1.

“So, sorceress equals magic,” Gabby said, “are you saying you became female by magic?”

I didn’t want to believe it, but Amy looked too natural to just be a normal trans girl. I’d noticed that morning that she looked like she’d been born female, and magic could explain that, but I didn’t want it to be true.

On the other hand, though, if magic was real, and Amy had a sorceress friend who would be willing to change me into a girl for a day, then I could actually experience what it felt like to have breasts in my bra cups, or an ass that actually felt right in my panties. The idea of actually experiencing these clothes that I’ve been wearing for fun for four years felt enticing.

“Amy, I don’t mean to be rude, but have you gotten psychiatric help?” Gabby asked.

Amy shook her head. “I’m not crazy, it just sounds like I am. But seriously, if a gynecologist was to examine me, they’d never be able to tell the difference.”

“You’re serious? Like, seriously serious?”

“Yep. Periods and possible future babies included. I thought it was crazy when it happened to me, but it didn’t take too long to accept it. I was closet transgender and didn’t even know, now I’m exactly who I wanna be.”

Gabby sat down on the bed. “Okay, this is just too weird. I’m not saying I believe this, but if it’s true, your friend can change Ken into a girl for a day?”

“Wait a second,” I said, somewhat quietly.

Amy carried on like I hadn’t said anything. “I wouldn’t call her a friend. She’s the principal of my school and she helped out Mel once. We get along more than anything else.”

“But she can do it? And it’s totally reversible?”

“Yeah.”

Gabby turned to me. “You’re gonna do this, right?”

“Wuh - Wait,” I said, my voice a little louder.

She kept on like I hadn’t said a word. “Because this would be awesome, Ken! We could hang out as girlfriends for once and have a great time, you wouldn’t need to hide your clothes because you wouldn’t be crossdressing as a girl!”

I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Wait a second!” I spoke in the loudest voice I could without yelling, so that I didn’t get Mom rushing up here to find out what was going on. “I’m thinking about this, okay?” I took the bra I was wearing off and folded it up. “This isn’t some quick decision I can make, it’s not like just changing a shirt or that sort of thing.” I sat down at my desk. “I don’t even know what exactly I’m going to feel with this change.”

Amy stood up. “According to Ms. Malski, nothing. You’d go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow morning as a girl. Then you’d go to sleep tomorrow night and wake up the next day as yourself again.”

“Was your change instant?”

She shook her head. “No. I went through a week of gradual changes. I still looked sorta like a boy when I went back to school, so that made it easier for people to think I was actually going through a normal transition.”

I sighed. “And what do I tell Mom? I can’t exactly tell her the truth.”

She gave me a weird look. “Why not? I told my parents the truth, they were accepting.”

“Mom doesn’t even know I crossdress, what the hell’s she gonna think when I tell her I’m gonna be a girl for a day? Or that magic exists?”

“That she should call my folks and ask them, because they’ll tell her exactly what I told you.”

I shook my head. “I hate to tell you this, but that’s not exactly gonna put her at ease.” I looked over at Gabby. “Why are you so gung-ho about this?”

Gabby leaned back on my bed. “You don’t get it, Ken. You just don’t. I have no female friends, at all. It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with other girls, it’s just that nobody wants to hang out with me except for you.”

“You just want a shopping buddy for a day?”

She nodded. “Yeah. I wanna know what it’s like, and it’d be nice to see you fitting your clothes properly for a change.”

I stood and walked over to the bookcase on the other side of the room. “This is just… Look, Amy, if this can really happen, gimme a little while to think it over, okay?”

Amy nodded. “Yeah, that’s fine. Ms. Malski won’t do anything until I give her the go-ahead. Take the time you need, because I can always stay a couple more days.”

Gabby sat up again. “I think you should do it,” she said. “Ya never know, maybe you’ll like being a girl?”

I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ll think about it.”

2.

Sleep didn’t come to me. I just laid there, tossing and turning. Thinking. About Amy’s offer. About Gabby’s total certainty that I should do it and that I’d like it. About… Everything. I stopped tossing and just stared at the ceiling. It still had the glow-in-the-dark stars I had Mom stick to the ceiling when I was little.

I sat up and looked out the window beside the bed. I wasn’t entirely sure why the sprinklers were going, but I seemed to remember Mom saying something about the timer not working right. The look of the wet grass in the moonlight made it appear as though the yard was covered in tiny diamonds. I loved the look of wet grass at night. Would that change if I were to take up Amy’s offer? How much would change?

I thought about Amy. She was a bit more feminine, but that was the only real difference between how she was now and how she used to be as Adam. But her change was permanent, presumably to improve her life. If I was gonna become a girl for a day, it might be more playful. I might not be Kenny for that day.

I laid back down and closed my eyes again. Thinking about it. That’s all I’d do for now. Maybe I’d do it, maybe I wouldn’t. I’d have to talk to Amy about it.

3.

I woke up and immediately felt something was wrong. I was still male, so Amy hadn’t changed me in the middle of the night without my knowledge, but something still felt outrageously wrong. I looked around my room and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

I threw on a shirt and a pair of shorts and walked out into the hallway. I heard talking from the kitchen, so I assumed Amy and Mom were already awake. I walked out into the kitchen and instantly knew what was wrong. My foot locker. Sitting there. Open.

“Kenneth Matthew Brewster, we need to talk,” Mom said.

4.

I felt like my heart was about to leap out of my chest and strangle me with the ventricles. I wanted to shout at Amy, because the foot locker had never been found before she came to visit. Except that I really couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know about it until yesterday, and she’d been here dozens of times as Adam. I just wasn’t thinking straight.

So then I wanted to shout at Gabby. She’d probably called Mom up and told her about the foot locker, trying to influence my decision and indirectly force me to take Amy’s offer. But that didn’t track, either. Gabby had kept my secret for years, and she wouldn’t just rat me out like that just for one day of girl fun.

I walked over to the table and pulled out the remaining chair and sat down. “Look, I can explain,” I started, but Mom held up a hand to stop me.

“First, where’d the money come from?”

“Some of it was from Uncle Terry, some of it Gabby bought.”

“So Gabby knows, too?”

“Yeah.”

She sighed. “And when did you start doing this?”

I started twiddling my thumbs. Why? I was having flashbacks to when I got caught sneaking cookies into my bedroom after dessert when I was little. “About four years ago. After that Halloween party.”

“The one where I dressed you as Little Bo Peep?”

I nodded.

She sighed. “And you’ve kept this hidden from me ever since?”

“Yeah.”

She let out another sigh. “I need to know, do you wear any of this to school? Particularly the underwear?”

I shook my head. “No. Occasionally I’ll wear panties when I’m going somewhere, and Gabby’ll ask me to wear a bra when we hang out sometimes, but not often.”

Mom turned to Amy. “Amanda, did you know about this?”

Amy answered, “Kenny told me yesterday.”

Mom turned back to me. “Kenny, I’m not going to judge you, I just want to know: Do you have a desire to be female?”

I shook my head. “Not in the same way Amy did.” I kept trying to relax. Mom wasn’t treating me like a monster or a freak, she seemed legitimately concerned about this. “Every now and again, I wonder what it would feel like to wear the clothes as a girl, but I don’t want to be one.”

Mom leaned forward. “Baby, why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”

I looked up from my twiddling thumbs. “What?”

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and explained. “Baby, I never told you about your uncle Hud.”

I was confused. “I don’t have an Uncle Hud.”

“No, you don’t. You did, but that’s the reason you only ever meet the grandparents on your father’s side.”

“Huh?”

She looked over at Amy. “I imagine your mother hasn’t told you about Hud either, right?”

Amy shook her head.

“Hud was my twin brother. When we were six, he went to a Halloween party in one of my sister’s dresses. We came home that night and he talked about how much fun he had wearing Sarah’s dress. After that, he got into a harmless little habit of trying on Sarah clothes and mine. We didn’t see anything wrong with it, it was just harmless fun. Your grandfather didn’t look at it that way.” Mom sighed again. “Your grandfather beat Hud to within an inch of his life. My mother called the police, but all they did about it was haul my father into a cell for twenty-four hours, then he was released and came home to finish the job.”

I didn’t have words. My grandfather had killed an uncle I never knew about. An uncle who had been a crossdresser, just like me. I looked over at Amy and saw pain and torment in her eyes. She was actually trans, this probably hit her worse than it did me.

Mom continued, “My mother immediately took Sarah and I to her friend’s, and then we never saw her again. The adoption was dealt with in less than a week, and Sarah and I did our best to just blend in with our new family. Uncle Terry helped. He’d been Sarah’s friend at school, and already treated us like his little sisters even before we were his step-sisters.”

I asked, “So… Did you ever try to get in touch with Grandma again?”

She shook her head. “No. And she passed just a few months later, drove her car into the lake near our old house. Your grandfather went to prison for murder. I don’t know if he ever got out.”

Amy was hugging her legs to her chest. “That explains why Mom and Dad were so accepting of me when I came out.”

I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I wish I’d known about Uncle Hud before now. I woulda told ya about my crossdressing before.”

Mom took my hand. “Ken, you never should have hidden this from me in the first place. I would have accepted you even if that sad chapter of my life had never happened. You’re my son, and I’d love you no matter what.”

“I was always afraid of what you’d say.”

“You never should have been.” She leaned back in her chair. “So I take it that silky black number I caught in your laundry the other day was actually yours and not Gabby’s?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“You’ve got good taste.”

Amy laughed. “That’s what I said, too.”

I felt a light smile coming on, but at the same time I couldn’t. “How did you find out?” I asked Mom.

“I was walking past your bedroom this morning and saw the foot locker. I hadn’t seen it since your father left it with you, and was curious about what you kept in it.”

I chuckled. “Kind of a surprise seeing an army foot locker with dresses in it, huh?”

She smiled. “Very much.”

“Can I keep doing it?”

“Baby, you bought the clothes, you’ve kept this secret for years, I’d be wrong to take away something that you enjoy, especially since my own brother enjoyed the same thing.” She smirked. “Just one thing.”

“What?”

“Grow your hair out. Short-haired girls don’t have the same flair that you should have.”

5.

“I’m surprised you’re not in that cute sundress I saw in the foot locker,” Amy said, sitting down on the lawn chair next to mine.

I laughed. “Not in public.” I looked over at her, sitting in that standard not-trying-but-still-succeeding-at-being-sexy posture that girls usually had when they sat on lawn chairs while tanning. “Nice bikini.”

She smiled. “Thanks. You had it all the way at the bottom, have you ever worn it?”

I nodded. “Yeah, just not often. Or for the last couple years.”

“I don’t even have a bikini, so thanks for letting me borrow it.”

“I’m surprised Melanie hasn’t made you wear one.”

“Oh, she’s made me wear one, I just don’t own one.” She took a drink of the Mountain Dew she brought out with her. “Mel actually owns more clothes in my size than I do, all because she wants me to wear them.”

“That… Sounds a lot like her.”

“So,” she sat up, “do you still need time to think? Because you can take all the time you need.”

I shook my head. “I don’t need anymore time. I just wanna talk with Mom about it.”

“Good luck explaining magic to her. I had Ms. Malski come to the house and explain it to my parents, neither they nor I understand it yet.”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“Plus, you’ve still gotta tell Gabby that your mom knows about the crossdressing.”

“Yeah. I don’t know how.”

“Um… Gabby, my mom found out and she’s okay with it springs to mind.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m just… Worried, is all.”

“About what?”

I sat up. “You saw how she was last night when you made the offer. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear she probably wants me to be a girl.”

“I’m not gonna make any arguments for or against being female, seeing as I’d be kinda biased, but don’t get pressured into being a girl for longer than you want to be.”

I shook my head. “I won’t. Hopefully, she gets it.”

“So, you just wanna talk to your mom about it now, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Well… I’m gonna tell her that I’m doing it.”

“You are?”

“Yeah. Female for one day, and nothing up here,” I poked my head, “is gonna change, right?”

She nodded. “Nothing mental is gonna change. You’re gonna be you, but with a bigger rack and slit between your legs for twenty-four hours.” She sighed. “Well, there are other differences. The hips and butt are a little difficult to get past the first few hours. I suggest getting your walk down before you change, otherwise you’ll be tripping over things for awhile.”

I sighed. “This is gonna take more getting used to than I thought.”

6.

I opened the refrigerator and took out the milk. I unscrewed the cap and took a big gulp straight out of the jug. Suddenly, a hand yanked it away from me. “Not so fast, young lady,” Mom said, a smirk on her face, “you’re supposed to be using a glass with this.”

I smiled. “It was just a quick drink.”

“So, what did you want to talk about?”

I put the milk back in the fridge. “Y’know how Amy looks spectacular for being trans?”

“I do.”

“If I told you it was because of magic, would you think I’m nuts?”

She sighed. “Well, I did just find out that you’re a crossdresser. Totally unrelated, we may be moving closer to the asylum next summer.”

I smiled again. “I’m not joking. If she wasn’t in the bathroom, she’d tell you herself.”

“Okay, assuming I do believe this, what about it?”

I took a deep breath. “Amy offered me a chance to be female for a day.”

Mom raised an eyebrow. “A day?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I’m not completely convinced either, but Amy’s too much evidence in magic’s favor than against it. Assuming it’s true, whaddya think? I’m seriously considering it.”

“What exactly would it entail?”

“I’d just be female.”

“One hundred percent?”

“Amy says she’s capable of bearing children.”

“For a day?”

“One day. Or more, if I decide I like it.”

She put her hands on my shoulders. “You want to try this?”

I nodded. “I told you this morning, sometimes I wish I knew what it felt like to have the body type my clothes belonged to. Amy says she knows a way to for that to happen.”

Mom let out a breath. “I want to talk to Amy about this first.”

As if on cue, Amy entered the kitchen, patting her face down with a towel. “Amy hears you,” she said, laying the towel over her shoulder. “What’s goin’ on?”

Mom sat down at the table. “Kenny told me about this offer you’ve proposed to him.” She crossed one leg over the other and laid her hands in her lap. “I’d like to know a little more about what happened with you, first.”

7.

Amy told us the whole story, from the panty raid to the school dance the following week, all about her slow, magical change from male to female. Just knowing that my change would happen while I was asleep and that it would be instant made me feel a little more at ease, but it was still unnerving.

Mom looked in shock. I couldn’t blame her. The whole thing sounded crazy, but Amy was the proof in her own story.

“Amy, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you for being as strong as you are,” Mom said. “If it were me going through this, even if I did feel better as the opposite gender, I’d be scared out of my mind.”

Amy nodded. “I was at first. Luckily, I had Steve.” She took a breath. “Now, don’t let what happened to me scare you, Kenny.”

Mom shook her head. “I can’t say I’m not scared. Even if it’s just a day, it’s a day where I’m looking at a strange girl that used to be my son.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that before. As far as Mom, Amy and Gabby were concerned, I’d just be me in a stranger’s skin. Maybe I shouldn’t do it. I couldn’t make up my mind.

“Baby, if you want to do this, to be female for a day, I’m behind you.”

I looked up at Mom and saw a smile on her face and tears in her eyes. She wasn’t just saying that to act supportive, she was truly being supportive. She’d really be behind me if I actually decided to do this. Amy was smiling, too, and I could tell my favorite cousin was behind me, too. Of course, she’d set this whole thing up, so why wouldn’t she be?

I took a deep breath, and nodded. “Amy, tell your sorceress friend that I’ll do it.”