“So, all of the girls in Diana’s posse swore they’d never have anything to do with yucky boys. But this guy named Jupiter saw one of them, a girl named Callisto, and thought she was pretty. He was a no-good kind of man, always chasing after girls and then leaving them alone as soon as they fell in love with him.”
“Yuck,” Jasmine commented.
Night and Day
part 11 of 12
by Trismegistus Shandy
This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. Thanks to Morpheus, epain, and Karen Lockhart for reading and commenting on earlier drafts.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Jamie wrote back:
“It looks like a lot of kids saw the interview, and they sent links to it to all their friends. The five hundred dollars Mom got out of this? Not worth it. Some kids were already calling me ‘twisted’ before but I think there’s more of them now. And they’re making fun of me for having multiple personalities, too.”
It wasn’t long before I got some of that treatment too, early mornings on the school bus. I tried to ignore it, sitting with Bobby and talking with him while I pressed my face to the window or turned around and looked out the other windows, trying to see as much of the sunrise as I could while the bus meandered around picking up different kids. As sunrise got later and the bus got more crowded before I checked out and Jamie took over, some kids who stood in the aisles because all the seats were taken by the time they got on realized what I was doing and took pleasure in standing between me and the sun; that made me a lot madder than any of the mean things they said about me.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to control my temper for very long at a time before Jamie came in and took over. I wasn’t sure if Jamie would get punished for stuff I did, but I suspected so, despite the school district recognizing our separateness by sending Mr. Martin out to teach me. I managed to stay out of trouble, reminding myself that if I used my power on the kids who were messing with me, I’d probably crash the bus and any nearby cars.
I never did get to school; the sun always rose before school started, because just as sunrise got toward the end of the bus ride, daylight savings time ended and I wasn’t riding the bus at all for a while. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Halloween was approaching, and Bobby and I were planning our costumes. On my first Halloween as a girl, I had a lot of costume options I’d never considered before, which was cool, but I still didn’t have any more money to spend on them, and no older sister whose closet I could raid for costume parts. I scrounged around our closets, and Bobby’s, and made a trip to a thrift store with Mom and Jasmine; they went over there with Jamie, and he turned into me in the parking lot. I found what I needed and put it all together.
On Halloween night, I woke up holding Jasmine’s hand, wearing Jamie’s costume. He’d dressed as the Flash, and as usual when I woke up wearing something other than the loose stuff we tried to change in, it was too tight across the chest and at the hips and too loose everywhere else.
“Hi, Diana!” Jasmine said, and hugged me. “You want to go home and change into your costume?” She was wearing her best white Sunday dress with a plastic tiara we’d found in the toy department at the St. Vincent de Paul store, and one of Mom’s necklaces.
“You bet,” I said. Jamie had apparently been taking her trick-or-treating around our apartment complex; we were over by the south building, and Jasmine had a respectable amount of candy in her grocery bag.
So we went back to our apartment, to Jasmine’s bedroom, and I changed into my costume while Jasmine showed Mom the candy she’d collected so far. I put on a dark green skirt — it was the first time I’d worn one, except trying them on in the store. I didn’t think I’d make a habit of it, but this one was long enough to be modest, and loose enough to not restrict my movement. Then a similar blouse, and sandals, a plastic garland in my hair, and finally the bow and arrows.
They weren’t a real bow and arrows, of course; I didn’t have the money. But I’d found a toy bow and arrow set, with suction cups on the arrows, at the thrift store.
“You look really pretty,” Jasmine said.
“Ready to go, princess?”
“Yay!”
Mom smiled at us. “You can keep her out for another half an hour,” she said. “Then I suppose you can hang out with Bobby until his bedtime.”
“Thanks.” So Jasmine and I went out and picked up where she and Jamie had left off, knocking on doors in the south apartment building.
“Trick or treat,” Jasmine demanded, holding out her bucket.
“My, what a beautiful princess!” said the old lady who’d answered the door, dropping a couple of pieces of hard cinnamon candy into Jasmine’s bucket. “And you, Maid Marian, are you this sweet girl’s sister?”
“Yes, I’m her sister, but I’m not Maid Marian. I’m Artemis.”
“Oh! Yes, I can see that. I’m not sure if the Greeks had green dye, though; I know they had purple dye... It looks very nice, anyway.”
“I tried making a peplos out of an old sheet,” I said, “but Mom said it looked indecent.”
“Oh, well. Happy Halloween, Artemis and Princess...?”
“Princess Jasmine,” Jasmine said.
And so we went on to the next apartment, and the next, and the next. Twenty minutes later, we’d knocked on every door in the building. I was about to take Jasmine over to the west building, but she said she and Jamie had already worked it over.
So we went back to the apartment, and Mom said it was time for Jasmine to go to bed. She demanded a bedtime story, and I obliged her; I helped her get out of her princess costume and into her pajamas, and set my bow and arrows aside, and sat down on the edge of her bed once she was under the covers.
“What do you want to hear about tonight?”
“Another story about Diana.”
“Do you want to hear about Siproites again?”
“No.”
“Or Actaeon?”
“No. Tell me a new one.”
“Give me a minute, let me think.”
Most of the myths about Artemis weren’t suitable for a little girl; I’d been stretching things with Actaeon, really. After a few moments' thought I came up with this:
“So, all of the girls in Diana’s posse swore they’d never have anything to do with yucky boys. But this guy named Jupiter saw one of them, a girl named Callisto, and thought she was pretty. He was a no-good kind of man, always chasing after girls and then leaving them alone as soon as they fell in love with him.”
“Yuck,” Jasmine commented.
“So he knew Diana’s girls wouldn’t have anything to do with him because he was a guy, but he was a magician too, like Diana. So he made himself look exactly like Diana, and then he came to Callisto when she was alone and said, ‘Hey, let’s go hunting.’ So they did, and they shot a deer, cooked and ate some of it, and sat around talking for a while, and only then he revealed who he really was.”
“He turned himself into a girl?” Jasmine giggled.
“Yep, and then back into a boy a few hours later. So Callisto was freaked out that she’d been hanging out with a yucky boy, but then she decided he wasn’t that bad — they’d had a lot of fun hunting together and stuff — and so they started hanging out secretly when Diana wasn’t around, kissing and stuff.”
“Gross!”
“Tell me about it.” (In one version of the myth, Jupiter raped Callisto. But I thought that didn’t make sense; why would Artemis punish her for getting raped? It must have been consensual if Artemis got mad about it.) “But one day Diana saw them together, and she was mad because Callisto broke her promise not to have anything to do with yucky boys. As soon as Jupiter was gone she confronted Callisto, and then she turned her into a bear.”
“Rarr!”
“So Callisto the bear wandered off into the woods and did bear stuff, slapping fish out of the river and eating them, looking for honey and getting stung by bees, things like that. And then she had a baby.”
“A people baby or a bear baby?”
“A people baby.” (This part hadn’t make any sense to me, but I came up with an explanation.) “Diana didn’t know she was pregnant, or she would have turned the baby inside her into a baby bear too. She couldn’t take care of a people baby because she was a bear, so —”
“Why not? That mama gorilla took care of Tarzan when he was a baby.” (I’d wondered where she’d heard about Tarzan; later I found out Jamie had told her that story.)
“But Callisto hadn’t ever heard of Tarzan. This was a long time ago. And gorillas have hands and bears don’t. Anyway, she took the baby boy and put him on the doorstep of a poor couple that couldn’t have children of their own.”
“How’d she carry him if she didn’t have hands?”
“In her mouth. — Very carefully. So the boy grew up, and when he was about Jared’s age, he went hunting one day and he ran into his mother. Only he didn’t know she was his mother, because bear.”
“Oh no!”
“So he was about to shoot her, but Jupiter happened to be there — probably he was sneaking around trying to get in with one of Diana’s other girls. And he turned Callisto into a moon.”
“What?”
“Really, she’s one of the moons of Jupiter. Jupiter had a planet named for him, you know.”
“Why’d they name a planet for him if he was so mean?”
“Beats me. It should have been named for a girl, right? But guy astronomers think that planets should be named for guys and girls only get moons and asteroids named after them. Except Venus, she got a planet named for her. Anyway, there she is. We can look at her in my astronomy book tomorrow.”
“What happened to her boy?”
“Well, he was so surprised to see a bear float off into the sky and turn into a moon that he dropped his bow and arrows. He decided to become an astronomer, but back in those days they didn’t have telescopes, so once she got far enough away he couldn’t ever see his mother again. He still had his adoptive mom and dad around, though, so that was okay.”
“And they lived happily ever after?” She didn’t sound too sure.
“Pretty much. Good night, princess.” I kissed her on the forehead and slipped out of the room.
Rachel Timson broke up with Jamie after she found out he turned into me at night — I heard from Bobby about it several days after it happened. But it wasn’t long before Jamie started dating another girl at school, still without Mom’s permission. They couldn’t do much outside of school because she didn’t have a brother they could use as a pretext for Jamie to come over. So one night I got an email from Jamie:
“Do you remember Angie Dawes? Well, I’d like to go out with her, but you know Mom won’t like it, and Angie’s mom isn’t too keen on her dating yet either. But she wants to meet you, and her mom lets her invite girl friends over. Of course, for you to get there at a reasonable hour, I have to go, and then turn into you there... see? Then her mom will give you a ride back here a couple of hours after sunset, or maybe I’ll take the bus home the next morning if you two decide to do a sleepover. Well, wakeover in your case. I don’t know exactly when but it won’t be on a school night.”
And on one of my social media accounts I had a friend request from Angie. I accepted it, and a couple of nights later I had a private message from her:
“My mom says I can invite a couple of friends over for a sleepover this Friday-Saturday. Do you know Teryn Simon? I invited her too. If you can come, have your mom call mine,” (she gave me the number). “I’ll tell Jamie to get here a while before sunset; I want to see him turn into you. I’m not allowed to date until I’m fourteen but that’s in just another couple of months, and I think I might want to date Jamie but I want to get to know you too first. I hope we can be friends. I remember you being a nice guy before you and Jamie changed.”
I talked to Mom about it the next evening, and she said Jamie had told her, and if I wanted to go, she’d let Jamie go over there after he spent a couple of hours watching Jasmine so Jared could do his homework. We’d have to get all our other homework done after we came home Saturday.
So Friday night, I woke up in Angie’s back yard. Angie and Teryn, girls I hadn’t seen since before my change (we didn’t ride the same bus) and never knew very well, were standing a few feet away staring at me in awe. An older woman was with them — probably Angie’s mom, I figured.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Diana.”
“Wow!” Teryn said. “And you don’t remember anything that we did with Jamie for the last half hour?”
“No, I don’t remember anything that’s happened to Jamie since we changed back in March, and he doesn’t remember anything that happened to me.”
“Come inside,” Angie said, “it’s too cold to be out here any longer.”
“Where’d Jamie leave my clothes?” I asked.
“He gave me a bag; I put it in my bedroom with Teryn’s things. Come on, I’ll show you.”
“Go on upstairs, girls,” Angie’s mom said as we went inside. “I want to talk to Diana alone for a minute.”
Angie and Teryn went upstairs, and I stayed with her mom in the kitchen.
“I saw the news report,” she said, “after Angie told me about you, and that you’d been on the news and all. You’ll change back into a boy at dawn, right?”
“Yes. He’s a different person from me, even though we used to be the same person.”
“And you’re a girl. Mind, not just body?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you can spend the night with Angie and Teryn in Angie’s room, but I want you to come downstairs before dawn.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll be up early to check.”
“All right.”
Angie’s was the first girl’s bedroom I’d ever seen besides Jasmine’s, and a four-year-old has a very different taste in decoration than a thirteen-year-old. I liked it; it wasn’t all pink and princessy like Jasmine’s room, but you could definitely tell a girl lived there. I saw my bag, picked it up and started to go in the bathroom to change clothes.
“You can change here with us,” Angie said, and giggled nervously. “I mean, you’re really a girl, right? Jamie said you were, that he was really a guy and you’re really a girl... not a boy in a girl’s body or something?”
“Yeah, but... I’m not wearing a bra,” I said. “And I’ve never been undressed in front of anybody but my mom... and doctors, I guess.” I thought about Artemis bathing with her girl friends and said: “Okay, whatever.” I took off my shirt and dug through my bag for the bra.
Meanwhile Angie and Teryn were changing into pajamas. They didn’t take off their panties, but they took off their bras. Angie’s breasts were as big as mine, Teryn’s a little smaller.
“Why are you putting on a bra?” Teryn asked.
“Why are you taking yours off?”
“'Cause we’re going to bed soon,” Angie said. “After we watch movies and do our hair and stuff. You mean you’ve been wearing a bra to sleep ever since you changed?”
“No, I don’t sleep. I mean, I kind of do, but it’s when Jamie is awake. I generally put on a bra and panties and real clothes soon after sunset and then change into loose sweats and a T-shirt, with no underwear, just before dawn.”
I put on a clean T-shirt, since I didn’t own any pajamas, and pulled down my black sweat pants. Underneath them I was wearing jockey shorts stuffed with toilet paper; in the few minutes since sunset the toilet paper had gotten spotted with blood here and there. (I’d started my period a couple of days earlier; only a week to go.) I took my panties and a pad from my bag and pulled them on, then put on another, girlier set of sweat pants. By then Angie and Teryn had finished changing into their pajamas.
“What do you mean, you sleep when Jamie is awake?” Teryn asked.
I explained what Dr. Ware had said about it.
“So he could be having a dream right now?” Angie asked, her eyes brightening.
“Maybe. The odds are against it, though. I think Dr. Ware said you dream about a quarter of the time while you’re asleep.”
“So do you dream about stuff that happens while Jamie is awake? Would he dream about the stuff we’re doing now?”
“Maybe? Probably not, I guess. I don’t remember as many dreams as I used to, before the change, and the one I remember best didn’t have anything to do with Jamie.”
“Oh.” She seemed disappointed. “What did you dream about?”
“I was out in the woods with some other girls, and we were hunting deer with bows and arrows.” I didn’t say anything about rescuing that woman who was being attacked, and killing the guy who was about to rape her.
“Huh. I wonder why.”
“I can guess. I’d been reading about mythology lately...” I told them a little bit about Artemis, and how she was also known as Diana and I’d named myself after her.
After that they wanted to watch a movie, and I said “sure,” though I wasn’t enthusiastic about the teen romance they’d picked. We trooped downstairs to the living room and watched it sitting on the sofa; I enjoyed it more than I expected, which isn’t saying much. Just after it was over, Angie’s mom came downstairs.
“Are you enjoying the sleepover so far?” she asked me.
“Pretty well, I guess.”
“Is this your first time hanging out with other girls since you became a girl?”
“Yes, except for my little sister. I don’t get out much.”
“Have fun. I expect Angie and Teryn can teach you a lot.” She smiled.
Angie, Teryn and I sat around talking for a while, and ate a snack before going upstairs to Angie’s bedroom. Teryn wanted to show Angie a makeup trick she’d learned recently, and after they’d made Angie up, they wanted to try it on me too. I shrugged and said sure. When they got done with me, I looked a lot more glamorous; my face didn’t go well with my loose T-shirt and sweat pants. I felt like I should be wearing a fancy dress or something.
“Have you ever worn makeup before?” Angie asked.
“No. Like I said, I don’t get out much.”
“Let’s do your nails too.”
“And mine,” Teryn said; “I want to try something different.”
Teryn cleaned off her old nail polish while Angie showed me how to apply it, demonstrating on a couple of the fingers of my right hand and then leaving me to do the rest. I did kind of a sloppy job on the first few fingers, but I got better by the time I was done, and touched up the other fingers a bit after that. When I stopped concentrating on that, I realized Angie was saying something to me.
“What was that?”
“I said, what do you normally do all night, if you don’t sleep? You said you don’t get out much... that must suck.”
“Yeah, tell me about it. Besides doing schoolwork, I mostly read and watch movies. I used to play video games but our game system died.” I didn’t tell them about my nighttime excursions.
“You don’t ever get to go see friends?”
“Just my friend Bobby; he lives in my apartment complex. But I can only see him for an hour or two some nights when he doesn’t have much homework.”
“I’ll try to invite you over more often.”
“Thanks.” I suspected she wanted to use me as an excuse to see Jamie more often, too; I wasn’t enjoying this girly stuff as much as I’d hoped I might, but it was a nice change to get out of the apartment and see different people.
After doing our toenails, we went down to the living room and watched another movie, then ate some nachos and cheese before going upstairs again. After we took some pictures of each other and a group shot Angie set up using the camera on her laptop, we cleaned off the makeup and went to bed — or Angie and Teryn did. Angie let Teryn have her bed, and laid down on a pallet, while I sat in her desk chair. We lay or sat in the dark, talking about various things, until first Teryn and then Angie dropped off to sleep. After I’d listened to their breathing for a few minutes and was sure they were asleep, I sat up, picked up my bag, and went downstairs to the sofa, where I got out the book I’d packed that morning and read until almost dawn, getting up to stretch every hour or two. Just before dawn, I went into the downstairs bathroom and changed into our loose T-shirt and sweats. I’d come out and was about to go out in the back yard to watch the sun rise when Angie’s mom came downstairs.
“Good,” she said. “You’ll be changing back in a few minutes, right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I was just about to go outside. I kind of need to watch the sun rise.”
“Or you won’t change back?”
“No, I’ll change if I’m indoors with no windows, I just get really fidgety and claustrophobic.”
“Oh, I’m sorry... I won’t keep you. I like your nails, by the way.”
“Thanks; Angie taught me how to do them.” I paused. “Oh, no! I need to wash this stuff off before Jamie wakes up, or he’ll be really pissed at me. Can I borrow some nail polish remover? I don’t want to wake Angie up going in her room rummaging in her things.”
“Sure, come on upstairs.”
I followed her to her bedroom, though I’d rather have been going outside, and she showed me where the nail polish remover was. I started working on that, but I found it hard to concentrate, and I asked: “Can I take this outside while I watch the sun rise?”
“All right. I’ll come with you and take it back in after Jamie — ah, wakes up.”
So we went outside, and I kept one eye on the sunrise while I finished removing the nail polish. It was only moments before the sun rose that I remembered the toenail polish.
If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors higher royalties than Amazon.
Comments
he'll survive having toenail polish
a nice little moment of goodness, lovely!
At least they are working together to make common friends
That should improve their social life. I suppose a bisexual partner might be a consideration once they got to that stage of their life.