“Good morning,” I announced, stretching my arms out above me with a huff.

My dad was standing at the kitchen counter, dressed for work, idly sipping from a mug of coffee. “Good morning, Emily. You’re up early.”

“Yeah, I woke up to go the bathroom and it was already like, now, so.” It wasn’t actually that early, only fifteen or so minutes before my alarm would have gone off anyway. But that was a lot earlier than I usually came out of my room.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Eh, decently.”

I went over to the refrigerator and searched it for the bottle of apple juice that I knew had been in here somewhere, to no avail. Had someone drunk it? Or maybe I’d just forgotten that I’d finished it. Reluctantly, I poured myself a cup of milk instead, grabbing myself an orange from the orange basket for the sake of having something fruity and then popping a couple slices of bread in the toaster.

“I heard you talking in your room last night,” Dad said to me after I finished washing my orange. “Brie again?”

I took a seat at the counter, opposite where my dad was standing. “Uh, yeah,” I answered. I uncomfortably picked at the stem of the orange I was holding. “We, uh. Yeah. We were just talking for a bit?”

“I’m glad you have good friends like that,” he said. “That’s the kind of friend you’ll have for life, don’t you think?”

“…yeah.” Friends. Right.

“How is Brie? What’s she planning to do for college?”

“Uh, she’s not sure,” I said. “She has like, some places she wants to apply, but she’s not really sure what she wants to major in. Uh. She’s interested in linguistics? But she’s not sure if she wants to like, go into it go into it. She has some other stuff she’s thinking about too.”

He nodded. “Well, I’m sure she’ll do good at whatever she ends up going into,” he said. “She’s a smart girl.”

“Yeah,” I agreed awkwardly.

“What about you, Mia? What do you want to do with yourself after high school?”

Oh no, not this conversation again. “Um. Go to college?” I turned my attention toward peeling the orange I’d gotten, doing my best to keep the skin all in one piece. “Dang it,” I muttered when I failed.

“What about after that? Where do you see yourself?”

“Uh. I’m not really sure.” I tried to focus on my orange. “I’ll… figure it out.”

“You know we’ll support you in whatever you want to do, Mia,” Dad said to me. He set his mug down.

“Yeah.”

“We’re very proud of you, Mia, your mom and I. You’re really growing up to be a fine young woman,” he continued. I stayed quiet, unable to find a good response.

Damn it, it’s too early for this.

“Thank you,” I settled for.

“I think your toast is ready,” he said, looking over his shoulder at the toaster.

Oh. I hadn’t noticed. I walked over and laid out the slices of bread—on the browner side, as I preferred—on a plate, and then returned to my seat to finish my fruit.

The sound of someone rapidly descending the staircase resounded through the house as I was on my fourth orange lobe out of ten. “Mia? Is that you there?” my mom’s voice came.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I called back. I glanced over at my dad, who was still sipping silently from his coffee.

“You’re up early. Are you—” She paused as she rounded the corner into the kitchen and spotted my dad. “Marcos? What are you still doing here?”

“Drinking coffee,” Dad replied plainly. “And talking with our secondborn child.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Wake your brother if he’s not up before seven, okay, Emily?” she said, walking up to stand next to my dad. She placed her leather briefcase down on the counter. “Make sure he gets ready on time.”

“Yep, will do,” I said.

“Alright, good job. Now, you—” She lightly prodded Dad with her elbow. “—should be getting ready to go too.”

Dad wrapped an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. “I am ready. I was just having some coffee.” He quaffed the last of his coffee before joining my mom on her way to the garage.

“Bye, Mia,” Mom called out over the noise of the garage door opening.

“Have a good day at school!” Dad added.

“You too!” I shouted back, mentally laughing a little at my own stupid joke.

Soon they’d both left, my dad to his tax office and my mom to her architectural firm, and the house returned to its usual quiet morning ambience. It wasn’t that often that I actually woke up early enough to really talk to my parents before school. It probably sounded bad to say, but… sometimes I just kinda tried to avoid it if possible. A lot of times it just ended up just being this same conversation, about my future and how they were proud of me and stuff, that I’d never really known what to do with.

I… yeah. It was too early for me to be thinking about that right now.

I finished off my orange, washed the juice off my hands, and set to preparing my toast. I ended up kind of shredding the bread trying to spread the cold butter, but it turned out good enough. By the time I’d finished eating and headed back upstairs, Gabe was only just getting out of his room, obviously disheveled.

“Wow, the prodigal son returns,” I commented.

Gabe replied with just a yawn, running his hand through his messy bedhead. “I don’t think that’s how you use that.”

“You just escaped a torturous fate, Gabe,” I said seriously. “Mom authorized me to use extreme measures to wake you up if you hadn’t.”

“Oh no, I’m terrified,” Gabe replied, deadpan. He yawned again.

“Anyway, go get yourself ready so we can leave early and I can prove to Mom I’m a responsible older sibling.”

He gave me a lazy half-thumbs-up and shambled over to the stairs. I watched him for a bit, just to make sure he didn’t just suddenly collapse and fall. When he made it out of eyeshot without doing so, I turned around and made for the bathroom.

I closed the bathroom door behind me and stepped in front of the sink. I sighed, facing myself in the mirror. Day three, here we go.

I moved closer to the mirror to inspect my face. It looked about the same as it had when I’d first woken up as Emily, if a lot less contorted with sheer confused panic. I felt my cheek. Was my skin drier than it had been? Maybe I was supposed to be moisturizing or something.

There was no stubble. That was convenient, at least. I didn’t know if it would like, grow in eventually and I’d have to shave it or pluck it or something, but for now I seemed to be spared that particular effort. My legs seemed to be in a similar situation, I noted, sliding one shin against the other.

My hair. I reached a hand up to touch it. I was pretty sure it was less… shiny? Than it had been when I’d gotten here. I was probably doing something wrong there.

The bathroom countertop was decorated by a row of unfamiliar tubes and bottles of stuff, presumably Emily’s. They definitely weren’t my brother’s, anyway. A bunch of hair products and lotions and other things I didn’t really know what they were for. Hopefully I wasn’t messing up anything too bad by not using them. I supposed I should probably figure out what to do with those at some point.

If… if there was one thing I’d gleaned about Emily from my two days spent as her, it was that she just seemed to put a lot more effort, into herself, and everything, than I ever had. I knew part of that was probably expectations, like of her being a girl, being expected to care a lot about moisturizing and clothes and stuff. And as a guy I’d never really had that kind of pressure. But Emily did.

I supposed my parents did get on me to take better care of my like, presentability and personal grooming and stuff from time to time. I’d just never been able to get myself to care all that much about it. Why did I feel like for Emily it wasn’t just an obligation, but something she genuinely did want to do?

The difference between me and Emily… was that she was a girl. That was obvious enough. She looked different, had different anatomy. Everyone saw her as a girl, and treated her as a girl, along with everything that came with that. As far as I could tell that was basically the only change from my life to hers. Every other difference between us stemmed from that. The way she dressed, the way she talked to people and the way they talked to her. Her sexuality. But otherwise, we were the same person. We went to the same school, had the same family and friends and girlfriend and Facebook password. We both liked running and rainy days and concerts and watching videos of people playing Kirby’s Return to Dream Land. All the same as me.

And yet, she seemed so much more comfortable with herself than I did.

I didn’t know what to think about that.

Oh god, what if I get a period while I’m like this, the thought came to me suddenly. I’d better fucking not. I had enough I was trying to figure out right now and I did not need to add trying to deal with a fucking period. What would I even do, ask my mom?

Cringing a bit at the mental image of that, I pushed the thought away and reached over to grab my toothbrush and toothpaste. As I began brushing my teeth, my eyes drifted back to meet my own gaze in the mirror, watching myself. It was my third day as Emily, as a girl, in this whole new reality I was living. I… I was really just acting like this was normal, wasn’t I.

Just… what else was I supposed to do?

A few minutes later I had finished up with the rest of my usual morning routine and exited the bathroom. “I’m done,” I yelled downstairs. Gabe shouted something back that his mouth seemed to be too full to turn into actual words, but I took the noise as a sign that he got the message and returned to my bedroom to get dressed.

I pulled open my closet door. There were more clothes in here than I could say I’d owned in the past five years altogether. Emily had picked those all? She actually wore them all? I didn’t know how that was even possible.

Automatically I went for my usual combination of a t-shirt and jeans, then paused. I looked around my room for my phone, locating it still on my bedstand, and picked it up to check the weather. No rain today, but it looked like it was going to be another mild, humid spring day.

I thought it over. Really, this was shorts weather, but…

Setting my phone down, I walked up to my closet, looking over the shelves. Emily had her shorts folded and arranged in the same place I’d always put them. I reached out and picked one up, a pair of denim short shorts. Wearing something like this…

Nope, nope, nope. I returned them to the shelf.

I settled instead for a generic pair of jeans, one of the looser ones that I’d determined had real pockets, and then a black-and-white checkered flannel over a plain black t-shirt. A regular enough outfit for me, ignoring the fact that I was wearing a bra and… yeah. Fuck, not going to think about that.

I took a step back to look at myself in the mirror. Standing there, wearing my style of clothes, carrying herself with my body language, was a girl. Emily.

Fuck, that’s still so weird to see.

Though… I knew I was like, in her body, and all, but… I didn’t know that I really looked that much like her, the Emily I’d seen in those photos.

“Cool and confident, huh?” I murmured.

Hesitantly, I unbuttoned my flannel, fumbling a bit with the button placement, and tossed it aside on my bed. I quickly took off the plain black shirt I was wearing and switched it out for another t-shirt, one I’d gotten our family trip to Hawaii a few years ago, this other black one with a swirly pastel blue design of a sea turtle. I then slipped the flannel back on over it, leaving it open this time and rolling up the sleeves.

I stood in front of the mirror once more, pushing my hair out of my face with one hand. Just… looking at myself.

After a few seconds, I cracked a wry smile. Amazing. Just radiating confidence. Absolute queen of self-expression over here. “What am I even doing,” I said to myself, but still I remained there, my eyes locked on the mirror.

I hovered there a few moments longer before finally turning away.

“Guess I should get my stuff ready.”