After a few days of living at Danielle’s, I could already confidently say one thing: Frankie was very interested in spending time with me. I had replaced his mom as his go-to confidante. He would mewl at my door in the morning until I got up, and constantly ask me rudimentary questions using his buttons, which had grown from being tucked in the corner of the living room to taking up a good quarter of it. 

Few of these questions made any sense, it turned out — words were strung together with no sense of meaning nor structure. I only recognized them as questions thanks to the convenient “Hmm?” inflexion button he had learned to press. I wasn’t sure if he was being limited by his own understanding of language, or by his available vocabulary, which his buttons could no longer keep up with.

He had become very talkative, and interested in cataloging any and every thing he saw, smelled, heard. Danielle had had to become selective in which words to convert into buttons, lest he be saddled with “clafouti” or “passing car”, which wouldn’t exactly be the most helpful at communicating his needs.

What time I didn’t end up spending with Frankie was taken over by my new work-from-home routine. I’d stopped going to the lab so I could keep an eye on Frankie, but my laptop and an open video call were an arrangement happily approved by my chief, now that the investors had been wowed and dazzled.

But on this particular morning, Danielle had gotten me out of my lair with the promise of an ‘apology breakfast.’ We went out at nine in the morning to a nearby cafe and ordered ourselves some tea and pastries, with Frankie harnessed to a leash at our feet.

I desperately wanted to be anywhere but here. Sure, our friendship had had rough patches in the past — and I never ever liked the awkwardness that came with having to push through to mending things. That wasn’t to say it wasn’t the right thing to do, but it just… wasn’t a pleasant experience. My eyes moved to the other customers, my ears kept getting distracted every time I heard a jingle vaguely reminiscent of a Leitmotiv I knew. Any excuse to let my mind drift from the current moment was something I subconsciously jumped at.

But one little being here kept pulling my attention back into my seat. Frankie mewled incessantly at any and every thing that caught his eye, and the sound of it kept reminding me I was in front of Danielle and about to have a difficult conversation. “I’m not sure how smart an idea that was to take the kitty with us…” I said, thinking about the noise he was causing. Still, he seemed happy to wonder about everything around him. I hoped the other customers wouldn’t grumble too much.

Danielle kept stirring her tea, not giving me much of a reply. She felt guilty, or at least looked the part — and wasn’t the kind of person to hide her emotions. After an awkward silence, she did, eventually, speak up. “I’m sorry for the other day.”

My voice got caught in my throat, searching for the right thing to say. “It’s… fine. It’s fine, you’d done nothing wrong. I broke that promise, you were… right to be angry.”

She knocked her knuckles on her forehead, before hiding her face in her sleeves. “Urrrgh, nooo, the whole point of that promise is to help you, getting angry at you doesn’t make anything better! That’s why I’m apologizing.”

“Please, just… don’t take it out on yourself.” I felt Frankie almost tangle my legs in his leash, and picked him up on my lap before he made it worse. “I get why you’re mad, I… I’d told you I got over it.”

“I just don’t understand,” Danielle said, slumping over the table. “You have magic. You could just… poof, voila, be done with it. What’s the hang-up?”

“I’m carrying on fine, y’know?” I sighed, petting Frankie’s back. “I just don’t think I need to do anything about it.”

She straightened herself up a bit. “What about jumping at any mention of your name is ‘carrying on fine’?”

I lifted my coffee and took a sip. “I don’t like my name, but… it’s whatever. It’s not my biggest priority.”

Danielle looked at her own cup for a moment, and downed it at once. Then, she placed it back on its saucer and started rummaging through her handbag. “Do you remember the questions I asked you, back then? You’d said you didn’t have an answer. Have you thought about them since?”

“Uh…” They had crossed my mind once or twice, and always ended up frustrating me. “Yes…?” I tentatively offered.

She pulled one of Frankie’s buttons out of her purse, placed it down on the table, and slid it towards me.

Frankie started getting agitated. He mewled, climbing over my shirt, sniffing in the button’s direction. I had to hold him back, and he rested his head on the table, looking all sad. “Oh, that reminds me. Shouldn’t we try to find another system for the cat? We kind of reached the limits of how scalable that one was.”

Danielle nodded. “Already on it. I stopped buying those, this was the last one I had left. But don’t change the subject.”

She slowly moved her index to the top of the button, and demonstrated it. As clearly as the little speaker in that thing could go, it rang one word out: “girl.”

I gulped.

She pulled out her phone and started reading something out. “Okay. Let’s say that this button is magical. When you press it, it’ll turn you into a girl, everybody will treat you as a girl — you know I would, at least — but after pressing it, the button will break, and you can’t turn back. Would you press it?”

I remembered that question. I still didn’t like it. “Why does the button have to break?”

“Oh?” Danielle tilted her head.

I saw Frankie aim for the button and had to pull him back. He probably thought that was one of his. “Why can’t I keep it around, and have it for switching back?”

“I mean if the question specifies it, it’s probably for a reason,” she said, shrugging, and went back to reading her phone. ”Next hypothetical. Let’s say, one day, you wake up as a girl. You go on about your life for like… a month, or something. At the end, you’re given a button. This one will give you back your old body, and you must press it now or never. Afterwards, whether you choose to push it or not, it’ll cease to work. Do you press it?”

“That’s the exact same problem but on a delay,” I said. “At the end of the day, whatever I choose, I just end up stuck one way or the other. I don’t get the point…”

“But like… whatever option you’re ‘stuck’ on, they’re about equal to you?” Danielle prodded, leaning forward a bit.

I paused for a moment, giving the kitty little scritches under his chin. “I guess?”

She scrolled on her phone for a moment, before shaking her head and putting it down. “What about if like, the button gave you an androgynous body. Would you press it?”

I looked down at myself. I’d always had a pretty lithe build, got miss’d and ma’am’d every once in a while. “Wouldn’t exactly change much.”

“...A boy button, then?” she said, for the sake of being thorough.

I waved my hand firmly. “Still no deal.”

“So, if you could, you would want the ability to shift back and forth?” She kept her eyes right on me. “What bothers you most is the idea of being stuck on any one option?”

I thought about it for a moment and chuckled. “I guess that’s what it boils down to.”

Danielle scratched the back of her neck. “That’s fine by me but like, we’re right back at the start… Can’t… can’t magic do that?”

“Sure it can, but I still don’t see why I’d bother. There’s more important things to life than gender.” I gestured at the prop in front of me, letting go of one of my hands on the kitty. “I mean, I just don’t see why anyone would so deeply need to press the girl button?”

At that moment, Frankie leaped out of my lap, dashing straight onto the table. Undeterred by any empty cups or pastry basket on his path, he dove right for the button. “Girl.” Danielle and I stared. “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.” “Girl.”

PrincessFelicie

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