In the first nine parts, Kyle found it more difficult than he expected to keep a deal he made with his mother: That if he wears girls’ clothes for a month that she would buy him a moped (a motor scooter). He’s not quite sure how it happened, but in rapid succession he lost his friends, convinced his mother that he’s gay transsexual and dating a boy named Steve, posed as a lesbian named Demi in order to charm the grandmother of his girlfriend Joannie, who preferred that she wore the pants, and he, the panties, in their relationship. In part 9, Kyle was trapped by Elvira Lancer into appearing as a female for the first time in public, and started taking the male hormones (steroids) that will inadvertently feminize his body.

Anything for a Moped? -Part 10 by: Dawn De Winter
Chapter Twelve: Was It a Memorable Sunday?

"You slut!" she screamed. Kyle had just finished getting off the phone, and Joannie was ranting.

Once again Kyle had kissed and told. Yes, he bashfully admitted, he had been tongue-dancing with Steve; and worse, there was no talk now of wanting to wash his mouth with soap.

"Did Steve force his kisses on you?" Joannie had asked.

"No, not exactly," Kyle had answered. "I wanted to kiss him to thank him for a great evening. You know — for the game and other stuff."

"You can’t mean to say that you actually kissed him?"

"Yeh, but don’t worry. I like kissing you a lot better," said Kyle, hoping to placate her.

Joannie was implacable: "You shouldn’t be kissing anyone but me, and I can’t believe that you let him put his arm around you at the game. How could you, Demi James?"

She was unimpressed by Kyle’s story about a fat man who thought he was a girl. She doubted it had happened. And in any case, a real woman didn’t seek the protection of the nearest male when danger threatened. She stood her ground and fought. "If you’re going to be my girlfriend," she told Demi, "you’re going to have to stand up for yourself. You should have cracked the s.o.b.’s nuts with your handbag," she declared.

"If I’d hit the slob, people might have figured out that I was really a guy. I would have been lynched!" Kyle tried to explain.

Joannie wouldn’t accept his excuses, for she was furious that Kyle had made his public debut as Demi while dating Steve. She had been attempting for more than a week to persuade Demi to go out in public with her — for example, to window-shop at the mall.

"But no dice," Kyle had said. He had been adamantly opposed to going out as a girl, and now he had actually done it — with another boy! Joannie’s emotions upon hearing this revelation ran the gamut from A to F — from anger through envy to fear of losing her ‘girlfriend’.

"Do you want to have sex with Steve?" she asked abruptly.

Joannie didn’t like the pause, not one bit, as Kyle briefly envisaged Demi and Steve in sexual union. His "of course not" answer did not, therefore, reassure her, especially as he said it without heat or conviction.

"Demi’s about to lose her virginity," Joannie silently concluded. "And she’s going to lose it to Steve if I don’t act fast."

And fast she acted. She invited Kyle over to the house. It was late Sunday morning, and Kyle hadn’t yet had breakfast, but he promised to come around at two thirty. And yes, he would be dressed as femininely possible, though Joannie wouldn’t know that for sure, Kyle warned, until he’d taken off hat, sunglasses and trenchcoat.

"You’ll look like a spy," she said. "Someone will call the cops on you."

"Better the neighbors think that I’m a spy," replied Kyle, "than recognize me as the sissy, transvestite son of Barb James. I’ve got to live on this street, you know, and once I’ve got the moped, I’m definitely putting away all this drag. Jeez, the girls’ clothes have taken over my room. It’s like they reproduce themselves. Yesterday evening, while I was at the game, my mom packed away more than half of my boys’ clothes to make room for all female stuff I’m accumulating. She said there wasn’t enough room for my guy clothes."

"I can’t believe it — all my regular jeans and every pair of underwear I own has been shipped off to the cellar. She says it can come back when I stop wearing girls’ clothes, but I wonder whether she really means it."

"Can I have your boxer shorts?" Joannie asked hopefully.

"Certainly not. I’ll need them when I start riding my moped. Anyway, you’re supposed to wear sexy panties — like you promised."

"Demi, I only promised to wear girls’ clothes on the days that you did. If you start dressing up like a guy, then I will too. So there."

Kyle didn’t like that answer, not one bit. But he brightened up at the thought that he could get her into a bra and panties for their make out sessions simply by wearing lingerie himself to them. And he wouldn’t have to wear a bra to school — not after the moped deal was won — for he would be able to change into something sexy on his way over to Joannie’s.

"I’ll have space for all my underwear, including the frilly stuff," Kyle silently calculated, "if I get rid of most of the girls’ street clothes — like the Capri pants."

The Capri pants? Why did he think of them? Why? Because Joannie was talking about them. "I just know we’ll have a super afternoon if we both wear our Capri pants," she was gushing. "And our Mary Janes." And then before, he could object, she added, "And your sexiest black lace because, sweet Demi, we’re going to have the place completely to ourselves this afternoon. Gran will be playing bridge."

At that point, Kyle ended the phone call by saying, "Joannie, I’ve got to go. My mother now knows I’m awake and I hear her hollering. But don’t worry: If she tries to ground me for coming home late, I’ll find a way to sneak out. And then you’ll be able to find out for yourself whether I’m wearing black lace. Wish me luck!"

And she did, just before she hung up the phone and called Demi a slut.

Did Joannie have her grandmother’s permission to invite Kyle over that afternoon? Definitely not! In fact, Joannie had been expressly forbidden to "entertain either boys or Demi" — that was how Virginia said it — when there was no adult in the house.

Thus Joannie was disobeying a direct order, which she rarely did, but she felt she had no choice: She just had to prove to Demi that a girl could kiss more erotically than any boy could, before Demi foolishly traded her virtue for basketball tickets.

Demi’s fate hung into the balance: It up was up to Joannie to make sure that she continued to love women, first and foremost, even as she journeyed to womanhood.

Since Joannie was liable to get into trouble anyway, she decided to go for broke — or at least to make her grandmother broke. Once again she stole into her grandmother’s purse, and then onto the Internet, where she used Virginia’s credit card to do some shopping for Demi. Joannie resented the fact that the Lancers had dressed up Demi like a paper doll. She resolved to be the one who’d choose the clothes for Demi’s next date, and so she went surfing for something so ‘excellent’ that she and Demi would remember the outfit for the rest of their lives.

Joannie eventually found the perfect site. Oddly enough, it was a clothing store that catered to guys. Or maybe it was to gays. In any case, The Fantasy Male Shoppe, had exactly what she wanted; and they promised delivery in time for Demi to wear it to their Saturday night rock concert and dance.

After she got off the phone, Joannie sat for several minutes near the phone smiling like a Cheshire cat. She hadn’t cracked a smile since she had first learned that Demi, ‘that slut’, had been probing Steve’s back molars with her tongue.

Yet Joannie was almost mirthful as she drew a mental picture of Demi at the dance: Joannie had never seen Demi attempt to cross-dress as a male. What a sight it would be to behold!

And if Demi pulled it off? What if Demi managed to look like a girl even when she was dressed in clothes bought at a clothing store for guys? Well, then Demi would be allowed to go a lot more than halfway when they next got some privacy. All the way? A home run? Maybe not a four-bagger, but at least a triple.

And how would this all happen, given Virginia’s reservations about boy-girl sex under her own roof? Joannie thought she’d be able to get her way once she’d thrown the biggest tantrum since she was toddling around in her ‘terrible twos’. She planned the scene for Wednesday.

As for getting Mrs. James to agree to give Kyle one night’s furlough from girldom, she would leave that up to Kyle to arrange. Joannie assumed that Barb would agree to a four-to-one trade — one evening dressed as a ‘boy’ in exchange for a four day’s prolongation of his moped bet. "That’s a good deal for Barb," Joannie thought. "I’d sure leap at it."

"I’ve thought of everything," Joannie decided. "Next Saturday will be best fun that I’ve ever had. What a gas! Demi’s masquerading as a boy! The entire evening will be awesome, simply awesome."

As the net-shopping had wound her up, Joannie was too excited to wait around the house until Demi’s arrival, and so, she headed off alone to Macy’s mall to look for more clothes. A fib was necessary: She told her grandmother that she was going to the mall with several other girls; but the fib was a mild transgression, thought Joannie, compared to credit card fraud. Joannie actually felt quite virtuous, for she was going to actually use her own money if she saw anything fit for Demi to wear.

Aside from the balding fat guy on the bus who kept leering at her, Joannie’s trip to the mall was uneventful. Nor did anything untoward happen in the boys’ department of Macy’s where she found several pairs of cotton boxers that would have looked perfect on her, but she virtuously decided to hoard her money for Demi. Still, there was a plaid pair that she just knew she’d have to buy for herself one day, for it had the same tartan as the pockets of Demi’s favorite jeans.

It was in the girl’s department that her visit to Macy’s became noteworthy. It’s not that she went on a spending spree. In fact, she bought only a single pair of pink silk panties for Demi (with white lace trim at the legs and waist), but that purchase did introduce her to Melanie.

Joannie, in a playful mood, had tried to shock Melanie: "Do you think?" she’d ask the salesgirl, "that these would appeal to a boy who has just begun to cross-dress? You don’t think the panties are too pink, do you?"

Melanie, always eager for the sale, hurriedly said, "Of course not, any boy who likes to dress in girls’ finery would just adore those panties."

And then she paused, as she gave Joannie a hard look: "Hmm, this girl is definitely the right age. I wonder if she knows Kirkdirk? She looks like a dyke. If she is, then she’d be the perfect girlfriend for a sissy like Kirkdirk. Well, there’s no harm in finding out if she knows the little pansy."

"I know," Melanie began, "a boy who’d cream in his jeans every time he put those panties on. He and his mother shop in this department. We call him Kirkdirk, but I’m sure he’d prefer to be called Kyla. He’s a blond boy about your age, and he’s got a slender build, and the sweetest button of a nose. Kyla wouldn’t by chance be the boy for whom you’re buying those beautiful panties?"

"You mean Kyle? Is his mother named Barb?" quizzed Joannie.

"Barb? Yes, I believe that was her name. And Kyle was his. So you are Kyle’s girlfriend? I can see why. He has excellent taste."

Joannie blushed: "He’s my girlfriend too! We’ve got all the same clothes, and he even goes to school dressed as a girl. But I shouldn’t talk about him, I should talk about her — about Demi. Demi’s the name you should use. There is no Kyla."

Melanie probed: "So you dress alike? That’s marvelous. I bet you wish you were twins — you know, with even your bodies the same. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Demi had … breasts just like yours? Then you could trade bras."

"Well, Demi sort of has breasts like mine. They’re very realistic."

"But realistic isn’t as good as real, is it, Joannie? You do know, honey, that Demi could get saline implants that would give her real breasts? Just think of it — with the help of breast implants, Demi could become the perfect girlfriend, the girl of your dreams."

"Implants! They’re far too expensive. Only movie stars can afford them," Joannie protested, after she had briefly contemplated, then rejected, the idea of charging an extra fifty thousand dollars to her grandmother’s charge card.

It was then that Joannie learned that the Vera Smuttee show would pay for Demi’s implants, provided she was willing to appear twice on the show with Joannie — once as flat-chested boy, the second time as a voluptuous girl.

While Joannie wasn’t thrilled with Melanie’s suggestion that both teens might need some breast enlargement to create the right dramatic effect on television, she was definitely interested in surgically enhancing Demi. Indeed, she eagerly took the consent forms from Melanie. There were four forms and four signatures needed — one each from Kyle and Joannie and their two guardians.

When Joannie asked whether a doctor’s consent wasn’t also necessary for ‘surgery’, Melanie reassured her that the Vera Smuttee show had medical staff who’d readily verify that Demi’s mental health was at grave risk unless she immediately got a more feminine body.

"If the breast implant is a ratings success," Melanie advised, "then the show will probably be willing to pay for sexual reassignment surgery as well — you know, for giving Demi a vagina."

Staring unnervingly into Joannie’s eyes, she added: "And you’d like that, wouldn’t you, honey? I just know you’ll want your girlfriend to have the sex organs of a woman."

Joannie’s eyes gave her away: They said yes — Demi should become as much like a woman as physically possible. But Joannie’s voice said no: "Big, beautiful, huggable breasts are all I want for Demi. I don’t want her to become more than half a girl. I want," and she blushed as she said this, "Demi to be able to please a girl in the way that boys do."

At least, Joannie still thought she wanted to have normal sexual intercourse, missionary position, with Kyle. But oddly, it was becoming more difficult with each passing day to conceive of having ‘that kind of sex’ with Demi.

Melanie said they didn’t have to make a decision that day about Demi’s ultimate body, for breast implants were all the show was willing to pay for at the moment. Then she asked, "Are you sure you can persuade Demi not only to agree to the implants but also to appear on national television? Not many boys would do such a thing."

"Demi will do it. I guarantee it." Then, with the documents firmly in hand, she marched off to do battle.

"I bet you will get Kyle to do it. I can see that you’re the type of a girl that a boy like Kyle was born to obey."

Melanie decided she admired Joannie, but she wasn’t sure she liked her: "I’m glad that I’m not the one who is sexually attracted to Joannie. I’d just as soon not be talked by her into getting a penis implant!"

Melanie and Joannie were not the only ones to wonder that day whether Kyle might be interested in making his body as well as his clothes more feminine. Barb had put the question directly to him once he heeded her summons just before noon that same day.

As he was dressed entirely in girls clothes — in the panties that he had worn to bed, as well as a pink bathrobe and slippers — and had not bothered to remove his makeup from his date with Steve, Barb addressed herself to Demi: "Sweetie, I don’t want to start fighting again. I admit that I had no right to spy on your kiss with Steve. I apologize for doing that, and I accept your own apology for staying out so late. You know that I was worried about you."

"As for the idea that you should stay out overnight on a school night, I assume that it was Steve’s suggestion. Wasn’t it his, Demi?" When Kyle shook his head, Barb then surmised that the idea had been Mrs. Lancer’s.

Barb muttered to herself: "That witch! She’s been pimping for her son. One of these days I’m going to give her a piece of my mind, but I guess that day will have to wait until Demi stops dating Steve Lancer. I don’t want to get in the way of first love."

To Kyle, Barb said: "Well, I knew that you wouldn’t ask to stay out all night on a weekday. Rather than rehash the argument, I’d rather talk about your date with Steve. I especially want to know why you decided to make last night your public debut as Demi in front of several thousand people. You told me you didn’t dare appear in public as Demi, and now you’ve gone ahead and done it in a grandstand. Why did you change your mind so suddenly? Please tell me, dear, for I’m trying to understand you. And lately that has been very hard to do."

Kyle then explained how he needed a change of clothes after his own were muddied, and that everyone realized at the last minute that his outfit looked too feminine for him to pass as a boy. Thus, he had no choice but to pose as a girl.

Barb found the explanation unpersuasive. She figured that Kyle must have realized how feminine he looked long before he got to the parking lot of the basketball arena. He wanted to go to the game as Demi — at least, that was her opinion. Yet her son was as yet unable to admit his deepest desires. He kept telling himself that he didn’t like dressing up as a girl. Yet clearly he reveled in it. "He always did," she thought. "He was always in his glory when he was pretending to be Joan of Ark or Pocahontas."

Kyle was in denial about so many things. Did these include his basic sexual identity? Was, Barb wondered, Demi a budding transsexual? Did she want to change her body as well as her clothes?

Determined to prepare herself mentally and emotionally for Demi’s further steps, if any, towards girlhood, Barb posed the one question whose answer worried her the most: "Demi, do you want a girl’s body as well as girl’s clothes? Are you going to be looking for breast implants or feminizing hormones? My gosh, you wouldn’t take female hormones without first seeking my advice and permission, would you, Demi? If you did, it would crush me. You mustn’t take such a dramatic step, sweetie, without our talking about it first."

Female hormones? No, Kyle wasn’t on those, and so he felt quite virtuous in bellowing: "No mom, I’m not taking female hormones! Nor will I ever take them! I love being a boy. Boys have all the fun. Why would I want to become a girl? The idea is totally bogus! So stop worrying about breast implants and hormones. And don’t worry about Demi’s being around forever. I’m leaving her behind in my dust the first time I speed off in my moped."

"If you say so, son; but don’t make any rash promises. You might want to be Demi from time to time even after you’ve won the moped. I think it would be fun for both of us if you occasionally got in touch with your feminine side. One day it will make you a better husband."

Kyle merely grunted. He certainly wasn’t going to admit that there was any possibility that he might want to cross-dress after he got the moped. Yet he couldn’t call the idea "totally bogus," for he suspected that Joannie would be able to entice him into women’s lingerie any time she really wanted. "Joannie can be so darn persuasive," he thought, as his body tingled with fond memory.

And besides, he had to admit that he liked the feel and the cut of women’s underwear, even some of the bras. The sports bras, he’d noticed, felt like a friendly hug. Lately, he had felt half-naked, almost indecent, whenever he could see his chest. Just the other day he’d made a mental note to ask his mother for one of the full-body swimsuits — like the Olympic athletes of both sexes used — so that he’d strike a more modest pose at the beach.

As the tight fit of the sports bras had also made him keenly aware of his nipples as an erogenous zone, he’d begun tweaking them whenever he masturbated, which was — at age fourteen — several times a day.

Kyle hoped to continue to wear some of his girls’ jeans and tops after the experiment had ended. He figured he could get away with wearing flowers or plaid on his jeans if he told everyone that he was a ‘hippie’. So that people would believe he was what he said, he intended to talk a lot about the need for world peace. .

For the moment, Barb accepted his grunt. She interpreted it to mean that there was some chance that he might occasionally be willing to dress like her ‘daughter’ around the house or in controlled situations, but that he had no desire to be her daughter permanently. And yet she had to wonder whether she was getting ‘straight information’ from Kyle when she saw the way he dressed for his Sunday afternoon date with Joannie (though Barb assumed her son was trysting again with Steve).

Whatever Kyle reservations had about cross-dressing, Demi seemed to revel in looking as ravishingly female as possible. Indeed, she had never looked more feminine — or, paradoxically, more masculine.

Her face, hands and hair were impeccably done, her flaming red lipstick matching her nail polish and a hair band. Her white halter top with blue trim and three-quarter length sleeves complemented her dark blue Capri pants, with their white tropical border at the leg hem. Her bare midriff exposed her navel, which she had dusted with some blue sparkles. A shoulder bag, white ankle socks, and sueded, black Maryjane shoes with a t-strap, two- inch heels, and floral appliqués on the toes completed the outfit.

So far, so feminine. How could anyone deny that Demi was a pretty young girl? Why, anyone could, if they looked at her crotch! There could be seen, thanks to the tightest-fitting pants Kyle had worn since childhood, protruding evidence that he was an adolescent male. He hadn’t noticed the small bulge in the short, bathroom mirror he had been using, but his mother did, as she scanned him from head to toe.

"Demi, you’re popping out in a most unladylike way," Barb laughed. Kyle probably could have found a way to tuck away his genitals, given enough time and contemplation, but he was in a rush to see Joannie — and so he agreed to the embarrassment and the physical torture of wearing his mother’s panty girdle on top of his black lace frillies (which, alas, hadn’t done much of a job of containing or concealing his boyhood). The girdle made him look much more feminine, not only at the groin, but also at the waist and rear.

He looked as feminine and as buxom as Barb imagined her son ever could. To her astonishment, however, Demi did not revel in her femininity, but rather hid it with a trench coat and a floppy, wide-brimmed hat. Barb had assumed that Kyle would be less uptight about dressing as a girl in public now that he’d worn a daisy outfit to a college basketball game. Instead, she saw him stealing furtively down the back alley. Barb wondered whether he was going to hide in the alleyways all the way to Steve’s. Her heart went out to her troubled, confused son.

She even shed a tear for Demi, her fledgling daughter, who was having so much difficulty shedding the dowdy plumage of her childhood: "She so desperately wants to fly. God, if you exist, protect Demi and do not let her plummet to the earth!"

Joannie, by contrast, whooped with delight when Demi stripped off her trench coat. Both girls had on identical shoes and pants, but otherwise Joannie was the less femininely attired. Even so, she was wearing, as promised, the same black lace underwear. The teens scarcely said a word after they reached the safety of Joannie’s bedroom as they feverishly stripped down to their bras and panties.

Once they were lying together in their underwear atop her bed, Joannie took control of their lovemaking: She determined what they’d do and the limits they’d observe. She had the situation well in hand.

As they were clumsy and inexperienced, there seems little point in dwelling on their lovemaking. Besides, the experience was more formative than definitive, for they never even removed their underwear. Why not? Because both teens were shy about nudity, and because Joannie wanted Kyle to associate sex with the caress of fine lace. If all went accordingly to plan, he’d develop such a powerful fetish for lingerie that he’d be soon pleading for the privilege of wearing his panty and bra — or better yet, his negligee — to bed.

Demi would outlive the moped bet, Joannie reasoned, if Demi, not Kyle, learned the mysteries of the orgasm.

Throughout their lovemaking, Joannie made much of Demi’s breast attachments. Indeed, Joannie had clung to them tightly as her own body shook with her first orgasm in the presence of a ‘boy’. She had been fantasizing the entire time about Demi’s forms being live flesh.

"Your breasts turned me on the most," Joannie gasped. "If they had been real, I’d still be writhing about in ecstasy. Oh, Demi, don’t you wish you had real breasts so that I could love them? Say it — say you wish you had real breasts, just like me."

After she asked him the third time, Kyle, who was in a very good mood, gave her what she wanted: squeezing the right nipple of his prosthesis, he agreed, "I wish I had real breasts just like Joannie’s wonderful breasts.’

By bribing him with kisses, she got him to reconfirm not once, but three times, that he wished he had real bosoms. Then she sprang up and came back with a souvenir from Russia that looked like a helmeted goldfish clasping a small marble ball. "Rub this," she urged Kyle, "and say three times, ‘By all the powers in the universe I would give anything — even my soul — to get women’s breasts."

Kyle balked. He didn’t like this talk of selling his soul — not one bit. It was not that he was a religious boy. His mother had taught him to be a freethinker and agnostic. Yet he had seen enough movies about Satan and the afterlife to worry about casual deals with the Devil. As Barb disapproved of Kyle’s viewing anything she judged "superstitious," he had been doing his Devil-watching on the sly — at other people’s houses or on television when she was out.

By sneaking the Devil into the family home, Kyle had, ironically, come to associate the Prince of Darkness with sin and deceit in a very personal, concrete fashion, despite Barb’s best efforts to persuade her son that neither Hell nor Heaven existed in any known Universe.

And so, the part of Kyle molded by Barb thought Joannie’s request to be childish and moronic; but the part shaped by Hollywood deemed it dangerous — hence alluring. Kyle loved to take risks. And to dare Satan to change you into a girl — that was quite a gamble for a normal, All-American boy to take. It was even more daring than going down Suicide Hill on a skateboard while blindfolded.

And so, while he said, "No way. I’m not going to touch that idol. It’s stupid," his words so lacked conviction that Joannie knew it wouldn’t be difficult to persuade him to "sell his soul." And the price wouldn’t even have to be very high — not when you considered how much joy Kyle took in tempting the fates. Indeed, less than ten minutes later, he was stroking the marble ball and intoning three times, "By all the powers in the universe I will give anything — even my soul — to get real breasts just like Joannie’s. Let it be done before this year be done."

What had changed his mind? It was yet another deal. Kyle loved to make deals, as he assumed he was clever enough always to benefit from them. This time he indulged Joannie’s superstititions so that she would bare her breasts to him for the very first time.

He wasn’t allowed to touch them, but he saw more than enough to make him think that he had definitely gotten the better of the deal: "I came once already, I saw Joannie’s boobs, and eventually I will conquer," Kyle chuckled to himself.

As Joannie wanted to induce Kyle to agree to implants, she got him to "sell his soul" for "real breasts just like Joannie’s" every time they subsequently made out. The phrase not only became a "sweet nothing" that he could whisper into her ear for maximum erotic effect, but it also became the centerpiece of two more attempts to enlist the help of the spirit world to make Kyle into a demi-woman — or female from the waist up. One time they used black candles, the next time, an effigy of a buxom Demi.

Within a month, both teens had lost count of the number of times that Kyle had begged the netherworld to give him breasts. It was a game they played — a variant of spin-the-bottle that always rewarded Demi with sexual favors from her girlfriend.

Joannie played the game straightforwardly. She had but one objective: to mesmerize Demi into believing that she must indeed covet the free breast implants on offer from the Vera Smuttee show since she had repeatedly prayed for a female body. In a moment of weakness, Demi would sign away her lingering maleness — that was Joannie’s game plan.

Kyle played the game in a complicated way, always with mixed emotions. One part of him scoffed at the entire premise — that the two teens lived in a world of magic where incantations could transform a frog prince into a beautiful princess.

Another part of Kyle played the game with dread, for Hollywood had taught the boy to believe that a man could be turned into a fly, or fly through outer space as a beam of light. He had even seen a couple of movies where man had become woman as punishment for being too cocky about his own sex. Could that happen to Kyle? Had he said once too often that, "any boy had it better than any girl"?

And what about the Devil? One had to fear the Devil. One part of Kyle feared that he had made a Faustian bargain -- that somehow he’d be turned briefly into a girl so that the Devil would be able ever afterwards to roast Kyle, the boy, like a wiener on a stick in the fires of Hell.

And there was a third part of Kyle — this one definitely went by the name of Demi. She actually hoped the spells would work. She wanted total fulfilment, if only for a day. While Kyle knew that he was lucky to be a boy, Demi longed to make love just once to Joannie as a woman. Demi wanted real breasts. She even craved a vagina. She aspired to the body that would delight her beloved Joannie the most.

Demi normally finished last in the game, behind Joannie and Kyle’s more masculine alter egos — the rational skeptic, the male chauvinist, and the reckless daredevil. Yet she did win the game at least once. Kyle had to recognize that on at least one occasion that the prayer for breasts had emanated from his very soul — that, at that moment he longed for there to be some force in the Universe capable of remaking him as a woman.

"I had that fool idea only once," Kyle assured himself.

Yet once was more than enough to unnerve the boy: It meant he was taking a far greater risk than he ever intended when he first started playing the game of gender. It also meant that when the steroids started visibly to transform his body in late November, Kyle would suspect his mind, or Fate, but never the drugs, of compromising his masculinity.

Masculinity. Ironically, on the very day that Kyle first asked the helmeted fish to make him a demi-girl, Joannie was pressuring him to return to boys’ clothes before that very week was done.

As part of her campaign to remold Kyle into Demi, Joannie wanted to dress him for their upcoming dance date. By dictating what he would wear, Joannie hoped to bend him further to her will. Now, as she explained to Kyle as they huddled atop her bed, she was anxious for him to wear boys’ clothes on their date that coming Saturday. These would be clothes that she was obtaining for him via the Internet from an ultra-trendy store for males.

Kyle was definitely intrigued at the thought of being outfitted by The Fantasy Male after he found out it was located in West Hollywood, California. "Wow, Hollywood!" he thought. "I’ll be the ultimate cool dude!"

But alas, he couldn’t take a chance on his mom’s finding out that he was cheating on their deal. So he told Joannie: "It’s a bogus idea. I can’t wear boys’ clothes to the dance, as much as I’d like to, as I’ll just be finishing my third week of the moped bet. I’m so close to winning my bike that I can’t take the chance of someone ratting me out to my mom."

"Demi, you’ll be the one to tell your mom — in advance. Then no one will get the chance to tell tales. You’ll wear boys’ clothes to the dance with her permission," Joannie said. And then she explained how Kyle should make another deal with his mom whereby he agreed to wear girls’ clothes for another five days in exchange for being allowed to wear boys’ clothes for a single night, and — and this was the prospect that lured Kyle into another dubious bargain — permission to spend the night at ‘Steve’s.’

Joannie promised to let Demi see her in the nude if Barb "allowed her daughter to go to the dance disguised as a boy."

After Demi and Joannie had once again proved to themselves that it was highly erotic to bring each other to climax while wearing black lace lingerie, Demi got out of bed to change into the pink silk panties that Joannie had bought her earlier that day. Bashfully, Demi changed in a closet. There she not only put on the panties but also the bodyshaper that had arrived by mail order. Joannie thought that Demi would look better in it than in a panty girdle — and she did, as it reshaped her angles into curves.

Then, garbed in Capri pants, a halter-top, Maryjane shoes and a trench coat, Kyle scurried back through the back alley to his own home and to Barb’s heartfelt greeting.

As they hugged, Barb noted: "Demi’s quite flushed, and I doubt very much it was just from running home." She probed: "Did you have a good time with Steve, Demi? You sure look like a girl who’s had a memorable afternoon."

Kyle thought about objecting to his mother calling him a ‘girl,’ but he didn’t want anything to break the magic spell that Joannie had cast over him, and so he replied: "I had an absolutely super afternoon. It was rad. I know I’m in love. I’m in love, I’m in love…"

"With a wonderful guy," interjected Barb helpfully.

"Yeh, with a wonderful guy," repeated Kyle. He wished he could be honest about the true love of his life, but he feared being undone by all his lies. He was terrified of losing Joannie if Barb and Virginia should ever exchange notes and learn how many tricks that the two children had been playing on them.

And so Kyle pretended he had been, and would always be dating Steve as he made his pitch for liberation from girls’ wear while he attended the Hell’s Vixens concert. Steve, he said, wanted him to dress like a boy that night so that they could ‘watch the concert in peace,’ without Steve’s constantly having to fight off guys who were making passes at his ‘rad girlfriend.’

"I know it’s cheating on the moped bet," Kyle admitted, as he offered to cross-dress for another five days in penance. Barb would probably have given him dispensation without any extension of their bet, had not Kyle seemed so determined to dress like a girl for the better part of another week.

As Barb figured that Kyle was looking for ways to prolong Demi’s existence, she decided to raise the stakes to a whole week. She was not surprised when Kyle readily agreed to her terms. She then decided, "Steve must actually prefer Demi to Kyle. That would explain almost everything. Maybe this cross-dressing will end when the two of them have their first lover’s quarrel."

In the meantime, she took heart from Kyle’s desire to revert to male attire, if only for an evening: "Maybe he’ll settle down into a recreational cross-dresser. With luck, I can gain a part-time daughter without losing my son entirely. I’ve been foolish to worry about his being a transsexual. He’s not. He’s just my wild and crazy son, always rushing heedlessly into everything, even into a fling with transgenderism. He’ll tire of dressing like a girl, just as he tired of being Joan of Ark."

She was in such a good mood that she assented to Kyle’s returning to the Lancers to spend the night after the dance. She even thought it amusing that Kyle stressed he’d be using the guest room, for she assumed that the two boys had just spent the afternoon in Steve’s bed.

To make it clear yet again that she wanted Kyle always to be frank with her, she handed him a condom: "You have a healthy libido, Demi, and I’m sure you’re about to become sexually active, if you are not so already. There are a lot of germs that are sexually transmitted, as I’m sure you’re aware, so please, whatever you do, have Steve wear this if you have intercourse."

While it floored Kyle that his mother took it for granted that he would be ‘the girl’ if Steve and he ever made love, he had to admit to himself that there was no point in insisting on his own virility — not at least, while he was wearing lipstick, nail polish, a halter-top, and Capri pants.

In any case, Kyle was far more disturbed by his mother’s next pronouncement: "Demi, I don’t want you to go out alone on Saturday night. Mrs. Lancer will have to pick you up here so that I know you’ll have a ride to and from the concert. Do you understand? I’m expecting her to ring our doorbell and to tell me that she’s come for you and that she will be responsible for your safety until your return the next morning."

Kyle tried to talk her into an alternate plan — indeed, into any other plan — but she was adamant. If Mrs. Lancer did not herself come to the door, there would be no date.

That night both Kyle and his mother slept fitfully. For the first time in a week the dancing Brazilian transsexuals returned to Barb’s dreams. As she had become used to their rhythms, they had lost the power to awaken her, even when they began to do the ‘forbidden dance,’ the lambada, with her son and his muscular friend Steve.

The two youths looked so much alike they could have been clones. They both had mustaches and shaven heads, white tee shirts and ragged Levis, and lots of black leather — boots, jacket, cap and chaps. "They both look like Nazis," she fretted, as she began to stir.

It was, however, the back of Kyle’s outfit that awoke her in a cold sweat: There was none. He was butt-naked to the world and Steve was closing in from the rear. Haunted by this specter, she couldn’t get back to sleep.

As for Kyle, he never really did get to sleep that night, as he spent the night vainly scheming. He kept looking for, but could not find, some way to avoid begging Steve to "ask his mom to lie to Kyle’s mom about Kyle’s whereabouts Saturday night so that Kyle could spend a night in the sack with Joannie, Steve’s rival in their love triangle."

It was difficult to think of the right inducement. At least, Kyle couldn’t come up with anything — hence his sleepless night.

Elvira, however, was more imaginative. Or at least she would be once Steve had told her that Kyle was pleading for her help so that he could, as she saw it, "cheat on my beloved son."

Chapter Thirteen: What Happened When Demi Started School?

There was a marked contrast between the ways that Kyle dressed for school on the first and third days of the third week of his moped bet. On the Monday, he dressed as conservatively as possible. Systematically, he chose the most unisex of the girls’ clothes at his disposal in order to look more appealingly ‘boyish’ for Steve.

Charming Steve was his first priority. To have any hope of persuading Steve and his mother to mask his date with Joannie, Kyle knew that he’d have to flirt with his friend, and he sensed that Steve preferred his boyfriends to look as masculine as possible. To be sure, Mrs. Lancer seemed to think that her son was searching for a sissy to love, but Kyle instinctively knew otherwise. He figured he should apply minimal mascara if he were going to bat his eyelashes winningly at Steve.

At Kyle’s suggestion, they ate their lunch outside. As a biting wind had driven most of the students and teachers inside, the two friends found in the shelter of a hedge the privacy that Kyle needed. There Steve snuck a kiss, with Kyle responding amorously enough to ensure that he’d have a sympathetic hearing for his odd request. "You know how much I love the music of Hell’s Vixens," Kyle began. "They’re playing Des Moines this coming Saturday, you know, and thanks to Joannie, I’ve got a super ticket."

"Yeh, I know. So?" Steve asked rather sourly. He envied Kyle his ticket, and Joannie her date.

"Well, I’ve got a small problem," Kyle continued. "My mom doesn’t know that Joannie exists and I don’t want to risk getting grounded by telling her about Joannie just now. So I told my mom that I was going out with you. Is that all right?"

"Sure, why not? Do I get a kiss for helping out?"

"There’s something else. My mom insists that I be picked up at the door — you know, picked up by your mom. If your mom doesn’t pretend to be driving the two of us to the concert, then I simply won’t be able to go to it. Do you think you could talk her into helping out?"

"Sure, why not? My mom doesn’t have much to do on Saturday nights anyway. She’s too old to date, you know. She could even drive you and Joannie to the concert. I bet I can even talk her into picking you up after the concert and giving you both a drive home. You can now show your appreciation with a big wet kiss."

"Uh, I’ll only be needing a lift to Joannie’s house. Her grandmother will drive us to and from the concert."

"But I don’t understand," puzzled Steve. "How can old Mrs. Smith drive you home? Won’t that give you away? Won’t your mom then realize that you’re dating Joannie?"

Kyle mumbled in a vain hope that Steve wouldn’t entirely grasp his meaning: "It will be really late when the show is over, so I’ll be bunking down at the Smiths — in their guest room, I imagine. So I’ll be able to walk home in broad daylight. I won’t need a lift."

Steve clued in: "Let me get this straight. You’re asking my mother to tell a lie to your mother so that you can spend the night with Joannie? I’m supposed to help you to cheat on me? Do I really seem that big a geek?

"Of course not, silly. But you’re my boyfriend, aren’t you?" said Kyle with a silky voice, "You shouldn’t worry about Joannie. She’s just a girl. You know I like boys the best and you’re the best of the boys." He then gave Steve the "big wet kiss" he sought.

Steve was an easy conquest: He said he’d find some way to talk his mother into aiding Kyle’s plot. "I don’t think our mothers like each other," opined Steve. "So maybe my mom will think it a hoot to fool your mom."

"Fool my mom?" For some reason, the idea made Kyle feel guilty. But the show had to go on, and so he gave Steve a big, appreciative hug.

Steve left with mixed emotions: joyous that Kyle claimed to prefer boys, but dismayed that his friend was, even so, going to be losing his virginity to a girl. "But," Steve told himself, "he can’t really lose his cherry to a girl. That I’ll be plucking."

And it wouldn’t take much longer, he told himself, now that he knew that Kyle’s mother was willing to have her son "spend the night at Steve’s."

"Will my own mom agree to an overnight? You’d better believe she will — so long as Kyle is wearing a dress." He chuckled. Steve then wondered how he’d react to his boyfriend’s showing up for their big date in a dress. To his own surprise, he was curious about how Kyle would look in a slinky dress and sheer stockings. "This I’ve got to see," Steve decided.

"But once he’s had sex with me, I’ll have much more influence with him. I’m sure I can get him to dress like a boy again. He’ll look rad in a leather jock strap!" For the rest of the day Steve daydreamed in class, doodling various leather and denim outfits for Kyle.

As for Kyle, he spent the day pretending to be deaf. Everywhere around him, people were talking about him. His classrooms were abuzz with gossip, which instantly ceased the moment he drew near. Yet they pointed at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. They stared at him even when they knew he was looking. They didn’t want him to hear what they were saying — not yet, not until they had formed a consensus. Even so, he knew they were talking about Demi. It got so he could read lips — first widening, as though with astonishment, as they said the "de", and then pursing — almost as they were kissing him off — as they said "mi."

After school, less than two blocks away from the milling crowd of students, Kyle and Joannie found their way blocked by two of the black shirts: Jason and Rob. Their fists clenched, they both had a look of pure malevolence.

Jason, the boy who’d vowed to pulverize Kyle if his cross-dressing ever became public knowledge, spoke for them both: "So it’s Demi, is it? The whole damn school is wondering what you and I did together in the shower in the days when I was stupid enough to call you my best friend. Rob’s been getting picked on almost as much. The guys — and the girls -- have been asking if we wear panties too."

"Joannie, get lost!" barked Rob. "We don’t want to see you cry. A weepy dyke — that’s a pathetic sight if there ever was one. You get out of here so we can start demolishing Demi."

"When we’re finished with you," he snarled at Kyle, "you’ll be so battered and ugly that you’ll stop fantasizing about being a girl."

"Yeh, there won’t be much point in dressing up like a girl, Demi, if you’ve got a broken nose, cauliflower ears, and bloody big scars on both cheeks," spat out Jason, who pulled out a switchblade. It sprang open.

Rob pushed Joannie to the ground, as Jason advanced toward Kyle with the knife. The situation looked desperate, for the only other person in sight was Derek, the leader of the black shirts, who was running towards them.

Kyle’s heart sank: "These guys will do anything Derek says, maybe even kill me."

And what did Derek say? To Kyle’s immense surprise, Derek was telling them to stop!

"Hey, you guys," he panted. "I told you to leave the little pervert alone. He’s none of your business. He belongs to the gangs now. You know that. They’ll decide the little sissy’s fate. You touch him now, and the Sharks will be parading you around the campus in a miniskirt! As for you, Jason, the gangs told me that if you carve up Demi, they’ll cut off your dong. They want prissy little missy to flounce around the school in all her glory. I don’t know why, and I don’t ask why. I just obey."

"Christ!" yelled Jason. "When do I get a chance to show the school what I think of sissies who like to dress up in mommy’s clothes? I’ve got a reputation to protect. First, you told me that we couldn’t jump him because that would just make the freak into a martyr and get them speculating about our hang-ups. And now that everyone is speculating about whether we’re freaks too, you tell me I can’t cut him up because the gangs are protecting him. When do I get a chance to crucify the little turd? When?" he shouted.

"Never, if you know what’s good for you," Derek menaced, very, very quietly.

Jason spat the ground in disgust. Rob briefly contemplated kicking Joannie. Then, without saying a word, the two black shirts stalked off. As for Derek, he lingered for a moment in order to say very, very quietly: "Kyle, be careful where you walk now that everyone knows about Demi. I can’t always be around to protect you."

So amazed were both Kyle and Joannie that neither said a word before Derek had hurried off to catch up to the black shirts who were loitering at the corner.

"I don’t understand," Joannie said.

"Me neither," said Kyle. "But I don’t like what he said about the gangs." Both teens shuddered. Their parting kiss was especially heartfelt, as though one of them was going off to war.

Surprisingly, Kyle had a spring in his step as he walked home. That evening he was agitated and restless. At one point, Barb remarked that she hadn’t seen him "so antsy" since the night before his BMX tournament. He’d replied enigmatically, "That’s just it, mom. I can’t really explain it, but this being Demi has become a big challenge — like winning at sports. It’s really weird, but I’m beginning to find wearing girls’ clothes a little bit exciting."

"That’s nice, dear," Barb replied. She wasn’t surprised. She’d assumed for some time now that Kyle found girls’ clothes sexually exciting. She wasn’t wrong about that, of course, not entirely. Thanks to the sessions with Joannie, he did now find it arousing to wear a bra and panties.

Yet Kyle wasn’t talking about sexual excitement, at least not directly. No, he was talking about the thrill in living his life like a video game, always having to be on the lookout for the bad guys, who lurked around each corner, as he sought the fruits of victory — his girl, his machine, and friends who didn’t turn on you just because the entire school erroneously believed that you were a transsexual.

Later, snuggling in his nightie in bed, he wondered whether Derek still numbered among those friends. "Nah, it can’t be possible. He called me a pervert. He’s just protecting his own butt, and yet …." Kyle fell asleep before he could decide whether Derek was friend or foe.

That night, in his dreams, Kyle fought and won every battle. Some of them he fought as King Arthur, the Anglo-Saxon boy who’d pulled a magic sword out of a stone. In the rest, he triumphed as Joan of Ark, the cross-dressing heroine of France. He woke up with a smile on his face, confident that he was the hero of his own life.

No one was ever going to intimidate Kyle. And Demi was a fighter too! So he’d wear whatever she wanted -- on the outside, at least. As Kyle thought there was an excellent chance they’d strip him down to his bra and panties as a prank, he decided to wear his cotton, boy-cut, jockeys for girls — their color a drab gray. If he ended up running down the school corridor wearing nothing but his panties, he wanted the sight of him to confuse his tormenters. With luck, some of them would be wearing nearly identical jockeys for boys.

If that happened, "Then the bullies will start wondering about their own gender identity," chuckled Kyle.

Kyle chose the underwear that Tuesday, but Demi got her pick of the rest of his clothes. She was determined not to back down. They all wanted her to go away? Well, not this week! Not before Kyle got his moped! And so, Demi defiantly dressed a little more obviously than usual: her makeup, lipstick and nail polish, (still clear, but high gloss), and her hair all quietly announced her femininity.

The hair wasn’t supposed to be quite so feminine-looking. Kyle struggled with it for some time, as he hoped to spray into place its one masculine aspect. But, as his hair had grown since Barb’s cut, it had grown more unruly. Today, it simply insisted on looking feminine. Kyle, saying "what the heck," finally yielded to it. His hairstyle that day was bound to draw remarks, even if Demi were not already a public scandal.

Determined to look good, Demi put on her favorite jeans: the pair that Mrs. Lancer had bought for her, the ones with the flowery tendrils stalking the legs. They went well, she thought, with the appliquéd flowers on her shoes, and color-wise, with her lime green, three-quarter sleeve jersey. As it had shrunk in the wash, it fit snugly, with an inch and a half of skin showing at the navel.

Did Demi look feminine? Yes and no. It depended on how closely you looked at her. If you believed her minimal bust and slender hips to be totems of her youth rather than her gender, you might think Demi a young girl. However, if you saw Kyle swagger through the hallways, you’d know that Demi was really a boy.

You were most likely to think of Demi as a girl if you saw her seated at a school desk, her scrawny hips hidden, her shoes and flowered hems in full view. In other words, it was Kyle’s teachers who found Demi most disconcerting, as they got to look at her all day.

Even so, Coach Bryant’s behavior was inexcusable. Since he taught civics, religion, and ethics when he wasn’t coaching Hoover’s football teams, he should have set a good example. No matter what the provocation from Demi, no matter how upset the coach was by the arrest of his youngest brother for propositioning boys in the men’s room of Macy’s Mall, he shouldn’t have ridiculed a student.

If he had been more mature, the coach should even have been able to handle the news that his brother had overstayed his welcome at the Mall because he had been obsessively searching for one particular teen, a pantywaist cut from the same twisted mold as this Demi-creature now lounging — immodestly and invitingly, in the eyes of the coach — in his very own classroom. The coach desperately wanted to exorcise his classroom of the demi-urge that seemed now to dominate it.

Ridicule were his weapons, banishment his goal. He started by making sure that everyone knew and despised Kyle’s femme name: "Class, I want you to meet Demi. That’s Demi sitting in the second row amongst the real boys. Demi is occupying a space where there used to be a boy named Kyle. Kyle was a smart aleck kid, but we used to think he was, nevertheless, a boy. We all once thought that Kyle belonged in the boys’ half of the class."

"Demi is quite another matter. Demi does not belong in the boy’s half of the class, because Demi is a sissy pervert. Demi is a head case who belongs in a psycho ward."

"That’s where Demi is going to end up — in a state mental hospital or prison — but for the moment I strongly suggest that Demi move her queer little ass out of the boys’ section of the room. Demi, you go sit with the girls in back. We don’t want trash like Demi to sit anywhere near the he-men in front."

Kyle, in shock, froze just long enough for the coach to repeat his order: "Demi, you little pervert, go sit amongst the girls in back. That’s where a little loser-sissy like Demi belongs."

This tirade did not impress the girls in the class, for it reminded them of the real reason why the coach segregated the girls from the boys in his classes, and insisted on the girls sitting in the rear of the room. He claimed he wanted the boys in front because they were the more likely to get into trouble if they weren’t under close surveillance. But the girls suspected that the coach simply preferred the company of males. He had been overheard telling a male teacher that he pitied the girls the tragedy of their birth because it meant none of them could ever be a high-school quarterback.

The closer a student sat to Brad Mitty, the star quarterback, in Coach Bryant’s class, the more honored the student was supposed to feel. Only boys could get really close to Brad and therefore to front row center where the tousle-haired, blue-eyed, muscular blond was forced to sit under the coach’s watchful eye. On more than one occasion, Brad had pleaded with his coach and teacher to let him sit near Vicky Andrews, his main squeeze, but the coach had insisted that "his star"

Kyle was, accordingly, envied by the guys and welcomed by the girls when the coach exiled him to the back of the room. Demi’s seat beside Vicky Andrews honored rather than degraded her in the eyes of everyone but the coach. Moreover, everyone howled with laughter — at the coach’s expense — when Demi had mocked him by parading like a stripper on a catwalk as she sashayed to the back of the room. Several of the students, led by Joannie, had provided suitable sound effects.

As the coach shouted abuse at Demi, the class rallied around her. He kept up a stream of insults throughout the class, which brought either embarrassed laughter or pained silence. Only once did the class rebel outright. Unexpectedly, it was the teacher’s pet, Brad Mitty, the star quarterback, who forced the coach to apologize for calling Demi a "faggot who’d soon be selling blowjobs at the bus terminal."

The coach had hoped to drive Kyle and Demi from the school. But his harassment had backfired. His class learned the wrong lesson. Had a more popular teacher belittled Demi, then Kyle might indeed have been forced into permanent exile or home schooling, but it actually improved his reputation to be targeted by Coach Bryant, who had the reputation of being the school’s creepiest teacher. His attitude towards both sexes was suspect, and everyone mocked his orange fright wig of a toupee. To have an enemy like Coach Bryant was even better than having friends. In his animosity could be found the bonds of many a great friendship.

For example, Tim and Joannie were so appalled by the coach’s treatment of Kyle that they lodged a formal complaint with Vice Principal Cudmore. He promised to say something to the coach, and he did say this: "Ernie," he said, "I hear you’ve been giving the school sissy a hard time. I even heard you called him a ‘faggot’. That’s not wise thing to do in this era in which the state Civil Rights Commission has been getting teachers fired for not being ‘politically correct’ enough. So be careful what you say to the sissy. I don’t want to lose this school’s most valuable asset, its football coach, just because some student accuses you of being biased against queers. So you’ll be real careful about what you say to that kid, right?"

"Right," mumbled Coach Bryant.

"And I don’t want you to hit the little brat either. Understood? Demi is not worth losing your career over. God, I wish it were different. I know that you’d love to pound the piss out of that sissy. So would I! But we live in a time of moral turpitude, when real men have to stand by like eunuchs, wringing their hands in futility, while vile creatures like Demi propagate. You and I know that Demi is a virus. Her vice will spread. Pretty soon there will be so many boys prancing around in skirts and skintight jeans at Hoover High that we won’t be able to field a football team, Christ, without allowing the bull dykes to play for it. So you certainly have my backing if you can come up with some clever way of ridding this school of Demi. But clever, mind you. You were too heavy-handed today. I don’t want ever to have to fire you, and especially not over the supposed civil rights of a sexual deviate."

"Now what’s your take on what Kyle is really up to?" Mr. Cudmore asked, "I can’t quite figure it out myself. But I’ve known Kyle James long enough to suspect his motives. I just don’t buy this ‘I want to be a girly-with-a-dolly crap’ of his. What do you think? Do you believe Kyle James really wants to be a girl?"

"I don’t know," replied the coach. "There’s a heap of freaks in the world right now. If I had to put money on it, I’d bet that the kid is a cross-dresser. I used to teach about her sort when I taught sex education. You know — she’s one of them that wants to cut off her dick so that she can get pregnant. The way that Demi was staring at me in class you’d think she was sizing me up to be the daddy of her baby!"

The vice-principal was mildly appalled by the coach’s ignorance of a subject he occasionally taught, but he wasn’t about to pick a fight with a winning football coach, and so he replied: "Well, I don’t think she, he is a transsexual. The James kid is trying to make fools of us. I just know that the James kid is mocking us. He’s no more transgendered than you are!"

"Mr. Cudmore, I don’t like being compared with that sissy — we are like two different species. I’m a real man and Demi is, well, she’s one of them demons that captures a boy’s body and drains him of his vital fluids. What do you call them demons? Yeh, I remember now: a suck and buss. That Demi is definitely a suck and buss. We’ve got to get her out of my classroom before she turns all the boys in it into fairies. You know what four of the boys told me after class? They said that if I didn’t leave Demi alone, that they’d show up to class in skirts! Can you imagine that? And I wasn’t being told this by four losers. No sirree. These were strappin’ fine youth, the best we’ve got. They’re very masculine, very muscular, handsome, and in peak condition. I’m sure they could have any girl they wanted."

Mr. Cudmore, unable to convince the coach that Demi was just another boy acting up, rather than a succubus from the netherworld, ended the conversation by telling him to make life difficult for the James kid — but not so difficult that the other students felt they had to rally around him.

"Her," the coach corrected. "That’s no boy — not any more."

"Whatever," sighed the vice-principal. "The little game being played by Kyle and Demi will be ending Friday. As soon as Dr. Loupi confirms that Kyle is just another teenage boy trying to grab attention, and not, as Demi claims, a transsexual, then I’ll be giving the boy a choice between attending Hoover in his own Levis or the industrial school in overalls supplied by the state of Iowa. Now don’t you go telling Kyle, or Demi, my plans."

Coach Bryant promised he’d be as close-mouthed as a clam. Instead he was an oyster: On Wednesday he released this pearl of wisdom to Demi: "The vice-principal and I disagree about what you’re up to. You’re such a hopeless sissy that I don’t think there’s any boy left in you. I just know you’d like to wear a dress to school so that you could seduce and pollute the real men of Hoover. But Mr. Cudmore — he thinks you’re a fake. He thinks you’re just pretending that you want to be a girl. Well, I hope he’s right, ‘cause if you’re not want of them Trans sexuals — that’s what he calls ‘em — then he’s going to expel your sweet little ass. And then, the only school that will take you will be the state industrial school in Sioux City. If you cross-dress there, lots of real men will be happy to make a girl out of you."

Demi got the message: If she didn’t show up for the interview with Dr. Loupi, poor Kyle would be expelled from Hoover High. Thus, Kyle would have been dressed as femininely on Friday, even had the Jets and the Sharks not decided to pay him a visit in the school ground after Tuesday classes let out. They had, as intended, a large audience, amongst whom could be seen Joannie, Steve, Tim and Derek — none of whom could protect Kyle or Demi against the fearsome gangs.

Both the Sharks and the Jets had inherited their names from earlier, less ruthless gangs. All they knew about the names is that they came from a gang movie that had played Des Moines in the late 1970s — a movie like Colors. Whatever their origin, the names suited the two gangs. Thus the Jets were recent immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, where the despair and poverty produced by the collapse of Communism had spawned some of the most ruthless thugs of modern times.

The Jets drew their leadership and the bulk of their members from the most violent, most hot-blooded, most emotional of all the Europeans: the Finns. It was said that Finns would cut your throat without a second thought if they didn’t like the way you tangoed with them. Kyle himself doubted there could be anyone more bloodthirsty or volatile than the Finns who led the Jets.

Unless it was the Sharks. The name suited them, for they too were rumored to kill without remorse. They were an African-American gang, who had in common this with the Jets — they too were newcomers to Des Moines. The Sharks were drawn from some of the most dysfunctional, unstable ‘hoods in the entire country — places where it was rare to find an intact family or a father who had the dignity of a nine-to-five job.

Kyle didn’t know all the ‘hoods that had produced the Sharks, but the names that chilled his flesh the most were Scarsdale, Scottsdale, Shaker Heights, Beverly Hills and especially Grosse Pointe, which he associated with contract killers, and the ‘Main Line’ of Philadelphia because it sounded like a place where heroin was king. If you came from ‘hoods like these, you were likely, Kyle figured, to be dangerously screwed up.

Markko Hakkinen spoke for both gangs: "Hey punk! Yeh, I’m speaking to you, Demi, you little fairy. You listen and you listen good. Some of my guys thought we should beat the crap out of you. And some others thought we should simply feed you to the Sharks. But I said ‘No, let’s wait and see how the brass react to the little sissy.’ When Derek told me that Demi made that ped, Coach Bryant, totally blow his cool, then I knew we’d made the right decision — you know, the one where we let you live."

Sherm, the dreaded leader of the Sharks, then spoke: "Of course, it wasn’t just us who disputed the possibility of a drag queen attending our school. Every righteous dude at Hoover has been worrying about our school persona. So we’ve had to warn off all the scrawny little dudes who wanted to beat you up. That service has been costing your friends, whom I’m astonished you’ve still got."

"My friends?" asked Kyle. He was confused: No one had told him about having to protect him from the Sharks and the Jets. How could Joannie and Steve have managed that?

"Yes," Derek hurriedly interjected. "Joannie Smith, Steve Lancer, and Tim Rush have been handing over their lunch money to the gangs so that you’d be left alone." He could have, and should have, added his own name, for Derek had been paying the most tribute. He’d even hawked his gameboy to raise money for his friend. He’d been Kyle’s friend all along, but couldn’t let anyone in his class know it. And why not? Because Derek was terrified that people would think he was gay if they learned he was befriending a cross-dresser. Derek hoped that by naming Kyle’s benefactors he could keep secret his own role in Demi’s survival.

Sherm glared at Derek, as he made a mental note to teach the fourteen-year-old to hold his tongue in the presence of his elders and betters. He then jabbed a finger into Kyle’s chest and snarled, "But it seems your friends don’t have enough money to protect you the way you’re dressed today. Demi, it’s time you started paying up too."

Then Markko announced their terms: "It’s only fair Demi, that you pay us your lunch money, starting from the first day you dressed like a sissy at school. That’s what you call retro-ac-tive-ly. Your lunch money — and that of your wimpy friends — buys you basic protection."

"Yeh, consider it basic collision insurance," interrupted Mika Kostinen, the sub-boss of the Jets.

Markko then grabbed Kyle by the arm and pulled him so closely that Kyle briefly feared that the fearsome Finn wanted a kiss. "You do agree to the need for insurance, right, little girl?" The gang boss then squeezed Kyle’s left bicep hard enough to him yelp with pain.

Kyle feverishly contemplated his options. He was understandably perturbed to learn that his friends had been paying protection money. How, he wonder, could he ever repay them? The question made him glum indeed. He cheered, however, when he realized he could reward his friends "with rides on the moped." When they too got to feel the wind on their cheeks, they’d realize that it had all been worthwhile. He could even let them take it out for spins at five bucks a ride. That way, he could be square with everybody in a couple of months.

He wished now that he hadn’t extended the moped bet by a full week. At the end of the current week, he’d still have ten days of lunch money to hand over to these bullies. But he decided that a moped was worth the extra cost, and so he said, "I understand. I give you my lunch money anytime I wear girls’ jeans. I’ve got no problem with that. It’s the least I could do to thank you for your help. Besides, I should be the one paying you — not my friends."

"No, you don’t quite understand, little dude," Sherm responded. "The cost of your basic protection has been going up. Your lunch money doesn’t come close to paying for it. Your four friends will still be paying us — assuming they want everybody to stay healthy."

Kyle gulped. He realized he might have to lend the moped out indefinitely to pay back his friends. He yearned for that moped more desperately than ever. It seemed his only feasible escape from the hole he had been digging for himself since he had foolishly boasted to his mother that he could wear girls’ clothes to school undetected.

Suddenly, fear punched him savagely in the gut: "What if the gangs demand our money, but won’t allow me to wear girls’ clothes to school. Then I lose the moped! Then I lose everything!"

To his own amazement, Kyle found himself begging for the right to attend school dressed as a girl: "Yeh, I understand completely. I get the right to dress as I’ve been doing, so long as everyone gives you their lunch money. I need to keep wearing these clothes. So it’s a deal."

He extended his free arm, but there were no takers. The gangs would set the terms of the deal, not Kyle. Sherm replied, "What pathetic little you wants is not our concern. Demi, you’ll wear what we tell you to wear. Comprendo?"

Forlornly, Kyle nodded. He now feared the worst: the demise of Demi, his dreams of a moped, and of all his newfound friendships. If he couldn’t wear a bra to school, he might as well kill himself.

It was, therefore, with very mixed emotions that Kyle received their edict: "Demi, we don’t like the way you look," Sherm snarled. "You’re going to humiliate this school if you don’t start dressing proper."

"Do you mean like a boy again?"

"No, you lamebrain. We are suggesting, real serious like, that you stop looking so much like a boy."

"Yeh," added Markko, "we figure that you’re less likely to humiliate this school if no one from the outside figures it that you’re a guy in drag. So stop screwing around with this half-boy, half-girl crap. It’s bad for the school. Tomorrow you look real feminine. We mean with big tits and a wide ass, earrings, red lipstick — all of it. You’d better be a totally convincing girl, or one of us just might get the notion to make you look more female between your legs. You get my meaning, little dude?"

"Definitely." Though Kyle cringed at the prospect of attending school as a girl, he considered an outright refusal to be taking an unacceptable risk. So he tried to limit the term of his confinement: "It’s cool. At school, I’ll do my best to look as much like a girl as possible for the rest of this week and for the ten days after that. But then I’ve got to switch back to boys’ clothes. My mom will insist."

His "mom" was the only excuse he could think of for his fixing a deadline, but this wasn’t his stellar moment at Hoover High: "My mom will insist" entered the school’s permanent lexicon. Thereafter, it was the standard excuse for feigning reluctance when asked to do something especially risky or risqué. It always brought laughter, but never more uproariously than the day that Kyle seemed to be admitting that his ‘mommy’ had conceived Demi as her dress-up doll.

"His mommy will insist!" guffawed Sherm. "Well, little Demi, you’re just going to have to explain to your mommy that you’re here to stay. You’re in, Kyle’s out for the rest of the school year. Just so that there’s no confusion about this — the sort of confusion that might lead the students at Central High to induce that we’ve got a boy here at Hoover who’s dressing up part-time as a girl — we do insist that Kyle go away, entirely."

"Yeh," Markko said menacingly: "as long as you attend Hoover High, you’ve got to be Demi all the time -- 24/7. If we hear that Demi’s been seen at the Mall or at the flicks trying to pass herself off as a boy named Kyle, or if Demi’s breasts should deflate at any time, then both gangs will be coming after you."

"So, sweet Demi," Sherm leered, "repeat after me: ‘I’m a girl, I’m a girl, I’ll always be a girl as long as I go to Hoover High."

Glumly, Kyle did — not just once, but a dozen times, at the gangs’ insistence. The superstitious part of him knew that he was tempting the fates with such an utterance.

And being a girl at Hoover High was certainly going to be expensive proposition, as Sherm explained: "There’s one last thing we got to tell you, Demi, and you’d better listen good to what I’ve got to say. Now that you’re determined to be a girl full time, you’ll be needing some more insurance. After all, there’ll be some dudes at Hoover High who won’t want to call you Demi and treat you like a lady. They might even rag on you. But, we won’t let that happen, Demi. But insurance costs. So we’ll be expecting five bucks a day from you — in addition to your lunch money. Do you want the extra insurance protection, Demi?"

Kyle, wincing with pain from Markko’s tightened grip, nodded.

Then Markko addressed the assemblage: "Take a good look at the pain on Demi’s face. If you don’t want to see it on yours, then you will treat Demi with maximum respect. You will never call her by any other name, no matter who you’re talking to — the teachers, the principal, even Demi’s mother. Got it?

Everyone nodded.

"And," Sherm’s voice boomed out: "since we don’t want Central High to learn we’ve got a sissy at this school, I want all of youse to yell out the answer you’ll be giving if anyone asks youse about Demi’s true sex. What sex is Demi?" he shouted.

"Female!" the crowd roared. It then dispersed. Some of the students were appalled, but most were amused. Almost everyone was curious to see how Demi would be dressing on her first full day at school.

After they’d emptied her pockets of cash, the gangs released Demi. As she left with Joannie, they made rude comments about her scrawny butt and flat chest, and then, to her horror, started wagering among themselves as to whether Demi would look feminine enough the following day to merit the gangs’ continuing protection.

When they were out of earshot, Kyle suddenly stopped, as though he were a deer caught in the headlights. He gasped: "Joannie, I’m in real trouble. If I don’t look enough like a girl tomorrow, they’re going to make it impossible for me to be a boy ever again. They threatened to cut off my balls!"

"Don’t worry," Joannie replied. "We can make you look so much like a girl that the gangs will have to admit that you really are Demi, the best looking girl at Hoover and my girlfriend." The teens then embraced — to the horror of a passing construction worker who muttered something about "dykes everywhere these days."

Joannie then suggested they go shopping for Demi — to complete her look, so there would be no further doubts about her essential femininity. To get Kyle into the right shape for an expedition to the mall, they stopped off at the James’ house where he put on two items that would become a second skin for the most infamous ‘girl’ at Hoover High — the breast forms and bodyshaper. Kyle then brushed his hair to eliminate its lingering boyishness, and changed his makeup and lipstick to make both more obvious.

They decided that Kyle now looked feminine enough to risk their going to the Mall. They took a detour on their way, so that Joannie could break into her piggy bank — as she told Kyle — and filch her grandmother’s bankcard, which she used to take out one hundred dollars at an ATM. Kyle, to his credit, had no idea they were going shopping on stolen money.

First stop at the Mall was a small stand that pierced ears for free for anyone who bought two or more sets of earrings. Kyle had only mild reservations about the piercing, since he had been thinking about having it done for several months. After all, most of the older skateboarders wore at least one ring in each ear, sometimes several.

Kyle even approved of the two-inch gold hoops that Joannie picked out for the Saturday night dance concert by Hell’s Vixen. For the first time, he learned that they’d be going to the dance in Goth mode — Joannie dressed as a foppish, eighteenth-century pirate, and Demi as the pallid ghost of the pirate. The thought of going as a ‘dead man walking’ tickled Kyle’s fancy. He would mock the grim reaper.

The ‘pirate’ hoops he liked. The dangling cut glass he could easily have lived without. First of all, he was less convinced than Joannie that the glass looked at all like diamonds, and second, the dangling ‘stones’ kept hitting his cheek, making it impossible to forget that he was wearing girls’ earrings. But Joannie got her way, as she also did when she convinced Kyle that Demi’s everyday earrings would have to be not only larger than most boys dared wear, but also have to sport a small red stone that some might confuse with a ruby.

As the earrings had punched big holes in her hundred dollars, Joannie reluctantly agreed that they couldn’t afford a perm for Demi. Indeed, Kyle would have to get his hair trimmed at a discount chain. He was pleased that none of its harried staff had the time or energy to worry about Demi’s gender.

At Joannie’s instructions, the stylist gave Demi little more than a trim, taking pains all the while to make her cut as feminine-looking as possible. Demi liked her new look — it would help protect her from the wrath of the gangs — but Kyle was distressed that a few snips of the scissors could make him look so feminine.

He also didn’t like Joannie’s plans for his hair — that it would get a lot longer, and as it did, he would have to spend much more time taking care of it. Split ends? He’d never heard of them. And now he was being told that they would become the bane of Demi’s existence.

Over Kyle’s vociferous objections, they finished their shopping at Macy’s. She had finally won him over when she pointed out that shoppers got less personal service in a Department Store, and that they would accordingly be freer to browse.

As Kyle feared, the salesclerk who had mocked his virility -- Melanie was working the cash. Even worse, she remembered him vividly: "Oh, Kirkdirk, you’re back at long last!" she gushed. "You look fabulous. You must be so proud of finally accepting yourself for … the little sissy that you truly are."

She had whispered the insult. Even Joannie hadn’t heard it. To both teens, she said, "And this must be one of your girlfriends. How sweet of her to join your shopping expedition to the mall."

Joannie piped up: "Miss, there’s no one named Kirkdirk here. That would be a foolish name indeed for a girl to have. I’m Joannie," she winked, "and this is Demi. She wasn’t born with that name, but the whole school now knows her as Demi. She’ll soon be the most popular girl at our school, but I just know that she’ll always be my special girlfriend. She still is you know," Joannie reassured Melanie.

Melanie then told Kyle that she was "thrilled, absolutely thrilled" that Demi was shopping at Macy’s. She then pointed to a rack of knit jerseys and suggested that Demi check those out while Melanie showed Joannie a pair of jeans that she just knew would fit her perfectly. As Kyle was anxious to be rid of Melanie, he gladly wandered off, leaving the other two girls alone for a moment.

Melanie got immediately to the point: "What’s with the breasts, Joannie? Demi’s breasts are so life-like! Don’t tell me they’re real! You haven’t let the little minx ruin your chances of getting on the Smuttee show, have you? Please tell me they’re falsies and that Demi hasn’t yet had implants."

Joannie was not entirely able to reassure her. True, the teen convinced Melanie that Kyle had not yet had implants. However, Melanie was alarmed by Kyle’s rapid feminization. "He seems to have no defenses against it," she said. "He must have been yearning to be a girl all his life. I’m worried, Joannie, that he’ll not wait for the Smuttee show. And if he gets any more feminine looking, they won’t want him. Are you sure you can make Demi look enough like a boy for the first show? You do know that the audience will want a real boy to be feminized on television, not a Demi boy."

"Don’t worry," Joannie giggled. "Demi is still able to pass as a boy when she has to."

"Well, I should hope so!" replied Melanie. But, looking at Demi in profile, she did wonder how much longer Demi would be able to persuade the TV viewers that she was a normal enough boy to be an intriguing candidate for a sex change. And so, she wrung from Joannie a promise to get Kyle’s signature that very week on the consent form for his implant operation.

"Demi’s signature won’t hold up in court," Melanie advised. "So we’d better get your girlfriend to sign while she’s still willing to admit that she’s actually a boy named Kyle."

They then joined Kyle, and very quickly Joannie had chosen a new outfit for Demi. As Joannie didn’t have sufficient money, Melanie agreed to buy the clothes on her own account, after Joannie had whispered that the salesclerk could have the revenue from any interviews that Joannie might give about Kyle’s decision "to get breast implants so that he could look as much as possible like his girlfriend." Or at least that’s what he’d be coached to say to any tabloids that featured ‘news’ from the Vera Smuttee show.

Demi’s new outfit came literally off the back of a mannequin. As Melanie disrobed the dummy, she said to Kyle, "Don’t you wish you had breasts, real breasts, just like Susie’s here? It’s amazing what they can do with saline solution. And the operation is so straightforward, they can have you in and out during a single day. Or so I’ve been told."

Joannie replied for Demi: "I’m just positive that some day soon Demi will be asking for transplants. But not today. Besides, she doesn’t want to be as flat-chested as that mannequin. You prefer my breasts, don’t you, Demi?"

And how! Kyle loved Joannie’s breasts — on Joannie. To be polite, he told Melanie that he didn’t really need implants, as Joannie had lent him "some great boobs." He then shook them salaciously.

Since the store was fairly quiet, Kyle eventually consented to use a changing room to try on the mannequin’s outfit. As he emerged to check himself out in the mirrors, Melanie applauded: "Wow, Demi, you look a lot more feminine and a lot sexier than that mannequin. The clothes fit you perfectly. Can I hire you to be the store dummy?"

She was just joshing, for she knew that Demi had already agreed to be Joannie’s dress-up doll. And Joannie was now dressing Demi in lavender. Or was it purple or lilac? Kyle couldn’t tell the difference. All he knew for sure was that the color sure didn’t look very masculine.

It could be found on the stitching and four-inch wide hem of the stretch, blue denim clam diggers. And it was virtually the only color in the sleeveless, poly-spandex ‘shell’ (with a handkerchief-shaped hem) that Demi would be wearing the next day as her top. Even its paisley and floral design was done in shades of lavender or purple.

To complete her mannequin look, Demi would be wearing purple sunglasses, a bangled bracelet formed from purple plastic and aluminum, as well as two six-inch lilac hairpieces. There was purple everywhere. Only the three-inch-high platform sandals (with a wooden base and star-studded denim straps) didn’t reek of lavender.

As Kyle saw himself in the mirror, he marveled at how much Demi looked like the mannequin. The color scheme he found appalling. Never in his wildest nightmare had he found herself trapped before in lavender, lilac, or purple.

Whatever this was, whatever you called it, the color was all-wrong for an all-American boy. And yet, as he shamefacedly had to admit, the outfit was perfect for a boy who would have to convince the entire school that he could pass as girl named Demi or end up as shark bait.

As he teetered about on the three-inch heels, Kyle noted that the sandals made him shorten his stride: "I even walk like a girl," he mumbled to himself. Somehow that observation didn’t upset him as much as it would have three weeks ago. He now saw it as an advantage to "walk like a girl," and he practised taking small, mincing steps when he was alone in his room later than evening.

Barb had no inkling of how much her son’s life had changed until the following morning when she got her first glimpse of the purple outfit.

"Kyle, you’re not going to school dressed like that, are you? In purple hair, purple eyeshade, purple nail polish, purple lipstick, purple clothes? You’d look like a grape Popsicle if you weren’t so … so buxom, and so … so round in the hips. Kyle, I’ve never seen you look so … feminine. If you go to school like that, everyone will know you’re wearing girls’ clothes. My lord, with those curves, they’d think you’re actually a girl if they didn’t already know better. You can’t fool them into thinking you’re a girl, Kyle. They know you already as a boy. Sweetie, aren’t you taking this dress-up game too far? I don’t want you to get beaten up."

What could Kyle say? He couldn’t tell her the truth. Could he tell her that he’d be expelled if he couldn’t persuade the school psychologist that he was a transsexual desperate for a sex change? Could he tell her that two youth gangs were extorting money from his friends and him, and that they were threatening to castrate him if he couldn’t transform himself into a convincing female? Could he tell her that he did in fact have a girlfriend, who was pressuring him to become her lesbian lover, and that the girl’s grandmother believed that Barb was trying to beat the transsexuality out of her son? Could he tell her any of these things?

Perhaps. Barb was a forgiving, lenient mother. She would have forgiven him his lies. Even so, he dared not tell her about the demands of the gangs. If he told her about the protection racket at school, she would, he feared, respond by immediately contacting his principal, the school board, and the police. Then word would get out that he had squealed on the gangs. If that happened, Kyle figured he’d have to change his sex for real and join the witness protection program — that is, if the gangs didn’t kill his mother and him first.

So what could Kyle tell his mother? He could tell her yet another lie. This time he definitely had her best interests at heart as he prevaricated. "Mom," he started. "You should always call me Demi. Everyone else does — or will, after today. I should tell you that I was dead wrong about being able to wear girls’ clothes to school without anyone knowing I was doing it. Everyone now knows. So it was getting real embarrassing to be pretending that I was still dressing like a boy."

"People started calling me a dweeb. I’d be passing by two guys and I’d overhear one of them say, ‘Isn’t Kyle pathetic? He actually thinks he’s dressed like a boy.’ Well, if I dress like this, and wear my boobs, they’ll know that I have no illusions about how I look. I’m going to do my darndest to look like a girl named Demi as long as we have the moped bet. And then, as soon as I’ve won it, I’ll show up in blue jeans and leather, and then they’ll know it was all a big game for me — that I was always playing make-believe. They’ll know I never actually thought I was putting one over on my classmates or my teachers. I was just trying to win a bet."

Barb couldn’t follow the logic. She doubted that anyone could. Naturally she concluded that Kyle had taken another step — a giant one this time — on his path to becoming Demi. He was now ready to be Demi in the most public way possible — in front of his classmates.

Barb held back her tears as she wished Demi the best possible day at school. "Take good care of yourself today, Demi. I want my daughter back in one piece."

"Yes, I guess I am your daughter right now. But don’t worry, mom, you’ll have your son back soon enough. Kyle’s not gone forever. As for Demi, she’s awfully proud to have a mom like you." And then, Kyle tottered out of the house and down the front path on his platform shoes.

As Barb watched him take his little baby steps, his bottom swaying from side to side like Sugar’s in Some Like It Hot, she fought back her tears as she reflected, "It’s finally happened — he has become she, and Kyle has become Demi."

She resolved to tell people from then on that she had but one child, a daughter named Demi. To prove to Demi that she had full acceptance, Barb took a few minutes to sort through Demi’s clothes before heading off to work. All of the boys’ clothes went into boxes. Only the girls’ clothes, Demi’s clothes, remained in what had been Kyle’s room.

As Barb anticipated, when Kyle returned from school, he didn’t even remark on the exile of the boys’ clothes to the cellar. He may not even have noticed that Demi’s wardrobe had displaced his own, for he was eager to talk about Demi’s remarkable day. He was, Barb saw, enormously ‘pumped’ by Demi’s debut at Hoover High. Indeed, so quickly did the story of her debut gush forth, you’d have thought that Kyle had forgotten the teenager’s oath to tell adults as little as possible.

"Mom, it was totally awesome! What a super day I had! I am so stoked! It was awesome, I tell you, totally awesome!"

When I started off to school, I figured it would be the worst day of my life. I figured they’d rag on me so much that I’d be gone by lunchtime. You wouldn’t believe it, mom, but I even had a map in my shoulder bag to show me where the railway yards are, just in case I had to hop a freight to get out of town real quick."

Barb chuckled at the specter of a purple, cross-dressing hobo.

"Mom, it’s not funny. I really expected to be creamed if I went to school with these." He caressed his right breast.

"But mom, it wasn’t like that! Not at all! About a block from school I found my best friends waiting for me. It was awesome! There was Steve, and Tim, Adrian and Alex, and Joannie. They were all waiting for me, they said, so that I wouldn’t have to enter the school campus alone."

"Who’s Joannie, dear?"

"She’s a real special friend, mom …, and then we got to the campus. You’d never believe it, but Derek was there. You know — he’s one of the guys I used to hang out with. He actually gave me the thumbs up! Can you imagine that? And then I saw the crowd!"

"What crowd, Demi?"

"All the kids. It looked like the entire school — including lots of the teachers — was waiting for me to arrive. There were hundreds of them, mom! Maybe thousands! And they were all waiting for me! For Demi!"

"My gosh, you must have been frightened, dear."

"Me? Never! I may look like a girl, mom, but I’m all man. I got my handbag ready. I’d put something heavy in it." (It was small barbell, but Kyle understandably didn’t tell his mother everything.) "If necessary, I was ready to start swinging. I wasn’t going to run. I was ready to rumble if they were."

He had now thoroughly alarmed his mother. All she could say was a mumbled ‘oh my, oh my, oh my."

"And at first it looked bad. A couple of guys started jeering, but Derek got them to stop. There were lots of wolf whistles — you know like guys do when a pretty girl walks by. But mostly it was real quiet, like no one knew what to do. Then I saw one of the older students — his name is Mika — hand over some money to Markko. He’s another one of the older students."

"Demi, are you saying that students were betting for and against you? That’s outrageous. I’m going to be calling your Principal first thing tomorrow."

"You can’t do that, mom. You’d get me into too much trouble. Anyway, why would you phone up to complain about gambling, when it was your very own son — I mean, your daughter — who WON the bet? Demi won! Don’t you understand? Demi was the big winner."

"Demi, what are you saying?"

"I’m saying that Mika was paying Markko because I really did, do, look like a real girl. And then — you’d never believe how totally awesome it was! — Markko started applauding me. You know the way they do at basketball games when they want the game to start — real rhythmic-like. Then a black dude named Sherm started doing it. Then the clapping spread! Soon it seemed like everyone was clapping! I know there was some booing. I know that. But most of the people were welcoming Demi to the school! Tons of people patted me on the back as I walked past them into the school! It was so rad."

Barb was duly impressed. And much relieved. What her reaction would have been if Demi had admitted to having her bottom repeatedly patted and pinched, and her breasts groped, as she passed through the throng will never be known, for Kyle was wise enough to know that Demi’s mother didn’t really want to be told that her daughter was treated during her first week at Hoover like a sex object by quite a few of the boys, who out of curiosity or lust, were interested in finding out which parts of Demi were genuine.

Nor did Barb really want to learn that the ninth-grade boys had decided already that "copping a feel of Demi’s breasts" was yet another of the many rites of passage by which they marked the arrival of their manhood. No, they hadn’t taken a vote. But when some of the more adventurous guys boasted about "touching Demi’s titties," it became a cool thing to do — if you were a fourteen-year-old boy. While Demi didn’t relish being pawed, Kyle thought the game harmless because the breasts, after all, weren’t real.

Kyle did, however, tell Barb that the vice-principal had yanked him from his first class. "This time you must have been afraid," she told him. Even if Demi wasn’t afraid of how the school administration might respond to a cross-dresser, Barb suddenly was. Her stomach dropped as she realized for the first time that she should have consulted the school principal before allowing her son to go to school as a girl named Demi.

"But it all happened so gradually," Barb silently consoled herself. "I certainly wasn’t going to ask the school administration if they’d allow my son to cross-dress in such a way that no one would ever realize he was doing it. It would have been folly to have asked for such a dispensation, and even more foolish to admit that we had a deal over a motor scooter. No, there was never a good time for informing the school that my son was miraculously turning into my daughter. Is Demi now paying a price for my mistakes?"

These self-recriminations might have lasted for hours, but Kyle interrupted Barb’s thoughts with an excited, "Mr. Cudmore, the vice-principal, he was furious, real red-faced, and he accused me of not keeping my promise to dress conservatively until after I had seen Dr. Loupi."

"Who’s Dr. Loupi and why were you supposed to see him?" Barb asked anxiously. Was Demi in poor health? She had to know.

"He’s the school shrink. He was just supposed to ask me some questions."

Barb had to ask several times before Kyle finally admitted that Dr. Loupi was supposed to determine whether he, actually Demi, was a transsexual.

"Oh, is that all it’s about? You had me worried for a moment. Now don’t fret, sweetie. It will be only one man’s opinion. But what do you want him to determine? If he says that you are a transsexual, will you be coming out of his office with a smile or a frown?"

"My life will be a lot easier," Kyle replied, "if he says I’m a transsexual."

"So you want him to say that Demi is the real you, that deep down you are really a girl?"

"Yeh, I guess," said Kyle. Yes, the doctor should be fool enough to believe whatever lies Demi fed him. But did Kyle actually want the doctor to be right in diagnosing Demi as a transsexual? Of course not.

Just because you dressed like a girl, just because your school accepted you as a girl, just because you’d told your own mother that she should think of you as her daughter, just because your gay boyfriend was beginning to wonder whether you were ‘male enough’ for him, and just because you were having a lesbian relationship with your girlfriend, that doesn’t mean that you’re anything other than an all-American boy from the heartland. At least that’s how Kyle saw it. In his own mind, he was still just a regular guy trying to get the moped that would ensure that he would be a hit with the girls, and a star among the boys.

"So what did Mr. Cudmore say next?"

"Well, I told him that I wasn’t breaking my word to him because all I’d promised was that I wouldn’t wear a skirt or dress to school. And I never would, mom! There are only two girls in my year who wear either on a regular basis. They both wear horn-rimmed glasses. Need I say more?"

"So Demi is much too cool to be caught dead at school in a dress?"

"Yeh, you’ve got it. Demi’s cool. After all, look at the way I dressed today! This outfit is so phat. I should, however, have bought some purple earrings. These hoops clash with the purple. A couple of the other girls commented on them. Do you think we could go shopping for some more earrings?"

Barb wasn’t ready for a fashion detour: "Demi, please tell me how your meeting with the vice-principal ended. I can’t bear not knowing."

"Well, he thought he could threaten me. He said something like, ‘So you want to be a girl. Well, Dehhhhh….mi’ — that’s how he said it, like he was trying to get me to despise my own name, he said, ‘we can definitely do something to give you your wish. Do you see this computer screen here? It’s got the file of a student named Kyle James on it. But I don’t see no Kyle in front of me.’"

"Now Demi, I’m sure the vice-principal has better grammar than that."

"He doesn’t. Anyway, Mr. Cudmore then told me that if I didn’t agree that very moment to go home to change into something more appropriate for a boy that he’d change the name and sex on my school records. When I called his bluff, he went ahead and did it. You wouldn’t believe how easy it is. I counted just five keystrokes. And then he showed me my file — ‘Demi James, sex female.’ It was awesome. Suddenly I’m officially a girl."

"My word! But Demi, don’t worry — it’s just as easy to turn you back into a boy."

"I’m not dumb, mom. I realize that! But the next thing he did — that was a bit more permanent."

"What did he do?" Barb had a sudden, stomach-churning vision of Mr. Cudmore’s computer changing her child’s genitalia with a single stroke.

"Mr. Cudmore said he’d announce over the public address system that a new girl had just enrolled in the school. He threatened to publicly tell the teachers and students to call me Demi from now on, if I didn’t go home to change into boys’ jeans. Well, I called his bluff."

"Was he bluffing?"

"Not exactly, he did make the announcement on the P.A. I’m glad he did, because all the other students were already calling me Demi, and it would have been really confusing — and embarrassing -- had some of the teachers called me Kyle."

"So let me get this — the vice-principal is insisting that everyone call you Demi and treat you like a real girl, and that doesn’t bother you?"

"No, it’s sort of cool. Naturally, when I change back into my regular boys’ clothes, I’ll get everyone to call me Kyle again. I’ll force Mr. Cudmore to change my file back to the way it was."

To herself, Barb mused, "Demi, I seriously doubt it will be that easy for you to go away. You’re here to stay, whatever Kyle might think. Of all people, Kyle should know that actions speak louder than words. After all, he was always racing around on his skateboard trying to impress."

Kyle was displeased with the vice-principal’s next decision: "After he told the whole school about Demi, Cudmore told me that he wouldn’t allow me to use the boy’s bathrooms or locker room, seeing as how I had become a girl."

"Are you saying, Demi, that you are now using the girls’ washroom at school?" Barb wasn’t sure she approved of that. Her son could get into trouble with the law if any of the girls complained about there being a ‘boy’ in their washroom violating their privacy. And one or two surely would.

"No way! Mr. Cudmore said he’d have me arrested if I tried to use either the girls’ toilets or their locker room. He said that there was a bathroom on the third floor that no one was using, because we’ve lost so many students since the school was originally built. He told he was going to unlock it, and that it would be my private washroom and change room — at least, until some other ‘demi-girls’ needed it too."

"How thoughtful of him. I’m surprised, Demi, to be told that Mr. Cudmore has a heart after all. Until now, you’ve not been describing a very nice man."

"Well, he still isn’t! Do you know what he did, mom? He put on a hand-painted sign on the washroom door. The sign didn’t say ‘men’s toilet’ or anything sensible. It said ‘The Demijohn’! Can you imagine! And it had one of those biological sex symbols — you know, the circle with the arrow or the cross."

"Yes, dear. Which symbol did Mr. Cudmore put on the sign of the … demi-john?" She just knew she wouldn’t like the answer.

"The circle had a question mark pointing downward. Everyone’s been laughing about it. But I don’t care. You know, mom, the more Mr. Cudmore picks on me, the more the other students like me. When I went back to class after the announcement, the other kids actually chanted my name, "Demi" several times. I think they’d still be doing it if the teacher hadn’t made them stop."

Kyle could have added that Demi had become even more popular after Coach Bryan had tried to throw her out of sex education class. For no reason at all, other than her gender, he ordered her to the vice-principal’s office. However, Demi was the very last person the vice-principal wanted to see back in his office. He was furious at the coach, as the entire class could tell from the scene that they overheard in the hallway just outside their classroom door. Once they realized that Demi had the power to get the coach into trouble, once they realized that she profoundly disturbed him, the entire class looked on the ‘new girl at school’ more fondly.

And so, for Demi it had been an upbeat day. No wonder she seemed to be on cloud nine. She had started the day afraid of total rejection, and she had found instead acceptance. Most girls who debuted at a high school in October found a far frostier welcome than she had. It had been a surprisingly wonderful day, the greatest surprise being after school let out.

"Gran is tied up at a women’s club meeting," Joannie told him. "If we go to my house, I’ll be able to show you how pleased I am that you’ve finally become Demi. You’re so sexy now. When we get to my room, I’ll show you how much I love Demi."

How much? Enough, it turned out, for Joannie to let Demi to hold her bare breasts for the first time. Demi, stripped down to her bra and panties, had, as planned, a body-shaking orgasm as she was asking for "real breasts just like Joannie’s."

It was a near-perfect day. Even the "demijohn" seemed like a blessing to Kyle as he drifted off to sleep later that night. The demijohn would, he now appreciated, protect Demi from the seniors who snuck occasionally into the boys’ washrooms to smoke a cigaret or to blow some weed.

"Joannie’s right," he admitted. "Demi is a hot chick. There’s no way I could safely use the same john as a bunch of guys getting stoned."

After such a sweet day, Kyle expected sweet dreams. And maybe he had them. But all he remembered the following morning was that he had awakened in a cold sweat with but one thought on his mind: "I’m going to get killed. I don’t mean the equivalent of being killed. I mean really killed, as in knifed, shot and beaten with a pipe. What am I going to do? I promised Joannie that I would go with her to the dance dressed as a boy. But if I do that, the gangs said that I’d be lucky to get off with being merely castrated." .

Kyle shuddered, for he was still very attached to his gonads. The last thought he could remember having before falling back to sleep was this: "Will they know that Demi’s a girl even when she dresses like a boy?"

That coming Saturday, Demi would look either like a sissy boy or like a girl in drag. As the girl had a more promising future than the boy, Kyle spent the intervening three days praying that Demi could pull it off — that she was such a hot chick that she’d look like a girl no matter what she wore. His future seemed to depend on everyone at the dance concert agreeing that, "Hey babe, the pirate drag is fooling no one. We all know you’re really a girl."

Continued in Part 11 where Demi will have to convince the doctor on Friday that she is a transsexual, and the raving crowd on Saturday, that she is, despite her male clothes and moustache, a "real chick."