By the end of the day on Monday, I was ready to run away from everything. By Wednesday, I had made up my mind to do so.

On Friday, I did.

First thing Monday, Janice was on the warpath. I was mistaken to think that she would forget all about her interaction with “that redhead from Credit and Rebill.” Oh, she couldn’t remember my name, or rather Cayley’s name, but that didn’t stop her from asking questions. She demanded that I send her the email chain about the issue, which of course I couldn’t do. Instead, I said that everything had been handled over the phone, so there wasn’t one. I still had to do some quick thinking to make up something that sounded sufficiently realistic, but could not easily be verified.

It got her off my back about my ill-advised cross-gender appearance, but she started taking it out on me in other ways. She started routing me the worst tickets, and she had her eyes on her watch every time I went on break. She even began to begrudge me bathroom trips, which was patently ridiculous given the amount of coffee she sucked down in the course of a day.

I kept the necklace in my laptop bag. I did not plan to use it at work again, especially after the trouble it caused the first time. But it was a relief just to know it was there. It represented escape and freedom.

That night, I put on the necklace as soon as I got home. I got a sense of relief from it, the way it feels when you peel off work clothes after a long day. After dinner I painted, until way later than I probably should have. I slept wearing the necklace, and slept well. In the morning, when I took it off before my shower, it felt like lifting a heavy pack to my shoulders for the next leg of a grueling hike.

Janice was no better. I put the necklace on when I went out for lunch, and again in the parking lot before I went home.

On Wednesday morning, I kept it on until the very last minute before going in to work. On my breaks, I locked myself in a bathroom stall, just to keep the necklace on for another five minutes.

Yes, I knew it wasn’t healthy. I was compartmentalizing my life, giving all the good parts to Cayley and leaving all the shit for Ben. It tells you a lot of what I thought about myself, when you get right down to it. But it was also a form of self-care, in a weird way. I had a place to escape to, a place I felt safe, at a time in my life that I doubted my place more than any other. What would I have felt like if I had not received a magical gender-changing necklace?

Throughout the day on Wednesday, a revolutionary idea occurred to me, and it would not go away. What would happen if I did go to Belmont House? Just for a week or so, just to try it out. I obviously couldn’t leave my entire life behind, and I didn’t want to lose this job — it had been hard enough to get in the first place, and it paid my bills. With both parents gone, and no siblings or cousins, I had no one to fall back on if things got desperate. I had no close friends on Long Island, and all my good friends from college had become nothing more than Facebook acquaintances who had lives and wives and kids. I couldn’t afford to take chances with my life.

When Janice wasn’t looking, I calculated the route on Google Maps. If I left early on Saturday morning, ridiculously crazy early, I could make it through the city before traffic got bad and be on my way upstate. I could get there before noon. And then what?

Well, present the card at the door. I tried to imagine what I would say, but I shied away from too much of that. What was the worst that could happen? They turned me away, and I had a nice little trip upstate before coming back to work on Monday. Otherwise, I’d stay for a week and see how it went. Meet the artists, maybe finish a project or two. I could disappear out of their lives whenever I wanted. Wouldn’t that be something to remember?

I just needed to be able to deal with Janice. She was a bit touchy about vacation at the best of times; if one of her team was out, she had to pick up the slack. Janice preferred managing to any actual work, and she would not take kindly to me requesting a full week off, with virtually no notice.

But she couldn’t say anything about me taking off sick, not since that memo from HR last year that updated the sick policy. Managers were now required to believe their employees, so long as they had sufficient sick time to cover the absence. And once sick time was gone, vacation time could be substituted.

I had three sick days and seven vacation days. Two full weeks.

I could do this.

Thursday night, I packed. I stuffed the suitcases while the necklace was off, since I knew that I could effectively pack for a week or two when dealing with familiar men’s clothing and sundries. When I finished, I put on the necklace. My suitcases shot up in size, and a third bag containing nothing but toiletries was appeared from nowhere.

I somehow found room for my mall purchases of the previous weekend, and set the suitcases next to the door. On Friday morning, I stuffed them into my car, along with art supplies and a few works in progress.

Fuck Saturday morning. I was going to leave right after work.

The day went by slower than physics should have allowed. It was noon, 1pm, 2pm. At 3:45pm, Janice exercised her managerial prerogative and went home for the day. Five minutes later, when I was sure she was out of the parking lot, I left too.

I put on the necklace as I merged onto the highway. I felt the driver’s seat slide forward as my legs shortened. My perspective shifted lower, and the rear view mirror adjusted itself to fit. My breasts pushed out to surround the seatbelt where it cut across. I pushed my sandal-covered foot onto the gas and shot down the LIE.

Of course, I ran into traffic almost immediately. I was heading towards New York City on a Friday afternoon, after all. It was after six by the time I finally made it over the George Washington bridge and out of the Bronx. By that time, my bladder was full to bursting. Why had I not taken a pee break before blowing off work?

I managed to find an exit that relieved the issue, and addressed my growing hunger. Google Maps complained at the detour, and I personally agreed with it, but the trip was certainly more pleasant from that point on.

The Belmont House was about six miles outside of New Paltz, New York. It was perched on top of a hill, overlooking a mountain lake. A long and winding drive through a pine forest blocked out what little light remained. I pulled into a visitor parking lot, a few hundred yards from the house, and tried to calm the frantic staccato beats of my heart.

Necklace? Check. Invitation card? Check. I eyed my makeup in the visor mirror, tugged up the neckline of my shirt, and double checked that I had the right address on my phone.

“Have some balls,” I told myself, smiled at the contradiction, and got out of the car.

At first I did not see a doorbell. Then I noticed the pull chain hanging down to the side, and I pulled it tentatively. The clanging alarm inside the house did not reflect my hesitation, and I winced. I looked over my shoulder at my car, and wondered if I could make it back before the door was answered. Just a ding dong ditch, nothing to see here. But before I could take that step, the inner door opened and a voice said, “Yes?”

It was a woman’s voice, in tones as silver-haired as the woman who spoke. I could almost hear that one syllable arching like an imperious eyebrow. I held up the invitation like a talisman intended to ward away evil.

“My name is Cayley?” I said, more like a question than a statement. “I got this invitation? And it said....”

The woman clicked open the lock on the outer screen door. “Gerald! Nicholas! She’s here!”

I opened the screen door and the woman stepped back, hands on hips, but beaming a genial smile at me. She still looked like a rather severe schoolmistress, but one for whom I had just delivered a particularly clever answer. “I’m Madge, but I suspect you... Come in! Come in! Oh....” And she wrapped me up in a hug, pressing my head into her chest. I felt even more like a child. “We’re so glad for you to be part of the family!”

Her words melted something inside of me, something I did not realize was frozen. But a second later a chill wind rendered it solid once more. I was an impostor, not a part of this family. And I could not forget that.

I looked up at Madge and faked a smile.