Chapter 11 – Dancing the Dream
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Thursday evening. Two days until the big Halloween party. It’s not going to be on halloween itself of course, since Halloween is on a Monday. A big party on a school night would be a little too alternative even for Promise.

I go over to Cindy’s room to see if I can do anything to help her with her costume. She’s leaning over her drafting table when I walk in.

“Have you called her yet?”

“Hello to you, too.”

I haven’t of course. I haven’t even turned my phone back on since pulling it back from the android-afterlife. It’s still sitting on its charger in my room.

“Go get your phone.”

I had foolishly mentioned at breakfast that it was back.

“How do you know I don’t have it on me?”

She looks me up and down.

“In that?”

Fair point. I’m trying a different look for the evening. A tight top with spaghetti straps and jeans tight enough that I might need the jaws of life to get them off, if my abilities fail me again. Still, I’d seen something in movies . . .

I pull the phone out of my cleavage. Cindy stares.

“Never. do. that. again.”

Okay, then.

“Did she call you? Text?” she asks.

“I haven’t really turned it on to see.”

That earns me a glare. I turn it on. Wait.

Huh. Twenty-three new texts. Five voicemails. I can’t look. Or listen. I hand the phone to Cindy. Definitely a coward.

She flicks through the texts. She listens to the voicemails. I am never going to take her up on that poker game. I’d lose my shirt. Finally, she presses something on my phone, listens for a second, and hands it to me.

“What?” I ask.

“Parker?” Valeria’s voice comes over the phone.

I almost throw the phone through the wall. No. Done with panicking.

“Parker,” Valeria says again, “Are you there?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“You are such a liar.”

Crap.

“I’m sorry, I---”

“You said the old you wasn’t good looking.”

“Well, technically, I said no one called me pretty.”

“No, really. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Fully recovered, and all girl again.”

“Thank God. I felt so bad when you got hurt. I was afraid it was because of . . .” she trails off.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”

“I was so relieved when you changed. You were all better and--”

“It happened,” I break in, “But I'm fine now.”

“Can I see you?”

I change the subject and we talk for twenty minutes. I tell her about talking to Miller. She seems surprised, but not upset. She tells me that Michelle, Helen, Tim, and a couple of others had shown up a few minutes after I ran away. They are going to try to get together this weekend. She wants to see me first, though.

We make a date for the next evening. I’m not even going to have to sneak out. Dates are allowed at Promise, just not too late, and not on school nights. A date.

“I’ll text you the address,” I say.

“See you tomorrow.”

“Bye.”

“Goodnight.”

Cindy’s eye rolling eventually gets me to hang up. We look at each other for a moment.

“I have a date!”

“You have a date!”

Of course she gives me a big hug. Not that I mind.

“She’s picking me up here.”

More hugs. I’m starting to really like hugs.

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It’s Friday, and I’m pretty sure I went to school. Ten minutes after getting home I couldn’t say what happened in any given class, though. My mind is elsewhere. What to wear. Where to go. I don’t want to go any place too expensive; we get an allowance, but I’ve only had a couple weeks to save it up.

The what to wear part really keeps sticking. I had almost switched outfits in the middle of the cafeteria because I was thinking so hard about it. Luckily I’d been thinking about a new outfit, so the switch didn’t happen instantly, and I’d stopped it in time.

Cindy gives up some valuable sewing time to help me out.

“Oh god no, not that one. Are you insane? Or a Kardashian?”

“Help” being a relative term.

I’m on outfit fifteen. I’d seen it on a fashion magazine at the grocery store last weekend on one of our “life skills” outings. Grocery shopping is very hard to master.

I switch to outfit sixteen. No. Seventeen. Uh uh. Eighteen. No, after catching her breath from laughter.

“What’s wrong with one of your sundresses?” Cindy asks, “You’re adorable in them.”

“Too plain.”

Nineteen. Okay, that one I can barely move in. Twenty.

“If you hold very still, you might not fall out.”

We finally agree on a little black dress, but in green. Cindy says it matches my eyes.

Then we get to shoes.

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“When you said you’d pick me up, I sort of thought you meant literally.” I tell Valeria.

We’re in her car. An old style Volkswagen beetle. One of her brothers restores them and had given it to her as a late quinceañera present. It’s cute. And black, of course.

“I wanted it to be a real date.”

She’d shown up right on time at the front office, wearing a really pretty, but very casual dress. Luckily, I saw her before she saw me, and switched to a yellow sundress and low heels. I kept the hoop earrings, though.

Sure, things looked bad after the explosion that burned my arm off. But that’s nothing compared to my embarrassment as Meg grills Valeria, and lays down the law about getting me back in time. I’m not sure that Meg approves of the whole thing until I glance back as we drive away. She’s grinning.

Valeria drives us to a little Italian restaurant I’ve never heard of. Not surprising really. I haven’t gotten out much. The food is delicious. Probably. She asks me more questions about my past, and I’m able to answer honestly now. It’s good.

I learn more about her family, too. Her parents are pretty much done with the whole raising kids thing. She gets away with things because they don’t pay much attention. They love her, though, even if they don’t know a lot of the details of her life, like the fact that her Friday night date is with another girl.

“Have you introduced them to any of the other girls you dated?”

“I haven’t dated a lot,” she says, “And the others, well. You know.”

“Boys?”

“Yeah,” she replies, “But not like you, I mean, you know.”

I don’t, not exactly, but I’m not going to press it. 

I’ve already gotten used to how freely the kids at Promise talk about this stuff. Not so much sex itself (although some of them won’t shut up about that), but attraction and orientation. It sometimes seems like half the kids are proud to be confused about who they are attracted to.

Valeria isn’t like that. She seems embarrassed that she has dated boys. She seems embarrassed that she’s attracted to me. She’s embarrassed that she’s embarrassed. I mostly shut up and listen. 

Next on the agenda, after dinner, is a movie. Neither of us really feel like it, though. The thought of sitting in the dark next to Valeria sends shivers up my spine, but I’m a little scared. We’ve had one real kiss, and that lasted about three seconds.

We settle on dancing. I try to explain that I have no idea how to dance, but Valeria isn’t having any of it. She’s sure I’ll be a quick study.

She’s right. We’re on the dance floor of a hole in the wall club that is holding the only all ages show we could find in easy driving distance. The place reeks of smoke, even though smoking indoors is against the law. The band is playing weird electronica covers of songs that were decades old when I was born. And playing them badly, at that. Despite that, the dance floor is crowded, and creepy guys keep hitting on us.

The dancing part is awesome. I’d watched the other girls for a couple of minutes to get the idea, then started dancing my ass off. Mostly I match Valeria step for step, but I do a little improvising, too. We draw a lot of attention.

The crowd is mostly college age, with a few other high school students here and there. The high school boys leave us alone, except for the occasional overlong stare. It’s the college guys who are being skeezy. Most of them take the hint after being turned down for a dance once, or maybe twice.

There are these two guys though. They don’t so much try to cut in as to bulldoze in. It isn’t much of a challenge to step around them, but it’s annoying. Valeria sees the look in my eyes after their latest attempt and pulls me off the dance floor for a break. We grab some cokes and manage to snag one of the few tables.

“What’s up with those jerks?” I ask.

“You really haven’t gotten out much as a girl, have you?”

“It’s just---”

“Hey ladies, mind if we join you?”

If it isn’t Thing One and Thing Two.

“Yes.”

Of course they ignore this and drag over two more stools.

“We’re on the football team, you know.”

They’re built for it, but . . .

“U.T.?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Not likely. Two players out on their own at a little club, drinking heavily the night before a game? No.

“No. You aren’t.”

“What?”

“I know every player on the team. You aren’t on it.”

Technically, I only know the names and faces of first and second string, but that’s a little too much detail.

“Hey now---”

Thing One reaches for my arm. I gently take his thumb and twist his arm one-hundred-eighty degrees. Not far enough to break anything. Quite. He hardly struggles at all.

“Go away.”

Thing Two takes a step forward but stopped when his friend gasps in pain from the little bit of extra pressure I apply. I let go and they both go prowling for other victims.

“That’s going to get you labeled a bitch, you know,” Valeria comments.

I don’t see a downside there. She tries to explain how girls have to put up with that kind of thing. How it just goes with the territory. 

“You'd understand,” she says, “If you were a normal girl.˝

 Ouch. I’ve known from the start that I’m never going to be a ‘normal’ girl. I don’t have to worry about so much of the crap they do.

I’ll never be afraid to walk down the street alone at night. I’ll never feel threatened by some guy in a club who won’t leave me alone. I haven’t been told all my life to just play along, boys will be boys, or that I should take being stared at as a compliment.

I’m not exactly sad about any of that. No girl, no person, should have to put up with that crap. I’m not going to apologize for not being scared.

We don’t yell at each other, but the mood is broken. We finish our drinks and head out to the car.

I’m half hoping to run into Thing One and Thing Two again on the way out. A little violence therapy might make me feel better. No such luck, though.

We don’t talk on the way back to Promise. Not until Valeria parks a block away. I don’t have to be home for another forty-five minutes. We just sit for a few of those.

“Thank you,” she eventually says, “for tonight.”

She leans across to me.

“And for the other night.”

She kisses me.

I’m five minutes late getting home.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Saturday is crazy. It’s Promise’s turn to host the Halloween party that rotates among four local group homes. Promise is definitely the most alternative of the four, but the others are not exactly mainstream.

I’m helping with decorations for the party. It’s fun, but I keep getting a weird vibe from the other kids. Not all of them, and not constantly. Something is a just a little off

I don’t pay too much attention, though, because I’m having fun not giving Cindy details about last night’s date. At the moment I can’t possible answer her because my mouth is full of tacks that I’m using to string lights along the edge of the rec room roof.

“Mmph um grm fnumph,” I carefully explain.

I could dodge the roll of streamers she throws at me, but I take my punishment like a big girl.

I finish with the lights and jump down from the roof on the opposite side from Cindy. By the time she finds me back inside, I’m in the middle of a conversation with Harlan about where to set up the DJ booth. Cindy gets distracted when Layla (who is in charge of the decorations) has a meltdown over, as best I can tell, the papier-mâché Great Pumpkin being the wrong shade of orange, and I take the opportunity to slip away again.

Fun is fun, but she eventually catches up with me at lunch. We’re eating sandwiches wherever so we can keep working when she finds me behind my room.

I get to the ‘discussion’ at the club before she interrupts me.

“That’s how I knew you hadn’t been raised as a girl, you know.”

I raise an eyebrow. This non-verbal communication stuff is fun.

“You’ve got the voice and moves down like you’ve been practicing for years,” she continue, raising a hand to keep me from interrupting, “But you’ve got a, I don’t know, a swagger.”

She considers her words.

“You move, or at least you did, like you expect people to get out of your way. Not like you think they should, but like it was what always happened, so you were used to it.”

I think about that, but wait for her to go on.

“I bet the hallways between classes were a shock.”

I nod. She’s really good.

“You’ve changed, though. Now you pay more attention to where other people are. You don’t exactly get out of their way, you just happen to not be there.”

“You’re paying a lot of attention to someone you’re not into.”

“You’re interesting. I like you.”

I blush. Gah.

Now she just rolls her eyes.

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I start the party wearing a pair of bluish-green shorts (technically, breeches) over red stockings. A blue jacket over a white shirt, and an incredibly dorky looking bluish-green and red cap finishes the outfit. My hair is dark brown, straight, and mostly tucked up under my cap.

I’d also gotten some tips from Henry on minimizing my breasts. With the loose jacket over them, they aren’t particularly noticeable. When I discussed this phase of my costume with Cindy, she asked why I just didn’t make them go away. She apologized shortly thereafter.

Nobody from the other homes takes much notice of me. I get some really strange looks from the other Promise kids, though. Dressing as a boy was about the last thing any of them expected from me. Kristen and Sebastian come over together and look me over.

“I was expecting something a little more elaborate,” Sebastian says, “You know, with as much time as you and Cindy spent on it.”

I shrug.

“Who are you supposed to be, anyway?” he continues.

“Tip. Well, Tipperatus, actually.”

This does not enlighten Sebastian. Kristen on the other hand, breaks into a huge smile.

“Oh, this is going to be fun,” she says, “When ---?”

Cindy, or rather, Glinda the Good, walks in. She looks amazing in the gown I helped her with. In her right hand she holds a wand with shimmering lights running up and down it (Kelly had helped with that part). Her crown is probably the weakest part of the costume, but I doubt that anyone is paying much attention to it. The top of the gown has some pretty serious push-up, and is noticeably lower cut than the movie Glinda’s. Her blond wig is way light for her complexion, but the contrast works.

She walks over to me. She’s almost six inches taller than me anyway, but under the gown she has on five inch heels, putting her just under six feet. I’m a child standing next to a grownup.

Very few of the kids have put much effort into their costumes, so she really stands out. All eyes are on her as she walks over to me. We had decided to skip any dialog, so I bow on one knee to her. She taps me on the shoulder with her wand and gestures to a little curtained off area we had set up next to the DJ ‘booth’.

I pass through the curtains and make sure they are closed behind me. I hear Cindy chant some made up words. When she pauses I switch into the real costume, the one she worked so hard on. She finishes up on the other side.

“I give you, Ozma of Oz!”

She throws back the curtain.

Maybe six people in the whole room get it. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, Tip was a boy who turned out to be Princess Ozma, who had been transformed into a boy as a baby. At the end of the book she gets turned back into a beautiful girl. It was reading that book when I was eight years old that first made me realize why I felt wrong, that I was supposed to be a girl.

We had cheated a bit on the costume. The pictures from The Land of Oz showed her wearing a huge, ridiculous dress when she was first transformed. We had used some of the later illustrations as our guides, ending up with an elegant gown. Since we hadn’t found any illustrations of Ozma from behind, Cindy had felt free to improvise, going with a backless design.

I kept the reddish gold hair from the initial descriptions, instead of the dark hair from the later illustrations. I’m wearing an amazing tiara and a crown, and I have a huge red flower at each temple. It is totally over the top, and I love it.

I get a round of applause and whistles. For a minute, my cheeks are as red as the flowers I’m wearing. At least three kids ask how I managed the quick costume change. I just smile. The Promise kids, of course, aren’t as impressed by that part.

I’m only mildly jealous to not be the biggest deal of the night. About a half an hour after my big moment, Kelly walks in. Kelly’s usual clothes are sort of baggy and shapeless.Their hair is generally a sort of formless mop.

Tonight is different. If someone put Tilda Swinton and Jared Leto in a machine that merged them into one awesome being, the result might be something like Kelly tonight.

Nine tenths of the kids there (and a couple of the chaperones) just stare in amazement, and probably a little lust.

And Kelly takes it all in. Not gloating. Not acting better than anyone else. Just accepting the attention as given.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The party is winding down as midnight approaches. At some point, Kelly had christened one table in the corner as Table D in exile, and the usual gang had gathered. Kristen is dressed as Ripley, from Aliens, Henry as, I think, a young Marlon Brando. Sebastian is, so he says, Alan Turing, but I have to take him at his word for that. Kelly, it turns out, is supposed to be Ziggy Stardust, whoever that is.

The kids from two of the other homes have already bussed it back to their places, and the kids from the third are being slowly rounded up by their chaperones. Henry’s head rests sideways on his arms, and he’s snoring slightly. His eyes dart back and forth under his closed eyelids, and he starts to look distressed. I reach to shake him awake when Cindy puts a hand on my arm.

“Maybe you should go in and help him,” she says.

“What? No,” I answer, “That would be messed up.”

“Talk about messed up,” Kristen breaks in, “I had a really weird dream last night.”

She looks at me.

“We were in the dining room,” she continues, “all of us, and you went all crazy. You were being a real bitch to everyone, then you boyed out and started breaking things---”

“Then he attacked Meg,” Sebastian breaks in, “right?”

They all look at each other.

“He said we were next?” Cindy asks.

Kristen and Sebastien both nod.

“So we all had the same dream, then.” Kelly says, “That’s not normal.”

If they did, then maybe all the kids did. That might explain the weird vibe I’d been getting from everyone that morning. I’d once spent a whole morning mad at someone for something they only did in a dream. Not recently, but it has happened.

“I don’t know if I can get into someone else’s dream,” I say, “but maybe I should try to go in and see what’s up?”

That leads to questions from Kristen and Sebastian. Could I really go into dreams? I’d told Cindy about my couple of dream walks, but not the others. I fill them in on the basics.

“It wouldn’t be right,” Kelly says, “to go into somebody’s dreams without their permission.”

That almost ends that conversation.

“But you have my permission to go into mine, later.”

The others all agree. A one-night-only pass into their dreams, to see if I can find out what’s going on. I tell them I’ll think about it.

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