Two weeks later, in the swivel chair in front of the computer in my apartment, I was still a woman. You might have thought that Lamar’s letter would have sent me running to BodyMat to switch back, and I have to admit that it crossed my mind. But I had until October 31st to decide, more than two months, and I did not want to do anything hasty.

What’s more, I was mourning my relationship with Lamar, and I wasn’t sure how well I would be able to do so as Chris. Would I still feel the same way? Or would the emotions just confuse me? I can’t say that I had ever been that in touch with my emotions, as a man, and I did not know whether the additional emotional intelligence I had built over the summer would transfer over.

So I sat in my apartment, in front of my computer, playing games and refreshing my inbox. BodyMat had legal restrictions in place to maintain the identity of its clients. There were three levels of identity permissions that I could set — text only, photo and first name, or full contact information. These three levels were set independently for both sides of the transformation.

For example, I had given David and Chris full Level 3 access for my Holly side. (There were no permissions set for the Chris side yet, as I had not changed back.) Both of them opted to return to their old bodies, and by the photos, neither had actually changed all that much.

Veronica had not changed back, which meant that we could correspond freely. She became my most frequent correspondent, checking in several times a day to make sure that I was all right. Both she and Chloe had reacted with shock and anger when I showed them the letter, but Veronica had been most upset. As far as she was concerned, I was entirely in the right and Lamar entirely in the wrong, and her unwavering confidence helped me through some rough nights.

Chloe had warned that she might not reply right away to any messages. “I don’t know what I’m going to be walking into, but if it’s anything like the last time, I might find myself whisked off to a small village in Tibet to reset my aura or some bullshit,” she had said. I had sent her several emails, though she had not responded to any, and her original-body permissions had not yet been set. As soon as she did so, all my messages would go through, and I was all right to wait.

As for Lamar, I was surprised to find that he had set permissions to Level 1 in his transformed state. I honestly expected him to block me out completely. I spent two weeks trying to decide whether to send him an email or not, with Veronica firmly in the “don’t you dare” camp. But now, with the glow of the monitor (and two weeks of crap food) giving my skin a very unhealthy pallor, I had my mouse poised over the Send button.

It was a nice letter, in which every word had been carefully considered, erased, retyped, tasted, spit out, deleted, and typed again. I started out saying that I forgave him, but that I wished I knew why he didn’t say goodbye, why he couldn’t tell me what was going on. I said that if he wasn’t going to be my boyfriend at least he could be my friend, and that even with only a few months of history, he owed me that.

It went on, and I’m afraid I may have rambled. I got passive-aggressive in places, defensive in others, apologetic in yet others. Looking back he probably thought I was having mood swings, to be able to reflect so many different emotions in a single letter. To that, I would only say this. It is possible to feel all of those emotions at once, and more, and getting them down on paper was the only way to keep from being overwhelmed.

I clicked the mouse.

When no response had come, three hours later, I went to bed.

In the morning, I did have a response, but it was not from Lamar. It was from Chloe.

Or Cassie, rather. Oddly she had only given me Level 1 permissions, but I was too glad to hear from her to care. It was a short letter, and felt rather distant, but she told me that she was doing well, and was back in New York after a trip to Dubai. She made no mention of Lamar, nor of our plans to meet up in New York before the school year started.

In a way, the distant reply hurt as much as Lamar, but unlike his unambiguous letter, I was able to find excuses for Cassie. In fact, just hearing from her at all gave me a boost, and it was enough to get me out of my funk and back into the world.

I took a walk. There was a lake, up in the mountains not too far from campus, and it was a place I had always liked to go to be alone. I made a real effort to clean myself up, and when I was finished the sight of myself in jeans and a light sweater, my hair pulled back in a ponytail, cheered me up a bit too. I still liked the way I looked. I was comfortable in my body.

The lake was everything I had hoped for. It was a crisp late summer day, cool enough thanks to the elevation that I remained mostly free from boob sweat, but warm enough that I could sit on the rocks and just look out over the water. At one point, while I was sitting there, a little boy of about six years old approached me and held out a flower. It was just a little wildflower, but I was touched.

I looked around, but could not see his mother anywhere. Asking the child was no good. He was more interested in telling me about the flower than the location of a missing parent. I began to feel quite concerned — the last thing I wanted was to be accused of kidnapping.

I had just taken the boy’s hand and started walking him down the hill when a rather harried woman came rushing up. His mother — for that is who it clearly was — apologized profusely, and we chatted companionably for a few minutes before she ushered him back to the trail.

The whole episode was such a clear reminder of how different I was now, or at least how different people perceived me. And it only confirmed the decision that in my heart I had already made.

I was going to stay female.

The legal process was easier than I thought it would be. I already had a full legal identity as Holly, and my older identity had been put in a “pending” legal status, meaning that Chris could still own property, enter into contracts, and a few dozen other things that aren’t worth delving into here. All I needed to do was to put that identity into inactive status, while transferring my existing debts and obligations over to the new identity.

It meant that I was now registered at school under the name of Holly Carmichael, and my existing coursework transferred over. It meant a few days logging onto websites and submitting forms and arguing with people on the phone, but it was surprisingly straightforward.

Breaking the news to my family was a little harder. They knew about the internship, and had supported me, but my brother just didn’t understand why I hadn’t changed back as soon as it was over. “I mean, I support you, but it’s just so out of the blue, you know?” But we left it with an awkward hug and plans to meet up for Thanksgiving.

My old college friends had not really heard about the internship, so it was a huge surprise for them. For the first week or two, I got all kinds of very weird questions. My male friends were tremendously uncomfortable, at least until they started drinking, which is when they started to forget who I was, and make me tremendously uncomfortable.

“So did you suck a dick?”

“None of your business,” I replied flatly.

“Ooooooooh!” Then he laughed and made angry cat noises, like I was the one being irrational.

My female friends, on the other hand, were less open than I had hoped. Chloe and Veronica had welcomed me into their little sisterhood with open arms, but then again, they had each met me as a woman, and that is the place I occupied in their heads, even after my revelation. These girls had known me for three years or longer, and to them I was still a guy. Or worse, they forgot I was a guy and then remembered, felt stupid, and took it out on me.

Long story short, by the end of September, I had drifted away from all of them. It happened naturally — I just stopped getting invited to things, or the things I was invited to just didn’t sound like fun.

But don’t go off thinking that I was completely alone. I met a couple of girls in class, Claire and Lori, and we hit it off right away. I also met a guy named Josh, who liked to haunt the campus coffee shop in the hours just before close, and I struck up a conversation with him when I saw him reading a book by one of my favorite authors. Pretty soon, lunches with the girls and late night literature discussions with Josh took up all the time I would otherwise have spent on drinking and partying with my old friends.

Regardless, I was heartily looking forward to fall break. One full week in Manhattan. I had reserved an AirBNB, just down the street from the old apartment, and Veronica was flying in from the UK to meet me there. We had tried to involve Cassie, but she had gone into radio silence mode. I was starting to get concerned about whether we could contact her in time, when help came from the most unlikely source.

Turns out, Lori’s roommate was watching a gossip show one evening, and who should be on screen but a certain Cassandra Warner. It was the name that arrested my attention, since the face was entirely new to me. That’s when I realized that her movements, as a young, trendy, and very wealthy Manhattan socialite were tracked by the tabloids. All it took was a bit of internet research to figure out her movements, and to find her favorite club — Swan Lake, an oddly named place in the Meatpacking District.

Seeing Veronica again was like coming home. The AirBNB was tiny, with two twin beds in a single studio room, but we were up until 2am chatting anyway, so it didn’t matter. Mainly we were talking about our plans to surprise Chloe, as we still referred to her.

“She’s always there on a Saturday, the site said,” Chloe informed me. “So tomorrow’s our best chance, yeah? Get there around nine, in case we have to wait in line. What are you wearing?” I pulled the outfit out of my suitcase and showed her. “You’re joking me, right?”

I looked down at the lilac top and skirt. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it is that you’re showing up at the trendiest nightclub in Manhattan wearing your gran’s old gardening togs. That’s it, we’re taking you shopping tomorrow. We need to slut you up.”

I had never been part of the nightclub scene as a man, nor had I as a woman, so this was entirely new to me. Turns out, I slutted up rather well.

First off were the boots, which were not terribly comfortable. They went up to the knee, and were by far the most substantial and covering piece of clothing I had on. The heels were higher than anything I had worn before, straining the limits of my skill conditioning. The boots went on over a web of black stockings.

My skirt was short, alarmingly so. At first I wondered if my skills had let me down, because I kept revealing a number of things I would rather keep hidden every time I sat down. But Veronica assured me that there was no modesty to be found anywhere in the garment, and that was actually the primary reason to wear it.

I got a new bra for the occasion, black and padded and not my usual style. It pushed my tits up and together, rounding them out to give me the illusion of a truly enormous, somewhat bulbous rack. The tight, glittery, purple top that Veronica chose for me was made of some kind of stretchy material, and the neckline was low enough to reveal everything that the bra had so carefully shaped.

Veronica did my hair again, but it was nothing like the elegant pile that she had assembled for my first date with Lamar. It was big and curly, a giant halo around my head. She walked me through the makeup application, demanding that I go bigger until I wondered if there was anything left of my face visible to the naked eye.

When we finished, we took turns examining ourselves in the small mirror on the back of the door. “Shit, Veronica. We look like total skanks.” Veronica’s outfit was more revealing than mine, if possible. She was taller, hippier, and far tittier, and the few bare scraps of fabric were held together by straps that a stiff breeze could have dislodged.

“I know!” she replied, enraptured. “I’ve always wanted to do this. Look out, New York, the Tit Patrol are here!”

“Fuck it. Let’s go Tit Patrol!” And under that battle cry, we went forth into the night.

We made it into Swan Lake first try. There was no waiting in line for us. We walked right up to the door. The doorman took a good eyeful of each of us, and then honest-to-god got out his phone and took a selfie with us. If you ever see two barely dressed ladies duckfacing next to a Long Island bouncer, there’s a decent chance that was me.

The club was deafening, and I could barely make myself heard over the noise. Eventually I managed to communicate to Veronica my question, namely where did we think that Chloe would be? She pointed towards the back, to the roped off area that was isolated from the main part of the club.

We pushed our way through, fending off roving hands as we did so. It was hard to tell sometimes how much was actual molestation, and how much was sheer press of numbers, but since most of it was boob and ass related, I guessed it was intentional. This was not my scene, and by the time we made it across the floor, I felt dirty and wanted desperately to be anywhere else. Was this really Chloe’s kind of place?

The VIP area was guarded by a pair of bouncers, but these guys were not swayed by a selfie. We told the friendlier of the two who we were there to see, and he checked his list — which of course we were not on. “Could you just give her our names?” Veronica asked, slipping him a piece of paper on which our names were written, along with a hundred dollar bill. He made them both disappear and then vanished himself, returning about a minute later to allow us past the velvet rope.

We were led through a door into a private room. There were a number of men and women there, drinking and socializing and sitting in each other’s laps. We did not find Chloe, but we did find Cassandra Warner.

She was regal. Her outfit was just as revealing as ours, but she wore it like a ball gown. When she saw us, her lips quirked into a smile that did not remind me of the friend I knew. Chloe’s smile invited the whole room to take part, but Cassie looked like we simply amused her, and we were not in on the joke.

We hugged her, in a remote and back patting kind of way. “It’s so good to see you!” I said.

“How did you find me?” Cassie replied. Veronica happily told her about our internet search, and that gave me time to observe what she did not. She did not look happy to see us. In fact, it looked like our presence made her a bit uncomfortable.

“And then my flight landed yesterday morning, and I slept half the day, and then Holly showed up, and look! She decided to stay a girl.”

“Yes,” Cassie replied. “Listen... I guess you noticed that I didn’t really write back, right?” We nodded. “It’s an old trick my Daddy taught me. It’s the way you communicate to people that you no longer wish to have their acquaintance.” To the side, a man wearing sunglasses snickered.

“What are you saying?” Veronica asked.

“I’ll spell it out. It was a great summer, it really was. I loved sitting around with you both, sharing SECRETS.” Her lips pursed at the word. “But I’m just not that girl anymore. Really, I never was. Did you really think that a shitty little walkup was enough to make me want to give up this?” She gestured around her at the opulent room before going on.

“As for the two of you, you were convenient. Little pretend friends for a little pretend life. Veronica.” Her voice was oily. “Once a fat girl, always a fat girl. And my dear Holly.” She stared down at my crotch before letting her eyes drift lazily up. “If you’d ever had a real cock in your pants, you’d have never given it up.”

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I spoke before I could consider it more deeply. “I told you about my erectile dysfunction in confidence!”

“Oh, I remember all of your little secrets. But the only reason I would ever keep a secret of yours is because no one I know cares enough to tell,” Cassie replied. She made a little move of her hand, and I found myself seized on the upper arms by a large, firm grip. In moments, we were hustled out of the room. The bouncers did not return us to the club, but instead pushed us out a back door in to an alley behind.

“That... that evil, foul-smelling, venereally diseased CUNT!” bellowed Veronica, kicking at the door as it closed.

“Veronica...”

“I can’t believe that she would SAY that, that she would DO that, that she....”

“Veronica!” I finally got through. “That wasn’t Chloe.”

“You’re damned well right it wasn’t like her....”

I shook my head, surprised at how calm my voice sounded, as compared to how fast my heart was beating. “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, that wasn’t her.” Veronica blinked at me in confusion. “Her father owns a body conversion company. You think he couldn’t make a duplicate? I never told Chloe anything about erectile dysfunction. That wasn’t her.”

“Oh.”

We started walked down the alley, hoping to make it to a more populated area soon. I was critically aware of how we were dressed.

“I can see two possibilities,” I told her. “One, her father did something to her. Has her locked up somewhere or something. Two, she got away, and her father doesn’t want anyone to know about it.”

“But which is it?”

I shrugged. “If she’s free, surely she would find some way to contact us.”

“Maybe. She also might think we’re being watched. We did get to that back room pretty easily just now.”

We flagged down a taxi. I barely noticed the ride. By the time the cab had pulled up in front of our apartment for the week, I had a plan.

“I think it’s time I changed back to myself,” I told Veronica.