"One bitter truth is better than a pack of sweet lies." -- Grandpa Decker.

Moving calmly and as if she had every right to be doing so, Mom used the Liquid Paper and a ball-point pen to correct the M on my registration to an F. I wanted her to do it, and I didn't want her to, and not just because it might mean trouble with the school.

I saw her, but I didn't see exactly what she was doing because I was hiding below the edge of the counter to keep anyone from noticing that I had a severe case of the giggles. I had both hands over my mouth and my eyes squeezed shut.

I heard Ms. Hudson, Jenny, come back to the counter and tell Mom, "Principal Fuller wants to meet with you. He'll be here in ten minutes or so."

"Certainly, we want to meet with him," Mom agreed in a voice that would carry to the entire room. Then more quietly, she asked, "Are there other records that need to be corrected?"

I couldn't hear Jenny nodding, so I popped back up to see. She grinned at me, and I giggled again, right through the hand over my mouth. I tried to hold still and not jitter up and down, but I was too excited. I'm not sure why, but I was.

Mom told Jenny, "I have Audrey's medical records here, and five copies of a letter from her doctors, explaining things." She tapped the two folders she had brought in from the car.

"Oh, good," said Jenny. "Can I have one of the letters to put in Audrey's file?" She turned to me. "You probably don't even have a file yet, but I can start one."

That wasn't the least bit funny, but I still had to hold back more giggles. She winked at me, so I did my squinty-blink back. At least I managed to stop bouncing up and down on my toes.

Mom and Mrs. Wright traded glares while Jenny went to her desk and prepared a file folder. A few minutes later, a tall, bald man with glasses entered from a side door, came around the counter and offered his hand to Mom. "Mrs. Jane? I'm Principal Fuller."

"Mr. Fuller," said Mom. "This is my daughter, Audrey." She gestured at me.

I was so glad I was mostly over the nerves from watching Mom alter school records. I had even stopped giggling.

I put one foot behind the other, bowed my head and bent my knees a bit before straightening up again. I'd seen girls do this in a movie somewhere when introduced to an important adult — no reason not to try to butter up the principal. "Pleased to meet you, sir," I said.

He stared at me for a moment then broke into a huge smile. "Well, aren't you sweet and polite! Did you teach her to curtsey, Mrs. Jane?"

"No," Mom declared. "Is that what she was doing?" She grinned at me. "She must have learned that on her own." She held out her hand, and I took it. "Can we talk in your office, sir?"

"I was just about to offer," he said then led us around the counter toward a door marked Principal. "Why on Earth…" he started to ask something, then glanced toward Mrs. Wright before stopping to open the door.

I heard a noise and looked back to see Jenny grinning at Mrs. Wright. Hmm, maybe she wasn't as clueless as I thought. Mrs. Wright looked as if someone had given her half a lemon to suck on. Mom has that effect on people sometimes. I looked away quickly so as not to start giggling again.

We moved into Principal Fuller's office. It had his name on the door: Dr. Blake Fuller. He was a doctor, too? Not a medical doctor, probably. He held a chair for Mom and then one for me, which was good since it was a tall enough seat that I couldn't just plop myself into it. "Thank you, sir," I said, smiling up at him and he smiled back.

"You're welcome, Miss Jane," he said. He stepped behind us and closed the office door, then took his own seat. 

Oh, wow. I'd been called 'Miss Jane' before, hadn't I? I didn't remember who by and I wasn't sure, but it was nice in any case. I tried to swallow a giggle, but one escaped, so I turned it into a grin.

"Such a polite little girl," he said to Mom.

She laughed. "Be careful, sir. She's only known she's a girl for four days now and she already has her father and brothers treating her like a princess."

I turned bright red, but I couldn't very well deny it, could I? There was no bar to rest my feet on, and my toes barely touched the floor, so I had to resist swinging my feet.

Dr. Fuller laughed. "I bet she has. Where did you learn to curtsey, -uh- Audrey, is it?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "From watching old movies. I'm trying to jump into this with both feet, and it seemed like a good idea." There went my feet, maybe 'cause I had mentioned them, swinging under the seat in spite of me trying not to let them do that.

He laughed again. "I think you're doing a fine job. Now, you brought some paperwork?" He said the last to Mom, and she handed over the packet of medical records and the doctor's letter. The medical doctor, that is.

Mom and I exchanged glances and our patented non-winks while the principal looked things over. Mom held up an OK sign, and I returned a thumbs up. Mom glanced down, and my feet stopped swinging, just from her looking at them.

"Uh, huh, uh, huh," Dr. Fuller said several times before looking up. "This is good documentation, in case, -uh-," he glanced at the closed door, "anyone tries to cause trouble. I'll make sure all the relevant records get changed," he said, then he broke into a grin.

He looked right at me. With the light from his fluorescents bouncing off his glasses and his bald head, I wanted to squint, but I resisted. "I should have known who you were as soon as I saw you, Audrey," he said, still grinning. "Your dad is Leland Jane, and I went to high school with your Aunt Nora." He laughed. "I was a senior, and she was a sophomore, and I asked her for a date."

He grinned even wider. "I was the geekiest kid in the senior class, and she was the prettiest girl in the whole school, but she turned me down with real, -uh- sensitivity, I guess I have to call it." Still grinning, he pointed at me with his open hand. "And you're going to look just like her in a few years, Miss Jane."

"This is a wig, sir," I said quickly, pulling the blond tresses away from my face. "My real hair is more ginger and all curly."

For some reason, this set Dr. Fuller and Mom to roaring with laughter while I turned bright red again. Did I look that much like Aunt Nora? And why was what I said so funny?

*

We got out of there in a few more minutes after Dr. Fuller mysteriously warned Mom to buy new door hardware and lay in a supply of rock salt, followed by more laughter. Huh? 

Jenny winked at us as we headed out and Mrs. Wright glared but not where Principal Fuller could see her. But just before we disappeared out the door, I got another curtsey to the whole room in. Then I had to scoot cause all the 'aws' gave me such giggles.

Mom was laughing as I skipped past her. "Audrey Jane, you are dangerously cute."

"I know, huh?" I called back to her. I stopped at the crosswalk and waited for her to catch up then took her hand as we crossed the street.

"A week ago you would have let yourself be run over before you would have held my hand," Mom commented.

I rolled my eyes. "I had to. I was pretending to be a boy, and boys don't hold their mommies' hands even when they want to."

Mom made a noise like a sniffle then laughed, shaking her head. "When you jump in with both feet, you pick the deep end, don't you?"

"I guess," I said. Then I pointed out," You would," and we both had a laugh.

In the car, she commented, "That went relatively painlessly. Now, who wants an orange cream cone?"

"You do," I said. "And me, too." So we drove through the Dairy Bee and got cones. I wrapped mine in lots of napkins to avoid getting anything on my dress, and it was so-o-o good.

*

After we got back home, we both changed clothes, and I used the stuff I'd gotten from Nordstrom's to wash my earlobes since the earrings had begun itching. Then Daddy called to say he was having lunch down at the big house while working with Mr. Fordyce, so Mom and I just had a light salad for lunch.

I had put on the jeans shorts I had worn earlier, then almost changed my mind because I wanted to get my new boots broken in and wondered if they would look silly with the shorts. They kind of did, but I took off my wig, fixed my short hair, and wore my Western shirt with the snaps and it all worked.

"If you're going to go riding, you ought to wear long pants," Mom commented. 

"I'm not going to go riding in the middle of the day as hot as it is. Alkali would not appreciate hauling me around." Alkali was the cowpony, a mare, I usually rode. Otherwise, she's retired being four years older than me, but she is a small horse and not too big for a kid my size. 

Mr. Hunt, Pete's dad, was the ranch horse trainer and he sometimes used Alkali to demonstrate proper bluffing, cutting, leaning, shooking, and drifting to younger horses and cowboys. Alkali was so good, she seemed to be able to read her rider's mind, and she could even work off a lead without a rider.

If she was in a field with a bunch of other horses, she would sometimes amuse herself by bluffing them into a compact group, drifting them from one side to another, then cutting out a favored horse to bring over to any humans leaning against the fence laughing their butts off. The other horses never seemed to have a clue as to what she was doing, which made it even funnier.

Fearless, she could buffalo a steer, or even a bull, more than twice her own weight. On top of that, she had an incredible sense of direction and hands who had to work the far pastures sometimes took her along, riderless, just so she could find their way home after dark for them. She was as sure-footed as a mule, too. 

If she had a fault, it was probably that she knew how good she was, and if she thought you were making a mistake, she would get stubborn about following orders. Mr. Hunt never had such a problem with her, though. She trusted his judgment over her own. But more than once, she had brought me home before I was ready to call my ride done for the day.

I really didn't want to do any serious riding in midday, but it did occur to me that I should let Alkali get used to the new me, since I probably smelled different and would be wearing different clothes than she was used to seeing me in.

I told Mom where I was going, put on some sunblock, grabbed a couple of carrots to put in my pockets, and headed toward the horse barn. I'd picked these shorts because they had a couple of real pockets on them.

I had my new white straw hat, too, but hanging down my back instead of messing up my hair. I just thought it looked neat and with the pink hatband, no one was going to think I was Audie. It seemed odd that three days ago I had been so dead set against pink.

It's a third of a mile from the house to the horse barn, so I had some time to think about stuff. Things had happened so quickly—it was only Monday today, and Friday morning, I had still thought I was a boy.

For some reason, I thought back to the day I had gotten so sick. Pete and I had shook the herd of little kids we'd been with and headed off on our lonesome, finding the cave with the funny, glowing mushroom. It had all been part of Pete's plan to annoy Daphne, though he hadn't thought of it that way.

Then I got sick, spent days in the hospital, lost my hair, and…nd eventually found out I was a girl and, according to the doctors, always had been. Even if I could point to pee, I was really a setter. I groaned a little at the old joke, certainly corny enough for any cowboy.

But had that been when it began? Had I never had a clue before the ultrasound that I wasn't a boy, all the way through? I kept thinking about that and almost pulled a Junior by stepping in a hole but caught myself in time.

Two of the hands punching dogies from horseback waved their hats at me from down at the feeding pens, and I took my hat off my back to return the wave. I still didn't want to wear the hat and mess up my hair, so I rehung it from the string around my neck.

I got to the horse barn and used the people-gate in the big door to get inside. It smelled of sweet hay and horse and was dim and cool inside. Cooler than outside, anyway. I walked along the horse stalls, most of them empty, then I heard Alkali nicker at me as she came in the horse-gate to the big grooming box.

"Hey, girl," I said, greeting her back. I took a carrot from my pocket and held it out on the palm of my hand as I reached her box. She took the treat, neatly as always, and whuffled thanks at me.

"You know me, don't you, girl?" I said. "I'm still me." And she nodded like she really understood what I meant. I took the big comb from the leather pocket in the door then opened the gate to go into the box. For the next ten minutes, I worked on taking knots and burrs out of her mane and tail, and she sniffed me all over, spending a little extra time at the pocket that held the other carrot.

"You get that one when we're done," I whispered to her. Horses always know when you're lying to them, so it's best to tell the truth whenever you can.