I figured my anime expression was as undisguised as my feeling right then. Narrowed eyes, sigh, and a grimace as I assured her, "You still have a big brother."

That didn't feel very encouraging to say with her so much taller than me but I took a little pride in it anyway. Smacking her softly-shaded hands together, Candace stuck out her candy-pink tongue and said, "But you're close. So close. Can't wait. I should snap another picture. And then maybe message mom?"

I urged her not to send anything to mom, not yet. I could see her finger linger on the screen but she relented, undulated her eyebrow lines, and noted, "Owe me two. Come on. You look silly dressed like that."

I conceded that but I stared warily at the clothing options because so many skirts were at the front of the store. As I walked, I tried to keep conscious of any feeling or changes in feeling between my legs and I shifted between that area and monitoring if my chest had changed. I had so much attention on those parts that I didn't really have a reaction when Candace started passing a variety of clothes to me. All I could offer was that the necklines were low. And they were. It was clear they were meant for someone with cleavage. Which I still didn't have.

I did like one in particular but it still had a distinctively feminine cut to the clingy material and a v-shape to the neck. It was a compromise but not one I really wanted to make. Candace didn't budge. She mentioned my owing. I didn't know she was going to collect so soon. She pressed me to at least try it on. 

Allison came over and sifted through a display. She had a couple tops on her shoulder. Candace recruited her for a second opinion but all she could offer was that it looked "nice". After that, she piled on the blouses, the camis, the skirts, and tight trousers, which looked like she intended to crush the last ounce of my maleness with. 

I offered her, "I'll try some of them. Not all."

We also agreed I would stay over near the rear changing rooms. The clerks at the front watched me and circled around, in a way that reminded me of nature specials about sharks, but didn't approach. None of them were animated, so I figured they were just curious. At least they didn't bug us about touching things. Candace giggled when the pants I was holding began to shift to match my art style. I glowered. 

Once behind the curtain of the changing room, I heaved a breath and scanned the clothes. They could've been worse but they also could've been more unisex. I figured I would try them on so Candace could smile a bit then I'd pick some real ones to wear out. And I'd also need to get some cheapie shoes more my current size. Probably something snug, although my feet didn't seem to be shrinking any further. I checked myself in the wall mirror. I looked about the same.

I slipped out of the clothes I'd gotten at the other store and sorted through the new ones. I'd have to pick something. I figured since Candace wanted to see me looking particularly girly, I might as well deal with that first. I selected the V-neck with nothing to show and the tight trousers. The top just felt wrong from the moment I slipped it on. Every inkling of my senses told me I was wearing something that wasn't meant for me. And yet it fit rather well. It was much more comfortable. The neckline was annoying but at least it was flat. 

I knew I looked like a flat-chested girl. The dip of the neck actually suggested there may have been something. To my relief, there wasn't. Slipping the pants on made me worry. I didn't want to push the change. They weren't as tight as I was expecting. Usually, I wore clothes much looser but they didn't feel painted on. They did, however, play up the girlish shape to my animated form. Then there was the matter of between my legs. I could feel that it was still there but it was definitely clenching up tighter and tighter to me and it wasn't just my imagination. The shape in front didn't look manly at all and it got even worse when I took in the full scope.

Perhaps if I still had a normal, human form then maybe I wouldn't have looked strange. But the feminine lines and curves of my drawn body made me look so much like a girl that I had to admit the reflection in the mirror was pretty cute. 

At least my walk didn't play up any of these traits, a good sign that mental changes hadn't altered me. But it was all so annoying. These clothes, all my hair, the feeling of it. This was not how I wanted to spend my weekend. 

But I walked out and over to where Allison had found a small chair and Candace was waiting with her arms folded, Allison's phone in her hands, and a smile on her face. Her eyes darted wider and she snapped off a picture before I could say anything. There was a better mirror off to the side and I stood in front of it.

I was such a girl. An anime girl. There was no part of my body in which my ego could hide. So I just glared at it and folded my arms too. Candace took another picture and asked me, "So, you like?" My expression was clear enough. 

Allison stammered and offered, "M-m=maybe you should try on some of the jeans? They might be more fitting."

I wanted jeans which wouldn't point out the way I was shaped but the next pair wasn't as bad when I tried them on. I traded the V-neck top for something which was snugger. I preferred the visual which didn't at all suggest I had anything up top. 

I got a couple colors and lamented how depleted my spending money would be for the month. But it felt like a small victory I would have something of a buffer before I might have to sift through my sister's old clothes for hand-me-downs.

I sighed at discovering my new shoe size and selected a serviceable pair. They were much more comfortable and easily the least feminine thing I purchased. I resisted listening to the clerks because I suspected a gendered pronoun was coming.

Though I walked out of the store wearing clothes I wouldn't have even put on as a joke the day before, they did feel decently comfortable. 

Clothing settled, I resolved to ignore my current state as best I could. Sure, I had blindingly-pink hair but I was just one person out of many and out of plenty who were animated. But I inevitably felt singled out. I got looks from passing, teen guys that soured my mood. Not helping was the fact Candace subtly nudged me to the front of the group so everyone saw me first. 

I couldn't wait for the next store because I told her flatly I was just going to wait while she and Allison shopped. At this one, they both spent a little more compared to the last one, where Allison just got some accessories and Candace got a smile and picture evidence. 

Out of boredom, I poked through a few hats that seemed like they might make hair a bit less obvious. One gray hat wasn't too bad but it was very fashionable, especially when the influence from my head made it match me. And I still had long streams of shock-pink locks. I wondered if I could pin it up and trap all my hair inside. Even a quick check showed it was a futile effort. I sighed and glanced at myself in the mirror. The hat wasn't helping. 

I wandered the floor, resisting the more energetic clerks, and made my way to the back. There was a full mirror at the end. I lingered on my reflection. The shoes were a sensible pick and they felt comfortable so far. I still didn't like the cut of the jeans but at least I felt like I had a little more wiggle room. And my top. I paused there.

No, I hadn't blossomed. Not yet. But my shape was different. Whereas the top felt a bit snug before, it felt like a good fit. A subtle difference which could've just come from stretching but it was ominous. I didn't want to get even smaller and girlier. It was bad enough Candace could loom over me. 

I put my arms down at my sides. The reflection did look like a work of art. Perfectly shaded to the overhead lights. I looked at myself and took a breath. As I knew well, so many people who were converted didn't feel bad about the results. I'd seen a pony who needed assistance all the time and didn't mind. Putting aside those who called it brainwashing, I took a full look at myself in the mirror, at that effeminate reflection. Was this okay?

I was happy I wasn't a pony or some abstract work of art which had to learn a whole new means of locomotion. What did I like? The smoothness was a bit trippy. It had kinda been there for a while. Feeling it all gave me a little shiver. One perk of Candace and mom's changes was they found the little stuff like inconvenient hair was airbrushed away. I never had any great desire to cultivate and shape my facial hair. A pencil-thin mustache may have been amusing for a laugh but I never really saw my face that way. 

I shut my eyes and thought about how I did see my face. I knew my regular face. I knew the contours of my nose projecting so much more than it did now. I should've felt dissonance with my self-image. 

I'd seen that sort of thing on one of those occasional afternoon talk shows which would look for those with extreme changes. One of them was a forty-year-old man who looked like a blend of Cordelia and Parker (silvery hair, small, and a bust which the camera operator kept emphasizing). They tossed out all the clichés but she was quite interesting because of how humble she was. She expressed a semi-religious feeling that, "this is a gift". But she spoke about how her face didn't match and, for a long time, "I didn't even know my face."

Tears like sparkling blue jewels hugged the corners of her massive eyes as she said, "I never knew my face. I denied it. I tried to hide it. But my face was blank. When I tried to find it, it felt like a shapeless mask. I looked a long time till I felt it and then, when I changed, it was like someone had done more than I could ever hope for. They peeled the mask away. And they gave me the gift of knowing what was inside me all along."

I reflected on that conversation and rolled my eyes a bit because of the melodramatic music they used to overplay the moment. But I looked at my face and I tried to think about that. 

I'd spent one particular summer reading through all the psychology books I could get my hands on because dad was editing a psychology textbook. I got a couple glimpses of Jung, enough to know that all the deepest stuff was going over my head. But I was intrigued by symbols.

The outward persona. I tried to become more conscious of how others saw me after that. I considered trying out a random accent with people I'd never met and probably would never meet again on random trips. But, in some ways, it was like the pool.

I could mime my legs like I was swimming underneath and I looked like I was floating but I was on the safe end of the pool the whole time, anchored to the bottom. I never did try my experiment. Not that it would've meant anything to my persona. I did notice the way I presented myself changed in subtly-different ways with different people. It was fun talking with dad about the textbook that summer.

I started a dream journal to dig at my unconscious. I tended to dream action movies which I forgot soon after waking with just feelings of running or doing things I couldn't possibly imagine myself actually doing. Some visuals stuck out and I would sketch them. In the end, I abandoned it. I got the impression either my unconscious wanted to bungee off bridges or my brain was preparing for the shock if I ever found myself crazy enough to attempt that.

Trying to find my Shadow intrigued me because it was challenging to wrap my head around what mine might look like. I would go back to the wild child of my dreams and imagine them wanting to blast through to the far end of the pool and basically become everything I saw in Candace. 

Candace even read some of the books (or rather skimmed through them at a swift pace). I asked her what she thought about herself. As I remember, she just said, "I am me" and gave a swift little shrug. It made sense for me that her animated form, if we suppose it was getting closer to one's self, wasn't too far removed from how she looked before, just more so. That made me wonder, with a suppressed shudder, that maybe the Candace I knew growing up was actually…holding back on her energy?

But then I had seen my sister have quieter moments, like at the food court and before she chose to have some dress-up fun. Not that she had mellowed out or that I would attribute it to becoming an animated person. 

And then there was that one part from Jung. Anima in the male psyche. At that time especially, I tried to make counter cases to anima and animus. I wrestled with them a bit. Ultimately, I didn't dwell on them. But here was an example of both sides combined staring at me in the mirror. Although my feminine side seemed to be winning out in spite of anatomy (checked to make sure, yes) and my mind was not behaving in a more feminine fashion, however that might be defined. At the very least I hadn't turned into a Candace doppelganger. At the same time, I wasn't Parker with all her little gestures. I was probably closest to Allison. 

I looked back to the main area of the shop and I could see her hand lightly-touching the clothes as she sifted through them. I could imagine her hanging to the side of a pool as she swam. But it wasn't quite the same for me.

So, I wasn't any of them. Mom would have quirks where she would have a long-running dialogue with herself when trying to work through her next composition and it was like waking her up when people talked to her. I had moments like that when I was reflecting but I didn't consider that inherently feminine. Then, my friend Amy. She was dry wit and whatever random snark I had running through my mind incarnate. In that sense, maybe she was more like Candace and her circular, self-declaration? But was that even true?

As was often the case when I read the psych books that summer, I found myself knowing a lot of things but understanding far less without clarity. My hope was that, in time, it would make more sense. Whenever I expressed this notion to mom and dad, they would smirk a bit to themselves but give me the kind of look which didn't bode well. 

I poked my reflection, still at the quandary of why I looked like a half-pubescent girl. Miss Reflection refused to spill her secrets. As I turned away from the mirror, I felt a twinge in my groin. I'd once pulled a muscle sprinting after Candace as fast as I could (long story). This didn't feel like that.

I tried not to panic. I did shiver like an echoing impact against my back. I wasn't ready for this. Not yet. I shifted my legs again but felt too unsure to check any more in public. I picked up a random jean jacket and rushed into the changing area. I avoided Candace's door. 

What I found disappointed both my optimism and fears. I was still a guy. Technically. Not much left and the form was strange. It was like a hidden tortoise. My first mental impression but it made me groan. The art style also seemed to smooth things away. Shifting my clothes, some areas seemed more sensitive and raw but not in a bad way. I had to admit that my gender seemed just about sealed, especially when I decided to double-check my chest. 

It wasn't a big thing but it seemed slightly fleshier. Unlike some art shifts, I still had nipples and they seemed more prominent. It could've just been a side effect of my art. I wasn't sure if they had swollen since last I looked. I hadn't lingered on that area before. 

An obvious change was the contours of my mid-section. There was no way in heck that form could be passed off as boyish. Even more of a stabbing, bold emphasis in the drawing of my shape.

Slipping my clothes back on, I still looked like a girl, only not quite so much. Adjusting my shirt discovered several positions where it almost looked like I had breasts. 

I hesitated in moving it to a position that looked less feminine. That hesitation had my mind racing to interpret and understand. The visage in the mirror, wearing my same, sudden grimace looked back at me with crystalline blue eyes and all my festering questions.