Hero: A Throwback Story (Patreon)

Hero
by
TG Kadee

As soon as Officer Peter O’Malley walked into her office, Dr. Mildred Brinkman could tell that he used to be a man. The walk, the posture, so at odds with the delicate little female body, the flashing masculine defiance in the big, pretty green eyes and the hard set of the full, pouty lips— it all read not just masculine, but imprisoned masculinity, masculinity shackled to a womb. She'd never seen it before, but she knew it the moment it walked into her office.

She stood and held out her hand, “Officer O’Malley.”

He looked up, reaching out with a small, soft hand and did his best to put some strength and confidence behind his grip as he said, “Doctor” in what was clearly a self-consciously lower chest voice, but still came out of him as soft and feminine despite his best efforts. He was wearing a pair of baggy gray sweat pants and an equally baggy blue t-shirt all smothered under an oversized hoodie. 

“Take a seat,” Dr. Brinkman said. “Mind if I call you Peter?”

“That’s my name.” Peter sat down, his legs spread wide, and he put his hands behind his head and tilted his head to the side, staring at her defiantly. ”Even if the department doesn’t really believe it.” He probably thought it made him look tough the way it had when he’d been, according to his file, a 6’ 2” 230 pounds precinct boxing champion, but with his feminine features and narrow little wrists, he looked like a little girl dressed in her dad’s clothes trying to play act at being a man, and Brinkman’s heart went out to him. “I don’t want to be here,” he said. “I’ve never believed in shrinks.”

“Most cops don’t,” Brinkman. “Do you want some coffee? Water?”

“How about some scotch?”

“The city doesn’t pay me enough to provide an open bar.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

“Yes.”

“Well, so? Let’s say you just certify that I’m fine and clear me to get back to active duty.”

Brinkman sat down. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“I figured.” He covered his face with his hands, then looked off at the corner of the room. “Listen, doc, I’m dying to just get back to work, okay? It’s the best thing for me. Sitting around all day, I’m going nuts, thoughts running around and around in my head, going stir crazy.”

“What kind of thoughts?” 

“Mostly just…” he stopped and looked at her with a smirk. “You almost got me there, doc. Almost had me talking about my feelings. Tricky.”

“I’m not trying to trick you. I would like to know what kind of thoughts you’ve been having, though.”

Peter didn’t answer. He shifted position, crossing his arms, crossing his legs- like a man, but still a defensive posture. He turned his body half away from the doctor, averting his eyes.

“Nothing you say leaves this room.”

“No. Nah. No thanks.”

“Then, tell me why you don’t want to tell me.”

“Because… why do you think?”

Brinkman admired his long slender neck, his face in profile—the upturned little nose, long curly eyelashes. “I would never speculate.”

“Take a guess. I’ll tell you if you’re right. How about that?”

“You’re worried I’ll send you to a mental institution.”

Peter looked at her, his eyes wide. “It’s that obvious?”

“Just about every cop who ever has or will walk through that door is worried I am going to send them to a mental institution.”

Peter frowned. “So that means I’m normal, I guess.”

“Normal,” Brinkman answered, “for a cop.”

Peter chuckled despite himself, but quickly looked away, still wary. “How many cops you sent to the looney bin over the years?”

“Just two.”

“How come?”

“Mostly because I didn’t like them.”

And this time Peter actually laughed, a pretty young girl’s laugh, and his eyes lit up for a moment, he even allowed a smile to flicker across his face for a moment, and Brinkman held her breath—my God, she thought. He is stunning. The smile only lasted a second before he felt embarrassed, self-conscious about that high-pitched laugh, and he pulled down the mask of ambivalence once again and said, “I better stay on your good side.”

“It’s not a bad idea.”

“I may be crazy, but I ain’t stupid.” Peter slipped out of his hoodie and once again spread his legs, his hands dangling in his lap—sitting like a guy. “You seem all right, doc.”

“I try.” She looked him in the eyes and smiled, struggling to keep her eyes up. The outline of Peter’s breasts could be seen even as baggy as his shirt was, and in her mind she found herself imagining him naked, big young breasts with full, brown nipples. The file said the body he’d been switched into was a 19 year old female, but she’d had the curves of a 25 year old, with the face of a 16 year old. 

This is going to be hard, Brinkman thought to herself, taking a sip of her cold coffee and forcing herself to think about baseball for a minute. “Can you tell me what happened? From the beginning?”

“Don’t you have some kind of file about me?”

“Dates. Reports. I would like to hear your story. Or, if you don’t want to talk about that, we can always talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything you want.”

Peter stared off into space for a minute, sighed and still staring off, clearly losing himself in the memory, he began to tell his story, still keeping his girl’s voice down in his chest, trying to sound like the man he’d been.

“I come from a family of cops. My dad. His dad. Both of them lifers at the NYPD. My grandfather and father both made detective. All their friends were cops. So, I grew up round cops—softball games in the park, barbecues. At my first communion half the church was full of cops and their wives. I always knew I wanted to be a cop, and I was a guy—they were all guys, men, like old fashioned men, and I played football and worked on cars and did all the stuff I could to be just like my old man.

I even got a scholarship to play football at Hofstra, picked up a criminology degree and I was a stud, I could get any girl, and…” he paused for a second, his face pained shifted in his seat, and then focused, continued on.

“Anyway, I got on the force, and you always start as a beat cop, and I didn’t want any special treatment on account of my dad or anything, so I was out on the beat and they put up in the Bronx, up where it is still pretty rough with drug dealers and low-end criminals and lots of junkies and domestic violence, so I did my time and showed I could handle myself, and then they moved me up to South Harlem, which is pretty gentrified but still has some shit going down all the time.

“Anyway. I heard, I mean we had heard, about the Switchers. It sounded like crazy bullshit, right? But there had been reports about cops in Montreal being switched into the bodies of women—guy cops. It got onto the news, but it was played off as joke news, or tabloid bullshit, and we got reports, from our international organized crime and terrorism units saying it seemed like this shit was real—that there were these high-end prostitutes claiming they were cops, and that these broads had stolen their bodies, and even though it seemed like on the low down the Canadian law enforcement was taking all this shit seriously, we all laughed about it. I mean, right? It sounds like science fiction bullshit.

“Then, it happened. To me and my partner. Fuck. September. One of those perfect New York fall days: cool, breezy, the leaves starting to turn, and the air smelled like I could almost smell apple cider. Me and my partner left the station house, grabbed some coffee, made an arrest of a homeless guy who was walking around on Shabazz street naked and drunk, and we’d scrubbed down and sanitized, which we always do after an arrest, then we’d gone back out to walk our beat for another hour or so before lunch.

“The call came in-- disturbance at 1200 Marcus Garvey Drive, and that address caught my attention right way. Right away.”

“How come?” Brinkman asked.

Peter smiled ruefully, a bitter, angry smile. “Prostitution. Like most strip clubs. All strip clubs. But we’d seen the girls going in and out—and not your regular street hookers, either, but these girls…” he stopped again, clenching his jaw. “Well, they were just better dressed, let’s say. And all young. And we’d seen the traffic-- Mercedes. Audis. People who had no business being in that part of town with so much regularity.”

“So when the call came in you knew already it was a, um, house of ill repute.”

“A whore house. You can just say it”

“A whore house.”

“Yeah. So, we both got excited because the call gave us an excuse to go in there and probably get a good bust for our promotions.”

Brinkman almost made a joke about getting a good bust, but stopped herself. It was too soon, she knew. And the fact that he was talking at all was good, and she didn’t want to say anything that might make him skittish.

“But at the same time? I swear to God. I thought about those reports from Montreal. The high-priced call girls. The Swappers. Something went off, some warning in my mind, and I even said to my partner Joey – hey, maybe we ought to be careful about those Switchers, and he laughed and I felt like a dumbass for even saying anything, but fuck me. I knew. I fucking knew.”

“Do you blame Joey?”

“Joey? No. Not so much. Just a little, maybe. I mean, the thing is, he got it even worse than I did.”

“How so?”

“Joey is married. A wife and a kid. And he got switched with this Russian broad—blonde hair and a body, well, a looker—his wife won’t believe it’s even him. Kicked him out of the house.”

“Do you talk?”

“No. Not much. I can’t stand being around him really. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because when I see him, what he is now. His face. It’s like the face of a model. He has huge boobs, too, and he reminds me of myself, of what I’ve become. It makes me sick. You know, fuck this shit.” Peter stood then, pulling his sweat pants up, and he turned and walked to the back of the room, punching the wall. “Can I fucking leave now? I don’t want to do this shit anymore.”

“Sure,” Brinkman said. “That’s enough for today. But I need to ask you to respect me and my office. Don’t ever get violent in here again.”

Peter turned sheepishly, his head down. “Yeah. My bad, doc.”

Brinkman smiled. “I’m going to give you a prescription. It’s something that will help you slow down your thoughts, calm your mind.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Brinkman stood and they shook hands. “Good work today, officer.”

“Thanks, doc,” Peter said, pulling a pair of aviator sunglasses out of his pocket and slipping them onto his cute little face. With a little smile, he punched Brinkman lightly on the arm and said, “You, too.”

Brinkman watched him leave: small frame hidden under all his baggy layers of cotton armor. But even under all those clothes should could imagine the outline of his round hips, his young, high ass, and again that long, slender neck rising so prettily out of the collar of his hoodie gave her a little thrill. Switched into the nubile body of a high-class female prostitute. How that had to be fucking with all sorts of things in his macho cop brain.

Careful, Brinkman, she said to herself as she imagined him in a bra and panties. Careful. You need to keep this thing professional. She took a deep breath. The idea of having sex with a male cop trapped in the body of a young woman was lighting up all kinds of secret kink.

II

Peter headed home. The appointment with the shrink hadn’t sucked as much as he expected, but it had sucked enough. He’d never liked shrinks. His desire to talk about his feelings was zero before. Now it was less than zero.

Less than zero, he thought with a chuckle, walking past the basketball courts on his way to the subway, hearing the shouting, the rattling of the chain-link nets. Hadn’t that been some kind of shitty movie with Robert Downey? He could remember it vaguely. He’d been a kid and had come into the living room, and his sister, Kate, had been watching it, so he’d plunked himself down on the couch and watched with her, half-interested and mostly annoyed—a bunch of rich kids making so bored with their easy lives they were going out and making trouble for themselves with a lot of drugs and dumbass decisions, and when it ended his sister had cried. “Why are you crying?” He’d asked.

“Because it’s sad.”

“But it isn’t real.”

“I know, but it’s still sad,” she’d said.

“So why did you watch it?”

“Sometimes girls like to feel sad.”

“You’re weird,” he’d said, getting up and tossing one of the couch pillows at her. Females. Girls. He’d never understood them, and he still didn’t now even though he was one.

Down in the subway he stood with his back against one of the subway poles—big, iron girders with peeling paint that looked like they were 2000 years old. He felt small, was small, and he didn’t like the idea that anyone might come up behind him, so he was always on guard, always standing in positions where he could have a chance to defend himself if someone messed with him. He pulled his Iphone out of his pocket and checked his email, hoping to see something from his lawyer or else the guys down at the precinct. They had an APB out for his body, his real body, so at least if they could find his body there might be a chance one day he could get switched back.

Every day he worried that he’d get a report that his body was dead—an drug overdose or just found washed up on the Jersey shore of something. So far, none of the bodies of the six cops who’d been switched had been found, and some people speculated that maybe they had all fled the country. He didn’t like to think about it. Because if his body was dead, this insult to his manhood would be his—for life. There would be no escape. And that thought—that thought? Well, he didn’t even want to think about it.

Bored, waiting for the train, he called Adrian Lopez, one his old buddies at the precinct. Adrian picked up immediately. “What’s up, bro?”

He held the phone to his ear, started to speak, thought about his voice, how he sounded, and then disconnected the call shoving the phone back into his pocket. Fuck it, he thought. What the hell do I have to say to anyone now anyway? The phone buzzed. Lopez calling him back. Pete shoved the phone back into his pocket and fought against the urge to hit somebody, anybody.

He didn’t like to be outside anymore, and yet he was reminded of his new body, his new sex, at home more than anywhere else. Everything seemed too big, too high, and when he had to use the bathroom, to sit down on the toilet just like a girl, he couldn’t ignore what he was, what he’d become, and it made him sick. He was a man, and he wasn’t supposed to have a hairy gash between his legs, wasn’t supposed to have to sit down to pee, wasn’t supposed to be what he was now.

He glanced in the mirror at that face, saw a look of fear in those big, girly eyes, and he turned away in disgust, still feeling sick when he saw her, saw that face, and remembered…

He pushed the thoughts away, sat down on the couch, legs spread wide, and turned on Sports Center. His phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket. Lopez again. A text floating on the rectangular screen with an image of Yankee Stadium behind it—and the message made Pete sit up with excitement. “Possible lead on your body.”

Fuck. His hands trembled slightly. He had to call now. His body! His real body. What if they could find it? Catch one of The Switchers or put an ad in the paper, offer to pay them to switch him back?  Then, he could put all this behind him, forget it just like a bad dream. He called. Lopez answered, this time just saying, “Thought that would get your attention.”

Pete let his voice drop as low as he could, hoping he at least sounded like a boy. “Yeah, Lope. You got my attention all right.”

“Everything good? I been trying to reach you, bro.”

“Yeah. I know. Sorry about that. It’s just weird, you know?”

“Yeah. I can’t even imagine. Your sister told me you been just sitting inside all the time.”

“Kate? She called you?”

“I called her. I was getting ready to come over there and bash your door down since you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

Pete felt a lump in his throat and a rush of emotions. Took a breath. Decided he needed to deflect all this shit before he embarrassed himself. “You trying to prove you really are Superdork after all?”

“I never denied it.”

“So what about this lead on my body?” 

“Well, I ran the fingerprints on that body-- I mean the one, the girl, the one who stole your body?”

“And you got a hit?”

“Yeah I got a hit. She’s in the system. So I know her name, and once I get permission we’ll run her through the FBI database and see if we can find her family. Her name is Salome Sofia Aragon.”

“Can you send me whatever you get? I’ll see what I can dig up on my own.”

“Sure thing. I’ll email the stuff I found. Just…”

“What?”

“Just be careful.”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“I’m not, but, you know.”

“I can take care of myself. Don’t worry about me.”

“Yeah. Forget it. Hey. We should get together. Watch a game or something.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’d like that,” Pete lied. “We’ll set something up.”

“Good talking to you.”

“Yeah. Later.” Pete’s insides were churning. His thoughts jumbled and confused. He felt grateful for a friend like Lope, someone who cared, and he’d even kind of appreciated him saying be careful, but it also pissed him off and he wondered—were these feelings of gratitude some kind of girly thing? Girly emotions? Were the tears he could feel pooling in his eyes, but which he refused to allow to come out of him, pushing them back with a surge of rage and hate part of an inevitable decline into feminine weeping and hysteria? Or were the normal reaction for a man who had lost his identity, his body, maybe even his job? 

Was he acting like a girl, or would he always have felt grateful for a friend who had his back?

Am I still me, he wondered? Are these just my normal feelings given my situation? Or am I changing? Becoming what my body tells me I am?

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why did I have to take that call? Why did they have to pick me? He needed to do something. To get his mind off it all. He looked over at his weight bench, barbells. There were 225 pounds on the bar, left there from before. He looked at the barbells. The thought of lifting whatever tiny weights he could manage now made him cringe with shame, and he thought, why bother?

Instead, he got on the Internet and he figured, why not? He opened the email from Lopes, and he saw the name of the person, the soul that should have been in this little girl’s shape instead of him: Salome Sofia Aragon. Salome. Not much in the email. Most recent known address—Steinway Avenue in Astoria, Queens. Place of employment-- Imperial Entertainment Services, but he’d known that already: it was the LLP that ran the strip club and whore house where she worked. She had no priors, and no birth certificate on record, no back account, no credit cards, not even a cell phone, at least not in her own name. But none of that was too surprising.

He typed her name into Google, figuring, why not? Do a search. See what comes back. Then, he sat there at his computer, staring at the screen, decided he needed a beer and after he went to the refrigerator, he wandered back to the couch and turned on Sports Center.

III

“So, you were telling me you were excited about the call?” Brinkman said. It was Pete’s second session. They’d gotten past the niceties. Pete had shown up dressed just like the last time—baggy sweats. A hoodie. The day had turned warm-- Indian Summer—and she’d been fantasizing that he might show up in just a tank top or a t-shirt, let her get more of a glimpse of his little body, but she’d known it probably wasn’t going to happen.

“Yeah. Right. That day.” Pete frowned and looked away, crossing his arms over his chest.

“If you don’t want to…”

“No. It’s fine. I don’t give a shit. So, me and my partner got all excited and hot-footed it down there, thinking we were going to get a big bust. As we approached the building, we saw a squad car rolling down the street, and I just said, “Fuck. That’s blown,” because, again, I was a little nervous—nervous about The Switchers, but Joey said, “nah. This is still us. Follow me.”

We cut down the street and came around from behind the building, up a little alleyway, and Joey figured we could just go in the back door. There was a report—like a gunshot—and a scream. We both pulled our weapons, and a cat jumped out of a dumpster—a black cat of all things—and it screeched and ran down the alley, and then the back door to the club swung open, and out ran two of the whores—the girls—and they looked terrified, and I had my gun in my hand and the girl saw me and said, “Pete,” and I said, “Stop right where you are! Some police shit like that.”

“What were they wearing?” Brinkman interrupted, a little too abruptly, wanting to know what the girls had been wearing, wanting to imagine Pete dressed as a stripper.

“What?” Pete asked.

“What were they wearing?” Brinkman repeated, looking away and adopting a disinterested tone. “I mean, did they look like they were making a run for it or something?”

“A run? I don’t know, really.” Pete’s eyes got a faraway look as he strained to remember. “No. It looked like they’d been working. They were wearing those things-- almost like a bathing suit but tight…”

“Corsets?”

“Yeah. I think that’s what they are called. Corsets. High heels and those old fashioned straps that hold up the pantyhose—it was like they’d been working the floor maybe, or sitting there for clients during a cattle call. This one,” he glanced down at himself. “This one was wearing green, a kind of deep green and black. I remember thinking….” He stopped and covered his mouth.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He’d been thinking he would like to fuck her, but he didn’t want to admit it to the doctor. It just seemed wrong.

“These blocks, the things you don’t want to talk about, that’s where you will need to go, Peter.”

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re afraid…”

“Afraid? No. Never. I’ll tell you. I looked at her, at her tits, and her hips, her long brown legs, and the wet lipstick, and I remember thinking that I would love to fuck her.”

Brinkman nodded. Beneath her desk, outside Pete’s sight, she had her knees squeezed together. She knew he was being unethical, getting Pete to talk about it, manipulating him, but he --- he was her living breathing fantasy mangirl, and it got her off in all kinds of ways to think of him ogling a beautiful young girl, looking at her tits, feeing a stirring in his pants, thinking about fucking her right before he became her.

The blonde ran right for Joey, and Joey lowered his weapon and said, “Hey, hey… calm down…” and I saw her throw her arms around him, and then they both kind of just slumped to the ground. It looked weird, like all the bones in the blonde’s body just turned to jelly and she just went all limp in Joey’s arms and he lowered her to the pavement, and then suddenly the other one, this one, had her arms around me, and I looked down at her in surprise, and I was about to say something when she got this look on her face, a vicious look like an animal, and she said, “Bitch!” and then I felt myself falling, dropping to the ground, and then I was on my back, looking up into… my own face.”

“You had switched bodies.”

“Yeah. I didn’t know it yet. I just found myself looking up, confused, and looking at my own face, and just thinking, ‘this is impossible.’ My face looked down at me-- I could feel hot breath against my cheek, feel the rough cotton of the cop’s uniform against my bare legs, but I still couldn’t figure out what was happening.

Pete covered his face with his hands, and Brinkman realized she’d been holding her breath, and she let a breath out and said, “We can stop now if you…”

“No. Just give me a minute is all. I never told this to anyone, doc.”

“Take your time.” 

Brinkman took a deep breath leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling with those big green eyes, now haunted as he remembered, and Brinkman’s heart went out to him even as it raced in her chest. “He, she, smiled and laughed, and I felt him put his hand on me, and the feeling, it made no sense, because I could feel her hand on my chest, on my nipple, and yet it felt like my chest was out to here—away from my body, and it was soft like jello, an she squeezed it, and all these strange feelings went through me, things I never felt before, and then she slid her other hand down along my belly…”

He paused, closing his eyes. Remembering. His voice had become softer and higher, prettier, rising up and getting breathy and more like a girl as he forget to keep up his act and remembered what it had been like “and he kept squeezing and messing with my chest, pulling down the top of that thing until both of my, both sides of my chest were exposed to the air, and my nipples were getting hard, and I started to realize what had happened, and he laughed, and his hand was down now on my abdomen, and sliding down toward the space between my legs, and I remember saying, “No. No.

“I knew he had been one of the switchers. That he had taken my body, and I was now in the body of that girl, the one who’d just run out of the club, the one in the green with those wet, red lips, and I felt shocked sick and I said “no, no” but it wasn’t my voice anymore, it was a little girl’s voice and then he slipped his hand underneath my… into my underwear, and I felt him push his finger inside me.”

Pete made a sound, an angry sound like an animal, and then he looked at Brinkman and barred his teeth. “That was when I knew, when I had no more doubt, when I knew I had become a woman.”

That had been enough, all that Pete could manage. He’d retreated then back into his shell, and Brinkman had renewed his prescription. She’d wanted to hug him, to hold him, to let him cry in her arms, but she could see by his rigid posture and clenched fists that he was trying to reassert his masculinity against the memories he’d just relived, and she knew better than to do anything that might make her little fawn skittish.

When Pete left, Brinkman had locked the door to her office and gone into the bathroom, feeling her own conflicting waves of shame and ecstasy. She pulled her pants down, her panties, and closing her eyes, she pictured Peter on his back, on the ground in a dirty alley, dressed in an emerald green corset, his pretty green eyes going wide with shock and terror as he was violated, as the woman who stole his body stuck her finger into his vagina, and then she began to masturbate as she imagined it was her on top of the pretty little man, and she was the one teaching him all about his new sex.

IV

Peter felt sick and angry when he got home. He tried not to think about—that. Whenever the memory had come up he’d pushed it out of his mind, but now it was all there, raw, that feeling of humiliation and powerlessness, that body on top of him as he lay there helpless and impossible new feelings passed through him, through breasts he should have, through his gash, through this HER he’d become.

He slammed the door to his apartment shut, picked up a floor lamp with both hands and slammed it against the wall, sending shards of glass flying everywhere against the glossy hardwood floors, and then he screamed, an animal scream, and he kicked the wall, busting a spidery hole in the drywall.

There was pounding at the door and Peter stopped, standing stock still, breathing hard.

“Hey? Hey? Is everything okay in there?”

Pete didn’t answer. He just stood still, feeling suddenly nervous, wanting whoever it was to just go away, hoping they would, but then the dull old brass handle began to turn and Pete rushed to the door, planning on locking it, but before he could the door started to open and Gil, his neighbor, poked his head in even while Pete threw himself against the door trying to push it shut.

“Ow!” Gil said, but he had his foot wedged between the door and the doorframe, and he pushed his head into the room and looked down at Pete. “Wow,” he said, his mouth dropping open. “So, it’s really true.”

Pete felt himself blushing. There was no use denying it. He concentrated on lowering his voice as much as he could. “Hey, Gil.”

“Pete?”

“The one and only.” 

“I saw it in the paper, but it didn’t seem possible.”

“I wish it weren’t. Anyway, I gotta go and do some stuff, so how about getting your fucking foot out of the way so I can slam the door?”

“Wow. I mean, you sound just like you, only…”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Gil frowned, glanced behind Pete at the shattered glass on the floor. “You gonna be okay? It sounded like you were in trouble.”

“I’m fine, okay? I just need some time alone.”

“Well, listen, I got kids, so…”

“You won’t hear another sound out of me.”

“Are you sure you don’t need some help? I could call someone.”

“No! Please!” Pete said, slightly panicked. The last thing he needed was for some kind of call to go in. That would put him in the nuthouse for sure. “I just freaked out, but I’m fine. Really.”

Gil looked uncertainly at the young girl. He’d seen the face in the papers after the supposed switch, had maybe even seen her around the neighborhood, but he’d never really believed that his neighbor Pete the Cop had been turned into a woman, and now here he was—she was?—talking just like Pete, the Queens accent, the cadence, but only in a girl’s voice, and it had sounded bad, really bad, like she had been on the verge of something terrible. My God, he thought looking at those wide, green eyes, the innocent looking young female face. If that really is Pete in there, God help him. “If you need anything, you know? Just come on over and knock.”

“Okay,” Pete said. “Thanks. See ya.”

“You have my number, right?”

“Yup. I won’t hesitate.”

“Goodnight then.”

Pete pushed the door closed, flipped all the deadbolts, and leaned against the door with a sigh. Fuck. He hated seeing people he’d known before, watching their reactions, seeing the pity. He hated those looks of pity. Suddenly exhausted, he went into the kitchen, took two of the pills the doctor had given him and laying down on the couch, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He woke hours later. The sound of a siren down on the street, the flashing lights tracing patterns on the ceiling. There were always sirens in the city. Always lights. He wondered why these had woke him, then realized he’d been sweating heavily in his sleep, and his sweats were damp, and he smelled and felt disgusting. He was going to have to shower, something he now did only every few days. It was another of those things, like going to the bathroom, that made it impossible for him to ignore this thing he now wore as a body, the disgusting flabby weakness of it.

But it had to be done. Leaving the lights off, he stripped out of his sweatshirt, stepped out of the sweatpants, then pulled his Jockeys down his round, soft legs, and finally unwrapped the ace bandage he’d wrapped around his chest to hide his breasts. Free of the bandage, they swayed freely—two huge melons on his chest, and the feel of them tugging at his collar bone, the soft weight of them swaying made him feel sick. He cupped them in his hands o keep them from bouncing around, feeling his wide, rubbery nipples against his soft little palms, and walked to the bathroom, turning on the shower and stepping into the steaming water, feeling it pour down the strange new contours of his female shape-- his wide hips and high, firm round ass, down his belly and between his legs. He lathered up with some Irish Spring and began to rub it onto his soft skin—he couldn’t believe how soft his skin felt—just like a baby’s, and yet he did nothing—NOTHING- to keep it soft. It always felt—disturbing—to soap up his breasts. So much of him, his old male self, wanted to feel aroused by the idea—hell, did feel aroused by the soft bouncing weight of a big, firm young pair of breasts in his hands, and it brought back memories of past girlfriends and nights sticking his hands up their shirts, slipping them out of their bras, the feeling of triumph and excitement the first time a female let him see her tits, suck on her nipples..

And then at the same time this body, this new body tingled with pleasure, and the nipples stiffened, and he felt the most emasculating tremors of pleasure pass through him and right down to the wet hole between his legs, and he felt sick and confused and just wanted to forget that it ever happened to him as he found himself wanting to have what he’d now become and lost at the same time.

He felt some pride and pleasure at the bristling hair on his legs, in his armpits. It made him feel a little like a man again, stood as a testament to his pride and refusal to be what this body told him her was, and so he finished showering, ignored the sensation as he toweled of his jiggley body, and then wrapped the ace bandage around those stupid melons again before slipping into some nice, baggy guy clothes and once again hiding from what he’d become.

Time to do some research. Get serious about finding his body, The Switchers, taking control of his life again. He sat down at the computer and checked his work email. Nothing much. Just the usual daily reports. Domestic violence. Drunk and disorderly. The day to day shit behavior that made the city go. Nothing on The Switchers. He checked his Gmail. His old AOL email. Took a quick look at CBS Sportsline checking out the lines on the weekend’s games, forgetting why he had even sat down in the first place. He got up, stretched. Scratched his butt.

There was a football game on, so he grabbed a beer, popped the lid and took a drink. He wasn’t supposed to mix alcohol and whatever the dock had given him, but he liked the way it made him feel—kind of fuzzy and detached from this body. Right before a commercial break, they cut to a shot of the cheerleaders on the sideline—kicking and shouting in their short skirts, their flat, smooth bellies exposed, bright smiles on painted mouths. Looking at their long, tan legs rising so high in those short skirts, he could feel it again- that finger, in and out, probing, and he looked away and chugged his beer. Stop thinking about it, he thought. Just stop.

But his mind had other ideas, and he couldn’t shake that terrible feeling of being violated from his mind, and also the question. The big question.

V

Back at Brinkman’s office. Pete slumped in his chair, safely hiding under his layers of baggy clothes. “I almost didn’t come today,” he said.

“Why not?”

“The last time… it kind of fucked with my head remembering all that shit.”

“How did it fuck with you?”

“I kept thinking about it, kept replaying it in my mind, just like right after it happened, and then I couldn’t sleep, and I kept remembering how it felt when she … put her finger in me.”

“How did it feel?” Brinkman asked maintaining her detached tone, but her mouth went dry.

“I don’t want to talk about it…”

“You don’t have to.”

“But I need to. Or, I think I need to.”

“I agree.”

Brinkman waited. Pete looked around, finally settled back and stared at the ceiling.

“It seemed like it went on forever. It was probably, what? A couple of minutes? But, she kept going, and then it felt like she shoved more fingers, her whole hand in there, and she was so close to my face, breathing on me, her eyes hard and cold, and she whispered, “You have a tight little pussy.”

“It was like she was taunting me, talking to me the way… some guy had maybe talked to her, but hearing her say that, it—I felt terrified, and angry, and yet….”

He stopped, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

Say it, Brinkman thought, trying to will him to say whatever it was he needed to say, what he was afraid to say. Say it!

But he shook his head, probably not even realizing he was physically manifesting his own refusal, and said, “Then she left. She got up and walked away, leaving me there on the ground in that filthy alley, and I lay there for a awhile, stunned, and then I saw—the blonde girl looking down at me, and it didn’t occur to me at all that she was my partner. She looked down at me, then out toward the street, and she yelled, “Hey! Hey!” And she went out of my sight, and the next thing I knew the alley was full of patrolmen, and they were helping me to my feet, and it was all wrong—like waking up in a strange room. There’s familiar stuff—a bed, a ceiling, a dresser, but they are all wrong. I knew these guys. They were patrolmen from my precinct, and I was looking up at most of them now, even Cheryl. I could feel the cool air on this body—it was half naked, and I caught guys checking me out, and it felt so creepy and wrong and yet I had these huge boobs, and their eyes kept dropping to my chest, and I was ashamed and confused, and they passed me off to Cheryl, who got me a blanket to cover up, and when she asked my name I said, ‘I don’t know.’

“You’re not in trouble,” Cheryl said. “And don’t worry about immigration. I just want to know what to call you.”

“It was just another kind of strange. I knew Cheryl, had known her since she was a rookie, and here she was talking to me like a complete stranger, like she’d never seen me, and I was too ashamed to tell her, so I just shook my head and said, “I hit my head. I can’t remember my name.”

“How old are you?” She asked. A lot of times if you can get a person to tell you one thing they’ll open up about the rest, but I shook my head becoming more and more aware of the wrongness of everything-- long hair swaying on my back, hoop earrings brushing against my cheeks, and I said, “I don’t know.”

“Listen,” Cheryl said, adopting a harsher tone. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me. And what’s going to happen is you are going to be arrested, and you will be thrown into holding with a lot of really tough, really mean women, and I’m telling you know things can get ugly for a pretty little girl like you, sweetie. Real ugly.

“A pretty little girl like you. When she called me that—I just felt so alone and defeated, and dirty and ashamed and lost and I don’t even know. I remember looking down at those big breasts, feeling all that hair, and I knew that if they processed me, I was lost, and so I looked at Cheryl and swallowed my pride, and I said, ‘Cheryl. It’s me. Pete. Pete O’Malley/”

“That was a big moment,” Brinkman said. “It took a lot of courage.”

“Well, at the time it felt like fear.”

“How did she react?”

“She did a double take. Like a cartoon character. Her face kind of squished up- I mean, she’s talking to this stripper who suddenly claims to be a dude she knew? So, she said, what? And I repeated it. “I’m Pete. I got switched, just like we heard about from Montreal.”

“’What’s the code word?” She asked.

“Do you really want me to say it?”

“Yeah.”

“Sucks and swallows.”

“That was the code word?” Brinkman interrupted.

“Yeah. I know. Cops can be assholes.”

“So, you find yourself trapped in a woman’s body, and the way you identify yourself to your fellow officers is by saying something sexist and demeaning?”

“It was stupid, but honest to God, doc? None of us really thought it would ever happen.”

“It’s still stupid.”

“I know. I always did.  I just didn’t care all that much.”

“Cops,” Brinkman said, shaking her head. “Anyway, go ahead. I didn’t mean to interrupt, well, I did, but I shouldn’t have.” 

Pete laughed. “You’re more upset about that than you are about the fact that some crazy broad stole my body and finger-fucked me.”

“Don’t make this about me now.”

“You’re the one that made it about you, doc. I’m just, for some reason I find it kind of funny. That’s all.”

Brinkman just smiled and shook her head. “I am not doing a great job maintaining my professionalism right now.”

“I know, and I love it.”

“Well, I am glad you’re able to have a sense of humor about the whole thing. This is the first time I have really seen you smile.”

“Well don't get used to it.”

Brinkman so badly wanted to tell him he was pretty when he smiled, but of course knew better, so she just nodded and templed her fingers under her chin. “Duly noted. So, getting back on track, what did Cheryl do then?”

“She shook her head. Did more cartoon dog double takes. Said something like, Pete? Really? In there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. I can hardly believe it myself.”

“And then she called it in. They put me in an ambulance still with the blanket over my shoulders, feeling small and confused and mostly just—like an asshole. People would come by the ambulance and walk by trying to act casual, but they were glancing in and checking me out, and I knew word was spreading that there was this stripper claiming to be Pete O’Malley, and I was sick with the thought that everyone would know about this thing. It seemed like I sat there for hours. They had stationed a couple cops next to the ambulance, and at one point I tried to ask one of them what was going on. I stuck my head out and said, “’Hey, Craig. What’s happening? I’ve been sitting in here forever.’ It was weird to hear myself talking in that voice, and I just tried to ignore it and talk deeper, like my old self.

“’Just be patient, miss,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you moving as soon as possible.’

“I hadn’t been called ‘miss’ before, and it irked me—not just the word but the way he said it, something like he was talking to a child, and I started to say something, tell him to call me Lieutenant O’Malley because I outranked the prick, but then I saw him look down at my—at these boobs—and I felt weird, and anyway the other cop said, “’You want something to eat? Some coffee or something?’

I realized I was hungry, thirsty, so I nodded. ‘How ‘bout some coffee and a sausage sub?’

“He exchanged a glance with Craig, and I realized my mistake—asking a couple cops for a sausage sub now that I was in the body of a woman was a huge mistake, and I felt disgusted just thinking about what they were thinking.

“Maybe we should explore that,” Brinkman said. “It’s come up a couple times today now.”

Pete shook his head and glanced at his phone. “Looks like my time is up,” Peter said, fishing his glasses out of his pocket and slipping them over his eyes. “I gotta rock and roll.”

“Good work today, Peter.”

“Yeah? Well, am I getting any closer to being judged as fit for duty.”

“Yes.”

“How soon?”

“I can’t say. I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

“Is there something I need to do or so? Some magic thing that will convince you I’m fine.”

“No,” Brinkman answered. “But when I feel you actually are fine, I’ll inform HR.”

“When?”

“When I feel you are actually fine.” Pete walked out of the building mumbling those words. When you are actually fine. So, she didn’t think he was fine. She knew he wasn’t fine. He knew he wasn’t fine. But sitting around in this stupid body was not doing anything to make him better! Work. Work. All his life he’d responded to stress by working more, working harder, and now all he could do was sit around and wait for something to happen, for other people to make decisions about his life.

He left Brinkman’s office and walked into the street in his hunkered down, embattled mode-- hands in pockets, hunched over, dark sunglasses on, just doing his best to ignore the world. As he cut through a plaza between two buildings with a small courtyard featuring a large statue of Atlas holding up the sky, he heard a woman call, “Pete!” He felt a shock of embarrassment and kept walking, but then she yelled, “Peter!” and he felt her grab his arm. Peter stopped and turned around, looking at the oddly familiar blonde hurrying after him. There was a hunky guy with her he recognized instantly as AnthonyToriccelli, a cop from the South Harlem precinct he’d always, thought was a little soft.

But the blonde? Where did he know her from? She was pretty—really pretty, with those bright gray eyes like a Siberian husky and--- “Oh my god,” Pete said as the shock of recognition hit him. “Joe?”

“Hi, Pete,” Joe said, wrapping his arms around his former partner in a sisterly embrace, and Pete felt himself surrounded by a sweet cloud of his partner’s flowery perfume. 

“Pete,” Anthony said, holding out a hand, which Pete shook, feeling his own tiny, soft little hand seem to almost disappear inside the big man’s grip. Anthony looked around, obviously a little uncomfortable.

“Can we have a minute?” Joe asked, smiling up at Anthony, who stood over six feet tall.

“Sure thing,” Anthony said, and then Pete watched in shock in a scene that suddenly seemed like slow motion to him. Joe smiled gratefully and tilted his head back. Anthony put a hand on Joe’s hip and another to Joe smooth, soft cheek, and the two kissed, briefly, and then Anthony put a hand on Joe’s back and said, “I’ll be right over here.”

“Thanks, honey,” Joe said, and Pete felt like he was watching a boyfriend and girlfriend interact, which didn’t seem possible because he knew the blonde woman standing in front of him had been a straight man with a wife and two kids just a couple weeks ago. It all seemed so wrong, and so impossible, and it also terrified him because he realized now why he hadn’t recognized Joe—it was the light pastel make-up emphasizing his full lips and high cheeks, the little diamond studs flashing in his ears, the form woman’s jacket that hugged his full breasts and displayed them to the world, tapering in to draw attention to his tiny waist, and the skin tight jeans that hugged his wide, round hips, the knee high leather boots with slender heels that had made Joe taller.

“You’re wearing heels?” Pete mumbled, looking at the other man’s tiny feet perched on those slender, feminine heels.

“Yeah,” Joe giggled, doing a little girl pose with his toes together. “I know, right?”

“Are you and Anthony? I mean, you two, are you…?”

“We’re dating,” Joe said with a smile, seeming to enjoy his former partner’s shock and surprise. “And it’s getting kind of serious.”

“What the fuck?” Pete said. 

“I’m just as surprised as you are, or I was,” Joe answered with a cute little shrug that was feminine, but a little stiff, kind of like a tomboy trying to girl it up and still not getting the hang of it. “I mean, when I first found myself in this body I swore I would never give in and act like a woman.”

“We talked about that,” Pete said.

“Well, I see you’re still fighting the good fight,” Joe answered, gesturing down at Pete’s baggy ensemble.

“How did this happen? What about your wife and kids?”

“Pete, I don’t know. I don’t know much of anything anymore. Jean kicked me out of the house, and I don’t even have visitation rights with my kids because the law says I am actually Anastasia Kasparov and not their father. Anthony was there for me, and let me stay with him, and I felt safe around him, and I didn’t feel safe in this body otherwise. I was terrified and alone, and he didn’t look at me like a freak or treat me like I was weird, and we hung out and he made me laugh, and then one night I kissed him, and then he kissed me, and the next thing you know we were lovers, and I wanted—I wanted to be his woman and to please him, and he told me he loved me, and so here I am.”

“Well, wow,” Pete said. “I mean, who am I to judge?” But he was thinking, what a pussy. I can’t believe he’s letting another man fuck him. “But what if you get your real body back?”

“I’ll worry about that when the times comes, if it comes, but right now I don’t want to be alone, and Anthony and I are together, and that’s all the matters.”

“Which one of you is on top?” Pete said, immediately regretting it, feeling it seemed kind of ugly, but Joe just smiled and reached down, running his hand over Pete’s bare skull.

“We take turns. Have you had any thoughts about it?”

“Hell no,” Pete said. “I’m never going to be a woman. I’m a dude, and not to judge you or anything, but—no. No.”

“It’s getting close to time for the movie,” Anthony called.

“’Kay,” Joe called back. “I have to get going, but I’d love for us to stay in touch, be friends.”

“I’ll text you, and we can set something up,” Pete said, and then he waved by as his former partner walked away, and Pete saw how hot Joe’s ass looked in the jeans, and he felt angry and ashamed at what had happened to his partner, to both of them, and he was also super pissed because now he felt more alone than ever.

That poor fucker, he thought, watching Joe walk away in his heels, his ass swaying. His lost it. Lost it all. Turned into a woman, showing off his tits and ass. I’ll never fucking do that. Never. Maybe those assholes stole my body, but they didn’t steal my balls. I never thought Joe would be such a pussy, he thought to himself as he walked away, vowing once again that no matter what his body said, he would never be a woman. 

VI

Days passed. Things only seemed to get worse. Legally speaking, his lawyer told him the same thing Joe had found: he was Salome Aragon, or else he didn’t exist. There was as yet no legal precedent for someone who’d been switched to reclaim his identity. As far as the NYPD was concerned, he was just a horrible nightmare they wished would go away—they didn’t know what to do with him, and even if the shrink said he was fit for duty, the NYPD hadn’t decided yet who he was and whether he could return to work as Pete O’Malley even though he now looked like a high class stripper. Thankfully, he had direct deposit, and the institutional stupidity of the department meant they hadn’t even considered yet whether to keep paying him or not, which was good for now, but he worried about that, too, because if they decided he wasn’t him he would have no income and have to go out and find work in a world that considered him a 19 year old Latina girl.

Maybe I should kill myself, he thought. What’s the point of going on anymore? He would never get his body back, never be a man again, and he couldn’t, wouldn’t accept this life as a girl. It didn’t make much sense to go on because it seemed like the NYPD would eventually stop paying and then what? Take up pole dancing?

He stopped by the store and bought a 12 pack of beer, a box of Swisher Sweets, and he headed up to his apartment, his skinny little arm straining with the weight of the beer, and hoping to avoid seeing anyone he knew, get inside and escape from the world, from life, just drink and watch sports and forget about it all, and so when he opened his door and saw his sister, Kate, sitting at his kitchen table, his sighed and said, “How did you get in here?”

“The landlord.”

“Asshole.” He plunked the beer down on the table. Kate stood up and opened her arms. He reluctantly accepted the embrace, hugging her back, feeling the strangeness of at as he was now shorter and skinnier than her. He separated and got away from her as fast as he could, grabbing a beer and tossing it to her, then cracking one open for himself.

“How’s Mom and Dad?”

“The same as always: miserable.”

He smirked. “Well, thanks for getting me up to speed.”

“How are you?” Kate asked, sitting down on the couch next to her brother, now an impossibly pretty young woman.

Pete shook his head. “You know, I just can’t. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my brother.”

“Am I? Still your brother? I mean, look at me.”

“Pete, you will always be my big brother. I don’t care about…. That. You always took care of me, and you were always there, and now I want to be there for you.”

“What does that mean? Should we hug and cry together and eat some chocolate or something? I’m not a girl. I don’t do that stuff.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking you to let me help you.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“Then how come your neighbor told me you were going crazy, smashing stuff to pieces the other day?”

“Fucking Gil. I knew he wouldn’t keep his fucking mouth shut.”

“He cares about you.”

“He’s worried I’m going to blow up the building and kill him and his snot nosed kids.”

“He told me he was worried you were going to kill yourself.”

It hit Pete like a punch in the gut. Was it that obvious? He found himself shaking his head, feeling that cold sense of panic again, and he said, “No. No way. The thought never even crossed my mind.”

Kate looked at him, and the tears started to pour down her face. “Oh my God.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“You’re still a terrible liar, Pete. Oh, please, don’t treat this like some kind of joke. Don’t. I couldn’t live with myself if you killed yourself, Pete. Please.”

The fear and stress in Kate’s voice got through to him, he felt her emotions in his whole body and tried, but couldn’t ignore it. He sighed. “I thought about it. But not seriously. Not yet.”

Kate started to cry. Pete felt his lip tremble, the sting of building tears, but he fought back the feeling, refused to give in, and instead found it in himself to put his arms around his sister, to hold her and comfort her, and there in her arms, at least for that time, he had no wish to die, couldn’t even imagine it.

They ordered pizza. Talked and drank some more beer. It was like old times, but at the same time not. The dynamic between them was not the same, though they tried to ignore it and mostly succeeded. Finally, Kate passed out, just as she always did, and Pete blearily got his extra quilt out of the closet and lay it gently over her, propping her head up under the couch pillow. Luckily, she’d fallen asleep on her side. He wasn’t sure if he had the strength anymore to move her.

He looked down at her calm, sleeping face, saw the small little wrinkles that had grown at the corners of her eyes. She was getting older. Starting to look older. Less and less like a girl, his sister, and more and more like their mother. He thought about her spending her nights in her dark apartment, alone, and his heart went out to her. Why hadn’t she ever found a guy? Gotten married? She was pretty enough, and nice.

Fuzzy headed, tired, Pete wandered off to his own bed and collapsed onto the mattress, falling, falling, falling into a soft, warm and restful sleep.

VII

Days passed. Days passed. Pete felt more stir crazy than ever, more trapped in this body, in the state of legal limbo in placed him into. He couldn’t watch most television shows. Sleepy Hollow, The Blacklist, Agents of SHIELD—one way or another guys and girls would start flirting, kissing, jump into bed together, and his strange new body would react in strange new ways, and he would turn the show off feeling angry and confused.

He didn’t have any books. Had never been much of a reader. And he took one look at the cover of the latest Maxim, with a girl on her hands and knees, staring at the camera, licking her lips, and the headline: five guaranteed ways to get her wet, and he tossed it aside. That wasn’t something he would be needing to worry about for awhile. He still didn’t feel comfortable out in the world with people—those who knew him or those who didn’t. He was small and weak, and he was someone he was not supposed to be. He found himself worrying that someone from HER life might recognize him—an old boyfriend or something.

Lopes texted him about getting together, but he kept putting him off, making excuses. He and his sister talked every day—just keeping in touch, but then a day before his next appoint, he woke up with a rash on his breasts, an angry red rash which he would have ignored but for the fact that it itched like crazy. He’d put on some lotion, wrapped them up in the bandage, but they itched like crazy, and he couldn’t stand it, so when Kate called and asked him how things were he just burst out, “These boobs are super itchy!”

“What?” Kate asked.

“I woke up this morning with some kind of stupid rash, and now I am going crazy, and if I scratch much more I’m probably going to start bleeding!”

“Are you still wearing that bandage?”

“Of course.”

“Take it off and let them breath. I’ll come over on my lunch break with some better lotion.”

“Let them breath?”

“Yes! You can’t keep your breasts all wrapped up like that! It isn’t healthy.”

“These are not my breasts, I…”

“Okay. Okay. Just do as I say, and hang in there until I come over.”

“I can’t…”

“Do you want to stop itching or not?”

“Fine.” 

“I have to get back to work. See you in a little bit.”

Peter groaned. Her advice hadn’t surprised him—the breasts got itchy and sweaty all wrapped up beneath the rubbery bandage—just like any skin would—and so naturally he’d developed a rash of some kind. But—let them breath? He hated even the thought of it. But the itch, that terrible itch, had already won, and so he went into his bedroom and pulled off his sweatshirt, tossing onto the bed. Then, he looked down at the tan bandage wrapped so tight around his chest, the soft flesh pooling at the top, and reaching down he undid the metal clasps that held the bandage in place and then unwound it, round and round, and when he finished he felt those huge mounds of soft flesh sway free, the weight pulling down on his collar bone, and he straightened his shoulders against the weight and thought-- fuck.

He had been keeping the temperature in his apartment warmer since the change, but even still the air felt cool and his big, fleshy nipples began to harden, so with a sigh he grabbed the bottle of Neutrena lotion from his night table, squirted some into his palms and then rubbed it into his breasts before grabbing his sweatshirt and pulling it back over his head. Now, the breasts were swaying free, pushing out the front of his sweatshirt impressively, and he could feel the rough material brushing against his hardening nipples. Pete squirmed uncomfortably, hating the total—womanliness of what he was experiencing, but he didn’t feel like he had much choice, so he just went into the living room and turned on the television, Sportscenter, but one of the hosts was Kelli O’Hara, and she was wearing a low cut top that showed off her breasts, and looking at them made Pete extra conscious of his own breasts, and so in disgust he flipped off the television and sighed, getting up and going over to his computer.

I have to get out of this body, he thought, sitting down. I have to find a way. Somehow. He checked his work email. Nothing on his missing body. He picked up his phone and texted Lopes: Any news? And then he looked back at his own computer and again typed the name of this body into Google, and he sat tapping the desk, tapping the desk. I need to be able to get into the NYPD crime database, he thought, or the National Database, or else why even bother? 

He started to go to CBS Sportsline, but then he realized: I’m afraid. I’m afraid to find out who she was before she stole my body. Why? He wasn’t sure, but some part of him felt that it was a mistake, a terrible mistake, to go down this path. Was it his gut? Feminine intuition?

He wasn’t sure. Couldn’t tell anymore.

Finally, looking at HER name in the search box in Google, he felt his breasts pressing against the edge of the desk, so soft and so annoying, so wrong. I have to get out of this body, and I have no other ideas, he thought, and so he hit Enter. The first hit was a Facebook Page—a page with her full name-- Salome Sofia Aragon. Pete paused, feeling nervous, but then he clicked on the link, and her page opened up, and he thought—she should really have been more careful with her privacy settings. 

The picture was of her dressed in a cheerleader uniform—that pretty young face all painted. It reminded him of the first time he’d looked in the mirror after the switch. She was surrounded by other girls in some kind of gym, all of them smiling. The letters on the red and black uniform read AAA: Astoria Arts Academy.

Her wall was smothered with posts that had been placed there over the last few weeks—friends wondering where she’d been, people just saying hi, then more and more worried and concerned posts, and then messages from people he guessed were family members, and a picture of a poster on a telephone poll: Missing.

Pete felt sad looking at all the posts, all the pictures. Hadn’t anyone talked to the family? Told them what had happened? If so, why was the picture of him—or rather why wasn’t it of him? Did her parents even know about the switch?

I should tell them, he thought, sitting back and crossing his arms—but as he started to cross them they squeezed those huge boobs together, and he felt like he had a huge balloon between his arms, so he tried crossing them on top of the boobs, but that felt weird, so finally crossed his arms under the breasts and let them rest heavily on his slender little forearms. Damn these things are annoying, he thought, but he was too focused on the Facebook page, all those images, and suddenly more worried about her family than he was about himself.

It would be strange. So strange. To contact them. What if they wanted to see him? Meet him? But didn’t they have a right to know? Why wouldn’t the NYPD have told them? The story had been in the newspaper, and…

Then it occurred to him. Maybe they thought she, Salome, might try to contact her family, or maybe one of the other switchers, and he leaned forward, excited, his breasts swaying, and he began scrolling through, looking more closely for something that might be a lead, going back in her timeline and then-- wait. She had a link to her “professional” page—her career as an exotic dancer, and her stage name: Princess Sweet.

Shitty name, he thought, impulsively clicking on the link, and there was a picture of her in nothing but pasties and a g-string, stiletto heels, her back against a glittering gold stripper pole, her arms raised, hands buried in his long, curly hair, her full, perfect breasts thrust forward, her tiny waist and wide, round hips, those long, long, tone legs…

That’s me, Pete thought, his mouth going dry as his hand crept to his cheek. That’s who I am now. He remembered that night, about a week before the switch, when she’d seen him in the street, looking at her, and she’d smiled back over her shoulder as she passed and gave her ass a little shake, and he’d looked at those full, wet red lips—his lips—and thought I would love to have that mouth wrapped around my cock…

He looked at those full, soft lips now even as he licked them, at those wide green eyes, that pretty little nose, and it was his face now, his body, his full breasts and narrow waist, his vagina…

The buzzer sounded, and he jumped. What? Who? Had someone caught him looking at himself? But then he snapped out of it, looked at the time display on his computer and realized it was probably his sister, and he slammed the laptop shut even as he realized that his nipples had gotten hard again, and they were running against his shirt and it felt—good—and he was getting a little wet between his legs, so he hurried over to the intercom and pushed it, saying, “yes,” and his voice sounded husky and wet.

“It’s Kate,” he heard his sister call back in a crackly voice.

“Come on up,” he answered, his voice cracking on the word come, and then he buzzed her in and hurried to the bathroom, pulling down his sweat pants and underwear and wiping himself dry, then shoving a wad of toilet paper into his underwear, because he still felt—wet-- and worried he might start leaking, then he waved his hands at his breasts ridiculously, ashamed of the hard points of his nipples pointing through the fabric, and he whispered, “Go down! Go down! Stop!”

But his stupid nipples wouldn’t listen, and they just seemed to if anything get harder, so he as soon as he let Kate into the apartment he wrapped his arms around his breasts, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling he was squeezing a couple balloons between his arms, and then he just stood there while Kate looked him up and down, picking up that something was weird in a new weird way, but she just shook her head and said, “Everything okay?” Glancing down at the arms her brother had wrapped so defensively around his breasts.

“Yeah. Just letting them… breath… as you said.”

“It’s better, right?”

“Yeah. At least when it comes to the itching.”

“Well, I got some calamine lotion that will help even more with the itching. So, that should help.” She reached into the bag from Duane Reade, a bag that seemed a little bigger than it needed to be for a single tube of lotion, and Pete felt himself flush as he caught a glimpse of a delicate white strap.

He jumped away like he’d seen a snake, keeping his arms over his breasts, though. “No! No! Come on!”

“Pete…”

“No! I am not wearing one of those things.”

“Okay. Okay. Fine. Forget it.” She tossed the bag onto the couch behind her, held out the white tube of lotion. “Here.”

“Don’t try and turn me into a girl,” Pete said, keeping one arm across his breasts while reaching out for the tube with the other.

“I won’t say another word about it.”

“All right, then.”

“You coming home for Thanksgiving?”

“No,” he said, standing awkwardly at the kitchen counter, his arms wrapped tightly around the soft abundance of his breasts, looking up at his sister, still feeling the terrible wetness between his legs.

“I’d like you to come.”

“How about mom?”

“She’s still having a hard time, but I think I could talk her into it.”

Pete shook his head. The thought of seeing all the cousins and aunts and uncles, the nieces and nephews—no.  Not like this. Not in this body, and he couldn’t stand the thought of facing his father and mother again. Not after the last time. “It’s too soon.”

“It’s a month away.”

“No. Try and put yourself in my position. Can you imagine me going to a family function like--- this? Half of them won’t even believe it’s me.” 

“I know.”

Pete didn’t even realize that as they were talking he had his knees together and had been idly rocking up onto his tip toes and back down, up and down, squeezing his thighs together. Kate noticed—it seemed like such a girlish habit, very unlike Pete, and she wondered if being in that body was changing him, and how fast.

“Why do you?” Pete asked, suddenly curious and also eager to change the conversation.

“Why do I what?” 

“Believe I’m me.”

Kate shook her head, looking at the beautiful nineteen year old girl across from her, looking for all the world right like a nervous teenage girl, but then she looked into those big, pretty green eyes and she saw him in there, and she shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “But as soon as I saw you in the hospital, as soon as I looked in your eyes, I knew it was you in there. I just knew it.”

Pete bit his lip. “Then why can’t mom see it?”

“I think she does,” Kate said. “But she just doesn’t want to believe it. I gotta get back to work.”

“Thanks for coming over.”

Kate went over and reached out, and Pete didn’t feel he could refuse the hug, so he looked down and opened his arms and he and his sister embraced, their soft breasts pressing together, and it felt different and scary to Pete, more intimate than any hug he’d ever shared with his sister.

As they separated, Kate looked down at them and said, “You do have huge boobs, Pete.”

“Asshole,” Pete said, embarrassed but kind of glad just to have it—them—out there.

“Use the lotion,” Kate said, shaking her head as she let herself out. “And think about Thanksgiving. You know how much our family loves breast…. Meat.”

Pete threw a pillow at her as she slammed the door closed behind her.

 Now I have to put up with my sister making boob jokes about me! Pete thought, shaking his head. Maybe I have it coming after all the hell I gave her when she was 12 and started getting hers, he thought, and then he took the new tube of lotion and rubbed it into his firm, heavy breasts.

VIII

“I feel like someone should tell her family,” Pete said. “I mean, I was looking at all those posts, feeling so terrible. They think she just disappeared.”

“Why don’t you tell them?” Brinkman said.

“I don’t know. That’s why I thought I would talk to you about it.”

“I think it is normal for you to feel some anxiety about it.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever had to communicate with the families of crime victims before?”

“Was it difficult?”

 “Yeah.” Pete shrugged. “Okay. I get it. It’s not that much different, especially if I just think about it like I’m a cop doing his job.”

“Which you would be.”

“They don’t even need to know I’m in the body of their daughter…. Child.”

“Not if you don’t want them to.”

Pete put his index finger in his mouth and chewed idly on the edge of his finger nail. Brinkman hid her reaction, but it struck her as a very feminine of the kind she was not used to seeing from him. “I should probably check with the captain.”

“Is that what the rules say?”

“Yeah.”

“So, let me know what you do next time.”

“Right.”

“Now, you were telling me about being in the ambulance, and you asked the men for a sausage sub?”

Pete closed his eyes. “Yeah. I wish I hadn’t told you that.”

“Why not?”

“Because now you’ll want me to talk about it.”

“You know you don’t have to.”

“But I need to. So, I had been in shock a little—or probably a lot. Even after what she did to me, I was still in shock, not really registering completely that I’d lost my body, my life, and that no one would see me the same way as before, or treat me the same way as before, or, anyway, I said ‘sausage sub’ and they both grinned and exchanged a glance, and I could see them smirk and one of them looked right at my tits, and I felt it. I wasn’t one of them. One of the guys. Not anymore. And I could see them thinking about making a comment, and I am a guy, and I knew exactly the kind of thing they were thinking, and it made me… mad. I was so mad because I’m a dude, a guy, and I’m not… I’m not supposed to have to put up with that kind of shit.”

“Did they say anything?”

“No. But they didn’t have to, it was all there on their stupid faces. Assholes.” He punched the arm of the chair with a little fist. “I was so ashamed that I pulled the door of the ambulance shut, feeling myself flush, and my hair was all around my shoulders and in my eyes, and I brushed it away, and I felt my breasts rise, and became—how can I describe it? Like—super self-conscious… I felt the tightness of the corset around my body, became aware of the weight of the breasts, their every little bounce, of the hair on my bare shoulders, those earrings, the weight of them pulling on my earlobes, and the feel of them brushing against my cheeks… even the feeling of the gunk on my face—all the makeup, the feeling of my legs in those silk stockings. Every inch of that body, and it was all wrong. It wasn’t right. It didn’t fit me—too bog in some places, too small in others… and I saw there was a mirror—the rearview mirror at the front of the ambulance, in the cab, and I walked forward feeling the sway of those wide, round hips, the boobs, and I looked in the mirror, and I saw… HER.”

“Her?”

“The stripper. The girl. I saw those wide, innocent eyes, all painted up and the long eyelashes and the lips… that face, and it was me. I was looking at myself, and no. It couldn’t be real. I was looking in the mirror and seeing someone else, and not just someone else but a girl.”

“It must have been… terrible.” 

“It was… I can’t even think of a word for it. It seemed impossible. Impossible. And yet I was seeing and feeling it all, so I just sat down and kind of checked out. I just kind of went into like… a zone.”

 “You probably had to. That kind of change?  It’s impossible to process. We were never meant to switch bodies.”

“You can say that again." Pete frowned. "So, for a time it was like a dream. Eventually, they took me to some kind of hospital and a nurse helped me out of my… her clothes and then I was in the bed with monitors hooked up to me, and I didn’t think I was sick, but I had no better idea, so I just lay there and stared at the television.

“Doctors and government types came and went. Later, I found out they wanted to study me, figure out what had happened, whether if it was even real. I think I would probably still be there, a lab rat, because they really wanted to know all about what was going on in my brain.”

“How did you get out? NYPD?”

“Haha. You obviously don’t know anything about the NYPD. No. Something better. It was the union.”

“The union?”

“Hell, yeah. They heard a cop was being held, and they came down there with guns blazing. Politicians know better than to fuck with the union, so they busted me out.”

“Good for them.”

“Yeah. I think they didn’t really realize the whole deal. When they saw me, saw this body, they were confused as hell, but once they had started to process they weren’t going to back down, so they got me out.”

“How long were you there for?”

“A couple days.”

“How did they treat you?”

“Horrible.”

“Really?”

“Well, from my perspective, because they treated me like a woman. The doctor came in to give me a ‘physical’—some beady eyed old dude, and he tells me to put my feet in the stirrups, and I was like—what the fuck?

“He looked at me like I was nuts. Asked me hadn’t I ever been to see a doctor about any female issues? And I said hell, no, I’m a dude, and he looked at me like I had three heads and I asked him if he’d even read my case file, and he asked me to just tell him, so I told him who I was and what had happened, and he says, well, I still have to look at your vagina.

“What?” Brinkman spit out some of her coffee.

“Yeah. He looks right at me and says, ‘Well, Pete,’ and he says ‘Pete’ all sarcastic and condescending like I am full of shit, ‘you may be a man, but I still have to look at your vagina. I was so pissed I started to get up. I was going to punch him right in his stupid face, kick his ass, but the nurse grabbed me and held me down-- that cute little red-haired nurse. I couldn’t believe she was stronger than me, but she held me down, and then they sedated me and tied me down with restraints, and I lay there and the doctor took my feet and put them into the stirrups, and there I was with my legs spread, tied to those cold, metal things, and my arms were tied down, and the doctor kind of gave me a little smile and he has some kind of metal thing in his hand that was flashing in the light—I could see it in his glasses, reflected there over those cold, grey eyes, and he smirked and said, “This may be a little cold, but just be a good girl, and we’ll be done soon.”

“He told you to be a good little girl? Even after you’d told him you were a man?”

“Well, he didn’t believe me.”

“So what?  Even if you were delusional, suffering some kind of post-traumatic stress after being raped, he shouldn’t have…”

“Raped?” Pete shook his head. “I wasn’t raped.”

Dr. Brinkman sighed. “You were violated, Peter.”

“But that was her fingers. She didn’t put her thing in me or anything like that.”

“Peter. It doesn’t matter. He….”

“She.”

“She… engaged in sexual contact with you against your will. You’re a cop. If you got a call with those details, what would be the legal definition?”

Peter shook his head, slipped on his sunglasses and said, “I can’t talk about this shit anymore.”

“Peter. This is not the time to walk out. You need to confront this.”

“Stop yelling at me!” Peter shrieked, his voice sliding into its naturally high-pitched, girlish register. ‘I can’t. I’m not. I wasn’t ever…. No. No. No!” He spun awkwardly, his arms out, hands bent at the wrists.

“Peter! Wait.”

Peter felt like he couldn’t breathe, like there was a 20 ton weight on his chest, crushing him. He felt like the office closing in, and Brinkman seemed to have grown to 20 feet tall had become a threat, a danger, and he ran, he ran from the office, down the hall and out into the cold, grey afternoon. His phone started vibrating. He ignored it.

It was past four o’clock, and the setting sun was low and the light slanted though the buildings, a warm, red color that only made the frigid breeze seem colder. Peter hurried down the street feeling chased, pursued, his heart racing, and that word huge in his mind: RAPE.

No. Not that. Not him. It wasn’t true. Couldn’t be true.

The feelings came back. Helpless. Confused. That MAN on top of him, her hand on his breasts while another slithered down his belly, down under the elastic of his panties, to stroke a vagina he couldn’t possibly have because he was a man, and RAPE.

No. No. No.

Cars honked, he heard brakes squeal and spinning he realized he was in the middle of the street, a whoosh of air blowing against him as a car swerved past and another, and Pete ran, not even sure if he was running back the way he'd come from or toward home, but just running, running because he could remember being pinned on his back, her body so big and heavy, her fingers sliding into his vagina, and no. 

He slowed to a fast walk, hurrying down the sidewalk, catching concerned looks from people who shifted to get out of his way, and he felt dirty and sick, radioactive, like a leper, and a thought lodged itself into his mind-- they all know. They all know I was raped. That I'm filthy, unclean. That's why they're looking at me like that, avoiding me.

Rape. I was raped. How could I not have realized?

He looked up and around. The bridge. Yes. He would jump, just like he should have in the first place, because he was supposed to be a man and he wasn't supposed to get raped just like a... woman. The thought crystallized, it felt good, felt right, and he smiled and grabbed his cell phone and threw it into the street so he couldn't call someone, have any seconds thoughts, someone shouted, "hey" and...

Oh. My. God.

He stopped, suddenly, his heart racing. There, behind a storefront window, he saw her-- the man he used to be-- his old face, the face of the woman who'd raped him. He, she, was sitting at a small table, sipping from a paper coffee cup, staring off into space... and Pete suddenly felt panicked that she might see him, and he hurried past the store and pressed himself against the stone wall just to the side of the glass.

It didn't seem possible. I must be imagining things, he thought. I'm hysterical, panicked. I think I see her because of all this shit in my head and it doesn't change anything because I'm going to kill myself anyway and even if it is her then no but it can't be it's just that I'm going crazy.

Pete took a couple deep breaths. Look, he whispered to himself. Look. But he was terrified to look. What if she saw him? What if she came out and grabbed him? He saw himself being bent over in an alley, her behind him as she yanked down his sweat pants.

But no. She wouldn't. Couldn't. He could scream if she tried anything here.

Biting his lower lip, Pete peeked around the corner and into the coffee shop, and he saw the back of her head-- she hadn't shaved her neck in a awhile, and it was looking pretty shaggy, as was his usual high and tight haircut, but he was sure that was him-- his body. The head started to turn, and Pete pulled away, reaching into his pocket, and--

Shit. His phone.

He looked out and saw it there in the street, somehow having not been hit by any of the oncoming cars, and taking one more glance into the coffee shop he saw her standing now, greeting a woman, and Pete's eyes narrowed. The bastard; she wouldn't get away with another rape. All his old instincts kicking in, Pete hurried to the edge of the curb, watched the oncoming cars zipping past, tires racing so close to his phone, and he waited, all thoughts of suicide gone, now laser focused on a new task-- bringing his rapist to justice-- and as soon as there was a little gap and raced into the street and grabbed his phone, two yellow cabs zipping by him, their horns wailing, and then he ran back to the sidewalk, and people were staring at him, shaking their heads, and he swiped his phone on ignoring the texts from Brinkman, hurried back to the coffee shop, glancing in the window and... she was gone.

No. No. No. He scanned the room, all the quadrants. Nothing. Just a paper cup sitting on the table where she'd been sitting, the chairs pushed back at odd angles. Fuck. Pete stomped a foot in frustration, looking up and down the sidewalk for any sign of her, but he was shorter now and couldn't really see that well over the crowd, and he spun around and stomped his foot again.

"Yeah? Pete?" He heard Lopes' voice coming over the phone.

"Oh, hey," he said.

"What's wrong?"

"I think I just got away."

"What?"

Pete went back to a spot against the building out of the bustling crowds and leaned against the wall, told his friend the story. "Get the cup," Lopes said.

"What?"

"Get the cup. We can find out if she was you. I mean..."

"I know what you mean," Pete said, hurrying into the coffee shop. A customer was just about to sit down at the table and was reaching for the abandoned cup so Pete summoned up his cop tone of command and barked, "Stop!"

Even in his small, girl's voice it worked, and the customer froze, looking up at the woman who'd come barging into the room in surprise. "Back away from the table," Pete said. "I'm a cop."

"My English is not so good," the man said in a German accent. "Did I commit some sort of crime?"

"No. Just sit someplace else." Then, Pete brought his phone back to his ear and said, "I got the cup."

"Good deal. Where are you?"

Pete told him even as he noticed a napkin sitting on the chair where she had been sitting. "I'll be right there," Lopes said, disconnecting.

"Okay," Pete said absently, looking down at the chair, at the napkin. It had writing on it-- a black pen, and the letters read, "Hey, Pretty Girl."

Lopes pulled up in his squad car, and they used an evidence kit to gather the cup and the napkin. "You think this was for you?" Lopes said.

"Yeah. She must have seen me. Damn it."

"It's a bitch," Lopes said, then shrugged awkwardly and said, "sorry."

"Why, because you said bitch? Lopes, I'm still me."

"No, I meant because she got away, but now that I remember I'm in the presence of a lady I'll be more careful with my language."

"Fuck you."

"Let's go drop this shit off at the station and get a beer."

"Oh, well, I'm not sure..."

"You're coming and that's it."

"I'm just not comfortable going out-- like this."

"Then we'll go to your place. I'm not taking no for an answer."

"Lopes," Pete answered, shaking his head, feeling strange, the adrenaline wearing off and some of the emotional turmoil from the day returning. "I had a really crazy day today, and the shrink, and I just don't think I'm in the right frame of mind for this right now."

"Well, let me drive you home at least."

"Okay," Pete said, feeling bad. "Thanks."

They didn't talk much as Lopes maneuvered the cruiser through traffic and up to the station in South Harlem. Calls crackled through the radio, and Pete settled into the passenger seat, feeling that good old sense of the comfortable and familiar settle in. This was where he belonged. He was a cop. He was still a cop.

What had happened? He would have to deal with it, and one way he now knew was not to kill himself, but bring that asshole to justice whether he ever got his body back or not. He waited in the car outside the station, sliding down in his seat, sunglasses on even though it was dark now, not wanting anyone to recognize him. He didn't feel ready to face them. Not yet. Of course, once Lopes drove him back to his apartment, he parked the car and followed Pete right to the door.

"You're going to insist, aren't you?"

"You know it, bro."

"Just one beer."

"Or white wine if that's what you're drinking these days."

"Fuck you."

They got in the elevator and Pete found himself pressing himself into a corner. He felt uncomfortable being in such a small place with a man, and there were so many emotions in him he doubted he could have gotten into the elevator with a guy right now-- any other guy. It made him feel angry that he had become so skittish around men-- just another item on the long list of reasons he had to get HER.

He felt the same anxiety as he fumbled with the keys to his apartment door, Lopes standing behind him-- a little close, almost close enough to touch, and Pete opened the door and hurried in, eager to put some distance between the two of them. "You're the first person whose been here other than my sister."

"I been a bunch of times," Lopes answered, plopping onto the couch and grabbing the remote.

"I mean since... you know."

"Oh. Yeah. Beer me."

Pete got the beers, handed one to Lopez, took a seat on an easy chair away from Lopez, who was smart enough to both understand and not comment. He clicked around and found an episode of Big Bang Theory, then raised his beer.

"To old friendships."

"Slainte."

Pete drank his beer, sort of wanting to tell Lopez to put on some sports, but he decided to let it slide, and then Lopez kept flipping around from show to show, idly talking about work while Pete sipped his own beer and got aggravated.

"Why can't you just pick one thing and watch it," Pete finally said, getting up and walking back to the kitchen.

Lopez smiled, watching his old friend walk away, his hips rolling, his hour glass shape hinted at even under all those layers. He almost said, 'my girlfriend says the same thing,' but it didn't feel right, was maybe a little closer to home than his jokes about white wine, so he just swallowed down the rest of his beer and said, "beer me."

Pete turned. "Um, Lopes? I'm really tired, and I kinda need some space?"

Lopez nodded and stood up. It had been a huge step for Pete, just spending this much time with him, and he didn't want to push it. "I should get home," Lopez said. "Great to see ya, buddy."

"You, too, bro," Pete said, managing a smile.

Lopez felt himself getting a little aroused at the sight of that pretty smile on that perfect little face, and shocked, he gave his old friend a thumbs up and let himself out. The image of those big, green eyes and that bright smile-- the little dimples on the soft, smooth cheeks-- lingered as he rode down. Shit. He was starting to get horny for the little woman Pete had become-- and it made him feel guilty and confused. He thought about the pictures they'd run in the Daily News -- pictures of the girl in stripper mode-- the full breasts, long legs.

Poor Pete, he thought, not for the first time. Jesus. To go from being a dude, a guy , a man's man-- to that? It was amazing he hadn't killed himself. Lopez got into his squad car, imagining his friend slipping out of his sweat pants, his round, firm ass and those long, tone dancer's legs, and he shook his head again and got out his phone. He dialed Kate and let her know about the visit, that Pete seemed to be doing pretty well.

He didn't mention to Kate that he was sitting in his squad car getting a raging hard on imagining Pete on his back, his legs spread revealing his wet slit, his big, naked breasts pooling on his chest, a dreamy smile on his face as Lopez climbed between those soft thighs and got ready to fuck him.

There was a beep on the line, and Kate interrupted. "That's him right now."

"Who?"

"Pete."

Lopez felt himself flush with guilt and said, "Okay. Good night, then."

"Thanks for being there for us."

"Yeah."

Kate switched to the call from Pete and said, "Hey" as brightly as should could manage.

"Hey," Pete answered, his voice sounding muffled, conflicted.

Kate frowned. Lopez had made it sound like things were good, but her brother sounded-- off to her. "What's up?"

"Can you come over? I really need to talk to someone right now."

"What's up?"

"I realized today that I was raped."

"You going to be okay until I get there?" Kate said, her heart going out to Pete even as she felt terrified for him.

"Yeah. I think so."

"I'm on my way. Text me if you need to."

"Thanks."

Pete collapsed into his easy chair as Kate hung up the phone, his mind a swirling storm of conflicting feelings. On top of everything else he had to deal with, he was pretty sure the Lopez had been thinking about fucking him. There had been something in his eyes right before he left, as they were calling it a night-- a hard, glassy look, and it had sent a shiver right through Pete's slender shape, but no. Lopez wouldn't do that, and whatever.

He texted Brinkman back, finally. She'd sent him five texts since he'd run out of her office. "I'm good," he typed. "Gonna talk to sister."

Then he added, "About THAT."

He set the phone on his thigh, and it buzzed back immediately with the message, "Good. I'm here if you need me." It made him feel good-- to know someone cared, someone else cared, that she cared and wasn't just drawing a paycheck.

When Kate arrived they drank beer and talked about what had happened to him, about his session with the doctor, about how dirty and ashamed he felt. He found himself holding hands with his sister, the two of them sitting close, their legs touching, nodding and looking right into each other's eyes, and the next day he wouldn't remember much of what she'd said, but only that she had not looked at him as dirty or filthy at all, but with her eyes full of love and compassion, and she has told him it wasn't his fault, and that she loved him.

"So what next?" She asked.

"Keep working with my therapist. And, also, I am going to nail her ass for what she did to me."

"That's my big brother," Kate said, giving his soft little hands a squeeze. 

IX

The next morning Pete woke up early, his head a little fuzzy, thick both from the beer and the emotional hangover. He stumbled into the bathroom, pulled his underwear down to his knees and sat on the cold toilet seat, looking up at the ceiling as he felt the warm urine pass through the lips of his vagina. Then, he wiped himself, went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee and carried it and a steaming bowl of oatmeal over to his work desk and sat down ready to work. His breasts were swaying freely under a t-shirt that was too tight, and he had slit the collar to provide more space. He'd taken Kate's advice and stopped keeping them bandaged down all the time, and he hoped he would get used to the feeling of them always so heavy and constantly swaying on his chest.

He felt focused, more focused than he'd been since the switch. He knew that he had a mission now, and that mission was to get a creep off the streets.

He went back to Salome's Facebook page. Fugitives usually went back to familiar places, and though it seemed clear from all the posts that she hadn't been in touch with her family, he wanted to check out friends, co-workers, other people on her page where she might be taking shelter. The girl had a lot of friends-- 987. He scrolled through pictures to see which ones seemed to have been tagged more often, and as he looked through her life, her friends, her posts, something started to bother him.

He was looking at pictures of her at ballet recitals, standing on her toes, arms raised over her head gracefully, as Maria in the school production of West Side Story,  then Juliet, sweet and innocent looking with flowers in her hair. More. She and her friends laughing for a selfie on the street with a caption saying they were about to see Magic Mike. Prom pictures-- she looked gorgeous in a shimmering emerald dress, clinging to her boyfriend. And there she was, a glittering tiara nestled in her thick, curly black hair, a bundle of roses in her arm as she was named homecoming queen. Again, he felt the strange sense of vertigo looking at the face that he now saw each morning in the mirror, the body he showered and fed-- his body, but living a life he'd never known, the life of a vivacious and sweetly feminine girl.

A seemingly happy, joyful girl.

Well-adjusted, Pete wrote on his yellow legal pad, beneath all the notes he'd taken on her life. He underlined it three times, tapping his pen while he bit his lip.

It didn't add up. 

Everything about her said that she was a very happy young woman, and there was nothing there to indicate she was unhappy with her sex, that she would want to be a man, that she fit the profile of a rapist. The profiles for rapists-- female or male-- were narrow and predictable, but he didn't see anything there that would put her-- on top of him-- with her fingers inside him. He remembered that face, that angry, leering face.

That wasn't Salome inside him. He knew it. There was no way the girl who'd left this imprint in social media had stolen his body- No way, which meant she had been switched as well. But when? Had the Switcher been the one who'd taken this sweet high-school girl and turned her into a stripper and likely a prostitute?

Pete idly reached up and scratched his soft, round breast as he went back to her professional page, looking at those pictures again, that long, lean, body, that face now all dolled up and displayed for sex. His sister had said that she'd been able to look into his eyes-- his new eyes-- and see him-- and so he looked intently at the pictures, the eyes, the body language, and he found himself shaking his head. No. That was still her. He was sure of it.

But then-- who had stolen his body? And where was Salome?

Pete got up and tossed his bowl into the sink, got another cup of coffee. With each step his breasts swayed and bounced, his nipples rubbing against the fabric of his shirt, and he thought for a minute about putting on the bra his sister had left there, but no. He wasn't going to go girly. He'd just deal with the jiggle factor. And so he paced for a minute, sipping his coffee, thinking. Salome. His heart went out to her. She was so young and sweet and innocent, and she'd just wanted to be an actress and dancer, a dream so many young girls had, but she'd ended up working as a stripper, and then someone had stolen her body, her life.

Where was she now? Dead? Imprisoned in some freak's basement? That poor girl. Just one more reason for me to keep going, Pete thought. Just one more reason to work. But what now? He sat down at the computer and started to scroll through the pictures again, the friends, the life, but nothing. Nothing. How was he supposed to find her? To save her? To save himself?

I'm a piece of shit, he thought, and he felt her again, on top of him, the feeling of her finger and then her hand sliding between the lips of his vagina, the terrible feeling of helplessness as she squeezed his breasts and breathed in his face, her breath hot and damp. I'm not a man anymore, just a stupid slut, a dumb bitch who got raped by a woman. I can't do this. I can't catch her, or him, or whatever. Damn it.

 He started to get up, go to the fridge, grab a beer, but then he stopped, closed his eyes, and folded his hands. He hadn't prayed in years. Not since he'd been a child. Church? He went for family functions. Holidays. But now? Well, sitting there in the body of a young woman, lost, confused, he whispered, God. Please help me. I'm scared and confused and I feel so lost, but I want to do what's right, to help Salome, and catch this creep before he hurts anyone else, and please, God. Please. 

He opened his eyes and on the screen, on Salome's Facebook page, was a picture of her family gathered on the stoop of their brownstone. They were all there, Salome in the middle of the bunch, wearing a Real Madrid soccer jersey, her hair up in a ponytail, and she was holding a little girl, who was pointing up and to the left, right at the street number which hung next to the door, old iron numbers that had grown dull with age: 700K 

700K. Look. Pete laughed and shook his head. Thank God. And then, before he could think better of it, he clicked started to type out a message to the Aragon family.

X

"Nobody would believe I was me," Pete said. He was sitting forward, his knees together, elbows on his knees, his chin resting on his little hands. "I called my girlfriend, Anna. Asked if we could meet. She'd seen the story in the paper, had heard through Kate about The Switch, but she told me over the phone she thought it was bullshit. She agreed to meet me, though, and it was a huge, huge mistake. I walked in the restaurant and she stood up-- she's a tall girl-- 5' 10", and I found myself looking up at her as she shook my hand, and I felt small and ridiculous, like her little sister or something. I had been in this body for a week at that point, but most of my contact had been with strangers, and so looking up at my girlfriend, realizing I now had bigger tits than she did, a higher-pitched voice-- I was more of a girl than she was, and it suddenly hit me how much I had lost."

"She didn't believe you?"

"No. Not at all. She accused me of being in on some kind of game with 'Pete'-- told me that if he wanted to break up with her he should be man enough to do it in person and not send his 'little slut' to do the job."

"I am so sorry that happened."

"It got worse. I felt really depressed, weird, my head had been fuzzy, and I was feeling so needy. I didn't want to lose her despite what had happened, I felt like I needed her more than ever, so I started-- well, begging, pleasing with her, and she was listening, I could tell, starting to wonder, and then, as we were talking, I felt like someone had punched me in the side all of a sudden, and I grimaced and put a hand to my ribs.

'Oh my God,' she said.

"What?" But even as I said it, I felt like I was... leaking. And I got another cramp,."

"And Anna just got disgusted and said, "Okay, 'Paul.' Well, you're having your period, 'Paul.' And I am not into dating a guy who's gonna be on the rag once a month just like me."

"You had your first period?"

"Yes."

"Right in front of your girlfriend?"

"Right in front of everyone. I stood up to go after her, and I looked down and saw this brown stain on the crotch of my pants, and I just ran into the bathroom and hid in a stall, pulling down my pants and looking at the blood on my thighs, and I punched the wall and screamed."

"I can't even imagine how that must have felt."

"It felt like shit. I'm a man, or was a man. And one of the things, I mean one of the big things that made me glad I was a man was that I didn't have ever be on the rag. It was something that made girls weak, inferior, part of what made me feel sorry for them, and now here I was having my period, blood coming out of my vagina, and I fucking hated it. I hated it so much, and I was so humiliated because now I couldn't deny that I was one of them, a female, the weaker sex."

"What did you do?"

"What could I do? I cleaned the blood off my thigh. I wadded up a bunch of toilet paper to keep me from leaking anymore. I couldn't do anything about the stain-- of course, I had worn gray sweat pants. And then I ran out of the bathroom, out of the restaurant, and I ran home and I got shit-faced."

"Have you had another?"

"Period? Not yet."

"How long ago was the first one?"

"I don't really want to talk about my periods, doc. It's disgusting."

"It's part of your life now."

"I... know," Pete said softly. "I guess. So, should we bond over our shared menstrual issues?  Maybe brain each other's hair while trading tampons? You got any pointers for me, sister?"

"If you don't want to talk about it, I'll drop it. No need to get so hostile."

"I'm just not ready."

"So, your girlfriend didn't believe you. How about your parents?"

"I tried to visit my parents, but my mother called me a lying bitch, and my father kept staring at my tits."

"Is that when you started...?"

"Binding them down? Yeah. I'm surprised it took me that long, but I think I was being a little defiant at first, refusing to even acknowledge that I had them, just wearing my regular clothes, trying to act like I didn't care, but whenever I did leave the house I was getting looks and catcalls, and then when my dad practically splugged all over himself staring at my boobs I finally decided I would keep them hidden as much as possible, and I also started to stay home as much as I could."

"You must have been very lonely."

"I was. My family is close, was close. I spent every Christmas and Thanksgiving with them, even after I got out on my own. And I was at every baptism and first communion. Now, my mother was calling me a bitch, telling me go away and never come back, and my father-- like I said, he just kept staring at me like I was a piece of meat. The only people who believed me were my sister, Kate, and my old buddy, Juan Lopez."

"But you avoided them."

"Yeah. I was ashamed, embarrassed. I was Kate's big brother. I always protected her and took care of her, and now here was in the body of a little girl, a stripper, and I didn't feel like I could protect or take care of anyone, and I didn't want her to see me like this, and I didn't want Lopes to see me like this, either."

"And yet you called the sister after our last session, when you finally confronted the fact that you had been violated."

"That word still makes me feel a little sick," Pete said. "It still makes me feel... I just don't like to hear it."

"I'm sorry."

"I know you didn't mean anything, but, yeah, I called my sister. She'd been reaching out to me, trying to help, and I just knew I needed to talk to her. I needed to talk to her more than I needed to hide from myself."

"And what did she say?"

"She told me it wasn't my fault, what happened, and that she loved me."

"You have a good sister."

"I know."

"Peter, I just have to tell you how impressed I am with you, with how positively you are dealing with all of this. A lot of people in your situation would be falling apart."

"Well, I'm struggling more than I let on. I get nervous around men, very nervous. I'm actually a little scared to be alone with them, and when things don't go right, when I mess up? A lot of times I think about what happened, what she did to me, and I feel dirty and stupid, and I call myself a dumb bitch or a stupid slut, and I know I shouldn't, but it just happens."

"And then what do you do?"

"You know, it may not be modern psychology or whatever, but I have been praying a lot. A lot. And so I pray, and then I feel better."

"Whatever works is good, and just understand that what you are experiencing it part of the recovery process. It will take time, and you'll have days where it all comes back, and it will always be with you, but the women that I have seen do the best are the ones who refuse to be victims, the ones who find ways to use their experience to help others, just like you."

Pete sat back, half sure that Brinkman had just called him a woman, and it irked him, but he decided to let it pass. He had something else he wanted to run by her. "I contacted her family."

"You did?"

"Yeah. I felt it was the right thing to do. Let them know at least as much as I know. I'm a little conflicted because I, well, I have ulterior motives."

"That's fine."

"Sure. You're motives are good. You want to solve the crime, and you may just help bring closure to them as well."

"Yes, well, speaking of that? He mother wants to meet me."

"She knows you're in Salome's body?"

"Yeah."

"So, how do you feel about it?"

"I think I should do it, both for her sake, and so I can do more investigating."

"Then do it."

"You seem pretty sure."

"Pete, you are the first patient I have had who was a man and got switched into the body of a woman. I say-- follow your instincts. Because the truth is I have no idea what makes sense for you, but just promise me you'll text me if anything gets weird."

"Okay, doc," he said smiling brightly. "I will."

Pete stood up and slipped on his sunglasses, and Brinkman walked him to the door expecting his usual 'peace out' style exit, but he shocked her as he turned, threw his arms around her and gave her a tight, loving hug. "Thanks for everything, doc. I can't tell you how much you've meant to me through all this."

Brinkman smiled and gave Pete a little peck on his smooth cheek. Having him there in her arms, smelling the feminine musk on him, she wanted badly to kiss him, to tilt that pretty face of his back and kiss those big, soft pillowy lips, but she resisted, instead separating, giving his soft little hand a squeeze and then saying, "You're amazing, Pete. Good luck with Salome's mom."

"Bye," Pete said in a high-pitched little chirp, his dimpled mouth in a wide, bright, beautiful smile.

Brinkman shook her head, went back to her desk, pulled out her Ipad and started jotting down some notes. Peter was adapting more and more traits that would fall onto the feminine spectrum of behaviors. The way he sat and moved, when his guard was down, the way he spoke. It suggested so many things about how much of a person was a manifestation of the physical organism-- not just the brain, but the body.

It wasn't just that Pete now had a female body. No. Brinkman had worked with many patients over the years, and they had fallen all over the scale of masculine and feminine without much regard for physical sex-- most people fell more toward the middle than they realized or wanted to admit, men and women who might be called a muddled collection of mascufem traits, and she had always had patients on the extreme ends-- masculine women and men, feminine women and men. 

Pete had landed in the body of a very feminine young lady, and it was the body, Brinkman felt, that was winning out over whatever of Pete had been placed into it--- his brainwaves, and if such a thing existed, his soul. If he'd been placed into the body of a more aggressive, assertive woman, she was inclined to think he would be more aggressive and assertive, but he'd been switched into a physical self that was genetically programmed to be passive and nurturing and sweet and cute, and he was starting to become all those things.

Was it a problem that a big tough cop was turning into a sweet, adorable girl? Not really. Not in Brinkman's mind. It would only be a problem if her patient started to feel it was a problem. When it came to gender issues, in fact, many of her most frustrated and unhappy patients had been ones who had been trying to repress their identities. 

As for Brinkman, she still got a thrill from the idea of a big, tough man finding himself in the body of a stripper, and then found himself becoming that stripper. She imagined him in a mini-skirt and fuck me pumps, a matching purse on his arm, hurrying prettily down the street, and again she sighed and headed to the bathroom while she imagined those long, tone legs and his tight, round ass in a pair of hot, lacy red panties.

If Brinkman's theory was correct, it was only a matter of time before Peter found himself wanting to dress like a woman, a feminine woman celebrating his vulnerability and need to be protected. Was it just wishful thinking on her part? She didn't think so. But in the meantime, picturing him smearing some wet, crimson lipstick on his full, soft lips was getting her wet, and she knew she had to take care of herself before she would be able to focus.

Pete was already struggling with some of the impulses Brinkman had predicted. As he walked home, he passed a Victoria's Secret, the shop windows full of huge pictures of the Victoria's Secret girls in their lingerie, and he glanced at them out of the corner of his eye, their full, firm breasts encased in pretty silk bras in bright, fun colors, and he wondered what it would be like to wear a bra like that, how it would feel. The girls looked so pretty, and he admired their flat, firm tummies. Part of him thought about fucking them, about how it would be to lay them down, climb on top and yet he also imagined himself as them, being gently pushed backward, onto his back, his arms above his head, his breasts in that little pink bra the girl in the window was wearing, and the hungry look in Lopez' eyes as he...

Oh, gross, Pete thought, snapping out of it. I am actually thinking about fucking my drinking buddy. Pete hurried away from the store, but his skin was tingling, and he felt his breasts straining beneath the ace bandage, which he still wore in public, and he sighed in frustration.

Once he got home, Pete unwrapped his breasts, rubbed them with lotion, slipped in an over-sized sweatshirt, sat down and kept thinking about those women in the Victoria's Secret window. What would it be like? He turned on Sports Center. They were talking about the WNBA, of course, and he idly wondered what kinds of bras those girls wore when they trained and played hoops, what kept them from bouncing all over while they ran. He flipped to ESPN2 just in time to catch the end of a commercial for Midol Complete.

It looked like the world was just determined to keep him thinking about girl stuff, so he finally got up and found the bag Kate had left, pulled out the little white bra, feeling it's soft, cool material in his hands.  He felt excited and guilty at the thought of putting it on, ashamed, really, but also kind of thrilled at the idea of the shame. 

You promised you would never go girly, he reminded himself. No bras. No women's clothes.

But he didn't have a choice. He clutched the bra in his hands, and he knew he had to put it on, see what it felt like to wear one.

He closed the blinds, looking around, feeling like he was being watched, and he pulled off his sweatshirt, his breasts swaying free. He looked down at them bobbing there on his chest, impossibly, and then he lifted the bra and held the cups against his boobs, feeling a thrill as the cool, soft material covered his soft skin, his big, sensitive nipples. How do I put this on? He wondered, having slipped more than a few off of girls over the years, but looking at the cups, he realized it was one of those kinds that opened at the front, and so he slipped the little straps over his slender shoulders, fit his breasts into the cups of his bra and, lifting them, he pulled the cups together and fixed the clasp in place, feeling the weight of his breast now pull down on the little straps as his breasts were lifted and pulled together, and he felt his cheeks flush with that crazy mixture of shame and guilt and excitement as he adjusted the straps and then shifted his boobs around and settled into his first bra.

My first bra, he thought, feeling ridiculous standing there in the middle of his living room, still with that tingly feeling like someone was watching him. Am I supposed to take a picture and post it to Facebook?

He giggled at the thought, walking into his bedroom, curious how he looked, and he flipped on the light switch and looked at himself there in his bra, and he looked really pretty, so pretty it almost scared him. She, the girl in the mirror, had really large boobs, especially for her narrow frame, and now in that little white bra, his breasts looked even bigger, and the way it squeezed them together gave him a deep, shadowy valley of mysterious, soft and inviting cleavage. The white straps against his slender, brown shoulders, his flat, taught belly and tiny little waist.

That's me, he thought, looking at the stunning young woman in the mirror, her mouth hanging open, her big, green eyes dancing mischievously. That's me in my first bra, and oh my god I look so hot it scares me. He nibbled on his finger nail, raised his arms over his head, watching as his breasts rose, pressed together, getting a thrill from looking at himself, just like when he'd been a man and seen a woman display herself, and then he giggled and got his cell phone, thinking-- just for me, for fun, and he snapped some selfies, his skin tingling, his nipples getting hard.

He tossed himself on the couch and looked at the pictures he'd taken, the smiling, dimpled face, those big, soft, firm breasts, and he sighed again looking at that stunning little woman, the stunning woman he had become, and he wondered what it would be like if this was it, forever, if this was his body now, and he would be stuck with it.

Because it was one thing to sit in his apartment in a bra and take pictures and giggle and let himself be a little silly, but out there in the world? In this body? What if the legal system finally decided that he was Salome Sofia Aragon, 19 year old female, and he had to really live like this and be this girl?

Maybe I could do it, he thought. Maybe. But he knew he didn't want to. Not forever. His parents still wouldn't accept him, and he missed being a guy, hanging with his dad, talking shop. He missed enjoying watching a girl like him be girly in her bra and panties, giggling and being silly.

And what about sex? Could he make it with another girl? Would he end up sleeping with guys? Or should he just become a nun? Take vows of chastity? He'd always been opposed to homosexuality, had been taught it was a sin, and thought he'd been better than most cops in that he tried to treat everyone with respect, he'd secretly hated gays and lesbians a little, felt they were doing something wrong, and flaunting it.

But now what was he? If he had sex with a woman was he being a straight man or a gay woman or what? One thing he was sure of was that his body wanted it, wanted to be touched and caressed. The need had been so strong he'd thrown himself into Brinkman's arms. He'd needed to be close to someone, to feel a physical connection, and then when he'd lingered there in her arms, looking at her face, he been ready, waiting, had wanted her to kiss him, and for a moment he actually thought she would, but she'd just given him a peck on the cheek and even that had made his fingertips tingle.

He went to his computer, thinking about checking the scores, but instead he found himself back on Salome's fan page, looking at a picture of her standing with her back to the camera, looking back over her shoulder. In the picture, she had dressed in that emerald corset, a little pair of green and black lace panties stretched tight across her perfect, firm, heart-shaped ass. Pete remembered the feel of it tightly wrapped around his body, lifting his breasts, and his hand slipped down the front of his pants as he stared at the image.

The phone rang. Lopez. "Hey," Pete said, his voice already a little husky.

"What's up?" Lopez said back, and Pete could tell he was a little drunk.

"Research," Pete answered looking at his ass on the screen, her ass. Am I really that fucking hot? He wondered while he let his fingers slip between his legs, cover the bristly pubic hair on the soft mound of his vagina.

"Is this a bad time?" Lopez said.

"No. I can talk," Pete said, his mind fuzzy. He licked his lips. "What's going on with you?"

"I was just thinking about you, Pete. Wanted to talk to you. Can I come over? Maybe we can hang out, watch a movie or... something."

Pete had been gently stroking himself, but now he paused. There was something in Lopez' voice, his tone, the way he said... something. It made all the female cells in Pete's body tingle, but it also scared him-- and excited him at the same time as he sat there in his bra, looking at a picture of his sweet little ass, and something made him say, "What do you mean by something?"

Lopez paused. "I don't know. You know. Whatever. We could just hang out and see what happens."

"What do you think might happen?"

"Well, you know, I'm a man, and you're a... woman."

Pete smiled, confused and thrilled by the thoughts and images running through his mind, and he giggled. "Tell me what you would do to me?"

"I would motorboat those tits of yours," Lopez said with a hoarse chuckle. 

Pete laughed, the strange spell broken. "You're an idiot," he said, letting his voice drop back into the mansetto he'd been using since the switch.

"Hahaha. Fuck. You sounded like you were into it for a minute there, bro."

"Yeah, well, I thought you were drunk dialing me, you asshole."

"I am, but what kind of a creep do you think I am? Wanting to fuck my best friend just because he got turned into a hot little tamale."

"Sleep it off, bro."

Pete hung up. What a prick, he thought, then chuckled. I really thought he wanted to fuck me. Yeesh. I really am starting to turn into an airhead.

He looked back at the picture of him on the screen, his perfect, heart-shaped ass-- HER perfect ass. It was still his unspoken secret. He'd seen her around that club, going in and out, had flirted with her, and she'd told him to come by and say hi sometime, and given him a wink, and she'd seemed older, suddenly, more coarse, less the innocent young girl she'd always seemed to be, and so he had gone back, and she'd reached down and grabbed his dick, squeezed it, and then he'd turned her around, bent her over, pulled up her skirt, yanked down her panties and pounded her, and pounded her.

After, she'd pulled up her panties and turned around, smiling, and said, "Did you like taking me from behind?"

"Yeah," he'd answered, buckling his pants.

"Have you ever wondered what it's like for the girl?" She asked, as she pulled her skirt down, her eyes drifting dreamily along his chest.

"No," he'd said.  "Not really."

And Salome had turned and given him another look at that ass, those long legs, and she'd said, "I think you'd like being the girl, getting fucked by a big, strong man."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" He'd said, annoyed.

But the girl had just walked away singing "Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side. Hey, sugar, take a walk on the wild side."

He decided it was some kind of code, some way a working girl sounded out a client to see if he was into some certain kind of kinky thing, but now he realized she'd been sizing up her mark, trying to decide if he was the guy she wanted to fuck, and he'd won and now he was in that body, the perfect, gorgeous little body that he'd fucked as a man.

He went to bed, hugging his pillow to his chest, and when he fell asleep, he dreamed he was Salome in the alley, bent over, and she was behind him, fucking him, and he loved it.

XI

Pete thought about maybe wearing some of his normal clothes to the meeting with Salome’s mother, but they were all too big in most places and too small where he would wanted them bigger, so he strapped down his boobs and slipped into his usual baggy sweats, thought about cancelling, decided against, paced around and thought about it some more. It just seemed like it would be so strange and awkward to step into HER life, to meet HER parents, and then finally he knelt down at the side of his bed and prayed, and as soon as he finished his first Hail Mary, he knew he needed to go for the sake of the mother, Edith, who wanted so badly to meet him, to give her some closure, and for the sake of Salome, too, because he felt certain that he would find the clues that would lead him to her somewhere there in that world of hers.

He found a seat in the corner of a subway car on the L line, the handicapped area, and sat next to two other women, his shades on, head down. After the LIC stop, a group of teenage boys got on, talking loudly, and they glanced toward Pete and he shifted nervously, trying to ignore them. Groups of young males made him nervous, and they seemed to be talking louder now that they had noticed him, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw one of them gesture toward him.

Sure enough, the boys walked back and grabbed the rail above Pete’s head, hovering over him, making him feel small, vulnerable. “Hey,” one of them said, his legs almost touching Pete’s knees. “Aren’t you that stripper who says she used to be a cop? From the paper.”

“No,” Pete said in a small voice, not looking up at the boy. “But I get that all the time.”

“I told you, dawg,” one of his friends said.

“She’s lying, man. I know that’s her!”

Pete started to get up, to move away, but the came to a grinding halt, and the boys got off, leaving him there, his heart racing. The woman next to him patted him on the thigh and smiled, and he smiled back.

“Boys,” she said.

“Yeah,” Pete answered. “Right?”

They really hadn’t meant any harm. Hadn’t been any threat. They just thought he was someone kind of famous, But he’d felt threatened, and again Pete felt he should probably do some training in this body, get it stronger, learn how to fight in this shape, to whatever extent this curvy little body could fight.

But then he found himself in Astoria, climbing up the subway steps into a bright, brisk Fall day, and he wandered down to the Astoria Diner and walked in looking around nervously for the face of Salome’s mother, but he heard a woman gasp, “Heavens.”

Turning, he saw her, Salome’s mother, Edith, sitting at a booth by the window, her mouth hanging open, tears already in her eyes. He smiled and walked over, and before he got to the table Edith had stood and come out, running toward him, throwing her strong arms around him and pulling her to him in a crushing bear hug. She was short and stocky, like a lot of immigrant women, the result of malnourishment as a child and hard work as an adult, her head coming only to Pete’s chest.

Pete hugged her back, feeling awkward and uncomfortable being held so tightly by a stranger, but he could feel the emotion flowing through her, and let her hold on until she finally pulled back and looked up at him, shaking her head and saying, “It’s you. It’s my Salome.”

“I’m sorry,” Pete answered, shaking his head. “But I’m not your daughter.”

“You told me, but I can’t believe it. My eyes are telling me I am looking into the face of my daughter right now.”

Pete took her hands and led her back to the table. He pulled some napkins from the dispenser and handed them to Edith so she could dab at her tears. “The stuff in the paper was all true,” Pete said. “Somehow, I was switched into the body of your daughter. This is Salome’s body, but now her… well….”

“Soul,” Edith said.

“Yes. Not her soul.”

Pete became aware of people crowding around them, faces all over the restaurant looking at the two of them curiously, and now that he was paying attention he started to recognize some of the faces from the pictures he’d seen. Salome’s family had come along with her mother.

“Is things okay?” A man Pete recognized as Salome’s father, Carlos, asked nervously, looking at the young woman sitting across from his wife.

Pete looked at Edith, and she nodded to her husband. “Yes.”

“Can I join?”

Edith looked at Pete apologetically. She had told him they would be alone, but he just shrugged. “Pull up a stool, partner.”

The owner came over-- an elderly Greek man, and said, “You want, you use the banquet room. So many people.” 

“Everyone wants to see you,” Edith said.

Pete felt overwhelmed, had to take some deep breaths to stay calm, but he nodded. The whole family needed answers, wanted to hear it directly from him, something that would convince them both that he wasn’t their daughter, their niece, their cousin, their sister, and that she, the real Salome, would be fine. He owed it to them and to her, and so he stood up and said, “Let’s go to the back, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”

As they walked, two little girls skipped up to him, smiling, and they took his hands, one on each side. “Aunt Sally! Aunt Sally!”

Carlos came up and whispered, “They are too young to understand.”

Pete nodded and smiled, letting them hold his hands, and said, “Hey girls!”

The children were left outside, a couple tween cousins gripping that they shouldn’t be left outside with the “little ones” and then the group, nearly twenty people, gathered around Pete and listened as he told them what had happened—leaving out the nasty parts—and then his belief that Salome was out there still, in another body, and that he wanted to find her.

There were tears and laments, and after the grief and disbelief passed determined faces as one after another they vowed to do anything they could to help him. Finally, Carlos and Edith asked if they could have some time alone with Officer Pete, and the group broke up.

“Thank you for coming. This must be hard for you,” Edith said, taking Pete’s hand.

“I felt it was the right thing to do.”

“You are good girl,” Carlos said, nodding, and Pete didn’t bother to correct him. “Do you want to take look at Salome’s apartment? Maybe something there?”

“I would really need a warrant.”

“What? No. No warrant. I have key. Co-signed for apartment.”

“You did?”

“Legally can enter.”

“You know the law,” Pete said, smiling.

“He loves Law and Order,” Edith said. “He watches it so much he turns into a lawyer.”

“It’s a good show,” Carlos said with a smile. “I learn English.”

“Let’s go,” Pete said.

“I’ll come, too,” Edith said, taking Pete’s hand. “I like to see the apartment now.”

The three of them walked to Salome’s building. It had gotten dark out during the long meeting with Salome’s family, dark and cold, but Pete felt warm all over. He was so moved by how much Salome’s family loved her, how they’d all come out, and how kind and welcoming her parents had been toward him, and he was glad he’d come out, done the right thing. Salome’s apartment was only a few blocks from her parent’s house, and Pete said, “She didn’t move far.”

“No,” Edith said. “She had big dreams, but she loved her family.”

The apartment was small—a one bedroom with an efficiency kitchen, but even after sitting empty for a month it was still neat and pretty, and it smelled like flowers and vanilla. There were flowers on the little dining table—withered and crumbling flowers.

“Have you moved anything since she disappeared?”

“No. Yes. I came once and cleaned some things out of the refrigerator, took out the trash. That’s all.”

“Okay. Just take a seat and let me look around.”

“Okay.”

Salome’s parents exchanged a nod as the young woman who looked like their daughter seemed to suddenly change before their eyes, the talk, the walk, the way she looked around the room with precision, she suddenly seemed exactly like the cop she claimed to be, and what’s more they both felt it; she knew what she was doing, and she would bring their daughter home.

Pete began reciting the Hail Mary to himself, and then he walked right back to the little closet of a bedroom looked at the neatly made bed with the emerald green quilt and lavender pillows, paused, and—something caught his eyes, the edge of something peeking out from under the bed. Kneeling, he lifted the edge of the quilt and saw it sitting there, an old fashioned diary with a faux leather cover etched with the image of a rose. Just the kind of thing Salome would love. He flipped open the pages, starting at the back. Whoever had switched her was someone she’d met recently, he was sure of it, and was he was also sure it had been someone outside of her normal circle—someone who could switch himself eventually into Pete’s body and take on a new life without anyone Salome knew noticing the coincidental double disappearance.

He flipped, flipped again, and a page caught his eyes because Salome’s sweeping, pretty handwriting had suddenly grown bigger and more excited, and she has written the word Talent Scout in big, bold letters surrounded with exclamation points—the entry was dated a day before Pete had been jumped into Salome’s body. And, there was even a name: Johnny Temp.

Pete felt certain this was his perp, the man who’d stolen his body, the rapist. He’d been trained against leaping to conclusions, warned not to stop looking for evidence prematurely, but he also knew, just knew, that Johnny Temp was the one he needed to find. Before he left, he opened the closet door. It was a small closet, packed with clothes—jeans and blouses nearly pressed and hung, and on one side three corsets a lot like the ones he’d woken up in—all emerald green. Pete touched one of the corsets, let his fingers trace the material, so soft and yet so hard. He took one of the blouses off a hanger and looked down at it—a peasant blouse, he thought it was called, kind of a thing for hippie chicks. He bet she’d looked cute in it, but then she’d looked cute in a burlap bag.

His stomach growled. He felt hungry. Excited to get on with the search, to call Lopes and see if he could run Johnny Temp through the system, so he walked out of the bedroom holding the diary triumphantly above his head. “I think I got something.”

Esther and Carlos jumped to their feet. “What? A clue? Can you find her?”

“I found this diary under the bed, and I think it’s given me some good leads.”

“What leads?” Carlos asked.

“Here I need you guys to trust me. It’s better if for now I keep the details to myself.”

“Yes,” Carlos said, nodding to Esther. “Of course.” 

Esther hugged Pete again, pulled him down and kissed him on the cheek. “You are the most wonderful girl!” Esther said. “I just know God sent you here to find the diary, to help us, to help Sofia.”

Pete smiled. “I believe he did,” Pete answered. “I truly believe he did.”

“It’s getting late. I have to get back to Manhattan,” Pete said. 

“Of course,” Carlos said. “But first you come to diner. At our house.”

“I really can’t.”

“Come. Come,” Esther said, taking his hand. “You need a good meal.”

“I wish I could. I really do.”

“Of course,” Carlos said. “We understand.”

The three walked out into the winter night. It had gotten colder, and Pete saw his breath, a hot, steamy cloud. They walked silently down the street, and when he came to his subway stop, Esther pulled him by the hand, while Carlos put a hand on his shoulder and steered him past. “Um, guys? I mean, I really do have to go.”

“Of course,” Carlos said.

“After dinner,” Esther added, the both of them just pulling him along, dragging him down the street. Pete looked back at his subway stop and then finally just laughed and gave in—it didn’t seem like he was going to be able to get them to let him go, and besides what did he have to look forward to in his cold, empty apartment? He’d call Lopez from the Aragon house and get his to run the name, then he could read through the rest of the diary once he got home.

“You will love Mama’s cooking,” Carlos said. “The best cook in New York City!”

“Oh, Father!” Esther gushed.

“It’s true!” Carlos said. “You’ll see.”

“Can I ask a special favor? One more special favor?” Esther asked.

“Sure.”

“Can I call you Sally?”

“Mama Aragon,” Carlos said, with a tsk.  

“It’s okay,” Pete answered without really even thinking about it. “It’s fine. It’ll make it easier for the kids and all.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Mama said. “It will be almost like having Salome Sofia back in the house again.”

Pete smiled awkwardly as the two dragged him down the street, toward their home, and once he called Lopez and left the info from the diary, he forgot all about it for the rest of the evening, just getting to know the family, talking little, listening a lot, completely lost when people switched to Spanish, but smiling and nodding as if he was following the conversation. They finally gathered at the table and Mama brought out a bowl of steaming shredded chicken and placed it in front of Papa, who dished it out as people passed their plates around.

“Do you want to lead us in grace tonight?” Papa said, looking at Pete.

“Of course,” he answered in a small, nervous voice. They all folded their hands and lowered their heads, and Pete offered the prayer he’d been taught and his family had always recited, from the time he was a boy. “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, amen.”

“Amen,” the family answered, and Pete looked up to see Mama smiling at him, her eyes once again damp with tears. He felt a catch in his throat and the threat of tears building in his own eyes, but he tamped down the feelings, looking down at his tiny little brown hands and digging his fingers into his palms. He’d promised himself he would never cry, and he didn’t mean to break that promise.

When Pete finally got home that night, he undid the bandage on his chest and let his breasts free, stretching, scratching his butt and then pulling his sweatshirt back on. He felt sleepy from the dinner—some kind of spicy chicken and rice mixture—and was glowing from all the love he’d felt. He’d called Kate and told her all about his amazing day, meeting Sally’s parents, the diary, dinner. Then, he grabbed a beer, curled up with the diary and started to read from page one, a yellow legal pad across his thighs to take notes. Sally had started the diary fresh the day she moved into her apartment, and he smiled reading how excited and scared she was to be growing up and getting on her own, but also scared and sad at the same time. She wanted to be a Rockette and had kept taking dancing classes—she’d seen them on television for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade doing their toy soldier routine when she’d been a little girl, and it had become one of her dreams to one day be a tall, pretty dancer just like them.

He came to the part where she’s decided to try stripping. One of her friends form high-school had started stripping and was making gobs of money, and Sally had finally decided to give it a try—without telling her parents, of course—because she wanted the money to take more acting classes, and she wasn’t making enough working as a hostess. She’d been assured there was no prostitution, that the girls were all treated first rate, and the manager had even told her that “Lots of talent scouts from TV shows come to the club” and many of the girls had gotten acting work through their dancing.

Pete’s heart went out to her as he read that last part. She’d been young and naïve, and she’s believed that she could get discovered and become famous working as a stripper, and her excitement at the prospect just made him fall in love with her even more, as did her entry after he first audition for the Rockettes, when she got the news they hadn’t picked her.

“Everything happens for a reason. I know if I keep working, my dreams will come true. God is just testing me, seeing how strong my faith is, how much I want it, and I am just going to go back to class tomorrow and work harder, learn more and get so good they HAVE TO CHOOSE ME! Daddy always says, fall down seven times, get up eight, and I will always get up again no matter what!”

Pete closed the diary and hugged it to his chest. Salome Sofia, he thought. You incredible girl. Where are you now? Do you still have your faith?

He believed she did. Everything happens for a reason, she’d written. And maybe it did. Maybe there was a reason he now found himself in the body of a young woman, and there was a reason she was going through her own switch and test of faith. But just thinking about the little miracles that had happened so far, Pete found it impossible to believe that God wasn’t acting somehow now, bringing him toward a resolution, a happy ending where he would be a man again and Sally would be reunited with her loving parents and adoring family. 

Pete drifted off to sleep clutching her diary to his chest, and that night in his dreams he was Salome Sofia, a young actress pursuing her dreams in the big city, ambitious and pretty, and she was happy to live just a few blocks from her parents because she loved them, and she knew they loved her, and when she walked into those audition rooms in Manhattan in front of all those PEOPLE-- the BIG PEOPLE who made the decisions, she knew that whatever happened there, she, Peter Sofia Salome O’Malley, would always have her family.

XII

Peter woke the next day, stretched and winced. His breasts felt—tender—and he reached down and gingerly cupped one, lifting it and confirming that it hurt a little, felt a little extra sensitive. He climbed out of bed, newly reminded of their ever present swaying and jiggling, the ridiculous weight of them. Did they actually feel bigger? Padding into the bathroom, he pulled his sweat shirt over his head and dropped it to the floor, then inspected his breasts in the bathroom mirror. They did seem a little bigger, and the left one seemed bigger than the right, giving him a lopsided look. What the hell? What kind of new female insult was thing going to be to his manhood?

Sighing, he pulled down his sweat pants and jockey shorts and sat down on the toilet seat, peeing, daintily passing a wad of toilet paper between his legs when he was done and standing up, looking down at his thighs, he thought they looked a little fatter, too. In fact, he felt like his whole body had somehow swollen during the night. Was it all the beer he’d been drinking? Everything felt wrong. His whole body.

He checked his phone and saw a text for Lopez: Got a hit. Check email.

Already? Pete felt his heart leap, and he hurried to check his email, quickly finding the details of what had come back from the National Crime Database on their Johnny Temp. The most interesting thing, and the one that grabbed his attention most rapidly, was the name and contact information for his last known place of employment: Star Makers Talent Agency. It was in midtown, and with trembling hands Pete picked up his phone and dialed the number. It’s probably disconnected, he thought. I’m sure they’ve closed up shop and moved on by now, but…”

“Star Makers,” a woman’s voice answered, “discovering tomorrow’s stars today. I’m Cady, how can I make your dreams come true?”

“Hello,” Pete said. “I’m trying to reach Johnny Temp?”

“Mr. Temp isn’t available right now. May I ask what this is regards to, miss…?”

“He, um, I met him, and he… told me he wanted to talk to me about representation.”

“And what was your name, miss?”

“Oh. It’s…” Pete hesitated trying to think of a fake name, and then Salome’s stage name just popped out: “It’s Princess Sweet.”
  “Princess?! Oh my God! Johnny has been talking about you so much. He thinks you are amazing!”

“What? Me? Really?”

“Yes, you. You must be a very special girl because, between you and me, Johnny very rarely solicits new clients these days. I mean, he’s so busy with all the actresses he already represents he will only consider someone he thinks is really good.”

“What? Oh, wow,” Pete said in a girlish chirp, just playing along. “I don’t believe it!” 

“You know what? This really is your lucky day because Johnny has an opening at 4:30. I could pencil you in and you could meet with him today.”

“Mr. Temp has an opening today?” Pete was surprised. He’d expected her to tell him that Mr. Temp had taken a leave of absence, or had vanished, or wasn’t available—anything but that he was still working there and would see him today. “I’m not sure about today. It just all seems so sudden,” Pete said. 

“The last girl Johnny signed had a guest star role on Orange is the New Black two days after she signed the contract.”

“That’s… well, okay. 4:30, then.”

“Great! Bring a headshot and resume!”

“Thank you so much!”

“Oh, and, remember. This is your chance to impress Johnny, and you need to look like a movie star if you want to be a movie star. Dress sexy, okay honey?”

“Okay!”

Pete hung up the phone. What to do? Could he be wrong? Maybe Johnny Temp wasn’t the switcher, was just another low rent turd who had coincidently stumbled across Salome’s path around the time she got switched.

It had felt so right, though, starting with the bullshit name. Hell. He didn’t know what to do, so he took a quick shower, trying to clear his head, decide what to do. It seemed, in the end, that this was still his best lead, and whether Johnny was or wasn’t a switcher, Pete decided he wanted to go in and meet the guy. Hell, maybe this could lead to him getting a whole different bust, and what would be so bad about that? There was one big sticking point: dress sexy. He would have to dress as a girl, and he had sworn he would never go girly. It would be the ultimate admission of defeat, the ultimate humiliation to not only have his sex stolen from him, to be trapped in this soft, fat little body, but to dress and live as a woman? 

But Salome was out there somewhere, trapped in God knew what horrible conditions, and he owed it to her to do whatever it took to save her even if that meant putting on a dress. Pete knew what he had to do, knew what he was supposed to do. He would have to swallow his pride and go back on his vow. And he would need help from a woman, a woman who could help him get sexy. He looked at the clock: 8:40. It didn’t seem too early, and thinking about his hairy legs and armpits, he figured he might need more than a little time to do what had to be done, and so he picked up the phone and called the only woman he really felt he could trust.

“Buenos Dias,” Esther said.

“Buenos Dias,” Pete answered, letting his voice go higher and prettier.

“How are you, Sally?”

“Good, and you, Mama?”

“Wonderful.”

“So, Mama, I was wondering, can you help me dress up as a girl?”

“As a girl?”

Pete explained the situation without giving out any details.

“Meet me at Salome’s apartment. I’ll make you sexy.”

“Mama, are you sure you’re okay with this? I don’t want you to do it if it will upset you to see me, you know, as…”

“I see you as a hero. You are doing this to bring my baby home, and I want to help you do that.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mama. Gracias.”

The call ended, Pete sat for a second, his hands clasped at his chest, his heart racing. “I’ll make you sexy.” The words terrified him. The whole thing terrified him more than he could say. He imagined himself, in this body, dressed sexy, showing off all his curves, his soft cinammon skin. He thought about the pictures of Salome on her professional page, how hot she was, how fuckable, and was he really ready to put that body on display? He thought about the growing fascination he’d been feeling for women’s clothes, for pretty things, and he felt that if he went down this path he might never really come back, that the man he’d been would be lost forever.

Looking down at the big, firm breasts straining against the fabric of his t-shirt and remembering he’d once vowed to always keep them strapped down, he shrugged and wondered if that man wasn’t gone already.

I don’t have a choice, he decided. I have to do this for Salome and any other victims, past or future. I am a cop, and I promised to protect and serve. It’s not about revenge, and it sure isn’t about a guy sitting at home in the body of a stripper trying to convince himself he’s some kind of macho man. I have to find Salome, to help her get her life back, and if that means I lose myself in this soft, pretty life, then I will pay that price.

Because if I don’t? If I let my fear and pride keep me from doing what I believe is right then I am not a man anyway.

Later, it all felt like a dream. Lowering himself into a bath full of sudsy, steamy water, taking the Lady Gillette Razor—pink and white—and drawing it down the length of his round, firm calf, shaving away the brown hairs he’d been so proud of keeping despite his sex. Shaving them away in swatches, seeing the glowing brown skin revealed beneath. Once he’d finished with one calf he’d run his hand over the skin and had been shocked at how soft and smooth it felt, how firm the dancer’s muscles beneath the soft skin, still strong even after a month of neglect. Lifting an arm, the weight of his breasts as he did the same for his armpits, getting his body smooth and hairless, the way the world said a woman’s body should be. It’s a disguise, he thought, cover, I am just doing this to same Salome, to save everyone.

When he finished, he stood, the water dripping from his body, between his thighs, down off his round breasts, and he toweled off, drying himself, feeling like a new man as he stepped from the tub newly shorn of all his body hair other than the thatch between his legs and his eyebrows and a bit of stubble on his small, round head.

He wrapped the towel around his body and Mama greeted him with a hug. On the pretty quilt of Salome’s bed lay a delicate little pair panties—emerald green with delicate black lace, and a matching bra. Pete took a deep breath and took the panties in his small hands, then stepped into them and pulled the up his long legs and over his hips, feeling them snug across his sex, his behind, and then he picked up the bra, much prettier and sexier than the more utilitarian white bra Kate had bought for him.  He hated the thought of it, everything it represented to him—his inferiority as a woman, his place in the world now in this body, or the way the world wanted him to be—eye candy, a walking talking sex toy, but yet? Was there maybe more to it? How many times has his old girlfriend told him she dressed for herself?

The bra clasped in the back, and Pete struggled awkwardly for a couple moments, helpless to get his big, bouncing boobs into the little cups while he tried to got the clasp fixed. “Everything okay?” Mama called from the other room, where she’d retreated to give the clearly bashful man some privacy.  

“Um… help?” Pete answered.

Mama came in and helped Pete get into his bra, noticing him wince a little and touch his breasts gingerly.

“Is something wrong?”

Blushing, feeling vulnerable and ashamed in front of Mama in this body and the tiny little bra and panties, Pete said, “My boobs hurt.”

“When did it start?”

“This morning. I woke up and they felt—puffy. My whole body felt puffy for some reason.”

Mama laughed and hugged him, again Pete feeling awkward, his nearly naked pressed against her, and he shook his head saying, “what’s funny?”

“I’m sorry,” Mama said. “It’s just that, well, you have the PMS.”

“PM…S? But, I had that already, like, maybe…”

“A month ago?” Mama raised an eyebrow. “It happens every month.”

“Oh,” Pete said, feeling another full body blush coming over him as he self-consciously brought his knees together. “Am I going to…?”

“It’s part of being a woman, Sally.”

“I know, but I mean, do I need a… plug? Today?”

“A plug? PMS usually starts a day before you flow, but maybe just to be safe we should get a tampon for you.”

Pete felt gross and embarrassed, more so than ever, and the idea of going out now while  he was on the rag, it just seemed like the final straw, and he was feeling more vulnerable than ever as it was. “Oh, God, maybe this is a bad idea, then. I mean, going on this thing when I am, um,, you know… flowing?”

“I never missed a day of work for 20 years. You can do this to. Just be like a woman and be strong.” 

The matter settled, Pete sound found himself wiggling into a little green dress that seemed three sizes too small, and then Mama had him sitting while she used carefully did his makeup. “I did this for Salome when she went to her first prom. I did cosmetology when I first came to New York. And manicures. I made her so pretty!”

“You just did the first?”

“Yes,” Mama said, wistfully. “Just the first. Then, she got sick.”

“What?”

“Sick with disease called teen-ager.”

“Oh,” Pete said, laughing. “Of course. Kids, right?”

“Now stop talking so I can do your mouth.”

Pete sat passively, his hands in his lap as his lips were painted with red lipstick. Mama put mascara on his lashes, eye shadow, eyeliner, blush on his cheeks. “Okay, missy. Now, you are pretty, too, but we need to do something with those nubs you have for finger nails. What are you  a chipmunk? You eat your nails and stuff them into your rosy round cheeks?”

Pete laughed and looked down at his jagged nails, which he had been chewing on. Mama went to work, and when she was done Pete found himself looking down at long, glossy red nails with flat, white tips, and Mama had also found Salome’s jewelry box and he now had delicate bracelets flashing at his slender wrists, rings on his fingers. Finally, she took a cross on a delicate gold chain and draped it around his long, slender neck, the cold metal nestling in Pete’s firm, round cleavage. On his feet he wore a pair a sandals with wedge heels. He had no clue how to walk in heels, and they had settled on this as being the best he would be able to manage.

“Come. Look at yourself.”

“No,” Pete said, shaking his head. “I don’t want to see myself like this.”

“Why not? You look so beautiful!”

Pete imagined himself in the mirror, the image of Salome in her prom dress popping into his mind—a gorgeous, glowing, smooth, smiling vivacious specimen of young womanhood—and it terrified him that he might look in the mirror, and see himself as a stunning young woman, and that he might like it. So he shook his head and said, “No. Please. I can’t explain, but I think it’s better if I don’t see myself like this.”

“Okay,” Mama said. “Now, walk across the room and sit down.”

Pete walked across the room and then stopped in front of the chair, looking back at Mama.

“Try,” she said.

He plopped down awkwardly and laughed at how clumsy and awkward he felt.

Esther shook her head, covered her eyes and said, “Mama Mia!”

“Maybe I can just stand the whole time?”

“No. I teach you.”

I have to get this, Pete thought. Watching Mama walk, turn and sit as gracefully as a cat, he saw again the resemblance between she and Salome, and he smiled thinking of her when she was a young, pretty girl. 

“Now you,” Mama said.

I have to get this for Salome. I have to allow myself to get this, to be that graceful. Because he could feel all the old male impulses in him, all his macho ideas fighting against all of this, his bra and panties, the dress, and now the idea of walking like a girl, sitting like a girl, acting like a girl.

As a boy, it had been one of the ultimate insults to be called a girl, for his dad or the other boys to say, “You’re acting like a girl.”

But now he needed to act like a girl, and that father was gone, had disowned him, and now he had Esther, Mama Esther, who looked at him with so much hope and pride, who’d been so welcoming and made him feel so good, who wanted nothing more to see her daughter again, and he knew, again, that he owed to them all to be the best girl he could be.

And so he walked, letting his hips roll, he walked in little, mincing steps, his arms out prettily, and he turned and lowered himself to the chair, knees together, smoothing his skirt under his behind, and then he put his small hands in his lap and smiled at Esther and said, “Good?”

“So much better! Just like a girl!”

And Pete felt himself blush with pride at the compliment.

Mama handed Pete a purse, and then she helped him into one of Salome’s winter coats—a hip length, faux leather jacket with a wide, white belt that emphasized his tiny waist and hugged his breasts. And then he found himself standing there in his dress, holding his purse, ready to head out the door, and he felt—scared. He couldn’t deny it. He was scared to go out like this, painted and sparkling with jewelry, his long legs exposed.

“What’s wrong?” Mama asked.

“I’m scared,” Pete said. “This is the first time I’ve ever gone out dressed as a girl.”

Mama took his hand. “Is normal, I think, to be scared when doing something new. I will come with you.”

“No,” Pete said. “That’s not necessary. I can’t ask you to put yourself at risk.”

“Please,” Mama said. “I used to work the midnight shift at Port Authority. Danger! Besides,” she said, looking up at Pete, squeezing his hand. “What kind of mother lets her daughter go to meet the talent agent alone? I should be there.”

Pete again felt overwhelmed with emotion, at how warm and caring Esther was, how much he needed her and wanted her to come, and so he nodded and said, “Okay, Mama.” And then, jokingly, he added, “Just don’t embarrass me!”

“Oh! Now you really do sound like a girl!”

And so Pete and Esther walked arm and arm out into the cold city, and feeling the cold air swirl around his legs and then blow up his skirt, Pete squealed and said, “My legs are freezing!”

“Stop complaining,” Mama said. “You sounds like a boy.”

When they arrived at the talent agency, Pete and Mama found a small lobby crammed with young women—all pretty, some stunning. The faces came from all over the world — a delicate Asian girl, a dreadlocked beauty with a Caribbean flare, Latinas and a golden haired woman who reminded Pete of his old partner, Joe, and was probably Eastern European. Some of the others were there with older women Pete assumed were their mothers, and two sat next to older men. Pete felt the tension immediately, like the tension you would feel at the gym when you saw another guy who might be as strong as you, and he checked out the other girls, taking in their skin and faces, their legs and their clothes.

As Mama helped him out of his coat and he stood there for a minute, adjusting his skirt, he glanced at the girls and saw looks of appreciation or jealousy, and he smiled. “I’ll tell them you’re here,” Mama said, and then watched, pleased, as Pete gracefully slipped into his seat, his legs crossed neatly at the knee. Then Pete, not liking the tension in the room turned to the Asian girl next to him and say, “You look so pretty!”

The girl smiled and said, “Thanks. I love your dress.” And then the other girls joined in, and soon they were chatting amiably even as, one by one, they were called back to their meetings. Pete’s time came, and he stood up, nervously tugged down the hem of his skirt, and followed the receptionist down a narrow, dimly lit hall to a small meeting room—a table and two chairs, a palm tree in the corner, framed posters on the walls of Jessica Alba, Lucy Liu and Rhianna. As Pete sat, once again feeling proud of himself for managing such a ladylike seating, the girl said, “Mr. Temp will be with you in just a moment, Miss Sweet. Would you like something to drink? Wine? A latte?”

What would a girl like Salome want? Pete wondered, and then just said, “A cappuccino?”

“Of course.”

Pete’s heart was racing. Now, sitting in the little room in his dress, feeling half naked and vulnerable, it all seemed like such a terrible idea. What was I think? He looked down at the soft globes of his cleavage, lifted and squeezed and right there for all the world to see. He smoothed his skirt and tried to breath, to calm himself, but the feeling of his breasts rising and falling with each breath, the slender silk straps on his shoulders, made him all the more conscious that he was a young woman, dressed and primped and painted, and what if the man who walked through that door was HIM—the man who had forced his fingers into Pete’s, -- body—and--- It is going to be me, my old body. I know it. He’s going to walk in here, see me, and finish what he started… it all rushed back, the feeling of the man of top of him, the man’s hand on his belly and then sliding down under his panties, down, down between his legs and then into him.

The door opened. Pete turned and saw a man in a black suit, red tie, and as the man circled the table, Pete looked up at the man’s face, ready to scream, but no. It was a face he didn’t recognize at all, it wasn’t HIM. But it also wasn’t Johnny Temp.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” the man said in a vague, hard to place accent, reaching out a hand. “I am Jason Newbody.”

Pete offered his little hand, and the man took it, bringing it to his lips and kissing the back of Pete’s hand, looking up as he did so to gauge Pete’s reaction. 

Pete resisted the urge to pull away, instead giggling nervously.

“You look terrified,” Jason said, staring right into Pete’s eyes.

 “I am a little nervous,” Pete answered, feeling that it was best to the honest. The man was still gently holding Pete’s hand, and it was making Pete feel even more uncomfortable. “Where is Johnny Temp?” Pete asked, pulling his hand away.

“He told me to tell you he is very sorry he couldn’t make it, Princess. He was really mad because he really thinks you’re going to be something special.”

“Me? Really?”

“Oh, yes. He called you the next Jessica Alba,” Jason said, pointing to the poster.

“Me?” Pete said, looking at the hot poster of Alba from one of her early roles- Honey in some movie about a dancer his girlfriend had forced him to watch one might. 

“But I disagree.”

“Oh,” Pete said, faking disappointment.

“I think you are much, much more beautiful.” And as he said beautiful, he let his eyes drop from Pete’s face to caress his breasts.

Pete didn’t have to fake the blush as the man’s lustful look sent shivers through his female shape. He’d never had a man look at him like that, and that hard, hungry, masculine energy lit up his little body and made him self-consciously squeeze his legs together.

Jason looked back up and met Pete’s wide eyes, and seeing that Pete was clearly a little rattled he smiled, placed his briefcase on the table and undid the clasps. “I know talent when I see it,” Jason said. “I don’t want Johnny to sign you, and you will be much better off with me.”

He pulled a sheaf of papers from the briefcase and slid them across the table in front of Pete, then held up a gold pen. “I want you as my client, Miss Sweet. I am offering you an exclusive contract for my services, and my personal promise that I will do everything in my power to make you the biggest star in Hollywood.”

“I don’t know,” Pete said, feeling like his chance of getting usable info was slipping away, that once he refused to sign the contract, because there was no way in hell he was going to sign the contract, they would show him the door and that would be it.

Jason just held the flashing pen out to him, staring him in the eyes. “It’s normal to be afraid, Princess. I would be surprised if you weren’t. But it’s the girls who have the courage to take that leap that win in this world, that get what they want. You can’t have your moment in the spotlight if you never get on stage.”

And just then the secretary walked in with two paper cups and placed them on the table, looking at the pen she said, “I knew you would love her.”

“You were so right,” Jason said. “I’ve never been this excited about a potential client.”

“Everyone here is talking about you,” the girl said. “We all want you to be on our team so bad.”

“Tell me what I need to do to get you to take this pen, sign your name and be the star I know you can be.”

“Um,” Pete smiled and shook his head, playing the nervous girl. “I really need to use the ladies room?”

“Oh, just sign the papers, and I’ll take you,” the girl said.

“I need to go right now!”

Jason nodded, and the girl said, “Okay. Let me show you the way.”

The whole way down the hall, the girl chattered at Pete, he responding back with polite sounds to indicate he was listening, but he was actually glancing around, checking out the space, looking for file cabinets or accessible computers, and then just as they reached the end of the hall where the women’s room was located, he saw it—an empty cubicle at the back of the office with an open computer.

“When you’re done, can you find your way back to Jason?” The girl said. “I have to see to some other clients.”

“Okay,” Pete said.

The girl then smiled and said, “It will just break my heart if you don’t sign with Jason. He really is the best, and, well, I like you and want to be your friend! Please tell me you’ll sign when you get back.”

“Oh! Thanks! Okay. I’ll sign.”

“Omigod! You’ll be so glad you did!”

Sucker, Pete thought, as they hugged, his big breasts pressing against the other woman’s. Then, he went into the bathroom, waited, peaked out to see that the girl had left and slipped into the little cubicle where he’d seen the computer. He knew he didn’t have much time, so he found his way to the company’s Internal network and started skimming over the sub-directories even while he once again prayed for guidance. He decided to search for himself, Peter O’Malley, carefully peeking at the board with his long fingernails, but as he started to type in his name, he felt a strong need to search for Salome instead. That was why he was here, after all, to find her, and so he typed in her stage name, Salome Sofia Aragon, and hit ENTER.

Seconds seemed like hours, and the search came back empty. Shit. He glanced around the corner of the cubicle. Nothing. So, biting his lip, he typed in Princess Sweet instead, which immediately began to bring back various hits from the company servers. I should have brought a flash drive, he thought, as he once again just went with that little voice that seemed to have been guiding him all along, and he clicked on a spreadsheet called Poetic Justice. He reached down to pull his cell phone out of his pocket, but instead his manicured hand found only the soft flesh of his hip in that tight little dress, and he remembered, "Shit! It's in my purse!" Which, of course, he'd left with Mama in the lobby. 

Skimming over the document, he came across Salome’s name, and there was an address as well. Pete recited it to himself three times, trying to drill it into his brain, and then feeling like he’d been there too long, he closed the windows, stood up and turned to hurry back to the meeting room, bumping right into Jason as he turned, stumbling, Jason grabbing his wrist and pulling Pete to him, Pete’s breasts crushed against Jason’s hard, flat chest. “What were you doing?” Jason said.

“Nothing,” Pete chirped. “I just decided to check my email.”

Jason pushed Pete back into the cubicle, one hand wrapped firmly around Pete’s slender wrist while the other snaked around his waist. “Just checking your email? Do really expect me to believe that you little bitch?”

The b-word was like a slap across Pete’s face, and he could tell Jason was not the kind to play games. The feeling of being so powerless in the other man’s arms filled Pete with terror, bringing back the terrible feeling he had when he first became a woman, and he struggled weakly as Jason pushed him back against the desk in the little cubicle. “Stop,” Pete said. “You’re hurting me!” 

“I know,” Jason said, “and I’m going to hurt you a lot more unless you tell me what the hell you were doing.”

Pete was now against the desk, with Jason pushing him backward, and Pete lifted one leg, reaching down to grab his shoe. “You better back off,” Pete said, trying to put some steel into his little girl’s voice. “I’m a cop.”

“A cop?” Jason said, putting a hand on Pete’s breast and squeezing. “Since when do they send little 19 year old girls into a business without a warrant, doll face? Hmmmn. Maybe I should smash that pretty little face of yours, teach you a lesson about sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.”

The feeling of the man’s hand on his breast, the weight of him pushing his way between Pete’s bare thighs, filled him with fear-- the threat to his face filled him with rage, and with his free hand he slipped the sandal off his foot, the sandal with that thick, wooden wedge heel and then Pete said, “Fuck you,” and brought his shoe up and into Jason’s nose, smashing it with all the strength he had in his little body. The shoe connected with a crunching sound and Jason recoiled with a grunted "fuck!"

Pete scurried to his feet, glancing to see Jason with his hands over his nose, blood oozing between his fingers, and then Pete kicked off his other shoe and bolted from the cubicle, racing back toward the lobby as fast as he could in his tight little dress, his breasts bouncing with each hurried step.

Jason recovered, shaking away the stars in his eyes, and he stumbled into the hall, looking to see the girl in the green dress running toward the front door. If she escaped, it could ruin all their plans, and even as he started after her, he yelled, "Stop her! Stop her now!"

Pete ran, the door at the end of the hall getting closer, closer. The doors to a couple of the little meeting rooms cracked open and curious men looked out, but Pete sprinted past them as they looked on, confused. Reaching the door, he pulled it open, glancing back just to see Jason closing in on him, and he screamed and run through the door, hurrying into the lobby crowded now with a new group of women and... no sign of Mama?

"Princess?" The receptionist said, coming around the desk, her eyes now cold and threatening.

Pete ran for the glass doors at the entrance as Jason burst into the room, shoving them open and then awkwardly racing down the hall, his heart racing, and he came to the elevators, pushed frantically on the button but Jason was running toward him, closing in, so Pete screamed again and turned, running toward the stairs, his legs flashing as he got closer, closer and then just as Pete was about to get there, to shove the door open and race down the stairs toward safety, the door opened, and HE stood there in the body of Pete O'Malley.

XIII

Pete slid to a stop and stood there, frozen, gazing up at himself in terror. HE looked down at Pete, a smile creeping over his face. "Hello, there, pretty girl," the man said, letting his eyes drop to Pete's heaving breasts, and then back up to his face. "Going somewhere in a hurry?"

Jason was walking up behind him, and Pete shook his head, his lips trembling. "No..." he said. "Stay away from me...."

The man strode forward, Pete looked around in a panic. There were big, tall men on either side of him, he was trapped, and he screamed even as he felt something warm dribbling down his thigh, and he realized he was peeing himself in terror, and Jason and The Man both started to laugh.

Pete struggled helplessly as the two men dragged him down the hall, but instead of taking him back into the Talent Agency, the opened a steel door with the name "Various Enterprises" on the door and shoved him in, dragging him to a small, dark room and tying him to a chair and then gagging him. "Who the fuck is she?" Jason asked, holding a wad of toilet paper to his broken nose.

"This sexy little girl is none other than Officer Peter O'Malley, whose body I now wear."

"Oh."

"Yes," the man said, pulling up an old, metal office chair and putting a hand on Pete's thigh. Pete made a small, mewling noise, tried to pull away, but he was tied down tight. Helpless. 

"Well, fuck her good for me, then." Jason said.

"I'll do that, brother- sister. You can count on it."

With that, Jason left, and Pete found himself alone with HIM. The man's hand was on the inside of Pete's thigh, caressing the soft flesh, and he now slipped it higher, letting it slide underneath Pete's skirt. "You are a very stupid little bitch coming here," HE said. "Very stupid."

Pete struggled helplessly against the ropes holding his arms and legs, trying to get free, even as he felt HIS finger now slipping further along the thing and gently, just ever so gently, rubbing up and down against Pete's vulva.

"No," Pete tried to say. "Please." But what came out of him sounding like soft moaning.

"Oh, I see you remember my friend, the finger. You like it when he plays with your slit, don't you, you little slut?"

Pete shook his head.

"Oh, he denies it, but I remember how wet his tight little pussy got last time we played with him. And look at the way he'd dressed. I'd say this man has become a nasty little bitch who wants to get fucked."

Pete kept shaking his head, terrified, ashamed.

"No? No? Well, how about we make a deal? How about I agree not to fuck you silly, but you have to do something for me?"

"What?" Pete tried to say.

"You give me a blow job. honey. Just like the little slut you are, and I'll leave that pussy of yours alone."

Pete shook his head. No. Never.

So, HE just laughed, took his other hand and pushed Pete's skirt up over his hips, then he grabbed Pete's panties and yanked them down to his knees. Pete squirmed, tried to scream, struggled to get his hands lose, and seeing his panic and fear HE laughed all the more, and then he stood up and undid his belt, letting his pants drop to the floor, revealing his stiff member poking against his red boxers.

Pete closed his eyes, terrified, still struggling against his bonds, and then he heard a slamming sound, and looking up he saw Lopez charge into the room and deliver a powerful blow to HIM, then another and another, and soon HE was crumpled on the ground, and Lopez hurried over and pulled the gag down from Pete's mouth and said, "You okay?"

"Yes," Pete said, his voice higher-pitched even then usual, his eyes wide, his whole body electrified to be in the presence of such a man. "Oh my god, thank you so much for saving me!"

Lopez put a hand on Pete's cheek, looked at him, feeling the same energy pass between them, the same magnetic pull, and he was confused and surprised as he stared into his partner's big, pretty green eyes, and he wanted to kiss him very badly, but it was wrong, and so he started to pull away, to go around and untie Pete's hands, but Pete whispered, "kiss me," in a pretty little voice full of need and want, and Lopez couldn't resist, so he leaned down and kissed the soft, pillow lips of the young woman his friend had become.

Pete clung to the arm of Adrian Lopez as the two left the building. A team of cops had arrived, and they had taken Pete's body into custody being careful not to let him touch anyone, employing new protocols that had been developed in case they ever managed to corner a Switcher. They'd cautiously gone into the talent agency, but Jason had vanished.

Pete could feel the eyes of the cops drinking in his body, squeezed into that little dress, and he heard occasional comments from people who knew who he was-- comments about how he'd turned into a sissy, or a girl, or that he had gone nuts and started working as a prostitute, but it all made him even more clingy, and he just wanted to hang onto Lopes' strong arm and feel safe, and as long as he was with Lopes he didn't care what anyone would say about him.

Mama Esther was there, too. It turned out she'd gotten nervous when Pete had been inside for so long, and when she'd asked the receptionist the girl had been cold and there had been something there-- something that didn't seem right-- so she'd gone out and called Lopez, asked him to come over because she thought Pete was in trouble.

And thank God, because he had been in trouble, but he wasn't anymore.

Lopez drove Pete home, and as he pulled the car up in front of the building Pete turned to him and put a hand on Lopez' forearm and in a tiny little voice, he said, "Will you come up with me? Check my apartment? I'm scared."

Lopez couldn't say no to that face, that voice, and so he walked the little female up to her apartment, and he looked into her closets, checked the bathroom, even looked under the bed all while Pete stood there in his little green dress, nervously biting his lip.

"It all checks out, buddy."

"Thanks," Pete said, holding his arms out for a hug.

"Pete, I don't know what's happening between us right now. The kiss, and now, well, you've been through a lot, and maybe..."

Pete felt himself flush with shame, for the way he'd been acting, feeling-- a little-- but mostly because Lopez was rejecting his advances, and he turned away and said, "You have a girlfriend. I'm sorry."

"No, I don't."

"What?"

"We're separated."

Pete stood there, looking up at the man who'd saved him, who'd always been there for him, and he wanted so badly now to be held by him, to kiss him, to be with him and as close to him as possible. He smiled, put his shoulders back, his breasts out, and said, "Hold me. Just hold me, Adrian."

Adrian stepped forward and gathered Pete into his arms, gathered that soft, warm little female into his arms, Pete's big, firm breasts against his chest, and he kissed Pete in the neck, nibbling gently. Pete sighed, lifting one leg and rubbing the inside of his thigh against Lopez, and then Lopez let a hand slide up Pete's tummy and cup one of his breasts even while he kissed his way up Pete's slender neck and found those warm, soft lips. Pete dug his nails into Lopez back, finding the other man's tongue, and they kissed, and kissed again, and Lopez put both hands on Pete's ass and squeezed and Pete saw stars. Lopez lifted Pete off his feet, and Pete wrapped his legs around Lopez waist.

"You're so strong," Pete gasped between kisses, his partner's strength giving Pete a thrill like he'd never felt before, and then Lopez tossed Pete onto his bed, and Pete smiled up between his thighs, looking at the powerful bull of a man and he didn't need to speak because his wide, wet eyes said it all.

Lopez crawled forward, grabbing Pete's wrists and pinning his slender little arms above his head. Pete arched his back and giggled, now loving the feeling of being so powerless and under a man's control, a man he wanted to have on him, in him, and Pete could feel himself getting hot and wet, and then Lopez was reaching behind Pete, unzipping Pete's dress and peeling it off him, and Pete was there, just in his bra and panties, his breasts firm and nipples erect, and Lopez let his eyes caress Pete's brown, smooth, curvaceous body, and then in one effortless move he had Pete's bra off, and Pete felt a thrill of excitement as he showed his breasts to his lover, and he saw the approval in Lopez' eyes as the other man began to kiss Pete's nipples, then squeezed his boob and began to suck on one, his mouth hot and wet, and Pete moaned softly as his body flashed with pleasure, and he wanted it, needed it inside him. 

"I'm ready," Pete said.

"I'm not," Lopez answered, though Pete could feel Lopez hard and stiff against his soft thigh. "I'm going to take you to heaven." Lopez shoved his hand inside Pete's pants then, found Pete's hot, wet slit, and then, probing, found Pete's clit, and when he touched it Pete's eyes went wide, he arched his back and whispered, "Omigod. Omigod! OMIGOD!" Lopez worked Pete's clit while also teasing his nipple, and Pete bit his lip, once again digging his nails into Lopez back, and desperate, Pete said, "Please. Please. Please."

Finally, Lopez pushed himself inside Pete, and Pete gasped as he was penetrated, his whole body tingling with pleasure, and as Lopez began to rock back and forth, sliding in and out, Pete began to thrust his hips, the two finding a rhythm, and Pete cried out "deeper! Harder!" And Lopez responded, getting so deep into Pete that Pete finally screamed in pleasure, tears rolling from the corners of his eyes as he felt his first female orgasm explode within him.

After, Pete lay on top of Lopez, idly making little spirals in the Lopez' chest hair with the tips of his long fingernails. Pete felt so calm and relaxed, so happy. Lopez had one arm stretched out to the side, while his other hand was on Pete's firm ass. "Why did you break up with your girlfriend?" Pete asked in a playful and pretty voice.

"She broke up with me," Lopez said, looking at the gorgeous face of the woman, his woman, his former partner. "Because during sex I yelled out another woman's name."

"Who?" Pete said.

"Yours."

"Mine?"

"Right before I came, I called her Pete."

"Bullshit," Pete said, thinking Lopez was teasing him, but when he tried to roll off, Lopez held him close.

"I'm not lying. I fell in love with you the first time I saw you-- the new you, this you. I started thinking about us, together, and now here we are, you and me, and I just think it was meant to be, Pete. I think this was supposed to happen, so we could find and love each other."

Pete started crying as he cupped Lopez face, feeling the man's stubble, enjoying the musky smell of him, and he let the tears fall as he leaned down and kissed Lopez, because it was okay for him to cry, and to feel, and to need a man, because Pete was a woman now, and it was all just as it had been meant to be.

When it came time for Lopez to head off for work, Peter tilted his head back and accepted a goodbye kiss from his lover.  "Be safe," Lopez said, running a finger along Pete's jaw.

"I will."

After, Pete say down to pee, laughing at how terrible he'd once found it, how humiliating that he had to sit down to pee, just like a girl. He, men, made so much of that, like it was such a big deal, such absolute proof of their superiority, when it was really just nothing. They should probably sit down just like us, Pete thought as he wiped himself. Then they wouldn't make such a mess!

He showered, slipped into the white bra Kate had bought for him, and then into his dowdy, baggy sweats, no longer feeling right in them, no longer feeling he needed to hide in their shapelessness. And yet, he wasn't out of danger. They knew he was, knew he was on to them, and he had to follow up his lead as he sought to find Salome. He carried his oatmeal and his coffee to his computer, sat down, and closing his eyes to remember the name and address he'd seen, he sent off a hopeful prayer and typed the information into Google, hardly even aware of his long fingernails.

The address turned out to be an orphanage out in Far Rockaway. Pete emailed the information to Lopez. He didn't feel safe anymore going out alone, especially on this investigation. It wasn't proper procedure even for a male officer, let alone a female. His experience at the talent agency had left him aware of how vulnerable he was now, had forced him to face it, and while he was determined not to live in fear all the time, he was also smart enough to realize that a young woman would be foolish to go after a group of rapists alone, especially when she didn't have to.

No. He would wait until Lopez was free, and then they would go and investigate the orphanage together. In the meantime, he grabbed his phone and called his sister, Kate.

"Hey, Pete," Kate said. "What's up?"

"What's up?" Pete said. "Well, for starters, guess who got laid last night?"

"Laid? What? You? I mean, was it with a girl?"

"Um, no, sister of mine, it was most definitely not a girl. I decided to take a ride on-- how do you girls put it? On the pogo stick, perhaps? And, um, well, I like it."

"Pete, well, I am totally surprised to hear this-- wait, are you fucking with me?"

"No. I am not."

"Well, them, um, details?"

And so the two sisters talked, like they had never talked before, and Pete again found himself feeling closer to someone than he'd ever felt, and he and his sister really got to know each other for the first time as they talked about men and sex and life.

XIV

The moment the little seven year old girl walked into the lobby, looked up at Pete and froze, Pete knew it was Salome. She look scared, and Pete smiled and said, "I'm not the one who stole your body."

"You know who I am?" Salome said.

"Yes."

Lopez showed her his badge. "We're with the NYPD."

"My hair," Salome said, putting his small fingers to her lips. She had big, dark eyes and long dark hair-- she looked like an Indian girl, and was extremely pretty.

"Oh," Pete said, rubbing his nearly bald head. "Yeah. I had it shaved off."

"Why?"

"I used to be a guy."

They showed her the newspaper report, and once he told her about himself, Salome remembered him from the beat, said she felt sorry for him because he'd always seemed nice. "The other girl is here, too," Salome said. "The Russian. I tried to tell them, we both did, but they both thought we were just little girls playing some game, living in some fantasy."

"Well, your parents have been very worried about you, and they are going to be thrilled that we found you, that we can bring you home."

"Mama and Papa? You can take me to them?"

"Yes." And with that the little girl Salome had become threw herself into Pete's arms, and he hugged her strong little body to his breasts. "I hope I can get my body back soon," Salome said, running a hand over Pete's stubbled skull. "Get my life back! I'm sure you feel the same way!"

Pete and Adrian Lopez exchanged a pained glance, the realization sinking in, and Pete smiled at Salome. "Of course."

"It must have been hard for a guy to find himself in such a pretty girl's body!"

"It was very hard," Pete said, taking Salome by the hand, but she pulled it free. 

"I'm 19," Salome said. "Don't treat me like a child."

Salome had been switched into a little Indian girl named Anji, but as soon as Mama and Papa saw her, they knew her, recognized her, and they all hugged and cried together, Pete and Adrian included.

That night, Pete and Adrian made love again-- slow, tender, sad love. Both of them knew it was probably for the last time, that Pete would soon be back in his body, that Salome would be back in hers, and that their love would come to an end. After, they held each other and wept. "Maybe he won't switch you back," Adrian said. "Or, you could stay in this body. The law says, right? That you are your body. You are legally Salome now, and she is Anji."

"No," Pete said. "It wouldn't be right. I promised her parents. I owe it to them. And what kind of man would I be if I tried to steal her body?"

"But I love you. This you. The woman you've become."

"And I love you, too, but I have to do what's right."

He was in a padded cell, wearing a straight jacket. They'd been careful not to let him touch anyone. He'd tried slamming himself into the walls in the solitary cell they'd put him in at holding, hoping a medic would come, and he could escape. Now, he sat on the floor smiling at Pete, Salome, and Adrian.

"So, you want me to switch you back, eh? Well, what's in it for me?"

"A new life. Freedom."

"Oh? I switch myself into the body of that little girl and you just let me walk? Knowing what a menace I am? I don't believe that. As a child, an orphan, I bet the government could just make me vanish, turn me into a lab rat. No. No thanks to that."

"Well, so much for that," Adrian said, putting an arm around Pete's waist.

"Wait," Salome said. "Please. I never did anything to you. Just switch me back. Give me back my life."

"Oh," He answered, smiling. "Now that is interesting. Now that is a proposition I can get behind."

"What?" Pete said, not sure he understood what was being proposed.

"I switch you into that pretty little girl," He said, grinning. "You become Anji, and Salome drops the charges, meaning sooner or later I walk out of here as Pete O'Malley."

"The government could still turn you into a lab rat," Adrian said. 

"I like my chances better, and besides, I want to see if this cop is really the hero he pretends to be. How about, tough guy? Want to rescue the fair maiden? Then you become a little girl."

"This is bullshit," Adrian said.

"Please," Salome said, tears in her eyes. She looked up at Pete and took his hand. "Please."

Pete nodded. It had all been leading up to this; he knew that now. He'd said he would do anything to bring Salome home, to return her to her parents and her life, and now the time had come for him to give it all away, his manhood, his womanhood, his lover and his old and new lives, all of it. 

"No," Adrian said. "She needs time to think about this."

"Now or never," He said, chuckling. "This offer expires in thirty seconds."

"You fucking prick," Adrian said, punching the wall.

"No," Pete said. "It's okay. This is what I have to do, Adrian. I love you more than I've ever loved anyone in my life, but this is what I have to do. What kind of man would I be if I said no?"

He looked down at the little girl, saw the tears of relief in her eyes, and he hugged her and said, "But I want you to promise me something, Salome Sofia."

"What?"

"That you are going to practice and work and go out there and become a Rockette just like you always dreamed of."

"Yes," she said with a laugh. "Yes. I will."

"Pete, we only have her out temporarily. She, you'd have to go back to the orphanage tomorrow. You could lose everything."

"I know," Pete said. "I know."

"Why are you doing this?" Adrian said. "Why did you do any of it?"

"Telling that wasn't part of the deal," HE answered. "Now let's make someone a hero, shall we?"

XV

The next day, Adrian, Carlos, Esther and Salome dropped Pete off at the orphanage. He was wearing a sweat suit, but it wasn't baggy. It was white and powder blue, from Juicy Couture's line of clothes for girls. The group of them said their goodbyes, then wept as he walked up the steps of the building and stopped in front of the big, wooden door. Reaching up with both of his tiny hands, Pete grabbed the handle and pulled with all of his might, slowly, slowly getting the door to swing open. Adrian started up the steps to help, but Pete turned his head, long black hair swishing across his back, and said, "I can do it. I'm not a child." 

With the door finally open, he stood for a moment, holding it open with his thin little body, and he smiled sadly, waved and said "goodbye" before turning and walking away, the big wooden door swinging shut behind him slowly, inevitably and finally closing without a sound.

 END