Sitting at our table, I played with my napkin, appetite fled. We’d left Dr. James’ office with a new medical file, still thin without the lab results to fatten it, and a small stack of pamphlets in lieu of a lecture—she’d said she trusted me to be adult about it and read everything and ask May questions. She’d also promised to rush all the tests, and I had arranged to make a third-party deposit. Afterwards May had decided to take us out to sandwiches and tea. “My mom did it as a ritual to mark my first female exam,” she’d told me. “I know you’re an old hand with doctors, but . . .”

  It had been very strange; the tea shop’s hostess had complimented May on “your beautiful daughter” and shown us to a private corner saying something about there not being many days left until school. May was just thirty-two so the lady was chopping quite a bit off my declared age but her words knotted my stomach.

  And that had been after our encounter on the way from the carpark to the tea place. Waiting at the traffic light we’d crossed paths with a pack of boys on their way to the mall across the road and I’d been seen. And not in any way I was at all comfortable with.

  I’d been a big man and not just in circumference before this last year. I’d topped out at six foot two in college but now I wasn’t even five feet (May thought I’d get there and not much further) and like Carl these teen boys, around my new claimed age, loomed. Two days ago, I wouldn’t have looked at them twice and they wouldn’t have looked at me once except to stay out of my way, but now they'd noticed me.

  The new size difference between me and Carl didn’t bother me at all, but with the boisterous group crowding us at the corner, most of them towering over me, something in me had shrunk away. The tallest boy had loudly introduced himself and asked if we were going to the mall, giving me that quick down-and-up onceover boys who hadn’t learned to be subtle yet checked girls out with, making me suddenly aware of the lightness of my clothing and my strip of exposed stomach. The skirt that had seemed modest suddenly didn’t cover enough skin above or below, and his eyes lingered on my chest, which, really? His gaze and the attention of the other boys made me deeply uncomfortable and I didn’t hear what May said as she took my hand.

  The light couldn’t change fast enough for us to move along and now, sitting at our table, that scene mixed with our hostess’ comments to leave me with feelings I couldn’t name.

  “What are you thinking?” May asked softly after our waitress left us with our warm pot of tea and plate of finger sandwiches and pastries. I shrugged. Great time to go non-verbal. Closing my legs beneath the table, straightening and smoothing my skirt, I thought again I should have worn the shorts as everything from the morning crashed into me.

  “Hey,” she said, waiting for me to look up. “Is it about what our hostess said?”

  “No, I—” And unaccountably there were tears in my eyes. Again. It really was getting absurd.

  She gave me a moment and an encouraging smile. “You can use your words,” she finally said. “Or we can just sit here and drink our tea.”

  And that wasn’t fair, she was working so hard to make this nice.

  “It wasn’t just the hostess,” I mumbled. “It was this morning. Everything. It was those boys?”

  Yesterday I’d fought outright numbing panic to come to grips with my new physical state. I’d pushed through it just to function. I’d woken up this morning feeling like I had that grip, however tenuously. Like the worst surprises were over, like I could function as an adult human being again. But all through the appointment—which May was right and I’d needed even if maybe not today—I’d felt off and not just because of the horribly embarrassing procedures. The boys had deepened that feeling and our hostess solidified it.

  May had made decisions for me, was making decisions for me, without telling me her reasons first and getting my approval in advance. It was different from last year, when she’d pushed their involvement with my recovery; then she’d checked every thought with me first. And after Dr. James had been convinced of my story—known my true age—she’d still been, not condescending, but as deferential to May’s opinions as my own. In her defense, I’d deferred to May a lot throughout the ordeal, but she’d acted like May was my guardian even though she’d known that wasn’t the case. The boys had been deferential to May but in their brief interaction with me they’d been something else that made me squirm. Polite enough, yes, but also almost posturing, engaging with me like they’d expected me to reciprocate their interest. I’d had no idea what to do and it had been . . . intimidating.

  God. I wasn’t just a woman now, I was clearly a girl, not a full adult developmentally, and that colored the way even May and Carl who knew better were seeing me let alone Dr. James and a bunch of boys and a hostess who didn’t.

  Worse, I didn’t feel like an adult now, either. Not at all, not in my head. I’d read somewhere that the human brain wasn’t finished developing until around the age of twenty-five, that before then the parts of the brain handling emotion and impulse regulation weren’t working at full adult capacity—that mental maturity was almost as much a function of brain structure as experience. I didn’t know if that was true, but between the way I was being treated and the strangeness of my thoughts, I was feeling decidedly immature and didn’t know what to do about it.

  Taking a breath, I tried to verbalize all that. May was amazingly patient with the tangled mess of words though her expression went from apologetic to concerned to horrified more than once. It was a good thing our teapot came on a warming stand, but finally she put her hand over mine. “Stop. You can stop, I think I understand you. I’m so sorry.”

  “No,” I sniffed, angry at my upset. “You shouldn’t be. I’m not making sense even to me, I liked what the hostess said, it— It sort of made me feel good, too.” It had, for just that moment when it made me feel like May and I were really family.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “I am sorry,” she insisted, “And you’re making a great deal of sense. You are an adult, as hard as it is to keep that in mind moment to moment with the way you look and sound now. I won’t make that kind of decision without you again, I promise. Or,” she quirked a wry smile, “I’ll try very hard not to. Forgive me?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay. And to start with, let’s talk about your name.” She withdrew her hand, eyes still on me, and nudged the plate of sandwiches my way.

  “My name?” I started, then laughed. Right, she’d just given me a name. A fake name for a confidential medical file, sure, but still. “April. How did you pick it?” I was suddenly hungry again.

  She blushed lightly. “It’s a little joke. I was just blanking on what to name you on the forms when the thought popped into my head that ‘April comes before May.’”

  “Huh?”

  “On the calendar, and last night? April came before May.” She laughed at my gasp and blushing “May!”

  “I’m sorry! And, it’s silly, but in my family the month-names are kind of traditional for girls. April, May, June. Very old fashioned, and I do have a younger cousin named April. One named June, too, but she firmly rejected it in favor of her middle name.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “April is the wet month. ‘April showers bring May flowers.’” And I’d certainly been a raincloud the last couple of days. Giggling, I sniffed one more time and wiped my eyes with a finger before gingerly selecting a chocolate pastry.

  “Sandwich first,” May said, then cringed a bit. “Sorry. Habit.”

  I laughed outright. “I don’t think you’ll be able to stop. And, I like it? The name, I mean. April. It’s like David—it’s not a name anyone needs to have repeated or mispronounces or asks the spelling for.” I felt much lighter now, even if the whole day had really driven home how insane it would have been to try and establish a new adult identity right away—how suddenly far away I was from independence.

  “That’s good because we’re going to need to stick with a name for your school records. And that’s another conversation we need to have right now missy.”

  “School—” The hostess had mentioned school starting up again, and suddenly the tea sandwich I’d selected didn’t taste as good.

  “One of my accounting jobs is for a school trust with Hadley Upper School, and I know several ladies on the board. It’s a private school, close to us by public transit, eighth through twelfth grades. They have an associated Hadley Lower School, first through seventh grades. Very swanky, ivy-covered buildings, school uniforms, weird school traditions, all that stuff. They’re academically more advanced than the local public schools—you’d be able to take so many AP classes and programs that in two years you’d be close to halfway to your bachelor’s degree if you decide you want to re-experience college. There’s always a waitlist for last minute openings, and . . .”

  “You called somebody, didn’t you?” I sighed. She’d only mentioned school in passing yesterday—Do you think you could survive going back to school?—and she’d already called somebody. “Wait, two years?”

  She nodded a bit shamefacedly. “I did some checking yesterday since the school year is so close. You’d need to take an academic placement test to ensure you’re up to the curriculum, but we could get you in and you’d be a lot less likely to be bored out of your mind with stuff you already know. . .”

  It never ceased to amaze me how many people May knew. She and Carl had grown up in a rural farming community, a “ville” as she put it, like Smallville, and had only come to the city to finish the schooling they couldn’t get at their local community college (well, that and to just leave their childhood community), but she seemed as connected as anyone I knew whose family had been part of city society for generations.

  Actually, remembering the Great Cookie-Knocking Expedition, it probably shouldn’t have been surprising at all. But I’d been quiet too long. “Or we can get you enrolled in the closest public high school,” she hastened to assure me. “Once we have your new documents ready.”

  “But why two years?”

  “Well, it would give you a little more time to get your feet under you. And face it, to grow a little more. And like I said, with the AP credits you wouldn’t be losing much time if college is your choice. I think what we’ll do is say you were a preemie, give you some health issues as a child so you started school at seven instead of six. So just turned eighteen you’ll be headed into your junior year instead of your senior year. That will make you a legal adult while giving you a little more time, and if you decide not to stick with it then you can always take the adult General Education Exam and be done with it all. But I think you need that year or two.”

  My throat was dry. Truthfully, the idea of reliving even a year of high school, public or private, filled me with dread. For one moment I thought about going for a homeschool track—and crushed the thought. They were already doing so much for me; attending school would at least allow me to give May some space back in her own home, take me from under her care for six or seven hours a day five days a week. “Hadley Upper School sounds good, if it’s not too big of an ask. Don’t—don’t push that hard for me.”

  She regarded me as if she could read my thoughts. “If you’re sure, okay. I’ll get things rolling.”

  *************************************

  Dropping the subject brought my appetite back and the rest of tea was good, but I was glad when we went to retrieve Steph and retreated to their home. Our home. A big part of me was all in favor of becoming a Mrs. Thompson after all, just at their place instead of holed up in mine. The thought of not having to deal with boys who looked at me like this morning again was a big point in favor of the home-schooled hermit plan.

  I took over Steph-watch until Carl got home, giving May the opportunity to retreat to her third-floor home office and deal with her own career. Steph on my hip (a bit harder to keep up now that I was so much smaller), I wandered around the place, just feeling off. With no immediate problem to focus on I found myself sinking into my head and finally I returned to the living room to sit down at the fancy chessboard they’d made part of their living room decor, absently bouncing Steph while she repeatedly tried to dive over backwards and escape, laughing at the game.

  After a few minutes I got out the pieces and set them up. Then I set up a delivery order from the Thai place all three of us loved, to be dropped off in a couple of hours. The delivery beat Carl to the door by only five minutes and I was plating and covering their favorite dishes when he walked into the kitchen.

  “What’s this?” He asked, sniffing the air.

  I set Steph in her highchair, buckling her up. “I thought,” I said nervously, “we could play our game tonight? Since we missed Saturday. I’ve been thinking about last week’s game and your defense.”

  A smile spread over his face. “So you stole dinner duty from me to make it happen.”

  I shrugged, passing it off. “That and I didn’t want fresh vegetables and microwaved meatloaf again, sure. Since it’s my turn to play white, I think I’ll start with the Spanish Opening.”

  He didn’t say anything for a long moment and I finally blurted “Carl, are we okay?”

  “Ross old man, we’re never not going to be okay.”