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Chapter Two:
See Emily Paint
 
For me, school was just a couple of days away.  Finally, this whole horrible summer would end and I would start a horrible fall to work on Mrs. Komori’s Just Being Program and earn back my skating privileges and independence.  The latter filled me with happy anticipation, but the thought of having my scrawny body and damaged psyche tossed back into the volatile sea of hormones and social anxiety we call eighth grade terrified me almost beyond reason.
 
And this was coming from a person who practically witnessed her Johnson turn into a Virginia.
 
“It’s not that bad,” Emily told me.  “It’s really not bad at all.”
 
She was painting.  With a few weeks left before her first year of college and a hole in her life formerly occupied by Toby (we weren’t allowed to talk about him yet), Emily turned to art, which thrilled me.  It had been so long since she had done anything more than a sketch or a napkin doodle.  She started sweating her ass off in the Venus-like atmosphere of our garage making incredible paintings while I watched perched like a bird on a tall, round kitchen stool. I loved to see her face turn red and her lower lip push out from creative exertion, her arms moving, the tip of the black paint brush stretching out from her fingers nothing more than a colorful smear. She got all shiny, her face and arms gleaming with perspiration. Her shirt stuck to her, so I could tell whether or not she wore a patterned bra underneath.
 
Or nothing at all, which was the case today because she’d been home all morning and hadn’t even showered yet.
 
“It’s pretty bad,” I groused, not feeling it because I was so enthralled in Emily’s creative dance.  Even her feet seemed artistic as they shuffled.  I kind of wanted to be her.
 
“I lied.  It’s exactly that bad.  No, it’s worse.  I wouldn’t do junior high again for all the… many… valuable things in that place where things of value are kept.”
 
“The bank.”
 
“I was thinking more like a museum.  Anyways, good luck at school, dude.  Are you ready?”
 
“If by ‘ready’ you mean I have like pens and pencils and notebooks, yeah.”
 
“Clothes?”
 
“Been all set with those.”  Actually, despite having bought all those girly-girl school outfits and dresses for me during my Princess Phase (as I called it—strictly to myself for fear of what Emily would say in response), Mrs. Komori graciously and patiently allowed me to change my mind once more.  Now I had some things I felt more comfortable about wearing.  A few pairs of sensible jeans, for example, and slacks.  The slacks were from the pre-teen girl’s department, but the jeans were boy’s jeans because I really didn’t want to wear the flares that were so popular.  And while I didn’t have any dresses I loved as much as I did that sundress—which I was actually wearing at the moment (and barefoot)—I found I wasn’t completely opposed to the wearing them.  They didn’t particularly interest me, but I didn’t hate them, and I supposed if I again happened to fall in love with one, I could probably talk Mrs. Komori into buying it.
 
Delacroix Junior High, my school, had a dress code but it wasn’t super strict.  Mrs. Komori and I read it the night before our final back-to-school shopping trip, just to be on the safe side before shelling out more plastic.  The rules mostly dealt with skirt length for girls and prohibited certain hair colors and styles—I couldn’t get a Mohawk, for instance, although I kind of wanted one just to see how I’d look with it now that I was a girl and had so much black hair on my head—plus facial piercings other than in the ears.  The school also outlawed any t-shirt with alcohol or drug-related imagery and, of course, profanity or obscenities of any kind.
 
Anyways, Mrs. Komori and I decided as long as I dressed neatly, I could get away with quite a lot of unisex mixing-and-matching.  In fact, since the code didn’t specifically mention anything about it, I further assumed boys were free to wear dresses if they wanted, too.
 
“If you mean am I mentally ready,” I said, “I’m not so sure about that.”
 
“Good luck,” Emily said and put down her plastic palette.  “Some people dream of going back and starting over knowing what they know now.  But I think that’s stupid.  I’d fucking hate that.  Being all small and whatever.  Maybe if I could go back at my same age and size so I could kick everyone’s ass--”
 
“I’m doing it.  I’m doing it tiny, too.  I never wanted to but here we are.”
 
“Yeah.  Well, I didn’t mean you, Honey Bunny.”
 
She stepped back from the canvas and walked around in front of it, studying it, planning.  The sunlight outside the garage haloed her body, glinting on her collarbones and the outside edges of her long, slender arms.

She made me really miss my guy parts at times like that.  When she decided the painting was finished and even one more brushstroke would ruin it, Emily smiled at me, her eyes glittering like black glass, droplets of sweat along her nose and above her mouth glinting.  She tore a long sheet of clear plastic wrap from a roll and carefully covered the palette with it, preserving the paint in case she needed it the next day.  After that, took me by the hand, helped me off the stool (not that I needed it) and led me into the kitchen.  She fixed us both bowls of Ben & Jerry's chocolate ice cream for lunch and sat at the dining table and talked and laughed while we spooned up the frosty deliciousness and fought off brain freeze.

“Maybe school won’t be so bad,” Emily said, a drop of chocolate ice cream on the tip of her nose.  I decided not to tell her.  “You’ll probably have a lot of the same teachers I did, and some of them were cool.  Not really.  But not all of them sucked, I guess.  And your classes will be super-easy and you should just breeze right through them.”
 
“Yeah, you said that one time before.”
 
“No, I didn’t.  You’re not only a card cheat and a scoundrel, but also a liar, Honey Bunny, and possibly a cattle rustler and horse thief.  But maybe you’ll make some friends, too.  Try, anyways.”
 
That’s what I was afraid of.  I ate my ice cream and thought about trying to make friends.  My attempts at re-socializing myself that summer hadn’t gone very well to say the least, and I had no idea how to relate to anyone other than Emily and Mrs. Komori now.  And I still wasn’t anyone.  No longer Martin, not quite Amy.  Maybe I really was Honey Bunny after all.  I told myself to “just be,” that part of the reason for returning to school was to help me become again.  Positive self-help mantras have a way of losing their power in the face of all-encompassing terror.
 
While I figuratively messed my undies mulling that over, the phone rang and it was for Emily, a call from Darla.
 
Darla.  Lots of curly red hair and freckles, a giant mouth with big, glossy white teeth. Very curvy, womanly body.  She had what even Emily called “birthin’ hips.”  By comparison, the proportions of my girl body weren’t all that different than they had been when I was a guy; I barely had any hips at all.  Lots of people thought Darla was gorgeous in a pre-Raphaelite sort of way.  But I never had.  Especially now.
 
Maybe it was Darla's whiny, possessive and completely helpless personality that made me find her unattractive. She was the total opposite of Emily, who usually exuded this crazy, brash confidence, but they shared the same capacity for extreme silliness.  Only with Darla, there was this childishness, this helplessness.  Like Toby before her, she usually ignored me the few times she came over, although she knew full well I’d once been Emily’s boyfriend and her own rival for Emily’s loving attention.  But I couldn’t help but notice after she left there’d be boxes of crackers laying on our coffee table and crumbs on the sofa, or bowls of half-eaten cereal in the sink.
 
Anyways, with me doing my house arrest thing and being so much younger and essentially out of the picture for good and Toby mysteriously decamped for places unknown, Darla was calling almost constantly.  Shows, parties, hanging out, plans for fall classes, maybe getting an apartment together their sophomore year.
 
Emily hung up the phone.  “Darla’s coming over to look at my new painting.  I think she kinda wants it for her bedroom.”
 
“Kinda wants you for her bedroom, you mean,” I muttered.  Not that I seriously thought that.
 
When Darla showed up, though, she looked off, noticeably more haggard than before the whole Toby Disappearance Weekend.  Dark, almost green rings under her eyes.  And she looked a little drawn, her cheeks hollow.  I couldn’t be sure.  Fluorescent lights tended to lighten shadows, so I could have been mistaken.  Easily, even.
 
“What’s up, Darla?” I said, just trying to act friendly around her so Emily wouldn’t feel weird about having her over.  “You’re looking really pretty today.”

Wrong move.  Darla’s freckles flared and she gave me this bizarre sort of look, like when you shine a flashlight in a cat's eyes. "I'm not trying to lose weight," she said in a huff.  “I mean, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
 
I raised my eyebrows and looked away, suddenly terrified by something in her look and tone that she was going to pull a knife out of her bag and come at me across the kitchen, with some sort of savage, high-pitched squealing that wasn’t quite human.  I saw Emily give her a look and then the moment passed and they were bopping out to the garage.  I went back to my room and hid under the bed until the fear went away.  I felt really dumb, though.  What was I afraid of?  And how exactly would being underneath my bed protect me from it?  Darla was just a needy, insecure person whose parents had fucked up raising her and who had absorbed a lot of stupid ideas from movies and TV shows.
 
You know, like me.
 
I crawled out from under the bed feeling very young and silly.  I knelt on the floor, put my chin on the mattress and stretched out my slim, brown arms; even on my best days, aspects of my body seemed alien to me.  How could I ever lift even a tissue with arms like these, much less tote around ten tons of school books all day?  Who is going to like me?  Who is going to hate me?  Why is that girl here?  Why couldn’t Emily have someone else for a best friend?  No, everything was cool.  But I didn’t feel completely normal—or what passed for it these uncertain days—until after Emily and Darla left together and Mrs. Komori came home from work.
 
Feeling skittish, I crept into the kitchen where she was bumping around, putting away some groceries she’d picked up on the way home.  I stood there blinking and looking at her, not knowing what to say.
 
“Amy,” Mrs. Komori said.  “You look like someone walked over your grave.”
 
“Maybe someone did.”
 
Mrs. Komori peered at me, no doubt looking for the return of Crazy Amy.  I smiled to reassure her, a fake smile I was working on for school.
 
“Worried about school?”
 
“Always.”  Among other things, increasingly.
 
“Don’t sweat it.  You’ll be fine.  A little younger than some of the other kids, but you’ll make up for it with your higher level of maturity.  And grades.”
 
Maturity was probably wishful thinking at that point, but this was our plan.  While Mrs. Komori probably could have made up a paper life for me all the way up to age 18 or beyond, that would have required my staying under wraps for the most part until then.  I mean, there was no way on earth I could fake being that age the way I currently looked; in fact, sometimes I was concerned I wouldn’t even pass  for twelve.  So until my body matured or the sex-change process somehow reversed itself—and we weren’t so sure it wouldn’t one day—I had to have something to do. 
 
Mrs. Komori also wanted me out and around people in a semi-controlled environment.  School was the best option.  With my intelligence and learning, the academic part would be a snap.  The social aspects would allow me to form a new psyche or personality or identity to replace the one I’d lost.  I’d get a truly intense education in what it meant to be a girl growing up in America as a bonus, along with a document trail that Mrs. Komori didn’t have to fake.  Real records we could then use to get me into college one day, or might help me to have an actual life when I grew up… again.
 
I thought about recent events and wondered if I’d have a chance to.  I’m totally petrified, I admitted to myself.  I am so, so scared.  Not just about school.  And not just for myself.

To be continued... (Incomplete)
Amy K is the author of 3 other stories.

This story is part of the series, The Ridiculous Destiny of Amy Komori. The previous story in the series is Little Orphan Amy!.
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