around me, standing on the wetter one. The mirrors had fogged up so I wiped the one above the sink clear, having to stand on tiptoe to reach. Standing there, looking at my reflection, I moved the towel up to cover my chest and swollen nipples. Even wet and stuck to my head, my new haircut helped make me look more like a girl.

I sighed. I’d enjoyed being a boy but honestly, I had hardly thought about it. Like a fish never thinking about water, I guess. It just was.

Some things I kind of liked about being a girl. Being honest to myself, I had always liked pretty things and had never enjoyed getting dirty or gross. While I loved baseball, I wasn’t any good at playing it and spent the one year I joined Little League on the bench or getting thrown out at first.

I turned my towel to the other side to absorb more water and opened the bathroom door a crack to get some air. We had no guests in the house so this was my own bathroom, even if it didn’t connect to my bedroom like Mom and Dad’s bathroom did theirs. Even Moose and Junior had a bathroom in their over-the-garage domain.

I took a comb and began working on my hair; no brushes when it was wet, Aunt Nora had said. The comb helped it dry faster by getting air into the fine dense curls. Again, I decided I liked the new color.

I dropped my towel and pulled on a clean pair of white panties, pushing the only part of me that still looked like it belonged on a boy so that it pointed backward and didn’t really show.

I debated whether I should put my bra back on. Mom had said it was okay to wear the same bra for two or three days unless it obviously needed washing. But did girls wear bras to go to bed? Considering the sensitivity of my nipples and how the bra had kept me form having to think about the soreness all afternoon, I did put it back on.

I picked up the nightgown and examined it again. Very light, very soft, blue, opaque, with white stitching and a bit of white lace at neck, wrists and hem. My first clothing with a skirt. I sighed.

Slipping it on over my head, I noted that, as I had thought, it reached past mid-calf almost to my ankles. I stepped over to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I fluffed my hair with my fingers and looked at the girl in the mirror.

What the heck were Pete and my other friends going to think? I kind of dreaded that but put it out of my mind. Pete and his family had taken the last weekend before school started on Tuesday to go on a mini-vacation down to Sea World. I wouldn’t see him until late Monday afternoon, probably. Danny, Lance, Chuy and my other friends I wouldn’t meet again till Tuesday morning. 

And the girls, Rhea, Grace, Penny, how would they treat me? As a new member of the club or as an interloper?

It would be a new school for all of is. Presley only had a K-5 elementary school. We would all be riding the bus to middle school in La Morena, the next larger town in the area. Lots of new kids to meet, our fifth grade class had only twenty-three students but there would be more than a hundred in the sixth grade. Maybe I could disappear and no one would recognize me.

Sighing, I turned to cleaning up the bathroom and putting my discarded undies and t-shirt into the hamper. I carried my jeans back to my bedroom with me and hung them in my closet.

The sighing of the A/C stopped but the house was still cool inside, a nice temperature for sleeping. I turned out the light but I could still see, dimly, from what leaked around the drapes from the barns.

I was in bed and nearly asleep when Mom and Dad peeked in to check on me. They didn’t say anything and I didn’t move. I must have dozed off before they closed my door and left.

* * *

A yellow-orange glow filled the cave and I didn’t realize I was dreaming.

“Pete?” I whispered but no one answered. Holding the hem of my nightgown up off the rocks, I made my barefoot way toward the fungus or mold or whatever it was on the wall near the back.

“Did you do this to me?” I asked it, but of course it did not reply.

When I had raised such a theory with the doctors they had dismissed it. Such a thing wasn’t possible, people didn’t grow new organs because they had touched a furry alien blob in the back of a cave. Nor could organs I remembered having just disappear.

I stopped asking or even thinking about the cave on Mt. Palomar. And now this…

“Why?” I asked but no one had an answer. 

Suddenly, I was on the bus, going to middle school, still wearing my nightgown but now I had a pile of books in my arms. I walked down the aisle, my bare feet slapping on the plastic runner. I sat beside Pete, who I had been friends with since pre-school.

He made a face. “Cooties! You’ve got cooties now, Audrey! You can’t sit with me!” He put an arm up to fend me off.

So I licked him.

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