“She’s waking up.” somebody says. Her voice is vaguely familiar.

“He,” someone else corrects. 

Thank you, random someone.

“We’ll see,” the first voice says.

I pretend not to hear them. I remember everything that just happened, and very much do not want to deal with it.

“Frank?” the second someone asks.

I can’t stall any longer. I open my eyes and look around, moving my head as little as possible. I will ignore the truth as long as I can, and I don’t want to feel the earrings I know are in my ears.

I recognize the second someone immediately—the school nurse. The other person in the room takes me a few seconds. She’s black, average height, and beautiful. She’s wearing what looks like a very expensive business suit. Then it clicks. Tiara.

Tiara, you know, the leader of the Cavaliers, one of the only actual mages left, the most famous living hero of the Invasion, rumored to be responsible for the creation of The School. That Tiara. Here.

“Tiara?” Wow, my voice is different. Only a little higher pitched, but different.

She nods. “And you are Frank Doyle?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I might show as little respect as I could get away with to the teachers and admin people at The School, but this is Tiara.

“Would you please tell us what happened?”

I hesitate, embarrassed.

“I’d like to help you,” she says, “To do that, I need to hear the whole story from you.”

So I tell her. While I talk, I sit up. Talking to her while lying down is awkward.

“I only did it when I was absolutely sure there wouldn’t be anyone in there,” I stress again when I finish.

She considers my story.

“Can you turn me back?” I ask, “Undo whatever effect is on me?”

“There’s no magic, or any other ongoing effect on you.” She shakes her head. “This is your body now. No different than if you’d grown up this way.”

“Can you use your magic to change me back then?”

Asking one of the most powerful people on Earth for a favor is a lot, but I’m desperate.

“If you’ve been paying attention in History of Magic, you should know that a permanent transformation is beyond what magic can currently do.”

I mostly already knew that, but I had to ask.

“Even if I could,” she continues, “are you sure you’d want me to?”

What kind of question is that? Of course I would.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She hesitates.

“Do you have a problem with your fellow students who are transgender?”

“No more than I do with the rest of the students.”

“Can you name one?”

“Uh, Samantha Graves?”

Sam is a trans girl, still fairly new to the school. She’s only been here a few months.

“Tell me about Samantha.”

“She’s a little taller than average, reasonably cute. She seems smart, but a little näive. Why?”

“Never mind. Thank you.”

“I feel like there’s something you don’t want to say, ma’am.”

“There are things that I shouldn’t say, so I won’t,” she replies. “There isn’t anything I can do to restore you to your previous state. Not long term, anyway. I could transform you into a close approximation, but it would last a few days at most, and possibly considerably less, due to interactions with your mark.”

“Would you? Please?”

“I will, if you really want, but I advise against it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve always believed in ripping the band-aid off, rather than pulling it off slowly.”

“You’re saying I’m stuck like this, so I might as well start getting used to it?”

“Essentially.”

“Can I think about it?”

It turns out she can’t stick around much longer. She has somewhere she needs to be. What a shock, one of the world’s first and most powerful superheroes has things to do that are more important than helping a high school kid who has fucked himself up.

She says she’ll come back briefly at the end of the school day, in case I decide I do want her temporary fix. I thank her, and she vanishes. So I’m one of three people who can teleport into and out of the school.

The door opens and Ms. Ruehl, the school principal, walks in.

“Other than the obvious, are you alright?” she asks, “Are there any after effects from fainting?” That last was addressed to the nurse as much as me.

“Emily caught him before he hit the ground,” he says, “So no damage from the fall.”

Of course she did, even though she’d been all the way on the other side of the auditorium before the whole thing started. God, I hate that goody-two-shoes.

“Other than the obvious, I think I’m okay,” I say.

“I’m glad to hear it. Now, even though it was supposed to be impossible, there is, in fact, a rule against boys entering the girls’ locker room, or vice-versa, and if one changes status they are to report to the office before switching locker rooms. There are forms to fill out.”

She’s seriously going to punish me, isn’t she.

She doesn’t ask me for the whole story, but she does ask me to clarify a few points from what I told Tiara. She must have been listening in. Not a surprise since everyone knows that Ms. Ruehl knows everything that happens at the school.

“Very well,” she says, once she has the full story, to her satisfaction, “the prescribed punishment is a one week suspension, or worse, depending on your record.”

Before I can protest, she continues, “You have been remarkably careful, so your record is relatively clean.”

The way she looks at me, I can tell she knows every prank I’ve pulled, every student I’ve tormented, every scrap of trouble I’ve caused. I manage to hold her gaze, though.

“Given the degree of care you took to not enter in the presence of fellow students, and other mitigating factors—” her eyes briefly went up and down my body “—I believe a one day in-school suspension will suffice.”

I blinked. There was no way I was going to argue with getting off that easy.

“Now, on to practical matters,” she says, “would you like me to change your preferred name or your pronouns in the school records?

I’ve only been careless enough to get caught and sentenced to in school suspension (or ISS) two other times. Those times, I spent the whole time stewing and planning how to not get caught the next time. This time, I just stare into space.

There are seven other kids in here with me, and they all knew what had happened by the time I got here. Not the details, but they knew who I was, and that I did this to myself trying to get into the girls’ locker room. I was sure that there was already a post on the Wall, but I didn’t think to check before flickering to ISS, and I can’t use my phone once I’m in.

It must have been Kyle or Len. Strike that; it had to be at least Kyle, and maybe Len. Kyle would have figured out what happened. He knows (roughly) how my mark works, and would have put two and two together. I’m not sure if he would have told anyone, though, other than Len. Len, on the other hand, would have immediately told anyone who would listen. 

Nobody makes a big deal of it. It’s not like I’m the first kid at The School to switch sides. I’m not even the first kid this year, and it’s only February. Usually it’s a trans kid, though, so that’s what everybody must assume is going on with me.

I jump in my seat when the lunch bell rings. I’ve been lost in lack of thought. I know I should be processing what happened, but the only thing I can hold in my head is the memory of flickering over and over again, trying to undo what I just did.

The other seven kids stand to head to the cafeteria, and I follow suit. Coach Hannigan is running ISS that day and calls me over to his desk before I can leave. He points down to the surface of his desk, where the words “Eat here (yes/no)?” float just above the surface.

I nod. I’m not ready to face more people yet.

“Mr. Doyle,” he says, loudly, “You’re going to need to have your lunch in here today.”

That’s believable. Students who do something that merit punishment just shy of expulsion, or students who are probably going to get punishments worse than ISS, but still have their cases pending, are generally required to eat their lunches here.

He swipes a few times on his tablet.

“Lunch’ll be here in a few minutes,” he says.

I don’t go back to my seat. Not right away.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I tell him.

“Go ahead, Frank.” He makes a note on his tablet.

A bathroom flickers into existence around me. The School doesn’t have separate bathrooms for boys and girls. Instead, the bathrooms have a row of sinks, and a bunch of stalls that close completely for privacy. There’s also a separate room with urinals. I won’t be using that again, at least until I get this whole mess resolved.

A quick scan shows that all the stalls are vacant, and I can’t hear anything from the urinal room. I wait a moment, to be sure.

Then I look in the mirror.

I’ve been avoiding even looking down any more than I absolutely have to, up until now. But I thought about what Tiara said about ripping off the band-aid, so here I am.

The girl in the mirror looks like my identical twin sister (which is not, I know, how identical twins work, but just go with it). She’s wearing jeans, like I was earlier, but these are girl jeans. Their legs stop above her ankles. She’s wearing a lavender hoodie. Her shoes are lavender trainers. 

Obviously, none of those clothes are mine. At least, they weren’t before this morning. I start to think about where they came from, but stop myself from chasing that distraction.

Her face is hard to look at. She’s me, but not me. She has two tiny hoop earrings in each ear (I felt the bottom pair bouncing when I was panic-flickering this morning), a little metal stud in her left nostril, and is wearing a little bit of eye makeup and shiny pink lipstick. 

She looks like a deer caught in headlights.

I look like a deer caught in headlights.

I noticed earlier that my nails are coated with shiny pink, but now I take a closer look. The polish is chipped, like it’s been there for a while.

I lick my lips. I can taste the lipstick. I probe the inside of my mouth with my tongue. It doesn’t feel that different. Maybe smaller?

Then there’s my hair. This morning, it was dark brown and short. Hers is raven black, with a hot pink fringe, and falls a little below her shoulders. It looks really cute, or would if it was on somebody else.

I stare at her. I stare at the hoodie. Rip the band-aid off.

I unzip the hoodie and shrug it off in one motion. 

Underneath, the girl in the mirror is wearing what looks like a tank-top, but with really thin straps. It’s pink with hot pink lacy trim. It barely reaches down to her waistline, and when I lift my arms, I can see the jeweled stud in her belly button.

She’s also wearing a necklace with a very abstract metal butterfly for a pendant.

And, yes, she has boobs. They’re pretty nice ones. 

This is a lot, but I’m not freaking out. Except that I’m almost freaking out over how much I am not freaking out.

Yes, I’m deeply embarrassed that the whole school knows what happened. But being that girl in the mirror? It’s a little disconcerting to see a strange face in there, but other than that? Meh.

I tilt my head and examine my reflection further. 

Since my mark ruined any chance for me in sports, I’ve let myself go a little. I wasn’t fat by any means, but this morning I’d been a lot softer than two years before. 

The girl in the mirror is softer, too, but in a different way. My glimpse of her exposed abdomen had let me see that it is toned, and I can tell by looking at her arms that she’d been lifting. Not like I did back when I was taking care of my body. Hell, she probably can’t lift as much as I could have this morning, but I‘d bet her numbers are respectable.

I hear voices and the bathroom door starts to swing open.

I flicker back to the ISS room.

Oops, I didn’t put the hoodie back on.

I pick up the sandwich that’s been left on my desk.

“Thank you,” I say to Coach, and sit down to eat. 

I leave the hoodie off.

“So you decided to rip the band-aid off?” Tiara asks.

I’m sitting in the nurse’s office again. This time it’s just me and her. I have the arms of the hoodie tied around my waist.

“I guess.”

“Do you still want me to cast the transformation?”

I sigh. “You said it would only be an approximation of the old me, right?”

“That’s right, although it would be a very good approximation.”

“I guess I don’t see the point then.”

“Very well.” She looks like she’s about to leave.

“May I ask a couple more questions?”

She nods.

“I’ve been thinking about this all day, obviously. Is there a chance that it wasn’t my mark that did this, but the wards on the locker room?” I ask, “Because then maybe whoever made the wards could fix it.”

“It’s possible that the nature of the protection may have been the reason your mark was able to do this, but it was definitely your mark, and not the protection itself. As for the maker fixing this, well, I’ve already tried.”

None of that really surprises me, but I had to try.

“Could you make a set of wards that only a boy could get through?”

“There are not actually any wards on the girls’ locker room. That room only exists for girls, more or less.”

That also makes sense, sort of. Especially for why my mark couldn’t get me in there any other way.

“Doing that for the boys’ locker room, then?”

“That is theoretically, but not practically, possible. The resources required are simply not available. I’m sorry.”

I try another tack.

“Isn’t it unfair for the girls’ locker room to be protected when the boys’ isn’t?”

“We used the resources where they were most needed. The alarms we have in place for the boys’ have proven sufficient so far.”

Damn. I’ll come back to that if I can think of another argument, but in the meantime, there’s something else I really want to know.

“I don’t get the whole thing,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I know I look like this—” I gesture at myself “—but why does that get me in? I know we’ve had more than a few guy shapeshifters, and if they could get in, I feel like I would have heard about it. You have to actually be a girl, cis or trans, to get in.”

She nods, but says nothing.

“But I’m not.”

“The magic I used is complicated, and if it has failed, this is the first time that I know of,” she says. “I won’t pretend to know you better than you know yourself, but ask yourself this question: How would Len or Kyle be reacting if this had happened to them?”

I wonder how she knows who Len and Kyle are, but that doesn’t really matter. I don’t need to ask myself her question. I know the answer. I ran into Len in the outer office, and he is clearly horrified for me. Like this is a fate worse than death.

“They’d lose it.”

She nods.

“Could my mark have messed with my mind? Made me okay with this?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “I am certain of that. I have made many mistakes, but not that one. Your mind is your own.”

I don’t know what to do with that information.

“I have to leave, but if you have more questions, send them to the email I’ve given you,” she says, and vanishes again.

She didn’t give me an email address. Or?

I get my phone out of my backpack and open up contacts. There it is: an entry for Tiara (no last name), with an email address, and a phone number classified as LIFE THREATENING EMERGENCY ONLY, which is not a classification that is normally available, but, Tiara.

It’s time to go home, I guess.