I watch Tess drive away. Maddy turns to wave at me. I’d like to wave back, but my hands are too full. I hope she’ll be all right by herself tonight. She seems to be fine, but you never can tell when the next tantrum will happen.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and cry out. It’s not Keshia, this time. “Not exactly a light packer, are you?” Jamie says.
“My grandma packed for me.”
Jamie takes the sleeping bag from me and then leads me to the car. The driver gets out to take my suitcase. He puts it in the trunk and then we’re on our way.
***
Once we get back to Jamie’s place, we go back to her bedroom like before. This time she has a surprise for me. It’s a digital camera that she picks up from her desk to aim at me. “What’s that for?” I ask.
“So we can get some glamour shots of you,” she says. She motions me over to her desk. She opens her laptop and then brings up Facebook. Only it’s not for her account—it’s a page for Stacey Chang. The wall is blank at the moment and there’s a generic avatar instead of a picture. I already have one friend in Jamie. “You don’t mind, do you? I thought it’d be easier to do it here without your grandparents around.”
“That’s cool,” I say, though inside I feel a nervous flutter. I really don’t want to be on Facebook, where any stranger in the world can see me. Dr. Ling might be dead, but there are still plenty of creeps out there who might want to do nasty things to a little girl. Still, I know how much it would hurt Jamie if I don’t do it; like most girls her age she practically lives on Facebook.
So for the next hour I let Jamie stage a photo shoot for me. First she brings out a case full of cosmetics. “These were my mom’s,” Jamie says with a note of sadness. Then she starts to slather on rouge and eyeshadow. Like most girls her age she puts too much on, so I look like a cheap whore. When Jamie goes to the bathroom, I wipe some of it off with a tissue so it’s a little more subtle.
When we get to the actual pictures, she makes me sit on the bed. “You should take the glasses off,” she says.
“I like the glasses.”
“People will think you’re a geek.”
“You don’t think I’m a geek, do you?”
“Me? I think you’re a total geek,” Jamie says with a smile.
I throw my pink monkey at her, but it sails wide to hit the wall. “Just hurry up and take the pictures.” We take a couple normal ones. Then she asks me to make some funny faces. I haven’t made funny faces into a camera in forty years, at least sober. All I can think to do is stick my tongue out.
“Come on, you can do more than that.”
“Like what?”
She crosses her eyes and folds her tongue in half like a slice of pizza. “Gross!” I shout. “I can’t do that.”
“Try it. It’s totally not hard.”
I stick my tongue out again and try to fold it the way she did. My tongue wobbles but stays flat. Jamie shakes her head. She steps over to the bed and grabs my tongue with one hand to fold it in half. “Like that.”
Try as I might, I can’t get it right. “You’re hopeless,” she says with a sigh.
I try something I used to do back when I was a little boy. I roll my eyes back until I can’t see anything. “Oh my God, that is so gross!” Jamie shouts. “I love it!” She takes a few pictures of me like that.
For the last batch she puts the camera on the desk and then sets the timer. We squeeze together in front of the camera and smile broadly. In a couple of other ones she does the thing with her tongue and I do the thing with my eyes. We wind up in a giggling heap on the floor.
“Those are going to be so awesome,” she says.
“You think so?”
“Trust me,” she says with a laugh. I watch as she connects the camera to the computer so she can transfer the pictures. It’s a lot easier than in my day where you had to go to a store and wait hours or even days to have the film developed unless you were lucky enough to have a Polaroid.
In minutes I can see the pictures blown up on the screen. My face turns warmer as I see how adorable I look, even when my slanted eyes are rolled back to show just the whites. There’s the surreal moment where I have to remind myself that’s my face on the screen, me with the red-framed glasses, thick bangs, and shy smile.
“Are you all right?” Jamie asks. “You aren’t going to puke, are you?”
“What? No,” I say and force myself to smile. “I’m just surprised how good these are.”
“I told you I know what I’m doing,” she says.
I think about calling home, but I know Jamie would take that as an affront, as if I don’t want to be here. So I try to relax while she starts to set up my Facebook page. She wants to use one of the goofy pictures of me as my avatar. “Don’t you dare!” I shout.
“Come on, it’ll be funny,” she says. As she pushes the button, I roll over on the bed; I don’t want to see it. Everyone will think I’m a freak. “OK, here it is.”
I look up. To the left I see one of my nice pictures. Beside that is my name and location. Before I can say anything, Jamie snaps a picture of me. Thirty seconds later I can see how I look, a mixture of horror and relief on my face. I give her a playful slap on the arm. “Don’t scare me like that!”
“All right,” Jamie says, “now it’s time to make some friends.”
***
By dinner I have thirty friends on Facebook. They’re Jamie’s friends who only accept my request because I’m her friend. My wall has a few standard greetings from these new friends; they welcome me and hope to see me around. As stupid as it is, I feel some satisfaction with this. Maybe I don’t know these people for real, but at least they know I exist.
“So what do you want to say?” Jamie asks.
“I don’t know. What am I supposed to say?”
“Whatever you want.”
She slides over so I can use the keyboard. What do I say to all of my new friends? I should try to say something funny, something to endear them to me. I can’t think of anything. As Steve and Stacey, no one’s ever said I’m a laugh riot. So I just type, “Hi everyone! It’s great to meet you!” The exclamation points are a bit much, but they make it sound perkier than a period, or at least that’s what I think.
“That’s it?” Jamie says.
“What else should I say?”
“Here, slide over.” I do so and watch Jamie type in a message that’s ostensibly from me. It says, “I’m sleeping over with Jamie Borstein tonight. We’re gonna eat sooooo much popcorn, LOL.” She posts it and then says, “It’s not great, but it’s a start.”
“Is that what we’re doing tonight?”
“Maybe. You’re not allergic to popcorn, are you?”
“No.”
“Caleb is allergic to peanuts. His face gets all puffy and red if he eats something that even touched a peanut. It’s pretty gross.” Jamie smiles evilly at me. “We should totally give him a peanut and then take pictures.”
“What? No! That’s gross!”
“I’m just teasing. You are soooo gullible.”
“Am not.”
“Here, I’m going to type that in. ‘I am so gullible I believe whatever Jamie tells me.’”
“Don’t!”
Jamie starts to laugh. “Got you again!” She rubs her hands together with glee. “We are going to have so much fun tonight!”
“Gee, I can hardly wait.”
***
Though I’m not hungry after dinner, Jamie insists we have a big bowl of popcorn while we watch movies in the living room. About a year ago Maddy and I had a sleepover that ended when Grace came over so they could reconcile while I stupidly snuck out to finish off Artie Luther. Before that happened, Maddy and I watched Twilight in the same way Jamie and I watch TV now, on the floor in sleeping bags. The only difference is Jamie is partial to Harry Potter movies.
Not for the eponymous character, as it turns out. She likes the redheaded boy, Ron Weasley. Whenever he comes on the screen, she gi
ves a little sigh. “It’s too bad they aren’t making any more of these,” Jamie says. “I wish they could go on forever.”
“That would be great,” I say, though I’ve never seen any of the movies.
Jamie picks up on this. “Have you even seen these before?”
“Not really.”
“Oh my God! You cannot be serious. These are the best! The books are even better. You haven’t read those either, have you?”
“No.”
She shakes her head sadly, to pity me. “What do you like?”
“I mostly read Nancy Drew books.”
“Nancy Drew? Seriously?” Jamie smiles at me. “That is so retro. You probably still play with Barbies too.”
“No,” I say. Then I add, “Well, sometimes. If Maddy asks me.”
“No way!” Jamie shakes her head again. “I forget sometimes you’re only ten.”
“I’m not a baby!” I say and sound just like Maddy.
“Stay here a second.” Jamie scrambles out of her sleeping bag to run back to her room. I assume she’s gone to get her phone so we can play on Facebook or something. Instead she returns with a book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. “This is a first edition, from England. Mom got it when she went over there for a conference or something. She bought the first five because the others weren’t out yet. I couldn’t read them on my own so she read them to me at bedtime.”
“That’s so sweet,” I say.
“Yeah, she was really sweet.” Jamie’s eyes water, but then she forces herself to smile. “I’ll read a little to you tonight, but then you’re on your own, OK?”
“OK.” I snuggle closer to her in my sleeping bag and then listen while she reads to me from the book.
I’m not sure when I fall asleep, but the next thing I know, someone shakes me. Jamie whispers, “Come on, Stacey. You can’t go to sleep yet. It’s not even midnight.”
“It’s not?” It feels to me like it should be two in the morning, but maybe that’s what happens when you start to go to bed at eight-thirty instead of midnight. “How long was I asleep?”
“Long enough to start snoring.”
“I don’t snore!”
“Do so. You sound like a chainsaw.” She imitates my snoring, which sounds like a pig as it chokes on something.
“I don’t sound like that!”
She ignores this and pulls her phone out from her sleeping bag. “I wanted to show you something. I found this really cool app the other day.” She pushes a few buttons on the phone and then turns the phone lengthwise.
When she shows me the screen, I see a Ouija board, like the kind kids played with in my day to predict stuff, only this one is all digital. “A Ouija board?” I say.
“Yeah, it’s cool. You ask it a question about the future and it gives you an answer.”
“Don’t you need to be psychic or something to make that work? I mean, how can a computer tell you the future?”
“Maybe it’s a psychic computer. We don’t have to play if you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared. I just don’t think a computer can tell the future.”
“Then what’s it going to hurt to play?”
She has me there. I sigh and say, “Fine. What do we ask it?”
Jamie thinks for a moment and then starts to type. “What is the first name of my first boyfriend,” she says as she types.
We watch as the cursor begins to tremble and then move around the digital board. The first letter is ‘E.’ Then comes ‘R,’ followed by ‘I’ and ‘C.’ The cursor comes to rest. “Eric,” Jamie says. “I wonder if it means Eric Jules?”
“Who?”
“He’s on the JV basketball team. Oh my God, he is so cute. He’s got curly blond hair and this really cute little scar on his left cheek from when he fell on the steps when he was a kid.”
“How do you know so much about him? Haven’t you only been here like two months?”
“One of my friends is a friend of his on Facebook. I sent him a friend request but he didn’t answer it. Jerk.”
“And he’s going to be your boyfriend?”
“I hope so.” Jamie sighs just like when she sees Ron Weasley on the screen. “I think I’ll start getting the wedding invitations printed. Mrs. Jamie Jules.”
I giggle at this. “That sounds silly.”
“Shut up.” She taps the phone. “Let’s see who it picks for you. It probably won’t do anything because you’re too little to even like boys.”
“I am not! I like boys.”
“Who do you like, then?”
“Lots of them.”
“That’s what I thought,” she says and then sticks out her tongue.
I slide away from her. “This game is stupid,” I complain.
“Come on, Stacey. We can ask it something else if you’re too scared to play.”
“I don’t care.”
“Fine. Let’s see—” her voice trails off and then she begins to type. “Who is going to be Stacey’s first kiss?”
“Don’t ask it that!” I shout. If this thing is any kind of psychic at all, it’ll bring up a girl’s name. I can only imagine the grief Jamie will give me for that.
I’m too late to stop her; she’s already hit the button. There’s nothing to do as the cursor moves around. As it does, I start to feel sick to my stomach. After a minute the cursor finally stops. D-A-R-R-E-N. Darren. Darren is my first kiss.
“Who’s Darren?” Jamie says.
“I don’t know,” I say, a little too quickly.
Jamie stares at me and then starts to laugh. “Oh my God! The weird kid under the slide! That’s your first kiss.”
“Shut up!” I shout. “I don’t even like him. We’re just working on the project together.”
“Stacey and Darren sitting in a tree—”
She has to stop when I hit her in the jaw with my pillow. This isn’t a playful pillow fight blow, but one intended to hurt. Her taunting rhyme ends with a cry of pain. “Ouch! You little brat! I bit my tongue.”
She grabs her pillow and hits me in the side of the head hard enough to make me tumble onto my side. Before I can sit up, she’s on top of me to pin my arms down. We’re wrestling like this when Mr. Borstein shouts, “What the hell is going on in here?”
Jamie slides off of me. Her face turns red as she faces her father. “We were just playing, Daddy,” she says.
“That didn’t look like playing to me.”
Being the youngest one in the room, I’m the one who breaks first. Though I don’t want to, I start to cry. “I’m sorry, Mr. Borstein. It’s my fault. Jamie and I were playing and I got mad and I hit her with a pillow.” I sniffle and then add, “I’ll call my grandpa to pick me up.”
Jamie’s father tousles my hair. “You don’t have to do that, sweetheart. I’m sure Jamie is as much at fault as you are. Aren’t you?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Jamie says, sincere enough that I believe her. She pulls me into a hug. “I’m sorry, Stacey. It was a stupid game anyway.”
“I’m sorry too.”
“That’s good, girls. Now clean up this mess and then get to bed, all right?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Jamie says.
“Thank you, Mr. Borstein,” I say.
He tousles my hair again. “It’s all right.”
Then he leaves us to clean up spilled popcorn and the rest of our mess. While I clean, I make sure to tap a button on Jamie’s phone to shut down the Ouija app that still showed Darren’s name on it.
***
I asked Tess for a sleeping bag because I figured Jamie and I would sleep out here in the living room. After we clean up, she starts back to the bedroom. “Where are you going?” I ask.
“To bed. Where else?”
“Oh.” I follow her to the bedroom and drag my sleeping bag with me. Jamie’s room is big enough that there’s plenty of room on the floor for me to stretch out.
As I smooth out the sleeping bag on the floor, Jamie asks, “What are you doing?�
��
“What’s it look like? Going to bed.”
“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.” She pats the mattress of her bed. “You can sleep with me. Unless you think I have cooties or something.”
“No,” I say. The bed is a queen size, with more than enough room for two little girls. As I climb on the bed, I tell myself that Jamie and I aren’t going to “sleep together” in the sense that Grace and I slept together. It’ll be like when Maddy and I share a bed as sisters.
I make sure to keep my pink monkey between us. Jamie has an ordinary brown teddy bear she clutches to her chest. “You got enough covers?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
With a yawn she says, “G’night, Stacey.”
“Goodnight, Jamie.”
Chapter 31
The next day is the most fun I’ve had as Stacey Chang. A Mercedes sedan waits to drive us around after breakfast. Travis sits in the front seat, which leaves us kids to squeeze into the back. I sit in the middle again, Jamie leans close to me, and Caleb presses against the door to look out the window.
Jamie instructs the driver to take us to the downtown shopping district. Along the way, Jamie and I play against each other in a Facebook trivia game. She of course trounces me. Then she gloats about it to all of our online friends. “You’re just a lot faster ringing in,” I say, which is true. I couldn’t remember which button on the phone to hit ninety percent of the time.
“You snooze, you lose,” she says and then sticks out her tongue at me.
“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.”
The next game doesn’t go any better than the first. I’m still too slow for Jamie and a lot of the pop culture questions are more tween-oriented. I manage to get twenty points more than last time, not that it matters since Jamie scores even higher.
I’m grateful we pull up to Macy’s then. The driver lets us out by the sidewalk so we just have to walk inside. It’s still difficult because we have to fight through the crowds on the sidewalk. Jamie takes my hand so we don’t get lost as we snake our way through the throng.
I haven’t been inside the department store in twelve years. Back then I was a thirty-nine-year-old man who wanted an expensive piece of jewelry that might save his marriage. With only a policeman’s salary, I had to buy a pair of diamond earrings. Debbie liked them, but it was too little, too late to salvage things between us.
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 46