One Word and One Year, by Karin Bishop

Part 7

Chapter 16: At the Pool, One Year Later

“Hey, Ramses has a new CD out,” I said to Taylor.

“God, I am so over those guys,” Taylor said. She rolled over onto her tummy and reached behind her to undo the clasp of her bikini. “That last CD was so lame! Who wants to hear a hard rock band that’s gone all ballads? Ever since they lost Ded, they lost everything.”

Taylor and I had been swimming all day, or at least laying out by the pool all day. I reversed my own position on the lounge chair; I’d been laying on my stomach with my bikini top undone, so I reached and clasped it and rolled over onto my back, pulling the straps down alongside the cups. As always, there was a pleasant moment of experiencing my breasts. They were small but definitely there, two little mounds with nipples like cherries on a sundae. I’d read that description somewhere and it still made me giggle.

It was funny that I didn’t want my straps to leave tan lines. Last summer, once my family allowed me to live as Allison, one of the first shopping trips with Mom had yielded three swimsuits, two of them bikinis. I set out to specifically develop bikini tan lines, since they were an unquestionable mark of a girl. It was tough at first because Mom and I both burn very easily because we’re so fair-skinned. I’d lay out by our pool, drenched in oil and smelling like a coconut, and was just amazed every moment at how wonderfully my life was turning out.

Taylor brought me back to the here and now. “Allie, you absolutely have to hear Silvershine. They’re so hot!”

“Hot like great music, or hot like in … to look at?”

“Both! They’re outta LA, and oh, God–I saw their new video, and the lead singer … I got moist! I swear to God, Allie, I just about came right in front of my TV!”

To be a girl now, with Taylor, was to experience sexuality in an entirely new way. I was so naíve last year, thinking how quiet and demure girls were, but once I was accepted as ‘just another girl’–as Chelsea had put it just before she moved away–wow was I educated quickly! Even though we were just teen girls and virgins, we were consumed with sexual interest in boys. Their bodies, their voices, the way they moved … just the whole maleness of them was amazing! The first time I experienced Teen Girl Urges was at the mall with Taylor and Amber, and we all saw a really cute guy over by American Eagle.

Taylor said, “I want to do that one,” with a lust in her voice I’d never heard before.

Amber said, “After I’m done fucking his brains out, you can have him!”

I blushed furiously and kept quiet and then half-joked, “He’s hot, but I bet he stuffs,” looking at the bulge at his crotch, and we all three giggled and that was it; I was ‘just another girl’. Still, it was jarring sometimes, because while the hormones the doctors had me on were working their magic, I couldn’t do anything about it. Of course, that worked as a really perverse kind of birth control … not that I could get pregnant, anyway.

And it was strange, but that thought always saddened me …

Taylor said, “So, are your folks doing anything special for … you know, your anniversary?”

It was one year to the day since I had come home dressed as a girl for the family conference. “No, not tonight; you know that. Jake’s at Northwestern and Daddy’s out of town on that conference thing.”

My wonderful big brother had graduated and I was so proud of him–and I got a special new dress for his graduation!–and he’d been accepted by Northwestern and Purdue but was touring both to decide. I think he was leaning toward Northwestern anyway, because Ashley was at the University of Chicago, going into psychology like she’d always wanted. And Daddy had moved into consulting and his business had taken off in a big way, but he was often at conferences now. Even though we had more money now, I missed having him around.

***

I thought back to that night a year ago, after we’d had our family conference. Mom had joined me in my bedroom. We’d looked at it, together, with fresh eyes. She was right, of course; it could use paint and a vanity. We kicked around some ideas for colors as I got undressed; the discussion covered the nerves I felt, to be undressing as a girl in front of my mother for the first time.

Mom tilted her head. “I’m thinking lilac and light purple, like the outfit you had on when I first saw you.”

“Mom, that was only today, you know.”

“Yes, but a lifetime ago,” she said, and it was true. Amazingly true!

“I like those colors. If we can find a vanity in white, maybe?”

“And if we can match the wall latex to enamel, maybe.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Baby, you have so much to learn!” Mom chuckled. “Remember I asked your father to teach you car maintenance?”

“Yeah. Jake said he’d do it.”

“Either one, but I’d prefer your father do it. Not because Jake doesn’t know what he’s talking about–he does–but because I want you and your father to get closer, doing things together. And every girl should know about cars. And paint,” she grinned.

She guided me in my new regimen of washing and moisturizing and said we’d get supplies the next day. She braided my hair in a ‘sleep braid’ and it was a wonderfully close time, mother and daughter, for the first time yet kind of timeless. I realized that mothers and daughters had done this for thousands of years, and it made me feel kind of connected to the world of women.

She held up a nightgown, my first that was my own, with matching panties. I hated-hated-hated! having to unclasp my bra and let the breast forms off my chest. Instinctively I crossed my arms across my chest and Mom grinned.

“Yep. A natural.”

I couldn’t remember if she’d said that before or Taylor, but I guess I was a natural …

The nightie had pretty lace at the square-cut bodice, hem, and sleeves, which were short and high on my shoulders. It came to mid-thigh and was so pretty!

“Now, go say goodnight to your father,” she smiled warmly.

“But, Mom, I …” I was nervous to begin with, but now I didn’t have the ‘shield’ of makeup or breasts … I gestured to my chest.

“Your father knows that you don’t have breasts. I told him before you got here about the breast forms, nail polish, makeup–everything. Didn’t you think it odd that he never referred to the fact that you stood there with breasts evident under your top, breasts that you didn’t have yesterday morning?”

“Well, when you put it that way …” I said sheepishly, and laughed with her. “Okay. Here goes.”

Timidly I made my way to my father’s den for the second time that night. He was sitting in his big chair, but had a stack of printout on his lap, his reading glasses on his nose. He looked up and smiled.

“All ready for bed?” Then he chuckled. “No, you’re ready to paint the kitchen. What a silly thing for me to say.”

“Actually,” I said as I walked toward him, “it was what I was going to say. ‘All ready for bed!’ was my line, so maybe we’re both silly, but I prefer to think of it as ‘great minds thinking alike’.”

“Come here,” he said gently, putting the printout on the table next to him and holding out a hand.

I didn’t know if I was supposed to stand there holding his hand, but something made me take it and continue moving to him and the next thing I knew I was kind of leaning against him, almost sitting on his lap. It felt scary as hell and very, very good.

He sighed deeply. “Interesting turn of events, huh?”

“Yep. Interesting,” I said. Then I sighed, too. “Daddy, I never planned–”

“Hush, honey; I know that,” he shushed. “I suppose your mother has told you that we … kind of knew …”

“Yeah, she did.” I nodded. “But it doesn’t make it any easier.”

“I would think it would. Why doesn’t it?”

“Because, like I said, I’m conscious of having failed you as a son, and then I kind of killed the kid, you know?” I tried a weak chuckle.

Daddy thought for a moment. “Did you ever think that you’d failed me as a daughter?”

“Huh? What? No!” I was confused.

“If, as we all pretty much know, you were supposed to be born a girl, then for thirteen years you have failed to live up to your potential.”

“To live up …” That phrase was very important to my father; he thought one of the biggest crimes for a human being was to fail to live up to their potential. “Gee, Daddy, now I really feel like crap.”

“Don’t say ‘crap’, young lady.”

“See? Right there. How can you so easily say ‘young lady’ when you only found out a few hours ago that I was a young lady … or want to be?”

“Back to square one. Because we had been warned, and because we could tell just from the empiric evidence. We’ve talked about it, your mother and I, for years. With your doctors, too. But I must say, it wasn’t until you made me ‘Aunt Emily’ tonight, that I really, truly understood it. Before, I had grasped the concept intellectually, but your ‘What If?’ tonight made it visceral, personal. You’ve always been good at that.”

“At what?”

“At framing things in a straight, no-frills, no-BS manner. To get right to the heart of things. And you show an empathy for both sides of an issue.”

“I do?”

“Yes, but that’s for another discussion. Good night, sweetheart,” he said.

And then my Daddy kissed the top of my head again and I flushed with happiness once again. I squeezed him tight in a hug and whispered, “Good night, Daddy, I love you!”

***

I was brought out of my memory when Taylor leaned up and slurped some of her Pepsi. “Geez, I’m still stiff from yesterday. I unpacked like a thousand boxes!”

Taylor had been working for two weeks for a friend of her mother’s who had a beauty supply shop. She was lucky to be working at fourteen.

“Honestly, Allie, I envy you. Making money without having to leave home. So cool! But your dad could at least take you to the cool conferences, like Orlando or something.”

“He’s in Wichita right now. Not terrifically cool,” I said, grinning. Actually, it was pretty cool that I was making money working with my father.

***

It had all stemmed from something he’d said a year ago, when he said I could get to the heart of things and had an empathy for things. Daddy had worked for a security firm for years but had been thinking of going out on his own. Maybe it was my decision to become Allison or he was just being nice, but he said if I could reinvent myself and change my world, so could he. So he formed his own security consulting firm, and it took off. He had such a good reputation anyway, and very low overhead so the clients and money came rolling in.

And we needed money, because becoming Allison was an expensive proposition. The day after ‘the family conference’–and I always thought we needed a better name than that, but that’s what we called it–Mom and I went to Home Depot. We found a lovely vanity set, and Mom liked the matching bureau, and even though I told her I could paint my existing bureau, she said it wouldn’t match, so she got that too, and the hat rack, and the full-length mirror stand, and I only just managed to stop her before she ordered a whole new bed! Everything was white, so we decided then and there that we liked the lilac and rose idea over lilac/purple or yellow/white. And I had no idea how expensive good quality paint was! Even the white enamel that I would use to paint my bed frame was pricey. Mom said we’d send Jake over in his truck to pick it all up. After all, it was the least he could do for his little sister … And this was only the first day!

Actually, the day had started with Jake and me slightly arguing over who got the last of the melon. I knew it was part of his sports diet so I let him have it, and he smiled and said, “Thanks, sis,” and everything felt nice. I was wearing my nightgown during breakfast, which normally was a no-no. Mom had a strict rule about not having breakfast in sleepwear, which meant that no matter how tired Jake was from a workout or a game, he couldn’t eat breakfast in his jammies; always dressed.

I only got away with it that morning because technically I only had one outfit, the denim skirt and top Mom bought along with my ‘family conference’ clothes. So after breakfast we went through the bag from Taylor and found quite a few usable items, some shorts, a skirt, several tops. The rest were too small or just didn’t do so we put those in a separate bag and Mom put the pillowcase in the wash to return to Taylor, and I got to wear flared khaki shorts and a sleeveless red tank top. Mom frowned at my feet and said we’d stop at Target on the way and get some girl’s flip-flops and the items for my nightly cleansing regimen, and some odds and ends that Mark never had before, like brushes, hair clips, hair bands, and so on.

And, of course, it didn’t stop there. There were some sales going on, so she said we could pick up some ‘essentials’ in Juniors Lingerie, and she found a makeup ‘starter kit’, a fishing-tackle type of box with a complete supply.

Mom said, “Even if you don’t use the makeup, you’ll have all the brushes and things you need. And you can use the makeup to play around with, try different things, different looks, without using the expensive, good quality makeup.”

So we got all this stuff even before we hit Home Depot–like I said, Allison was an expensive proposition!

And the flow of money didn’t stop there, of course, because the next day, Monday afternoon, Mom and I and Taylor went shopping and oh, my God, did we go shopping! Mom said we didn’t have to get everything at once, and we really truly didn’t, but it might have seemed like that with all the bags we brought home. Mom had worked it so Daddy was in his office working while we brought everything in. But then came the final checking for sizes and cutting off tags and it all made a big shopping bag full all by itself.

Now I had the basis of my wardrobe, all neatly hung in my closet and folded in my drawers. There was room, because Monday morning, while Mom was on the phone, I went through everything that Mark owned …which wasn’t much, really. There were some ‘little kid’ t-shirts that had cute logos on them, and I thought that maybe they’d be cute with a skirt–and on top of breasts in a bra, unlike a scrawny little boy’s chest!–so I kept them. I took special pleasure in bagging up all the tightie-whities and thick boy’s socks, except for some hiking socks that might be nice to snuggle in on cold nights. All of ‘Mark’ went into contractor bags, along with the remainder from Taylor’s contribution. After we’d picked up Taylor Monday afternoon, we stopped at Goodwill and donated the bags. Mom didn’t blink an eye when I told her what I’d done; she said something about ‘new broom sweeping clean’, folded the receipt into her purse, and that was that.

And Mom was true to her word: Taylor got a really cute outfit, a textured red silk top and black skirt, and Mom even threw in really expensive smoky stockings to match. I was jealous–playfully–but also really excited about wearing stockings myself. Not pantyhose, mind you–stockings, the real deal, with a garter belt. The temptation to wrap myself in nothing but silky, lacy lingerie was strong but, obviously, not going to happen–yet. But I tingled with the thought of pretty lace panties like a second skin around my smooth mound, nothing male in sight, and a pretty lace bra cradling my own breasts …

***

Again Taylor brought me out of my thoughts when she re-did the clasp of her bikini top and turned to sit up, holding her hand up to the glare from the pool. “My boobs got squashed,” she complained.

“Poor baby. Wish I had boobs to squash,” I countered.

“You do and you know it. Just not … magnificent beauties like mine,” she grinned.

She was right, actually; my breasts were quite definitely breasts and not just swellings. I’d been so excited when that hard nubbin appeared under my nipples, running out to Mom jumping for joy, and when they started to lift, I was in seventh heaven. I’d been so worried about other girls seeing that I had nothing. Flat was one thing, nothing was quite another …

For this reason the only person to ever see my chest–outside of family–was Taylor, of course. And even then I was shy about exposing myself, until the day when I sat in her room and proudly removed my bra to show her my hardened, rising nipples. She squealed with delight and said it called for a celebration … which we never really did, but it was wonderful to share with my best friend. That first Monday shopping trip, Mom had directed me to a ‘special needs’ section and got high-quality–though small–breast forms of my own and we returned Monica’s to Taylor, who told me later that she’d slipped the box back in Monica’s closet with her none the wiser.

Of course, Taylor did have to confess to her sister that the girl that Monica was so friendly to had been a boy named Mark. Somehow Monica seemed to never put two-and-two together, despite having met me-as-Mark several times in the years that I’d known her sister. Taylor had once said that Monica had ‘very limited resources’, an unkind remark–but typical of Tay!–referring to Monica’s obsession with her boyfriend.

Still, Mom had made Taylor promise to tell Monica the truth about me; Taylor had asked only that she be allowed to delay until I was under the care of doctors. Since that happened rather quickly, it was easier for Taylor to make her confession right away. I said I’d help Taylor by being there, and it had been hilarious explaining Mark to Monica, who had already gotten used to Allie, because she just flat-out refused to believe it. She preferred to believe that Allie had been pretending to be Mark for some silly reason–and in a way she was right, so we let it go. To Monica, I was her little sister’s BFF, and that’s the way I liked it. In the end, Monica waved a hand and said, “You’re just another girl,” dismissing any problems, proving our point, and reinforcing Chelsea Dunham’s pronouncement.

And as the hormones did their work, there were other changes to celebrate, too. My skin had always been smooth and free of blemishes but now it was positively milky, and Mom noticed there seemed to be some ‘moving around’ of fat. Not that I had fat–adipose tissue, thank you very much!–but underneath my skin, my shape was changing. I was developing a waist and round hips. And Taylor commented on my ‘really cute tight little butt’, so I knew my body was on the right track.

***

That Monday morning after our family conference but before our shopping expedition, Mom had been on the phone for hours, making calls and lining up doctors for us to visit, and she was lucky–a cancellation meant we could get in the very next day. She’d also alerted our lawyer to start preparing whatever necessary for my change of status, including a petition for a name change. And to start looking into how the school districts handled transgender students. She said it was a little early, but better prepared than not.

I wasn’t prepared for how thoroughly and how quickly the doctors would accept me in their gender program. Then I remembered that Daddy had said, ‘we were always aware that it might happen someday’–and, of course, it meant that the doctors had known about me all along. I’d had a lot of doctor’s visits over the years and always assumed other kids did, too; I had no idea that the file with my ‘special circumstances’ had been getting thicker by the year. I hadn’t known there was something wrong with me because there was something wrong with me, so seriously wrong that there were many conferences with Mom and Daddy and I was left out of it.

So when I was presented for the doctors for what I’d thought was an introduction, they were already well acquainted with my case. Apparently some transgender people spend more time lining up doctors and being evaluated as to the truth of their case, than they do once they’re accepted and the process begins. The advice that Mom had given to me before my first meeting with Daddy held true when I first met with the doctors: I was Allison, I was a girl and I stuck to my guns. That’s why the program accepted me so quickly.

It was also because I was so young and so ‘fully-transitioned’, as one doctor said. Needless to say, there was a huge battery of tests, not just blood and urine and stuff like that, but also psychological tests, eye-movement tests, and a bunch that could just be called ‘What If’ scenarios of a sort. Because I was so young there were things they were reluctant to do, but because I was so ‘fully-transitioned’ they found their way around their hesitation.

Ashley helped me tremendously; she’d already said that she was interested in psychology and teased me about ‘being her guinea pig’ even as she shared what she was learning, explaining the tests and preparing me for them. Not coaching–she was very clear that I had to give my own responses. But I would have freaked out with the brain scan device, for instance; I would have been worried about cancer and tumors but Ashley had told me about the brainwaves it measured so I was calm during the procedure. I loved Ashley and even loved that she teased me, because in many ways she’s my big sister now. I was spending more time with her and learning so much and Daddy’s right–Jake better do whatever he can to keep Ashley in his life!

All summer, I saw the doctors several times a week, and not the same doctors all the time. Since I seemed to be a historic case, it was like an open invitation to every gender specialist around. And beyond around, as I met with European and Asian doctors as well, of all disciplines. I didn’t mind it; I learned about myself and about people and the primary motivation for me was that things were happening quickly.

Most of the doctors seemed to be endocrinologists; they were young and old, male and female, some with charming bedside manners and some who’d only interacted with lab mice. Nearly always, at some point somebody said something involving the words ‘androgen insensitivity’ but nobody could agree on exactly what and how, let alone when or why. One doctor, exasperated, said, ‘Doctors, she never produced enough androgens to be insensitive to!’ and I loved him for calling me ‘she’. They used words about me like ‘wonder’ and ‘marvel’ but the most common was ‘mystery’. Apparently I was a ‘medical mystery’–and I told them that was fine with me as long as we were clear that I was a girl mystery!

Consequently, two things of great importance happened by the end of summer. First, of course, I’d been put on a hormone regime, and thanks to Ashley’s heads-up, when they switched hormones on me and I turned bitchy, we knew what it was and rode it out. They settled on the proper dosage by the end of July; we had already learned that my body made so few or so weak male hormones that I was only just barely a boy, chemically, and didn’t require a lot. But what they gave me had surprisingly rapid results. Yes, my body softened and smoothed, but the real excitement for me was when my breasts budded. And even that confounded the doctors; I shouldn’t have started developing in such a short period. Whether it was the proper hormone mix or whether it was the happiness that I was on my way, I found a fantastic sense of peace and, oddly enough, more self-confidence.

The doctors speculated that a female puberty, of sorts, might have been ready to occur on its own, or a hybrid puberty, anyway, because I was an anomaly. I’d always been an anomaly, apparently, based on the number of examinations and parent-doctor conferences over the years, of which I’d been unaware. Things seemed to pick up around age five, when I didn’t fit any of the five-year-old-boy percentiles. Not even close to them, one doctor told me. I was, however, quite nicely fitting the five-year-old-girl percentiles. These weren’t just regarding the usual height-and-weight measurements, but chemically, too. Doctors had ordered those tests done when, getting checked before kindergarten, my height and weight were obviously sub-normal, so they also began genetic testing. And I was in the dark that all this going on, because it was the general consensus among doctors and parents that they wouldn’t try to influence me one way or the other. Mom and Daddy were cautioned to raise me as a boy but keep an eye out for things feminine in my nature and not encourage or discourage them. The doctors adopted the policy of ‘wait and see’–a wonderful medical term for ‘we’ve got no idea and just hope the patient will sort things out on their own’.

That ‘sorting out’ began that day in Taylor’s bedroom; my general sense of not fitting in was explained once Taylor pointed out my true direction, and my body and age had reached the point where puberty–male or female–was knocking at the door. My mother’s phone calls the day after our family conference triggered things; it was like dominoes had been set up just waiting for me to knock over the first one by deciding Girl-or-Boy. I found out later that most of the doctors over the years leaned towards the Girl choice, and I felt comforted and reassured by that. It was also because the majority opinion of Girl clashed with the genetic reality, that the doctors had kept up on my case.

Genetically I was XY but there were serious oddities with some of my genes that weren’t explained but excited my doctors. It depressed me because I’d been secretly hoping they’d discover I was XX. The other depressing news was that internally, I was male. Sadly, there were no hidden ovaries or rudimentary traces of female organs. And I did have a penis, although it was abnormally small. I’d always known it was smaller than those I’d seen in the rec pool showers, but now it was impressed on me that, speaking medically and not just out of male ego, it was really, really small. ‘Abnormal’ was the precise word they always used, and once I thought about it, I realized that maybe it wasn’t the right word, because everything else was in ‘abnormal’ parameters for a boy–my height, weight, body chemistry and, of course, my mind’s femininity.

That last was obvious on every single psychological test, double-blind test, every-which-way test, that they threw at me. Even the ones the foreign doctors prepared that were sometimes translated badly! Perhaps more telling, there were also tests the psychologists used that weren’t mental, in the sense of thoughts and impressions. They dealt with physical responses, nervous system triggers, and couldn’t be faked or coached for a specific response, so they were considered to be extremely valid. They also usually involved probes or sensors attached. Unpleasant sometimes, but uniform in their verdict: I was female.

That smoothed things for the second thing of great importance.

Two weeks before school started, there was a large conference with my whole family and every one of my local doctors and a few specialists. And lawyers. They laid everything out and it came down to one word–castration. Our state allowed it in several cases, including the approval of both patient and parents, as well as with medical approval. The lawyers were there for dotted ‘i’s and crossed ‘t’s and everybody looked at me and I looked at my parents and said yes and yes and yes! They were both looking at me with sad smiles, and they nodded. Jake nodded, too, but squirmed a little–only natural for a guy–and I leaned over and muttered, ‘They don’t belong on a girl, do they?’ and he smiled and leaned over and said, ‘No, they don’t, sis!’

I love my big brother!

So I was castrated. It was a ridiculously simple and minor procedure after all the heavy bureaucracy, but yes it had to happen and I only wished they could’ve taken the penis, too. I was sore for a few days but had these empty little sacs and I folded my tiny penis straight back and buried in the sacs, I pulled up my panties and burst out laughing. Mom was passing and stuck her head in the door and I pointed out my camel toe!

I knew that it wasn’t necessarily a desirable fashion choice, but it sure seemed to mark me as female, should anybody question–and I knew that boys checked for those things. They’d get excited about them, in fact; I’d heard them! But I could wear the tightest panties or bikini bottoms with confidence, and if I wore something tight-tight, I had to be careful about that darned camel toe!

Taylor had exploded with laughter, spraying Diet Coke over her hand, when I showed her. She dried her hand and squealed as she hugged me and said that as long as I didn’t shower with other girls at school, nobody would ever know. She said that sometimes mishaps occurred at slumber parties but as long as I was careful there should be no problem. Then she grinned wickedly and said we should stage a photo–such as the obligatory teen-girl-peeing shots!–and use it strategically should question arise; perhaps a Facebook post, and then ride the embarrassment, knowing that it would completely validate that I was 100% female. Fiendishly clever, my BFF.

I knew I had to wait until I turned eighteen before the penis could be removed and finally get my vagina, but the doctors had sort of hinted that, with the speed in my case, I might be able to have it sooner. A German teen had her operation at sixteen, so, fingers crossed, maybe I can beat her record!

So I was pretty much safe to just live a regular girl’s regular life, as long as I wasn’t completely nude in front of anybody except Taylor! The doctors cited a (fictitious) heart condition so I would never have to take PE classes in school. Instead, I would have Study Hall so I could get my homework done, but I would also be taking classes like Home Ec like any other girl. And best of all, I would be allowed to use the regular girls’ restrooms. I’d been told that most school districts’ policies with transgender girls involve using a unisex or handicapped restroom, or go to the Nurse’s Office. Not only did it set the poor girls apart as different, it prevented them from participating in the true social center of teen girls–the girls’ restroom!

With the exception of my ‘heart condition’, I was just another girl. I had to do some physical exercise besides aerobics at home, and my ‘condition’ was spun that it wasn’t the severity of the condition itself that excluded me from PE, but the school’s fear of litigation if something unfortunate occurred. I was encouraged to swim, for instance, and I loved it and all my bikinis and even my one-piece swimsuits. And as Taylor and I got to invited to other girls’ pool parties, I was completely accepted as a girl and never had to ‘prove it’. Not once was anything visible between my legs that didn’t belong on a girl!

And school was yet another expense. I wanted to take my chances at the new high school. I talked with my parents about coming up with a different last name, maybe Mom’s maiden name of Berg, since Jake Chambers had been such a well-known and well-liked athlete. I figured as Allison Berg I’d survive, with Taylor and my girlfriends for support–all of whom had solemnly promised complete silence about Mark having ever even existed–but it was actually Jake who talked reason into me, about the ramifications of word getting out that I’d been Mark. Even hanging out at the mall was pushing it but could be explained away, he reasoned, but not high school. He’d graduated and was out, but told me the harsh realities of high school gossip. Sooner or later, somehow or somewhere, somebody would remember Mark and all the doctors’ assurances and ‘sticking to guns’ in the world wouldn’t quiet the scandal. And then I’d be tagged for four years, and probably beyond … and my dream of being ‘just another girl’ would never be.

So my parents got their way at last: Private school. They never got me into St. Martin’s but did get me into Briarwood, a nondenominational four-year co-ed prep (translation: ‘rich’) that actually was an amazing school. And for some reason my grades improved–in a harder school! I went through the year with GPA of almost 3.8, but I felt guilty having my parents spend even more money but they pointed out that even if I weren’t Allison, they had planned for Mark to go to St. Martin’s so the money had already been put away! The first time I put on the blue-and-gray-plaid pleated skirt, white blouse and ribbon tie and blue sweater–and pulled up my knee socks–I couldn’t resist it; I giggled and did a little strut like a young Britney Spears. That was enough to earn a stern lecture! But I liked the fact that we didn’t have to spend as much money on school clothes because of the uniform, and it equalized me with all the other girls.

Because, except for not having a period, I was one of the other girls, now. I had estrogen coursing through me, my breasts were developing, I had a smooth vagina-looking crotch, and I just looked like a girl–which was how I’d gotten into this in the first place! I got to be friends with several girls at my new school, but nobody could replace Taylor as my BFF. And now we had two schools to gossip about, and the big plus: Taylor fell hard for a guy at Briarwood, Steve Carlson, and he felt the same way. So even though I missed the other girls at my old school, we still got together and did the mall.

After all, regardless of what school they’re from, that’s what girls do!

End of Part 7