What eight year-old boy hasn't seen their older sisters having a sleepover and tried to figure out what was going on?
When Kaitlin had her slumber party, she had made a show of hanging the "No Boys Allowed" sign on the door. Since her room was on the second floor, overlooking the cranberry bog, there was no way for a kid who'd rather catch a Lugia than climb a tree to get up there.
In frustration, but not defeat, I went back to my room and found the old silver half dollar. Grandma had given it to me a year before. When this coin had been minted, JFK's face had been double struck by a machine error. Grandma claimed it was a lucky coin.
As I ran my fingers over the two-faced president, I made a wish. "I wish I could be like one of the girls."
This is when everything went weird. The coin flew from my hand, bounced off my DS, rolled over to my closet and started spinning, faster and faster. I could see sparks flying off that coin in all directions, even though it was spinning on a wooden floor.
Terrified of what was going on, I stood up to try to grab the coin, then noticed that the sparks were hitting my clothes in the closet. My school jacket was changing right before my eyes. The public school blue and grey was replaced by a catholic school red and black, and the pants became a skirt.
Next to the new school uniform, my power rangers pajamas shifted as well, changing from mechanical mastodons to soft satin. I reached out to touch this newly formed nightgown, and something told me to put it on.
The minute this foreign invader in my closet covered my body, Kaitlin threw open the door. "Hey, princess. We can't have a slumber party without my little sister!"
I looked from her to the mirror. Overlaid on my own body was the image of a little girl with blonde pigtails and a really cute face. Is that what Kaitlin was seeing?
I was swept up into the world of slumber parties, truth or dare, and makeovers. For that night, I truly was like one of the girls. Maybe it's that qualifier that saved me from a full transformation. Each of the girls saw me as a girl while I was in the nightgown.
When Dad came home, he called me "Jemma." When I went back to my own room the next morning and took off the nightgown, nobody remembered that I was in the sleepover but me.
I had always thought it was some weird dream. I never thought about it until the day twenty years later.
When I was on my way down to the post office to check the PO Box for the lawfirm, I saw something that I shouldn't have. Down in the alley behind the Daily Paper diner and the credit union, an older man, around fifty by the looks of him, was knifed repeatedly. When his attackers saw me reaching for my phone, they started chasing me.
I ran as fast as I could through the shopping district, shouting bloody murder. They were on my heels, and I ducked into a thrift store to hide.
Over by the racks of new arrivals, I got that old feeling of "Wear Me" coming from a blue A-line dress. As if the situation wasn't bad enough, now I was losing my mind. But I couldn't stop myself. On went the dress, and away went my dignity.
The two thugs ran in after me, and saw only a gorgeous woman in a blue dress.
"Hey, missy, you didn't see a mousy little guy run through here?" the one with the tan cap asked.
"Uh yeah, he ran through the backroom to the loading dock." I lied, taking this time to memorize their features. As the killers ran out in pursuit of me, I made the phone call to the police, describing what I saw, who they were and where they were headed.
The court date is in three weeks. And until then, I've got to live like this, looking like a woman until the day I can take the stand as a man.