"I just can't do it."

Aubrey tutted sympathetically. "I know that has to be so frustrating."

"It really is. I'm so ready to wear different jewelry."

We were both dressed in our finest, making circuits of the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, on the New Paltz campus. Aubrey had some of her images in a student exhibition, and she'd invited me to the opening as her plus one.

"Did you ask Madge or any of the others for help?"

I nodded. "Madge told me that I couldn't get to my destination using another person's path, or some bullshit like that."

"What about Gerald?"

"He said basically the same thing. Actually, his exact words were 'Doesn't work like that, Cinnamon Bun.'"

"And they can't, I mean, do it for you?"

I shook my head. "It's got to come from me, apparently." I sighed. "I just wish I knew where I was keeping it."

For the last month, I had spent every day in various attempts to change myself into an actual woman. My initial attempts—painting myself as a man, and then painting myself as a woman over it—accomplished exactly nothing. Later I tried to get fancier, by taping up the paper, painting over it, and then lifting the tape to paint the "truth" beneath. The best I was able to do was the time I changed my shirt from yellow to pink, although to be honest I might have just been too tired to remember what I was wearing.

"These are really spectacular," I said, pointing at a small grouping of pastels.

"Those are Ethan's."

I eyed her suspiciously. "And who's Ethan?"

"You'll meet him tonight. Hey, the snack table is open!"

I surveyed the table. Cheese, crackers, wine with an Italian-sounding name. This all looked very familiar. A little fancier than the spread I had put on, but the same in spirit. I helped myself to a cracker.

A portly man in a beret approached us. "Ah, Aubrey, wonderful to see you. And is this your....?" His lips wavered between an "m" and an "s" shape.

"Friend," Aubrey supplied. "Cayley, this is my advisor, Professor Armstrong. Professor, this is Cayley Callaghan."

"Ah, one of the artists up at the House," said Professor Armstrong, taking my hand. "Tell me, what is your opinion of our little exhibition here?"

"You have some very talented artists here," I replied.

He beamed. "I hoped you would think so. Let me show you around." And turning his back on Aubrey, he led me off.

I looked over my shoulder at Aubrey. "Sorry!" she mouthed. I rolled my eyes, and reconciled myself to an evening charming Aubrey's advisor. I caught a glimpse of her later, walking around with a tall young man with circular glasses, whom I presumed to be Ethan. By the way she was giggling, I was pretty sure that I had forfeited my date for the night.

I felt a pang. the necklace had changed my gender, but not my age. At twenty-seven I was hardly an old maid, but there was so much experience I had missed out on. I was never a little girl, would never feel that flush of teenage romance. I became a woman fully formed, arriving at the destination without the journey. It was hard not to feel a little cheated.

And yet, what I lost on one side, I gained on another. I could tell at a glance that Ethan was just as into Aubrey as she was into him. He was preening, showing off, exaggerating something or other. I wondered if she had told him she was a Belmont Fellow yet.

The evening wound down at last. Professor Armstrong made a few oblique statements that I realized, to my shock, were a dinner invitation for the following Tuesday. I made my excuses politely but firmly, and gathered up Aubrey.

"You just missed Ethan," she said.

"Oh, I saw plenty of Ethan," I replied with a smile. "But I want to hear about him too."

Aubrey was high on a successful evening, and told me about Ethan in minute detail on the way home. We had only gotten to their second date ("well, it wasn't exactly a date") by the time we pulled up to the house.

We had only just entered the kitchen when I heard footsteps coming from upstairs. It was Anthony. He held a paper in his hand, and was clearly excited. "I found her."

"Who?"

"Caroline!" he exclaimed.

I felt a pang of guilt. In the months since my unmasking, I had forgiven Anthony for what he did. It had all worked out, after all—in fact, Darren and I probably wouldn't have gotten together without his interference. I remembered belatedly that I had set him the task of finding Caroline.

"Where is she?"

He had a look of fierce pride. "I don't know. But," he held up a finger, "I know where she's going to be. Tonight, in the shared workspace. Look!"

I took the paper from him. It was a pencil sketch, set at a high angle. I could see myself, clad in the exact gown I was currently wearing. I had my arms folded, and my posture looked impatient. Across from me was a woman in her middle years, half-drowning in bulky jewelry.

"How long do we have?"

"I don't know!" he said, almost joyfully. He took me by the hand. "Come on, we need to get you there."

He pulled me out the back. Aubrey followed, and I was glad of her company. Anthony was chattering away. "I had always treated my sketches as static moments, you know, snapshots of an unchanging past. But the future, ah! The future is always changing, moment to moment, snaking around like a firehose without a fireman! It was change I needed in my art, not stasis. And I know I'll never hear the end of it from Gerald, but I don't care." He giggled, the first time I'd ever heard such a noise emerge from him.

Holding the sketch, I tried to place exactly where I was standing. Yes, that was my workspace next to me, and Darren's just beyond. Out of habit, I check Sasha's food and water dishes, and found him, tail lashing contentedly, with his face buried in the bowl.

I took up my position in the aisle. How long was I supposed to wait? I had a brief image of me, wearing this dress on a daily basis, waiting for the one moment that it was going to come true.

Only a few seconds had passed before I saw movement. Sasha had been sitting on one of Darren's comfortable chairs. He got up, stretched, and sauntered towards us.

Wait. Sasha had been at his food bowl. Or was that a different cat? Because the animal in front of us was definitely—

Sasha stood on his hind legs. He lengthened, expanding upwards and outwards. All his fur seemed to explode off him at once, vanishing as it scattered and drifted to the floor. In his place was Caroline.

"You've been disguised as our cat?" I cried. "This whole time!"

"It was ever so much fun!" she replied.

"I let you sit on my lap!"

She tutted. "That wasn't me, dear, that was the actual Sasha. I will dare many things, but I draw the line at petting. Oh, hello Anthony."

"Caroline," he replied in droll tones. "One assumed that when you left Belmont House, you had actually left."

"I gave up my spot as a Fellow. No one said I couldn't sleep in the workspace for nine months."

"It was implied," said Anthony.

"Ah well. Let's look at you dear. Yes, you have come into your own, haven't you?"

"You made my life hell for a while, you know," I told her.

Her brows knitted. "Oh my goodness? How so?"

I folded my arms and tapped my foot impatiently. "You made me think I was an impostor. You forced me to remain as a woman for months. Why, when you could have just told me I was accepted and let me figure things out in my own time. Why?"

"Because you wouldn't have figured things out," she said simply. "You were calcified. If you had come here as Ben, you would have still felt like an impostor. And you would have been, in a sense—a woman in a man's skin, without the sense to know who she really was. You had lived your whole life as an impostor, until you found me."

"Give her a straight answer, Caroline, please."

She huffed. "All right. I did a divination. Madge is good about her locator spells, you know, finding the best candidate for fellowship. But what she never thinks of is the happiness of that individual. I divined that your only real chance at true happniess was the path I laid out for you, the path that you've walked up to now." She broke into a smile. "And you've done marvelously, my dear. I'm so proud of you. Completely justified our faith."

I opened my mouth to berate her further, but realized that in all likelihood, she was right. As Ben, would I have quit my job like I did? Walked away from the cage I had built for myself? Or would I have assumed that it was all a mistake, that I could never possibly fit in, and returned to the hell I'd made?

I recalled acutely my emotions during my first week at the house. I was ready to leave, certain that I did not have what it took. Becoming friends with Aubrey changed that, and so did the attraction I felt for Darren. Neither of those would have happened if I had been Ben.

I caught a look on Caroline's face, as if she were reading my thoughts. "No, I can't read your mind. But I can tell you this. You are close to achieving what you want. There is just one thing holding you back. Luckily, I can do something about that."

Caroline made an odd sort of twisting motion with her hand. I felt a tearing sensation at my skin. It was the same feeling I got when taking off the necklace, but it was still there, around my neck.

The pendant hung down my flat chest. I held up my broad hands in horror.

"Caroline!" Anthony barked. "What in blazes do you think you're doing?"

"We all have to take the training wheels off sometime," she said. "Give my best to the family. au revoir!" And in a puff of smoke, she turned back into a cat, and scampered off into the night. The real Sasha, strolling atop one of the partitions, watched her go with idle curiosity.

"Put it back!" I demanded, hating the sound of the voice that said it. "Put it back!" But she was already gone.