“So, how did you do last night?” May asked innocently after breakfast.

  I sputtered and glared, laughing. “May! Mom! You can’t ask that stuff now, you said moms were the exception!”

  “Well if it will make you call me Mom, I’m going to ask every morning. But we’re the exception to the exception, so spill.”

  My face had heated with a boiling flush.

  “I didn’t use the pad. I did the second thing again.” I felt suddenly nervous. Only three days after my transformation from a man with a failing heart to healthy teen girl, I’d masturbated twice and come in my sleep once. Was that normal? “How much is too much?” I managed to ask. “For a girl.” When I was this age the first time, I remembered doing it just about every day after school.

  She just smiled, rubbing my arm. “Hun, there’s no such thing as too much, as long as you don’t get risky about it or start doing it in public places and dragging others into it. Girls can get just as horny as boys, we’re just not as hair-trigger is all, so stop comparing. Now, about my other suggestion?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I nodded. The hair appointment. She’d made one yesterday and broke it to me while brushing my hair last night—but had hastened to say that if I didn’t want to do it then that was fine; “Your hair needs a little trimming, is all. Nothing major.” She’d told me to sleep on it, but I’d agreed in my head before she’d tucked me in.

  “Wonderful. We’ll take Steph along this time, get back to boxing this afternoon.”

  So we prepared for the expedition with a full baby kit and the most high-tech baby stroller I’d ever seen. Streamlined, it looked like it could bounce off a car bumper without breaking if it needed to. Which made sense—May said it was designed for jogging mothers to take their tykes along the running paths with them; it had a roll bar and the safety straps were very secure, practically a crash web. After opening it up and making sure everything was there, she collapsed it again for the trip through the back yard to the garage while I carried the bag and Steph, who burbled at me.

  “It’s a good thing I like you, you little poop bomb,” I told her. Walking ahead of me, May stumbled with a laugh. Steph laughed, too.

  “Be nice to your baby sister,” May said, taking her from me to strap her into her equally high-tech baby seat.

  My baby sister. I hadn’t really thought about that at all; when she had used the “sister” word yesterday it had sailed right by me on a wave of my own drama but I had a baby sister, now. What was she going to think of this when she got older? Would we tell her the truth? Or would she grow up thinking that the cover story was the truth and her mom had gotten pregnant with me at fourteen? I’m going to be the best older sister, I promised her silently.

  The drive to May’s stylist took only a few minutes and she left the stroller in the van, putting Steph in a sling instead. It wasn’t a big saloon, with only six chairs, three of them occupied, and two sinks. Her stylist, a young black woman, sported a welcoming smile and neon-rainbow hair. Really, it practically glowed. “May! Wonderful to see you! And who is this?”

  “This,” May said grandly, “is my daughter April.”

  “No.” The woman’s eyes widened. “She’s beautiful! And looks so like you! Why haven’t you brought her around before?” Or talked about her before? I could hear her thought.

  May didn’t bat an eye. “I only just talked her into it. The appointment’s for her.”

  The woman instantly turned to me. “I’m Nichole, young lady, and you’re in good hands. The best!” A minute later I was in a chair with her fingers in my hair while May looked on and I watched her in the mirror. Lifting strands she watched them fall, humming to herself.

  It looked like May wanted to say something but she didn’t and after scowling thoughtfully for a minute or two, Nichole met my eyes in the mirror and said “Your hair falls with a moderate wave, and at this length I recommend a shoulder-brushing bob with textured ends curled inward. No coloring, it’s already perfect with your skin.”

  May nodded her agreement but looked at me in the mirror. “What do you think, hun?”

  I had no idea but nodded too and her eyes narrowed as she studied me for a moment. “It’s unanimous then,” she finally said. "Do it.”

  “Excellent! Oh, this is going to be fun!” Spinning me around to put my back to the mirror, she got to work. The next while wasn’t an unfamiliar experience; scissors, water sprayer, finger-measuring, the usual. What was new was I’d never had my hair done by someone who talked without stopping. No questions, not one, but I heard so much about my hair as she worked that I wished I’d thought to record it. She didn’t talk just about my hair of course; she also talked about May’s hair, her hair, other clients’ hair, tricks for hair, hair disasters (never hers), just all things hair. I was seriously impressed.

  And also wondering if it was me; I’d had a few barbers and stylists over the years but never someone as warmly personable and chatty with me as Nichole.

  When she did a final spritz and got out a massive curling iron, I started paying closer attention to what she was doing. Spotting my attention, she spun me around to face the mirror and slowed down a bit, walking me through exactly what she was doing to curl my ends under, the best way to do it at home, and what to use on it beforehand. By the time she was finished I was pretty sure I could do what she’d done.

  With one last brush over my face, a last comb swipe, and a couple of tugged strands, she whipped my barber’s cape off. “Well?”

  Woah.

  She’d said everything she was going to do but I hadn’t really pictured it. Now there it was. She’d tamed my waves somehow without any product, and I wasn’t sure what textured ends meant but it had to have something to do with the softness at the edges where it had been a blunt chop before. And my hair seemed . . . lighter? Fuller? Bouncier? It fell in waves around my face but the only curls were at the bottom, where it tucked inward just before reaching my shoulders.

  “You like?” Nichole was grinning. I nodded.

  “Yeah, it looks— Wow.”

  “That’s what I like to hear.” She ran fingers through it and it all settled back in place when she drew them out. “And here!” Reaching into a drawer, she pulled out something I’d seen before. Slipping it on my head like a pair of glasses, she swept it up over my forehead with a little back and forth to settle it on top almost like a pair of headphones.

  “The style’s perfect with Alice bands and hair bands.”

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  May put a hand over her mouth, not fast enough to hide her silent laugh. It was a narrow white band with a little velvet bow cocked off-center on it. Really? Really?

  “Keep the band,” Nichole said grandly. “Now should we book you, May? Perhaps for next week?”

  Five minutes later (with more talking) we were out of there and loaded into the van. May kept her eyes straight ahead as we pulled out, only then looking at me sideways and busting up laughing.

  I opened my mouth. Shut it. “What? What’s so funny?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! It’s just, your face when she put that on you! There’s a reason I didn’t load you up on frilly and flowery underwear—I was honestly surprised when you came downstairs Monday morning wearing the top and skirt. And the dress yesterday? But the bow? Definitely a bridge too far for you right now and it was all over your face.”

  I covered my flaming cheeks that she found so funny, then dropped my hands because that felt like such a girl thing to do. Pulling the headband off, I shifted in my car seat.

  Doing that seemed to strike a thought for May. “Change of subject,” she said, eyes back on the road. “You’ve been shifting a lot today, like you’ve got ants in your pants. Acting almost like you want to undo a wedgy. What’s up with that?”

  The heat rushed right back to my face. Today I’d worn the high-waisted jeans shorts with a black t-shirt, determined to get used to the “groping” feeling it gave me in my crotch. I’d thought the feeling would just fade as I adjusted but it hadn’t—in fact after just a few hours I was feeling . . . aroused down there and only down there. It did not put me in the mood at all, it just made me want to squirm and find a way to make it stop.

  When I had no words, she looked concerned. “What is it, hun?”

  Flushing hotter, I told her.

  “Right. Wow. So that’s why the skirt and the dress? They didn’t molest you?”

  I nodded miserably and her brow furrowed. “Huh. I would have thought that, as a guy, you would have had a lot more . . . gropeage down there from tight pants.”

  “Maybe,” I groaned, “But it was something I was used to. And if the pants were too tight, crushed balls didn’t feel anything like this.”

  “Oh! Does it hurt?”

  “No, not like that. It’s just intrusive. I can’t stop feeling it, feeling what’s different.”

  “Well, there’s an easy solution, and fortunately we have time for some shopping.”

  Shopping.

  Dropping my head back, I groaned again.

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

  May knew all the stores. All of them. She freely confessed that she’d hit a bunch of them on Sunday, talking to several saleswomen about what to buy for a young “un-girly” girl (the dress and skirt had been her own experiments). Their advice was why none of my panties had tiny bows on them, why my little bras were as plain as sports bras, and I appreciated that. Now she led me through some of those stores, focused on her solution.

  Which was cargo pants and baggy shorts and more skirts in two styles; skater skirts (like the flaring skirt I’d worn Monday) and tennis skirts (same length or shorter, sharply pleated), in a variety of pastel colors and patterns and even a few black ones. With those she showed me what to wear underneath; more boyleg panties—she also called them boxer panties—in colors but mostly black or white. She also got a few pairs of athletic shorts for me to try to see if I was more comfortable with wearing those under my skirts.

  “And always wear panties under athletic shorts,” she said, pointing me to the changing room to try on a skirt-short pair that she thought went with my t-shirt.

  I sighed. “Hygiene, right?”

  “Yup, you’re getting it. Now scoot.” She swatted my butt, earning a glare.

  An hour later we left with full bags and a fussing Steph. I was sure I’d cut it short by at least an hour by agreeing with every suggestion to the point where she eyed me suspiciously with each choice. As David I’d had zero interest in fashion; outside of office suits I’d just gone with black and khaki for pants and blacks or grays or solid pastels for shirts and never worried about what my colors were, and obviously if there was a girl-gene for fashion I hadn’t gotten it now.

  Getting home, I took all the bags upstairs and dumped them on my bed. I’d worn a skirt and pair of high-legged spandex athletic shorts I’d modeled home, May just giving the tags to the saleswoman to ring up, and now I sported a tartan skater skirt with my black tee. May had also threatened to take me shoe shopping to match all of it, but I’d begged for a one-day reprieve I was hugely grateful for; being taken out and shopped for was a truly alien experience.

  I did stop to look at myself in my mirror, taking in the new hair and all of it, and feeling . . . I didn’t know, I couldn’t label my thoughts or feelings at all; truly par for the course since waking up on Sunday.

  Back downstairs, I begged off more boxing after lunch. Last night May had told me more about the education requirements for Hadley Upper School and although we needed to wait for my new documents to make the application official, they had files on their school website so potential applicants would know what was required and a link to a practice-test I could take anytime. It had been a lifetime since high school, and I was more than a little nervous about the “necessary knowledge” that I might have lost while being an actual adult and businessman.

  So instead, I sat down and took the practice test.

  And bombed it.

  Not all of it; in the two-hour test I flew through the language section and did decently on the history and civics sections. But I only passed the science section by a single point and completely failed the math section.

  Basic math? Excellent—I could handle fractions still, even work out some algebra from principles in my hazy memory. But eleventh year math requirements included a solid grounding in trigonometry, geometry, and calculus, and I could barely remember a few terms in each, forget about solving tougher problems in any of them.

  Public school it is. At least they’ll have to take me.

  Sucking it up, I showed May the results. She looked them over and then looked at me. “Something tells me you really don’t want to do public school again. Am I right?”

  I nodded. Honestly, the thought made my skin crawl. Saying I hadn’t had a great experience was putting it mildly, and I knew that what I’d gone through the first time wasn’t going to be repeated, but . . .

  “Damn right that won’t be repeated,” she said when I expressed that thought. “But let me make a call.” She left me wondering who she could possibly know who could do . . . what? Ten minutes later she was back.

  “Okay,” she said. “I explained about your early health issues and your uneven homeschooling, and here’s the deal. We can still slip you into Hadley as a sophomore, if we can get your math result up just ten percent. You’d be on math probation until you caught up.”

  “How—”

  “It’s the results of your other sections, they looked at that practice test. Your literacy is college graduate level and your history and civics knowledge is about what they expect of a Hadley sophomore, so they know you’ve got a good mind and can do the work. The blame is on your homeschooling creating gaps, and if you can demonstrate a ten percent improvement with a review of what they think you already know, you’re good. They’ll ‘average’ your scores overall.”

  I could sort of see that, but— “A sophomore? School for three years?”

  “So?” She shrugged off my protest. “Not to belabor the point, but it won’t have to be. Start Hadley as a sophomore instead of a junior, you’re still eighteen so you can just do the GED if that’s what you decide you want; that’ll get you into a good state university. It’s just, if you decide you can stick the three years to graduate at Hadley, Ivy League acceptances are practically handed to you if that’s what you want to do this time around. And with all the AP work done at Hadley you could pick up your bachelors in just a couple of years if you wanted to do that so you wouldn’t really be losing time!”

  I stopped, mouth open. Because she was right; if I could get through it, Hadley would be the strongest possible start to whatever I wound up deciding to do this time. And whatever I did, I knew I wasn’t majoring in business again.

  I had another breath-stealing moment as it hit me again; I was planning for my future. I hadn’t had one before, I’d been more or less done, in the final act of my story and planning for my exit, stage left. And while that had sucked, at least I’d known. I’d had a plan to carry me right up until the end, maybe four or five years from now. Now—now I was staring down at least five more decades, maybe six, with no idea what I wanted to do with them except to not do what I’d done before.

  “What is it?” May asked. I shook my head. “Nothing. This is— This is good.”

  Focus. It needed to be my mantra. Do the next thing.

  It was Wednesday and May had set the appointment for testing and documents for next Wednesday—just a week before the beginning of school. I had no idea what kind of juice she had with someone at Hadley Upper School to set it up (I was pretty sure passing the test was normally a prerequisite for even getting on the wait list), but that gave me six days to cram as much forgotten math (never my best subject) back into my head as I could.

  I could do this.