Note to readers. Don't read if you don't like poor grammar, this is rough.
This is a work of adult fiction. No resemblance to reality should be inferred or expected.
Copyright… are you kidding?

Edited by Amanda Lynn and Rosemary.

Years ago, I was a science teacher at Portland High School. I’d found a door on the blind wall on Elm street while in a traffic jam. There was no door really. It was only visible in the mirror, and as I was in the car. I couldn’t examine this phenomenon in more detail.

Some days later, I was there again, walking by on foot, and I saw the door mirrored on the side of a parked car. I could see and feel it, only while turned away from it. I tried the door and opened it into a world where I was a girl ten years younger than I was in my own world.

I panicked then, and returned to my own world that same day.

A few years later after my breakup with my girlfriend Val, I’d considered checking the door again. I was so unhappy with my current life and I was ready to step through this door and live that other, maybe a bit better, life. With a folding mirror in my jacket pocket, I went to Elm Street and found the same wall. I looked in the mirror and the door was there. I followed myself in the mirror to the door till my back was touching it. I took the doorknob in my hand and turned it. Nothing! I could turn the knob a little bit but not much. The door was locked.

Was it a tragedy? No way. I’d realized at that moment that I had to live my life and not escape it. My attitude and my life both changed. I was offered a job at the USM physics lab. It wasn’t great improvement money wise but… High school or Uni? The choice was Uni.

I was alone and I wasn’t looking for someone in my life. Solitude was good. I had more time for myself and my Scout. I’d restored him with all the original parts. I finished it like Monteverdi Safari in black and yolk yellow. I didn’t plan to sell him but it happened that a fortune was offered and I made a deal.

The same year, I was offered a position at the University of Maine and I accepted it, so I moved to Orono.

I still had some errands to run in Portland and I parked my car in the USM employees’ gated parking lot. My new car’s plate number was still in their database and I was allowed in. Anyway not so many cars in summer.

One of my errands was in the state court building so I was coming down Elm Street, the same street I usually walked to school on when I was a kid. It was also the same street where, on a blind wall, I’d found a door that was visible only in the mirror. The door was locked the last time I’d checked it. Was it still locked now?

I had no mirror with me nor was there anything nearby I could use as one, but I had sunglasses. I took them off and examined the blind wall mirrored in them. It was something of a distorted image but I could see myself and the wall behind me. The graffiti was cleaned off so I had to meander back and forth until I found the door. I came with my back to the door and groped for the door handle. I tried it and it wasn’t locked.

I hesitated for a while. I had everything I needed in my life. Was the curiosity of the unknown worth to lose the wealth. I would be able to come back at any moment. Or wouldn’t I?

I turned the doorknob and cracked the door open, making a step backward. I felt as if I had dropped a couple of inches down. Something fell to the ground and broke with a shattering sound. I looked down and there was a smartphone with the broken glass on the pavement. I checked it and it didn’t respond.

I looked around and there was a single passerby on Elm Street. This street never was crowded. It was secluded, especially in summer. I examined myself discretely. I guess I wasn’t Sandra. Sandra should be an adult already. I was a kid. A girl. Nothing wrong with being a girl, though I wasn’t desperate to become a female me. I was dressed like a boy and had no visible breasts. With my hands in my pockets, I could feel clearly – no balls here.

No backpack and no purse. Keys in left pocket and wallet in right back pocket. And no working phone. There was some change in the wallet and, an id. I sighed with relief. I was Patricia Laurel Kilian and I was fourteen. I calculated in my mind and found that my mom was thirty-nine when Patricia was born. That’s if the mom was the same. If she was the same mom her birthday will be in two days. As Earl, I had planned to send her flowers.

What next? I didn’t know what plans Patricia had for the rest of the day. I turned toward my parents' home. I would explore what I found there.

The door was unlocked.

“I’m home!” I shrieked in my new, high-pitched voice, closing the door behind me.

“I’m in the kitchen,” The voice of a young woman said.

I turned to the kitchen and there was Sandra. And I thought I was in the universe where instead of Earl and Sandra there was only Patricia. Sandra was obviously too young to be my mom. So she was my sis. How could I not notice there was another kid when I was here in Sandra’s place seven years ago?

“What's the haps?” she greeted.

To tell the truth it was unexpected to meet Sandra and the most I managed to stammer out was, “Sandra?”

She looked at me and the look on her face changed from relaxed happiness into a worried one.

“You are not Trish,” she rather stated than questioned. “Earl?”

“How do you…?”

“I was you one day a few years ago,” she said.

“Do others know?”

“You mean rents? No. I wasn’t so stupid as to tell the nonsense about the door in the mirror or another universe.”

“But Trish?” I asked.

“Yeah. It happened. It was at first kind of a spooky story,” Sandra said. “Four years ago. You were ten. She was ten,” Sandra corrected herself.

I had nothing to say.

“No. It was you. If you stay, and you stay, you’re Trish now.”

“How do you know?”

“Trish emerged as transgendered two years ago. Then she got hooked on an idea she was Earl reborn in a girl's body,” Sandra explained.

“What do you mean by reborn? I haven’t died yet.”

“Mom had confessed two years ago, she had an abortion when she was eighteen. Trish convinced herself she was the soul of that aborted baby. Have you tried to open the door three years ago?” she ended with an unexpected question.

“Well… Yes. But it was locked. How do you know?”

“I was at Uni in Boston and one day I felt an unexplained urge to come home and check that door. I rationalized, that I didn’t need or want to be Earl. The next day that feeling was gone.”

“Urge? I felt the same urge today. It’s why I’ve stepped through the door,” I said.

“Will you be ok to stay Trish and be the girl?” Sandra asked.

“I think yes. I had expected to be you. You know, the young woman and not a kid. Female anyway…” I explained. “Why do you ask?”

“Mom begged me to come home and try to convince Trish against puberty blockers. Mom’s not the same as in Earl’s world. She’s overprotective here.”

“Well… I’ll be Trish. No worries here. My only worry is about real Trish– now Earl – will she cope being a twenty years older man?”

“If she wants to come back, you’ll be the first to feel it,” Sandra assured me.

“You mean I’ll feel the urge to go back?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she replied.

“The more I stay here, the more I want to know,” I stated. “Did Trish have an accident with broken ribs?”

“Why?”

“I feel like I’m wearing something squeezing my chest.”

“Come to your room,” Sandra ushered me.

We went upstairs to what I thought was her room.

“Isn’t this your room?” I asked.

“It was, but it’s yours now. I live in Providence.”

“Back to the broken ribs,” I said.

“Ha-ha… Take your shirt off.”

I took it off and I was wearing a compression vest. I had to wear one like that four years ago when I had a skiing accident and broke three ribs. This garment was a real help then.

“Take this off too,” Sandra commanded.

To put this thing on and take it off was a struggle. Generally one has to roll it up but I didn’t have enough strength. Or I still didn’t know how to operate my new body.

“Let me… help… you…” Sandra grabbed the sides of the vest’s hem and started to pull it up. “Raise your hands!”

The thing was off and two mounds of my flesh popped out free. I instinctively covered them with my hands. They were round and firm. Not big but breasts anyway.

“This too,” Sandra pointed at the bandage on my waist. I rolled it off and it did nothing– just covered the waist. I looked inquiringly at Sandra.

“To conceal the girly waist,” she explained.

“I’m well developed for the fourteen-year-old,” I offered.

“Indeed you are,” Sandra confirmed.

I pulled out the drawer of the chest.

“What are you looking for?” Sandra asked.

“I need a bra for these,” I pointed at my breasts.

“You think Trish was kidding? She insisted her name was Pat like Patrick, not Patricia. Pat’s a boy. Nothing girly in his room.”

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Language, young lady,” Sandra said with a chuckle.

“So I have to put everything back on?”

“Just a shirt. It’s thick and it conceals your breasts under the jacket. It will do for a while.“

“A while?” I asked.

“Walmart’s enough, I guess, for the very basic things,” she offered.

Those very basic things were really plain and basic. Anyway, it was more than an armful of things barely fitting in Sandra’s Qashqai.

At home, I changed into leggings and a cropped tee. I had a bra under the shirt and my midriff was visible and I looked like most girls my age of fourteen.

So we, that’s Sandra and I, went to the kitchen and did dinner, waiting for mom and dad to come from work. Sandra was introducing me into Patricia’s life meanwhile. Not much there. Trish was a loner. No friends. She was about to attend high school – the same school Sandra and I attended, and the same where I’d worked in my world.

Trish insisted on starting puberty blockers. Her condition was confirmed as gender dysphoria by three independent shrinks. Then another doc said blockers weren’t HRT. Everything is reversible as he said. But puberty isn’t really rocket science especially when you’ve gone through it. So mom knew Trish would never be a functional female even if she backed off. That’s in case Trish used blockers.

The door opened and closed and dad’s voice said, “I’m home!”

“In the kitchen!” Sandra said aloud and dad poked his head in.

“Hmm... It smells hea…” he started but then his eyes caught my view in girl’s attire. He first starred at me. Then he turned to Sandra.

“Is that some kinda experiment or something?” he asked her.

Sandra didn’t answer while the entrance door opened and closed again.

“What’s the commotion here?” mom asked entering the kitchen.

“Oh…” was the only thing she managed to say.

“Mother, Father! Meet your daughter Patricia Laurel. Trish for short,” Sandra kinda introduced me to rents.

I smiled sheepishly and finger waved to them and then I said, “Mom, dad! I’m back.”