I had set my alarm a bit early so that I would have time enough to contend with whatever challenges I found upon waking. I sculpted my form back into being and made off for the shower. I began to wonder if showering even mattered anymore, would dirt carry between forms? Probably, I guessed. These idle thoughts were interrupted by a sort of itchiness of mind. I’m not sure how to characterize it other than to say that I solved it when I thought of myself as the girl and my body molded itself into that shape without the sculpting I needed to do to return to the male form.

There was something very serious here. I’d been putting it off, but there was no way to deny that the girl form was now my default form. I would of course, continue to test it, but I would not be surprised if I woke up in this form for the foreseeable future. Why would this come along with my shape-changing power? What about this ability needs me to have this default form and not my old one? And why wasn’t I more put off by it?

I stepped out of the shower to dry myself off, and I couldn’t help but notice that if I was disturbed by anything, it was sculpting myself into my old form. I stood for a time in front of the mirror patting myself down with a towel.  After a few minutes standing there gazing at my own reflection, I had to admit that I was just putting off the inevitable. With some hesitance, I molded myself into my boy shape.  It felt a bit like getting kicked out of your nice new sports car and being forced to drive an ice cream truck with two flat tires.

I gathered my things, made nice with the parents, went to school. The rest of the week continued in much that way. I made plans with Javi to take a little trip this weekend. Not a camping trip like before, just a day trip a couple hour’s drive away. I really wanted to talk about what was happening and as much as I hated to admit it; I wanted to talk Javi into letting Vera in on this. I felt awful keeping her out of the loop. But my motivation was at least in some part selfish too. I was having all these feelings about the changes I was going though and I really wanted anoth… a woman to talk to about them. Thinking about myself as another woman was exactly the kind of intrusive thoughts I was dealing with and I definitely didn’t want to talk about that aspect of things with Javier.

My school work was not exemplary this first week of February. I was a little distracted nearly the entire time. But spring semester of your senior year of high school isn’t exactly the time to buckle down anyway unless you’re on track for something more than I was. My best-case scenario was University of Arizona and I wasn’t looking forward to four more years in the same town I grew up in. I did want to attend college, but I had no idea what else I could do. This is why I chose to wreck my future rather than spend the next few years going into blinding debt so that I could spend the rest of my life in a job that will only wear me down and enrich some asshole who I’ll probably never meet.

By the time Saturday rolled around, I had a good idea of what my girl body sizes were like and they weren’t too far off from my moms’ if I mixed and matched. I had filched an outfit from a basement hamper the moms had been meaning to take to the second-hand store. I stuffed it into my backpack and put that under the now tarped-over bed of my truck.

I told my moms that I was going to catch a movie and have dinner with Javi. He joined me shortly after I got into the cab of the truck. The thing I liked about Javier was that he was usually down for anything. His whole life, he’d just rolled with things as needed. Like everything with the shard – I had a week-long identity crisis and he was all ‘hey, I charge your phone, bro’. So, I didn’t think he’d freak out once he understood what I had planned.

On the drive, Javier kept badgering me. “Why are we going all the way out to Sierra Vista? That place sucks. There’s nothing there” and so on. I eventually told him that it had to do with our abilities and that it was important to me and that if he’d not bother me about it until we got there; he could control the music.

We pulled into a spot behind the mall and I told Javier to wait a moment. I crawled into the bed of the truck, grabbed the backpack and let my default shape take over. It was a matter of some bouncing and flipping about to change outfits in a closed truck bed but after a few moments and a shout from Javi of “You didn’t need to drag me all the way out here to jerk off in your truck. You could do that at home.” I decided to make my entrance.

Javier must not have thought I was actually engaging in some weird sex stuff in my truck bed, because he’d stationed himself just outside the gate. So, it was with little fanfare that I found myself kicking down the stuck tailgate of my truck to roll out, miss the ground with my foot and fall on my ass while wearing a selection of my mothers’ clothes. While it was not the first image I wanted to get across to Javi about this iteration of myself; it did the job. Javi was too busy laughing and calling me a ‘stupid dingus’ to really be put off by my form.

I scrambled up off the ground and held my arms up “Ta-da,” I intoned.

“Dude, what are you doing? I mean, that’s a nice hot chick and all, but I kinda figured you could do that.” Javi said with an amused look on his face.

“Okay, I didn’t know how this would go and that’s shaky start, not gonna lie.” I said in my light soprano voice. “But we gotta talk about some things and I had to… um... show you want I’m dealing with.”

“You’re dealing with being a shapeshifter? Wait, did you bring me here to boink? Is that why you’re being a girl? Bro.. Bro.. That is a lot to take in right now.” Javi said and placed his hands in front of him as though I needed to slow things down for a moment. And then he took on a more contemplative look like he was actually giving that some consideration.

“No. That’s not what any of this is about. I’m not trying to fuck you!” I said a little too harshly.

“God, you don’t have to be such a bitch about it. Make me get all sad.” And he did genuinely look hurt.

“I’m sorry. That was rude. Look, what I’m trying to say is... I just keep waking up like this. Not like Theodore, but like this lady, every day and it’s weird and I just wanted to talk about it, okay.” And now somehow, I was the one that was sad. And, I guess crying a little. Javi looked conflicted for a moment before giving me a hug, and a ‘there, there’ pat on the back which isn’t a lot, but I appreciated the gesture.

“Okay, I can see how that would be difficult. But why are you being that girl now if you don’t have to and are those Cathy’s flats?” Javi asked, taking in my outfit, which consisted of black leggings, black and silver ballet flats, and a fuzzy sweater thing.

“Because look, it’s complicated. Give me a sec.” I rooted around in the pockets of my backpack before I found what I wanted. A dangly necklace and a pair of earrings came out and I rubbed my fingers around my earlobes to sculpt out little holes for them and then put them in. I struggled with the clasp of the necklace though and finally gave up and turned my back to Javi with the ends of the necklace held up behind my neck.

“You want me to do this up for you?” He asked tentatively.

“Please.” And I stood there while he affixed the clasp. I looked around me and took in the scenery. It felt so weird to look like this, be wearing these things and just existing in the public sphere. “Let’s go inside” I said to Javier.

“Okay. Wait, Teddy... what should I call you?” Javi asked. I think he wanted to ask more but that’s what came out.

“I guess I haven’t thought about it much. Something simple I guess, Rosa. Oh, it could be short for Rosalind.”

“Right. Rosa, did we really have to come all the way out here for this?” He said as walked into the mall.

When he said my name, it was like he’d let loose one of his electric sparks down my spine and it was all I could do not to stumble at the shock of it. When we walked into the mall, there was a store there with a long row of glass windows along the hallway and I caught my reflection and thought to myself ‘oh, there’s Rosalind,’. I turned from Javi to hide the grin that I couldn’t hide from myself. I was way too thrilled about all of this.

“Yes, what if someone saw you hanging out with this smoking-hot girl and started asking questions? We need to be somewhere absolutely devoid of anyone we could feasibly know.” I finally answered. “Besides, I need some clothes. Wearing my moms’ things feels gross.”

“Like more girl clothes?” He asked.

“I mean, yeah, why not? Oh, let’s go in here. Looks like they might have something cute.” And I made off into the store to rifle through a rack of tops.

“Something cute? Hey, Te… Rosa have you given any thought to whether or not these changes are messing with your head?”

I looked up at Javi from the blouse I was holding up to myself. “Hmm, oh yeah. I guess. But I mean if you got turned into a hot girl, wouldn’t you want to play into it?”

“I guess, yeah, I can see that.” Javi admitted.

I slung the top over my forearm and moved on to the next rack. “Also, I was kinda thinking, what if we brought Vera in on this?” I eyed Javi for a reaction to this question.

A small frown inched down one side of his mouth and he nodded his head. “Yeah, I had kinda been thinking about that too. I don’t like keeping this from her. But you know if we tell her she’s going to want the last charge on the shard, right?”

I nodded. I had figured this as well. I wasn’t super excited about what the extra chaos of empowering Vera would entail, but I also didn’t want that shard sitting around with a charge still on it. What if my moms being two rooms over wasn’t far enough away?  No one knows what being near one of those would do over a period of time.  Did the area of effect change with long term exposure?  One of them being empowered would be a disaster. Mama Liz would probably turn herself in out of misplaced deference to authority.

“Let’s do it Monday, we’ll go over to your place and give it to her there if she wants it?” I told Javi, adding a pair of jeans to my growing stack.

“She’ll definitely want it. But yeah, let’s do it at my place.”

I took my pile of clothes into the fitting room and left Javi to wait on the boyfriend chair scrolling through his phone. I got the sizes about right but not everything was a cute on me as I thought it would be so I ended up putting half back.

“Where are you going to keep all that stuff, anyway?” Javi asked after I had made my purchase and had a nice hefty bag full of new clothes.

“In the closet, I guess” I said without a hint of irony. “My moms are gay, they probably wouldn’t be too upset to find me engaging in a little light crossdressing, right?"

“Yeah, I dunno. Your moms can be weirdly rigid about some things though.” He was right about that. I had often walked onto land mines with them where I thought I’d be having a normal conversation and something I said would set them off and suddenly I was being yelled at.

“Hmm, maybe I’ll try to figure something else out.”

I popped into the Ladies’ and changed into some of the new things I’d bought. I still wasn’t sure what my style was with this body, but already I think I had an inkling of it. When I found myself staring at the mirror while washing my hands; I couldn’t look away from the cute lady doing likewise directly in front of me.

Javi and I had lunch and it wasn’t long before we fell into our routine. I had been worried that Javi wouldn’t be able to hang. That he’d get weird or something; make us both uncomfortable. I guess I had underestimated him again. He was as good and true a friend as ever and if his eyes lingered just a second or two too long from time to time, I could forgive him for it.

At the movie theater, there was a moment’s hesitation as we went to our seats. Normally, when we go see a movie, we’d do the bro thing and set down with an empty seat between us or Vera if she was there. And this time after he’d chosen a seat, I just plopped down on the chair next to him. Was I being weird now, or was it just that the pointlessness of our insecure masculinity was being laid bare now that I had none to worry about? He definitely noticed too, but didn’t say anything.

The movie was one of those weird indie films that set out just to mess with your head, so we had a lot to talk about on the drive home. I was struck again by how normal the whole thing was. It wasn’t until we were a couple blocks away from my house that Javi asked “Umm, doesn’t it kinda defeat the purpose of your whole driving out the middle of nowhere idea if you come home looking like that?”

“Shit! I didn’t even think. Fuck.” I made an immediate right turn and looked all around, hoping there was no one to notice this girl driving my truck. I hadn’t even considered what would happen if I got pulled over either. I don’t have any ID for this body. I was being so dumb.

After some deliberation, I drove to a nearby department store with a gigantic parking lot. I parked at the far end of the lot, had Javi get my clothes out of the truck bed and hand them to me in the cab. I sunk down below the line of sight and asked Javi to stand guard while I changed clothes and body.

When I was done and sat in the driver’s seat, Javi hopped back in and looked at me funny. “What?” I asked.

“You looked so happy before.” He said, and looked a little saddened himself. “You know it’s fine, right? Like it’s not a big deal to me one way or another. If… if you know, you want to hang out like this sometimes.”

I knew what he was offering and I felt a huge sigh of relief lift off of me. I didn’t even know that I had been so worried about it. To my mind, this was just a fun little experiment with Javi. It wasn’t meant to be more than that. Well, maybe it had been more than that. Else, why did I buy so many fucking clothes? Maybe I did want this to be a regular occurrence. And the fact that he’d just accepted that was the sweetest thing.

I wiped at my suddenly tear-streaked face. “Thanks, Javi. Shit, now the moms’ll think we were smoking weed. My eyes’re gonna be all red.”

“Dude, I got you.” Javi dug through one of the many pockets in his cargo pants and pulled out a bottle of eye drops. I thanked him and cleared my eyes out before we headed home. We parted ways in my driveway and for a second, it seemed like a hug was in the offing, but the moment passed and we went to our separate houses.

When I got in, Mama Cathy looked up from her book and scrutinized me. “Your shirt is inside-out.” She said as though I’d come home with coke crusted on my nose and my tits out. “Neither you or Javier noticed that all day?” She continued. I think she meant to sound more flippant but it was obvious that this question held more weight than she wanted to let on.

I looked down at the shirt as though it was the first time I’d seen it. “I guess not. Guys don’t really notice things like that, mom.” For some reason, that seemed to calm her down and she returned to her book without another word. Which was lucky since I really did not want her to ask why my backpack was packed near to bursting at the seams.

I went to my room and unloaded the stash of clothes I’d purchased earlier. I really didn’t want to have to jam my nice new stuff in a smelly backpack to get all wrinkled. It was going to be hard to wash these things anyway. But there wasn’t a solution for it. I let my thoughts drift back to when I was in the changing room and how nice it felt. I’d never enjoyed buying clothes before but this felt so different. And the thought was enough to change me back.

I made a mental note to be careful of that, and worried that it might be like trying not to think about a pink elephant. And what if I got stuck trying not to think about it in school. One accidental transformation and I was done for. I had to learn to exercise greater control of my thoughts. But in the meantime, no reason to let a good transformation go to waste, so I put on an outfit from the stash I bought earlier.

I tried to set down and concentrate on my homework but sometimes I’d catch my reflection in the mirror or the pc monitor and get sort of lost in it.