“You should go,” May said, ending the call and handing my phone back. Mom. I was still getting used to thinking that even in my own head. Each time I did I felt warm. But feels aside, Oh, hell to the no.

  I accepted the phone like it was going to bite me. It was my new phone, the one on the Seever Family Plan, and the call had been from Pinky with an invite to the Last Night of Freedom party tomorrow night, to mourn the ending of summer vacation with a Saturday night blowout party. Said party invitation had been extended to Pinky and to me, her new little sister, by someone I’d never heard of (not hard since I knew only two Hadley Upper students by name so far).

  When Pinky had called, I’d made up some perfectly good excuses but blundered tactically by saying “And I don’t think my mom will let me go.” Pinky had insisted that I pass the phone, and now . . .

  “Mom,” I said firmly, pretty sure I scored points whenever I said that, “I don’t want to go.”

  “And I can’t make you, sweetheart, you’re an adult.” And I was impressed that she managed that with a straight face since the whole problem was I wasn’t an adult anymore in anybody’s eyes, not even mine half the time. “But unless you do something completely childish like put your hands over your ears and chant ‘La-la-la I can’t hear yoooooou,’ I’m going to do my best to convince you to go. So brace yourself.”

  I wasn’t that childish; instead I set my iPad beside me on the couch and gave her a look of wide-eyed attention. “Go on, sell me.”

  She burst into laughter, bouncing Steph on her knee. We were in the living room, where I’d been studying for school again—I was preloading my tenth-year math work now so I wouldn’t be standout stupid in that one subject—and she’d been sitting on the other end of the couch, reading and playing with Steph when Pinky called.

  “I’m so proud of you, honey,” she said.

  “Objection, softening up the customer. Also, why?”

  “Your breakthrough last night. Do you know, that is the first time you’ve ever initiated a hug? You don’t hug. Not in the two years we knew you as David, not as April.”

  “I—really?”

  “Well, you hugged the little one here all the time, once you got over worrying about breaking her. But you only ever fist-bumped or back-slapped Carl and you never hugged me. Received a few hugs, and I like that I can just hug you any time I want now, but giving them? Breakthrough.” She sighed. “And now I want to hug you. Also I got distracted. You should go to the party.”

  I flushed lightly, manfully (womanfully?) resisting the urge to jump up and hug May now. It was ridiculous how addicting social touch had become since I’d woken up as April. But “Yeah, no. You need to do better than that.”

  “Okay.” Sitting up straight on the couch, she turned Steph to look at me, to witness my anticipated defeat, I supposed. “You’ve told us that your first high school experience was . . . not that great. That due to your size, your insecurities and shyness, you were one of the geeks. Invisible to the cool kids and especially to the opposite sex. You were even bullied a bit?”

  I shuddered, the fun going out of our little debate. “They called me The Bulk. Like The Hulk except not as cool.” I’d been both tall and heavy in high school, which had at least kept me from being pushed around and stuffed into lockers, but it hadn’t been fun. I still remembered the queasy wretchedness with which I’d faced each new week of school after a weekend of freedom.

  May winced. “Yes, that. Well, Hadley Upper will be a better experience for you, I guarantee it.” A fire in her eyes hinted at burning buildings if it wasn’t, and I felt my own eyes prickle at how ready she was to fight for me. Dammit. Stomping on the feels, I kept them off my face.

  “However,” she went on after a moment, “you’re starting school again at an extreme social disadvantage. You’re entering a school that runs from year eight to year twelve as a tenth year. Virtually everyone around you will have had two years to solidify their social circles and line up their hierarchies. It’s going to be tough for you to find your place in that.”

  “Gee, you make it sound so fun.” This was the kind of thing that had been in the back of my mind, though not in such stark words. I’d be an outsider, a newcomer, not at all comfortable with the people around me and it would show like blood in the water for any of my peers who wanted to be mean about it, for the bullies who liked to psychologically torture other kids. I’d be a lot more vulnerable to physical bullying this time around, too.

  Obviously picking up my distress, May scooted closer. “Hey, it’ll be fine. I promise. You just need allies. Now Hadley’s done part of that already, giving you Pinky as your new big sister. I spoke to her mother, and I think she’ll do a good job of steering you past the pitfalls starting out. Okay?” She waited for me to nod.

  “But,” she continued when I did, “if we’re going to trust Pinky, then we need to trust Pinky. And Pinky says that, quote, ‘Everyone’s going to wonder about the new girl, April needs to be seen where we can spin her big entrance’. And she says the best big entrance is a small entrance—don’t put on a show, just let people know you’re there and who you are and let her do the talking. So you go to the party and hang with Pinky and Brad, they introduce you to a few connected peers, you make a nice impression, and you start school Monday knowing more than just two students.”

  She cocked an eyebrow and I bit my cheek. I was pretty sure she half-expected me to blurt out “Brad will be there?” since he’d been the center of my meltdown yesterday. I didn’t blurt, but—“Pinky said she’s involving Brad in her grand strategy?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Oh yes. She calls it Three-and-Three. She’s going to introduce you to three key girls and Brad’s going to introduce you to three key boys. All tenth or eleventh years, the party’s being thrown by an eleventh-year Queen Bee she has a hook with.”

  And dammit, this was actually sounding reasonable. Deflect! Deflect! “Come on, you’re really going to trust your teenage daughter at an end-of-summer party being thrown by someone you’ve never met?”

  “No, I’m going to trust someone with decades of adult life experience to not do anything teenage-stupid and to know when to call for a rescue if it gets to be too much.”

  Dammit, she was good at sales. First, highlight the problem and empathize. Second, propose the solution and make it sound easy. Third, display certainty I could do it or at least not crash and burn. Fourth—

  “It really is up to you,” she said softly, absolute confidence in her eyes. “But I think it would help you a lot. And I think it might actually be fun for you. And since you’ve got this whole Second Time Around thing going, don’t you think it’s an opportunity to experience new things? Parties are part of the teen experience.”

  . . . Fuck.

  This was going to be horrible, I could feel it in my bones as I groaned. “I need a chessboard so I can tip my king.” Standing, I took the happy little goblin away from her, put her down on her blanket, and straightened up. Opening my arms I tipped into May, falling like a small tree as she yelped and wrapped her arms around me. My dramatic fall flattened her into the couch but when I tried rolling off she wouldn’t let go and after wiggling for a moment, I settled my head beside hers, just lying there. “It’s going to be awful.”

  She rubbed my back and squeezed some more. “Maybe. Maybe not. But you’ll survive and it’ll be good for you.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “I love you, Mom.” I’d decided I loved saying that, and practice made perfect.

  “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  ***********************************

  So now I was a bundle of nerves over my “social debut”, and May had the perfect fix for that; more shopping. We were going for my school clothes anyway, so after lunch off we went.

  Shopping for Hadley required going to a store imaginatively named Hadley Uniforms; Hadley Lower and Upper had a strict uniform code and enforced it with a single-source supplier. The uniform consisted of skirts for the girls and slacks for the boys, blazers and ties for both boys and girls, and white shirts either short or long-sleeved. The skirts were the Hadley Tartan, not an official Scottish clan tartan but a mostly green-and-black pattern, the same pattern as the ties. Blazers were a dark, dark green, and the blazers had the Hadley crest on the pocket over the left breast.

  Variety could be found in the details. First, I was stunned to discover that the girls of Hadley Upper had won the right to trim their skirt hemlines far above the knee, shorter than fingertip-length; apparently the united student council with all the class presidents had pushed the argument that if the cheerleaders got to run around in short skirts, the privilege should be granted to all Hadley girls. (Apparently there had even been a stirring speech from the Senior Class President, something like “If Hadley’s rulers see fit to lift our school’s archaic ‘modesty standards’ on behalf of one group of Hadley Girls, justice and equity dictates the privilege being extended to all. It’s the 21st Century! Girls’ legs aren’t forbidden sights!”) The administration had caved, but held out for an additional rule; if school skirts went more than two inches above knees then we had to wear school-regulation black tights or shorts beneath them. There would be no flashing of panties!

  Beyond the new-won skirt variations, socks had to be black but you could wear textured socks, smooth socks, short socks, thigh-high socks, etcetera. Shoes had to be brown or black. Boys and girls could also wear green Hadley vests or sweaters beneath or in replacement of their blazers, but couldn’t go without wearing one of those three articles of clothing.

  And Hadley staff were strict about writing up uniform violations; even improperly tied ties and open collars could get you after-school detention. Discipline!

  The Founder’s Endowment included a generous uniform stipend for students who couldn’t afford the school’s sartorial dictates, but we didn’t need it. May thought she was footing the bill; I was keeping track of all receipts to pay Carl out of my own accounts. She made the visit to Hadley Uniforms as painless as possible; after they measured me, she picked out at least two of everything including gym uniform and school and gym shoes and paid for the tailoring and delivery (extra to insure we’d get everything before Monday). Then she took me to a patisserie and chocolatier’s for lunch (A sly dig at my rant last night?), only afterwards revealing her dastardly motive for taking it easy on me; we needed a new outfit for the party.

  At her suggestion and my pleading, Pinky had sent pics from last year’s Last Night of Freedom party with thumbs-up and thumbs-down emojis on various outfits. She’d also included an update on what might be fashionable this year. The key, it turned out, was to look “summer fun” but not throw-on-whatever’s-in-your-closet-casual; you wanted to look good without looking like you were trying to at all. Now May looked the pics over and dove in.

  What followed was truly scarrifying (really, I was emotionally scarred) and two hours later I stood in front of my mirror in only my panties and bra, May sitting on the bed. That I only felt a little self-conscious at this point was huge progress. “Okay,” she said. “Before we dress you, we’re going to do a little self-talk. First, what do you see?”

  So much for being only a little self-conscious. “Um. Me? Four-foot-ten? Skinny? Not much going on? Pale?” My paleness was even starker in contrast to my ginger hair that somehow made my eyes look even bigger.

  “Well,” she said, “I see a beautiful, graceful young woman with a lovely slender body and a pixyish face, brilliant eyes, and gorgeous red hair. Is there anything that stands out to you?”

  I flushed.

  “Oh? What is it?”

  “My nipples,” I mumbled, staring at my breasts in the mirror. They were covered but I knew what my nips looked like under there. Given everything else I’d had to get used to, I’d barely paid attention to them at first but they were . . . different now. And not just more sensitive.

  May had assured me that my small breasts were fully developed and Dr. James had backed that assessment, and they swelled out from my chest symmetrically I supposed, but my nipples weren’t how I remembered female nipples looking in the glossy porn magazines of my youth. Poky and pink, surrounded by only narrow rings of areola, they were fleshy thimbles standing proud above pale white flesh, too prominent for my breasts’ small size.

  I didn’t know why they bothered me; they disappeared under the least flattening (except when they shrank and stiffened into bullets from temperature change or friction or arousal) and nobody’d see them but me.

  May just smiled. “Really? Nipples come in different shapes but they look just like mine did. I’d whip off my top and show you, but having Steph has given me mommy breasts and they’re different now. Trust me, yours are quite cute and perfectly normal. The boys will love them.”

  “Mom!” My flush heated.

  “Okay, okay. My point is, you’re beautiful. And what we’ve put together is only going to show it. Well, not the nips. It’s not that kind of party.”

  “Mom!”

  She laughed. “You’re just too easy. So first, the new underwear.” She rolled her eyes at my look. “I’ll close my eyes.” When she did, I stripped off fast and put on the new powder pink panties with little bow accents and matching bra. I barely needed the bra except as a layer to hide my poky “nips”, but I was starting to get used to the band around my ribs and the feeling of the straps. Why May had insisted on new and matching underwear nobody else would ever see was a mystery, but I’d gone along to stop her from holding up set after set as if to match them to my skin or something.

  “Done.”

  She opened her eyes and smiled. “Now the shorts.”

  This I was a bit leery about. We’d found these at the third place we’d stopped, a pair of pre-faded jeans shorts. Even after almost a month I still hadn’t gotten used to the gropy sensation a tight crotch gave me and I’d sworn off jeans of any kind, but the cut of the shorts had caught her eye and she’d had me try them on and then bought them. Now putting them on again, they felt . . . okay.

  “Move around a bit,” she instructed. “Yes. See? Snug at the waist and legs but a lot of give in the butt and not tight in the crotch. How do they feel?”

  “Like I’d rather wear my cargo shorts?”

  “Yes, but remember, we need you to sell your new age. Now the shirt.”

  I pulled the red shirt over my head, tugging it as far down as it would go but still leaving a strip of skin between it and the shorts. Sleeveless, it was bright red with a white printed cartoon image of the manta ray-shaped crashed alien ship with two aliens standing below it (big eyed Grays from close-encounter lore since nobody knew what they really looked like), one studying an unfolded map and saying to the other, “I knew we should have turned right at Antares.”

  Turning to the mirror, I tugged on it again. “Stop that,” May said. “Now spin around.” When I did, she nodded. “Well?”

  I’d heard somewhere that gingers should never wear red, but May had disagreed and now, looking myself over, I thought they didn’t know what they were talking about. The bright red somehow gave my pale skin more warmth and even complimented my hair (Nichole had labeled my dark ginger hair color “sunset”). Snug, the shirt hugged my torso down to my waist, the seamless bra not showing under it. And . . .

  “See?” May said. “Look.” Stepping up behind me, she put her hands on my hips which I suddenly saw I had. “The shirt length draws the eye to where your waist is smallest. The shorts are dropped to the top of your hips, accenting their curve. The looser fabric below your beltline gives your hips and butt a bit more width, accented again by the short leg’s close wide cuffs.”

  She exaggerated the leg length by calling it “short”—the snug turned-up cuffs were practically in my crotch—but she was right about it all. The tight shirt showed off what bust I had while the break lines between top and bottom showed off my small waist and the shorts accented my hip swell. I was still small, nothing to be done about that, but I didn’t have an immature silhouette and could pass as a tenth year at least. And—

  Looking at myself, I couldn’t ignore the truth; I looked . . . cute. Oh my God, I was cute.

  She smiled at my flushing face in the mirror. “Excellent! Now the makeup.”

  I groaned.

  “Hush. Peachy pink or coral for your lipstick, light peach-toned blush. Let’s see you do it.”

  “Makeup takes so much time!”

  “And now you know about the Beauty Toll. Be prepared to pay it every day.”

  It took a few tries, with wipes and do-overs, for me to get it down to her satisfaction, and then for eyeshadow she had me apply a “nude shade with warm undertones.” That took a few more attempts. Finally, she brushed out my hair (my bushy eyebrows and thick lashes we could leave alone, apparently), and had me take a vanity mirror selfie with her leaning in with arms draped around my shoulders. We really did look like mother and daughter and I forgot my confused reaction to my appearance to luxuriate in the warmth in my chest. “Well?” she asked, turning her head to kiss my hair. “Think you can show your face like this for dinner?”

  I could and at the table Carl made silly jokes about how “Our little girl is all grown up,” and “Don’t go bringing home any stray boys.” Aunt Sophie told me she hoped I’d been reading the book. I maintained a dignified silence, and after dinner beat Carl soundly at chess with the Danish Gambit.