CHAPTER NINE: FOR REAL FAMOUS

It was the weekend, and so their next meeting with Dr. Turcott wasn't until Monday. Ash kept Luci at his place, promising them in front of Heather that he wouldn't try to imprint Luci to just himself (not that either of them thought he would). He said he'd get her to do as many of the mental exercises as possible, hoping they might be able to reverse whatever damage had already been done. El wasn't hopeful, but she wasn't an expert. Certainly, her own intellect, modest though it might be, had been holding pretty steady. She fell asleep doing logic problems on her phone app, content that she might get a full night's rest. There was nothing for her to do, nothing imminent to worry about, and for the first time in a week, El thought she might get to sleep in. She was surprised, then, to wake up at 7:03 am to Melanie's latest text. Her first had been twenty minutes before. She'd texted:

<I mentioned on Pixogram that my girlfriend was the girl in the photo w the Covenant assholes
<So sorry El. I hope you aren't mad
<A reporter called me and wants your contact info
<El ru there
<Don't be mad
<Pls answer
<:(

She texted back:
<I'm not mad, Mel
<I was sleeping
<|O SLEEPING
<You can give my contact info
She was a little annoyed, sure, but not mad.

It took all of two minutes for Melanie to respond:
<OK!!!
<Love you!!!
<Her name is Miranda Cuthbert

<See u tomorrow?, El messaged.

<Try and stop me!
<;P
<That's me licking u senseless

<haha
<;P

El rolled out of bed, noting that her chest now had its own little locus of momentum, and padded over to the full-length mirror. Even disheveled and sleepy-eyed, she had to admit she was pretty in an 'adorable munchkin' kind of way. She was, quite possibly, much more than just pretty. Her hair resisted dishevelment, resting in thick golden tresses that were now half-way down her back. Her face sported a natural coloration that spoke of subtle cosmetics use even though she'd never used the stuff. Not yet. Rose-pink lips, smooth complexion with just a hint of blush, and ice-blue eyes that looked naïve and innocent when he opened them wide and batted the thick lashes. Her pajamas, a pair of pink shorts from some time in Melanie's late girlhood and a white sleep shirt from a year or two later, were now quite tight in the seat and bust. She was even shorter than before, but El no longer had a figure that anybody might mistake for a child's. Even so, she didn't look at all mature... parts of her were still shrinking and in some ways, it felt like being a kid again. El was deciding how much more she'd like to grow in the womanly attributes department, as if she had any choice in the matter, when her phone rang.

"Hello?" She still wasn't used to that sweet, high voice, but she liked it. It hadn't changed much (if at all) since yesterday. Good. She didn't want to sound like a kid or a munchkin.

It was Miranda Cuthbert, the woman who'd authored the free speech article for RealNews. They were centered in Los Angeles, just a two hour drive away, and Miranda wanted to interview El for a follow-up piece at her earliest convenience. As soon as El mentioned she didn't have plans for the day, Miranda insisted on driving up for an in-person interview. She sounded so excited that El didn't have the heart to back out. She was doing an actual, video-recorded interview at noon! And she didn't have anything to wear!

Nobody was awake and downstairs, of course, and she wasn't about to knock on her parents' door. The sounds of passion within indicated they were waking up vigorously and might be doing so for a while. If their noises hadn't woken Nolan, they would soon, so she tapped on his door instead. He poked his head out, squinting and rubbing his eyes.

"El? What time is it?"

"I need a ride to get some clothes," she said. "It's important."

"Can't you drive yourself?" he asked, yawning.

"I left my car at Miranda's yesterday and got a Ryde back because... it's complicated. But my car's not here and I have a TV interview at noon."

Nolan looked at her incredulously, perhaps wondering whether he was still dreaming and not entertaining the chauffeuring request of his brother-now-sister while his parents screwed like howling animals in the next room. "You... need clothes... for a TV interview?"

El huffed and stomped her foot. "Yes! I'll buy you breakfast if you take me..."

"Why can't you just get an Ober or a Ryde or whatever?"

"Because I need a second opinion, dingus! This is really important."

Nolan eventually conceded. Maybe El should have gone without him - it took her older brother fifteen minutes to get ready, by which point El had been pacing the dining area for a full ten minutes. She was wearing her cotton shorts and off-white top combination from two days ago and they really didn't fit anymore... but it wouldn't do to go shopping in her sleep clothes, either. It somehow seemed unacceptable to shop for nice clothes while dressed like an urchin.

"You're buying breakfast?" Nolan reiterated.

"Come on!"

The closest store that met El's criterion was a standalone JC-Penney just past the Belvena Boulevard strip malls. Nolan insisted that SmartMart was perfectly acceptable for one-use-only clothes, as these were likely to be, but El was having none of it. She didn't have to look like a fashion plate, but neither was she going to look cheap for Miranda Cuthbert. She actually cared about coming across well!

Walking into the store, El's stomach was a wellspring of anxiety. Over the past few days, she'd been mostly worried about finding clothes that vaguely fit and not ones that actually looked nice. If she was like Melanie, she could be flush with wardrobe options (though few of those were anything approaching professional), online admirers, and cash (presumably - she'd have to ask). But El wasn't a firm-bodied Sporty girl. She was a teenaged waif three quarters of the way toward Babydoll Barbie. She just needed something that made her look like an actual, serious grown-up and not a little kid playing corporate lawyer.

El took literally all of the vaguely-acceptable clothing close to her size to try on. Based on her apparent measurements, she'd just about fit into a 2P, which was the smallest size on anything outside of the junior petite section and pretty slim pickings. On the bright side, plenty of it wound up on sale because there wasn't much demand for clothes fitted to five-foot-tall women with waist circumferences under two feet.

She messaged Melanie in the dressing room, first taking a risqué pic in just her ill-fitting panties with a pouty sad face:
<:(
<I'm having an existential crisis here and my brother is making it worse
<Trying clothes for my TV interview at JC Penney

Melanie responded a minute later with a sweaty, sexy workout picture. That wasn't any surprise because she was posting sunrise yoga pictures to Pixogram every few minutes and getting thousands of likes. That pic was followed by:
<:O
<TV?!
<omg
<I'm heading over
<Stay strong sistah

A moment later, El emerged in her latest ensemble, a pinstripe pantsuit that had looked amazing on the model in the picture and was marked down 70% for an incredible $119. She stepped out and bit her lip, gaging Nolan's reaction.

"Wow. Oh, wow," he said. "That looks, like, really good." He'd said that about all three things she'd tried so far. She wondered whether he might have some stealth strain of AHS that had drained away half his brain because nothing her brother said was helpful and he could barely string a coherent sentence together.

"It's too loose!" El said. She pulled out the slack in the waist to show him, which only made his eyes bug out. Nolan was doing a good job of not perving out on her, but it was obvious that he was uncomfortable and having a lot of conflicting feelings about the outing.

Fortunately, Melanie came to the rescue with coffee, bagels, and a practiced eye ten minutes later. She was still in her yoga outfit, but her slightly-disheveled, recently-exerted look did nothing to dampen El's appreciation - nor, she noted, Nolan's - of her physique. He adjusted his pants conspicuously and couldn't help but take almost-covert glances at El's girlfriend as she bent down to evaluate the selection. Melanie tutted and immediately discarded all of the pants and ensembles containing them.

"These aren't going to work."

"What? Why not? I like that one," El said, pointing to the heather tan pants that just screamed, 'attractive professional!' to her.

"That one's very nice," Melanie admitted. "But not for you. Unless you get them tailored, pants aren't going to do you any justice. Your waist is what? Twenty-three inches?"

"Um. Twenty-two."

Melanie whistled. "Twenty-two. Even worse. Pants don't have enough cinch to them. With a skirt, unless it's a super-tight one, you'll have a lot more leeway. Trust me, you'll go with a skirt and you might even be able to use it after your AHS is done."

Melanie thumbed her way through the much-reduced pile of options, selecting a smoke gray skirt with heather patterning, a white button-up blouse, the smallest patent-black belt they could find, and a jacket to match the skirt - a lucky find that Melanie had just scavenged from the junior petite section.

El felt self-conscious putting it on, aware that she'd be walking around with nothing but an inconvenient angle keeping her panties from full view, that her smooth legs would be sliding against one another all the way up. But, looking down at those silky legs and rubbing them together in the skirt, she immediately got the appeal. The question, though, was: how would she look? Though the skirt might be knee-length and modestly flared, El just knew she was going to look like a kid trying to play sexy secretary. She was blushing when she stepped out from the dressing room to present herself for judgment. She spun around and did a little curtsy.

"Again without the jacket," Melanie ordered.

El placed the jacket on the little clothes hook and spun again, her mid-back length hair tumbling in a cascade of honey and gold. She hadn't meant to do that. It had just sort-of happened. Nolan was rendered completely speechless. Melanie looked like she was suppressing some surge of emotion. Laughter? She was trying to contain her laughter.

"Take a look," she said.

El did. Outside of the confines of the dressing room, where she'd got an imperfect glimpse of herself in subpar lighting, she had a much better perspective. She didn't look like a kid playing sexy secretary. She didn't look like a kid at all.

"Wow. Oh, wow," she said. She looked, like, really good.

Melanie came up behind her, put an arm around her girlfriend's shoulder, and snapped a picture. El smiled reflexively and Melanie snapped another. She started fiddling with her phone.

"You cannot post that!" El said. She made a grab at Melanie's phone, but the larger woman turned to the side and held it out of reach.

Melanie put a hand on El's shoulder and shot her a serious look. "El - you're going to be video-recorded. You're going to be on the news. Please give me this... I promise I won't post until after the video's online. Okay?"

El huffed. "Fine. That's fair," she said. "I... I look pretty good, right?"

Melanie ran a hand down El's flank, giving her skirt-encased rump a little squeeze. "No," she said, her breath hot in El's ear. "You look fucking amazing."

"Uh," Nolan said. "Do you want to drive El home?"

Melanie'e eyes alit with sly delight. "I think I'd better."

"Cool. Cool," he said. His expression became gravely serious. He waved half a bagel at them. "You still owe me breakfast."

- - - - - 

Melanie paid for the whole shebang without even blinking. The combined outfit was $309 and she added another $60 in floral print undergarments that she insisted were a 'must' for any professional interview.

"And we need to accessorize!" she added.

El didn't care to accessorize. She would, she insisted, acquiesce to a full wardrobe and wardrobe accessory tour once her post-AHS form had stabilized. But for the next week, she just wanted to ride the changes out and maybe, just maybe, look good for an interview or two. Melanie wasn't thrilled about it, but she respected that line in the sand for the moment. She did, however, talk El into some barebones hair accessories - hair bands, scrunchies, a good comb, and a tortoiseshell beret that El snatched up before her girlfriend could even start to sell its beyond-obvious appeal.

Melanie drove the two of them back to her place, ostensibly so El could pick up her car to drive home. Unspoken was that they probably had an hour or so before El had to get serious about preparing for her interview. Unfortunately, their horseplay was subdued on account of Angie and Brian Harmon, fresh home from church, in an advanced state of foreplay on the living room sectional. When Melanie and El tiptoed past, the two of them didn't even notice.

"It looks like they got the holy spirit in them," Melanie said.

"I think your dad was speaking in tongues."

Melanie laughed. "Gross!"

They made their way upstairs, where Melanie demanded that El model her interview-wear once again - which El flat-out refused to do, as she was reasonably convinced that this would inevitably result in popped buttons and torn or rumpled fabric. She had to look serious! But Melanie did convince her to model the undergarments - snug but reasonably modest panties, their barely-pink color with little lilac flowers nicely showcasing her increasingly-shapely lower half. The bra was the same style with little white frills and half-cups that pushed her modest bust up and out.

"I don't think you'll be able to wear those for long," Melanie said.

El blushed. "Probably not." Then she wrinkled her nose at a slightly pungent smell... was that?

It was. That was Melanie's barely-subdued arousal, the floodgates to which presently buckled and suddenly failed. She tackled El to the bed, stripped her of the panties, and followed the proud Harmon tradition of speaking in tongues. And was she ever a cunning linguist! El completely lost track of time, of her wardrobe, and of her imminent interview with RealNews's Miranda Cuthbert. By the time she finally descended from the limb-quivering high of Melanie's ministrations, it was 11:30. She grabbed fistfuls of her girlfriend's thick, dark tresses and lifted her smiling, sated face from her own damp crotch.

"I have to go," she murmured contentedly.

"Mmm... not yet," Melanie said.

"My interview..."

Melanie perked up a bit. "Your interview? Oh! Your interview!"

She'd completely forgotten about it. Melanie wiped El down, helped her into her interview clothes, giving her a crash course in sitting with a skirt on in the process, and then reined her mass of hair in, clipping the tortoiseshell beret atop as the piece de resistance. Then she stood back, admired her work, and rushed El past her shamelessly-copulating parents and out the door.

El tried to adjust the car seat for the umpteenth time, realizing with some disappointment that it was as far forward as it would go. She could see over the steering column and reach the pedals, but only just. Melanie slipped into the passenger seat and checked herself in the sunscreen mirror.

"What are you doing?"

Melanie rolled her eyes and gesticulated excitedly. "I'm your moral support, doofus! You really are a Babydoll Barbie if you think I'm missing this."

- - - - - 

They arrived at El's house exactly two minutes before Miranda Cuthbert's royal-blue SUV rolled up the driveway. El broke the news about the interview to her mother, who froze up for five terrifying seconds like she'd just suffered an aneurysm and then proceeded to go into a cleaning fugue, shuffling around the living room in her breezy blue dress, her dust cloth a blur of activity as if every last cranny of the room wasn't already clean enough to eat off of.

"We could have planned this better," Melanie observed.

"No shit." El shrugged.

Miranda sat in her SUV for a minute, touching up her make-up and hair in the mirror before strutting out in her wine-red skirt suit and knocking on the door. Melanie answered it a moment later - Miranda would recognize her from her Pixogram posts, after all - and led her into the living room where El was waiting, hands clasped and anxious on the sofa. El was more than a little intimidated. Miranda was tall, dark, and very professional-looking. She didn't look to be past her early thirties but had the no-nonsense demeanor of a journalist who'd been at the game for a while.

El's mom spotted their guest and gasped. "I'm still cleaning!"

"It's fine, Mrs... Bouquet?"

El's mom nodded, unconvinced. "You're sure it's fine?"

"It's fine," Miranda reassured her.

Miranda turned to El and offered her hand, hesitating for just a second. "You're the girl in the picture?"

"I have AHS," El said. The incident had only been two days ago, but in AHS time that was enough to cause noticeable change.

"Ah, right." She squinted and then gave El's hand a gentle shake. "Fair enough. You still look similar-enough, I suppose. And your name is Elle Bouquet? Is that short for something? Elaine? Eleanor?"

"Ew. No. Just El," El said.

"E-L-L-E?"

Elle blinked. "Yeah." Actually, that felt exactly right. The same old El with just a tiny languid lingering over the 'L'.

Miranda set up a digital camera and three box lights in the living room with practiced efficiency, checking the lighting levels with a little hand-held device and sliding the light intensity up and down until she was happy with the results.

"Are you nervous?" she asked over her shoulder.

"A little," Elle said, which was a massive understatement. She was worried she was going to sweat through her white blouse. She was worried she was going to make an idiot of herself on camera.

"Don't be. I do this all the time. You'll do just fine. Do you want to touch up a little and add some foundation before we start? It'll look better for the camera."

"I, um... I don't know how," Elle said.

Miranda turned around and frowned at the apparent non-sequitur. "Don't know what? Just some basic foundation for the glare and, honestly, the rest looks fine."

"I've never put on make-up before," Elle said. "Like I said, I have AHS and... um... I was a guy until a few days ago. I have no idea what to do with cosmetics. This is just what my face looks like."

Miranda Cuthbert glanced to Elle's mom, who confirmed with a succinct nod. The words she mouthed in response were clearly 'sweet holy fuck'. She took a few deep breaths, audibly muttering to herself, "Okay, it's fine, Miranda. Holy shit. Holy shit. This is huge."

After the initial almost-hysteria on the part of Elle, her mom, and Miranda Cuthbert at various points, the interview actually went pretty well. Miranda had clearly prepared the interview to focus mostly on Elle's experience during the clash with the Covenant protesters, but she was a professional and could work on the fly. She helped Elle with the foundation while Pixogram-friendly Melanie offered unhelpfully complex cosmetics advice from the wings. After the make-up and the initial pleasantries, Miranda got down to business.

"Yesterday, RealNews posted an article detailing Evangelical Covenant protesters at a community center in Corona, California in the tragic aftermath of the AHS outbreak there. So far, our article's gotten 5.6 million views online, more than a million of them since this morning. I think it's safe to say that everybody's wondering about the story of the girl caught among those protesters. It's a dramatic sight, to be sure. But what we've learned is that this frightened girl was until-recently a boy. Do we have a picture of Elias?" Miranda asked.

Elle's mom plucked Elias's senior class picture from the nearby shelf, wiped for dust underneath it, wiped for smudges on the framing, and handed it to Miranda. The reporter held it up to Elle's face so viewers might see the near-complete scope of her metamorphosis.

"You're not still going by Elias, though, are you?"

"No, I'm Elle Bouquet. I'm still me, but different."

"You certainly look different," Miranda nodded. "How are you coming to grips with being an AHS victim? Has it been difficult?"

"I'm not a victim," Elle stated. "People get sick all the time and if they're lucky they get better. Sometimes they get better than they were before - you can go through a rough patch with your life or with your health, right? And sometimes you come out stronger than you were before. That's how I feel. I've had to adjust and adapt, but ultimately I think it's helped me grow as a person." She looked down at her petite frame. "Grow might not be the appropriate word. I think I've learned a lot about who I am."

"And what about two days ago? Can you tell me what it was like being in that crowd? Having those people shout at you and, eventually, assault you?"

Elle took a deep breath. "That was frightening. It would have been frightening before, but now I feel a lot more vulnerable sometimes. That's a hard adjustment, I suppose... but I. Am. Not. A victim. I had to walk through that crowd because they were in between me and my therapy group, Miranda. I'm not the only one with an unusual case, you know. Do you know why the Covenant people were even there? They were protesting the suicide of one of the people in there - some poor woman whose body became something she couldn't live with."

"Do you think they went too far? The community center is public property, after all. The right to protest is enshrined in the Constitution's very first amendment."

Elle shrugged. She wasn't entirely sure how she thought about that, but she'd give it a go. "Of course they have a right to protest. They have a right for us all to see what hateful bigots they are, right on camera. But they don't have a right to get between us and therapy. They certainly didn't have a right to assault me. I mean... look at me. If my friends Petra and Ash hadn't pulled me out of there..."

"Petra and Ash? Are they... have they experienced similar AHS symptoms to yours?"

"Pretty much. We're all different - Ash is a guy now and Petra's a lot bigger than me, so they were able to muscle through the crowd. But it's absurd that they ever had to. When that woman grabbed me..." Elle started to tear up at the memory. She'd been so scared and bewildered in that moment. "When she grabbed me, that was really frightening. Not just because I was being assaulted but because she hated me because of who I am."

The tears were welling up. An instant later, her mother whisked a tissue into her peripheral vision and Elle accepted it, blotting at the corners of her eyes.

"You can't help who you are. Is that what you're saying?" Miranda asked.

Elle nodded. "I can't help who I am. I couldn't help who I was before AHS and I can't help who I am now. But, what's more, I like who I am! What's wrong with that? I'm not hurting anybody! That's what gets me... who are they to say I can't live my life on my terms? I'm not protesting in front of their stupid church, am I? And I wouldn't do that - what they say and do and believe is their business, not mine. But I have to live with the fact that these people so full of hate aren't even willing to give me five minutes to explain who I am and what I've been through. They're so threatened that they have to shout at me and assault me! I love free speech, but I also love dialog. We can't have free dialog if people are going to be so shut-off from the world that they can't even stand to listen to another person's point of view. I'm Elle Bouquet and I refuse to be sorry for who I am!"

"Wow..." Miranda said. "I'm sure it was hard to share that, but I'm glad you did. Would be open to joining us in a panel discussion about this in a few days?"

"Yes," Elle said without hesitating. Melanie was giving big thumbs up and shaking with excitement.

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