10:53 27 May

The rest of Tuesday went normally, which was nice. My week had been getting weird, so I was glad I could just chill with Melody, talk about books and more about our lives, and lie out back on the trampoline. But then it was Wednesday, aka the day that the girls and I had picked to work out what we’d wear on stage. Which made me… nervous.

“You’re being anxious again. What’s up?”

Mel and I had just finished breakfast, my favorite peanut butter and chocolate cereal, and were on our way back up to my room. I sighed.

“Okay, so Bailey and Kelly and I had plans today. You’re coming, obviously, but I haven’t told Bay you’re here, so it’s gonna be a surprise.”

“Haha, yesss!” Mel clapped her hands. “She’s gonna be so excited.” She frowned at me. “But that’s not why you’re worried. So what kind of plans do we have for today?”

“Uhh, well, uh. I mentioned yesterday if I’m gonna be the lead singer in a girl band then I’m gonna have to dress the part?”

Her eyes lit up. “We’re going shopping?”

Ohboy.

“Thrifting! I’m not planning on spending that much money.”

“You’re wearing that to the thrift store?” she asked, as I shut my bedroom door behind us.

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I looked myself over. Loose Star Wars t-shirt, cargo pants, and a zip-up hoodie (a different one, in blue, just in case Sunday’s was bad luck). Reasonable outfit, I thought.

“Well… do you really want to take that stuff off to try on stuff at a thrift store?”

I thought about it for a second. It wasn’t very appealing, which must have shown on my face.

“Right. So you want to wear something snug so you can try on stuff overtop. Like these,” she said, tugging a pair of leggings out of her suitcase (how had it ended up in my room anyway? Wasn’t she going to be staying in the guest room with her mom?).

“Huh! Okay, that makes sense. Alright, what can I find for shirts…”

I checked in a couple of drawers and wound up changing into a longsleeve shirt; it was made to look like I was wearing a tan shortsleeve on top of a white longsleeve, the ‘shortsleeve’ part having a silhouette of a skateboarder on it. I apparently didn’t have very many shirts with a snug fit.

“I’m not sure what to do for pants,” I said, turning back to Mel.

Wait, when did she change her shirt? And- hang on!

“I’m a guy,” I reminded her.

“Yeah?”

“We literally just changed five feet from each other.”

“…how did neither of us notice?”

“I’m terminally oblivious, according to Bailey. What’s your excuse?”

She shrugged. “Uhm… I’ve been sharing your room?”

“Jeez, are we cousins, or siblings?”

“At this point, I’m not sure.”

“Anyway. Pants. Ideas? Because now that you’ve brought it up I really don’t want thrift store clothes on my bare skin any more than I have to.”

“I have an idea… but you might not like it.”

Way to be reassuring, cuz! “…what kind of idea?”

She pulled another pair of leggings out of her suitcase. “I could lend you these, and you could just wear a pair of your sweats over them until you need to change.”

It… wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever had (I would know). By a fair margin, actually.

I mean… I’ve already worn girls’ clothes. More than once, apparently. And I’m probably going to be buying more of them today.

“Alright, gimme before I change my mind.” I snatched them away and went back to my dresser to find a pair of sweats.

When I turned around again Mel and I realized roughly simultaneously that we’d both changed next to each other. Again.

“…oh, whatever!”

###

11:32 27 May

Once we had everything we’d need – I wound up leaving the hoodie in my room, I’d just be too hot if I brought it, though doing so made me inexplicably uncomfortable – we went downstairs to watch TV until Bailey and Kelly arrived. Kelly was going to get dropped off at Bay’s and walk over with her, as she apparently had never successfully learned to ride a bike. I didn’t begrudge her that; they can be temperamental animals, and with my experiences on wheels the past few days it was pretty understandable. We told Aunt Cher we were heading out for a while, though we didn’t say precisely what for, just who with.

The feeling of leggings under sweats was odd for a while – they fit fine, but snug was definitely the right term, and it was weird having something looser overtop. But by the time the doorbell rang I was used to it. After a quick glance through the front window blinds, Mel and I bounced off the couch and ran for the door. I got there just slightly before her and opened it, revealing Kelly and Bailey on the front porch.

Kelly’s eyes widened.

“Omigod, you’re twins!” she blurted.

“What?” I looked back at Mel, about to ask ‘what do you mean’, but… she had let her bangs grow out… meaning her brown hair hung down past her freckled face exactly the same way mine did. Down to her elbows, like mine. And we had the same brown eyes. She looked a lot like her mom… who was my mom’s sister… and I’d always thought I looked like my mom…

We stared at each other for a while, not even breaking eye contact when Bailey excitedly leapt forward and pulled Mel into a hug with a squeal.

“Holy crap,” Mel finally said while returning Bailey’s hug.

“Yeah.”

Bailey stepped back. “So, Kelly, Jack’s twin here is his cousin Melody. Mel, this is Kelly.”

“Uh, right, sorry.” Mel shook herself off, and I took the time to gather myself as well. She smiled at Kelly. “Yes, hi!”

“Nice ta meetcha!”

Dad had fixed my bike Tuesday night; the front wheel was bent, but the frame was fine, and we had a spare, so it hadn’t taken him long. Riding tandem on a single-person bicycle was a little awkward, but we got going fine, and Mel had my backpack to shove anything we found in so it wasn’t throwing me off. Kelly was riding with Bailey, so Mel was with me. Kelly kept looking exaggeratedly behind us, and the snickering that induced didn’t make it any easier to pedal.

“What are you doing?” Mel asked when she finally noticed.

“Keeping an eye out for moose,” Kelly said.

“Wait, that actually happened?”

Bailey and I almost had to stop we were laughing so hard.

“Sneaky little buggers, moose,” I got out. I was glad I could laugh about it, ‘cause that meant lasting trauma was unlikely.

Somehow we all made it into town to the thrift store – it didn’t look like that much from the outside, but inside it was a big sprawling mess of rooms. The parking lot was virtually empty as we parked our bikes and locked them up – the town had put up a bunch of bike racks everywhere way back innnn… nope, two years ago. Whatever. Time is a construct.

Bailey and Kelly went inside while I was still locking up my bike, and I made to follow, but stopped just short and stood there in front of the building for a minute.

Am I really doing this?

If I go in there, I will be coming out with girls’ clothes. My own girls’ clothes, specifically for me to wear.

(The poison, my brain quoted helpfully. The poison for Kuzco.)

I felt a bit faint. Then I felt a hand in mine. It squeezed, and I followed it up the arm to Mel, smiling encouragingly.

“Try new things,” she whispered.

Try your best; try everything you can, sang my mental radio. I let her tug me into the store.

It was anticlimactic.

For starters, the front room didn’t even have any clothes in it; somehow I’d been under the subconscious impression that they’d be lying in wait ready to leap out and grab me. Instead it was a room full of random knickknacks and lamps and small appliances, a glass counter with a very bored-looking 18 or 19-year-old goth dude (I think? But who am I to talk) behind it, and a couple shelves of VHS tapes that I was totally browsing later. The carpet and wall paneling was probably from the 70s, and some of the stuff in the place might have been there that long too.

From the way Kelly was looking around, I guessed she hadn’t been to the place before, and if Mel had been before moving away she didn’t seem to remember it. It was definitely an Experience.

“Clothes are back here,” Bailey said for the others’ benefit. We headed through a doorway to a white-painted room full of shelves of kids’ toys and board games, with an open doorway on the far wall, and steep stairs to one side that led up to the area they kept the military surplus in.

Ooh, hang on…

“Just a sec!” I went up the stairs and started digging around.

A-ha-ha!

“Perfect,” I murmured. US BDU camo fatigue shirt, which would look cool if I wore it open on top of something, and brown fatigue pants ‘cause I like my pockets. I was half-tempted to find a beret too, I wasn’t sure why, but I decided that would be a bit too military. I was already planning to only wear half the fatigue set at a time – the last thing I wanted was to come off as a fascist or something. It wasn’t that I had anything particularly against the troops – maybe the military as an institution – but there’s a sort of a stereotype when a non-enlisted person gets too into their military roleplay.

Ooh, maybe I should get, like, an iron-on lesbian flag patch or something for the shirt. To show my support.

“Jack, c’mon!”

“Coming!”

I tugged on the fatigue shirt, leaving it open, and tucked the pants under my arm. Then I saw it.

Forget the fatigues (well, okay, I was still getting them, but), there was an honest-to-god vintage, Vietnam-era camouflage MA-1 bomber jacket. That was classic British punk. I had no idea what the hell it was doing here, but I decided to chalk it up to Providence. I grabbed it and pulled it on, then took the stairs down two at a time. Which was probably a bad idea considering they were so steep they were almost a ladder, but I was a bit amped.

“Ta-da!” I flung my arms out and in the process chucked the fatigue pants at Mel’s face. “Whoops, sorry.”

“Hey! What was that for, little bro?”

I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, you’re like, ten minutes older than I am!”

“Yep, like I said! Little bro!”

Does that even really count anymore, since I woke up? I wasn’t going to mention that just now, though, so I just stuck my tongue out at her.

Kelly giggled. “Considering why we’re here, shouldn’t that be little sis today?”

Glrk.

“Hey, whatever,” I said with a pseudocasual shrug. “Clothes are clothes, let’s get a move on slowpokes.” I headed for the far exit of the room. Mel beaned me in the back of the head with the fatigue pants; by the time we passed through the next room to the one the clothes were in we had to take a break to quit laughing.

The space the clothes were in was a big room that might once have been a garage, or alternately a dance hall; it was floored in concrete, wood-paneled, and filled with rack upon rack of clothes, both stuff people donated, and unsold stock that the local stores got rid of.

“Alright, everybody, spread out!” Bailey barked. I snapped a salute.

“Sir, yes, sir!” I swiveled on my heel and marched off to the sound of more giggling toward the girls’ racks, not that there was too much in the way of order here. It didn’t sound quite right in sneakers; I needed a good pair of combat boots. Maybe we could go to Hot Topic or something later and see what else we could find.

Wait, what am I thinking? This is gonna cost me enough money as it is!

Sure, I still had like $800 (I was pretty sure it had been birthday money from various rich relatives), but did I really want to spend it all on girls’ clothes?

...

I started digging through the racks.

I pulled out a couple flannel shirts that looked like they’d fit, and found a few pairs of worn girls’ jeans in a few bright colors and black.

These sizes make no sense. I had to check everything by holding it up to myself, and as best as I could tell, none of the numbers on the labels meant anything at all. Can’t they standardize this shit?

“Jack!” Mel waved from the shoes; her other hand was holding up a pair of slightly worn black combat boots. She saw my grin. “Yeah?”

“Hell yeah!” I shot her a thumbs up.

Okay, accessories. I shifted gears mentally and moved to another part of the room to join Bailey. Ohhh, those’ll be perfect on Kelly!

“Here, take these,” Bailey said, dumping a black choker and a set of studded wristbands in my hands.

“Where did you get the trilby?” It was black, and perched rakishly on her head.

“You like?” She posed briefly, with a wink. “It was over there.” She waved vaguely and unhelpfully toward the rest of the room.

“Find anything?” Kelly asked, walking toward us. “Oh, this is perfect!” she added, holding a loose flowy white shirt up against me.

“Yeah, here!” I shoved a pair of elbow-length fingerless black gloves and a checkerboard scarf into her arms, trading her for the shirt.

After another I-didn’t-really-want-to-know-how-long, our arms were all full enough that a trip to the dressing rooms was in order. They weren’t the greatest dressing rooms I’d ever seen, but they had four walls and a solid door which, after all, was all that a dressing room really required. I took the combat boots – steel-toed, too – and locked myself in.

I went through the jeans first, tossing the ones that didn’t fit to the side and stacking the ones that did, ending with a black pair of torn-up skinny jeans. The flowy shirt went over my longsleeve after I’d taken off the fatigue shirt, and I put on the choker and slipped on the combat boots.

I stared at myself in the slightly-grimy thrift store mirror. Held my hair up in a high ponytail with my hands. Let it fall back down.

Okay.

I already look like a girl.

That made me feel… non-bad? That should feel bad, right? But it was more of a muted not not-good. Or like, I just felt… calm?

I don’t think emotional interpretation is my strong suit.

I’d practiced it a few times since the weekend, so I slipped a hairtie off my wrist and braided my hair, then put the bomber jacket back on and followed it with a pair of spiked wristbands.

Someone knocked on the door. “Hey!” Mel said. “Earth to Jack! McFly, are you in there?”

I took a deep breath, because there was a major difference between ‘clothes in a changing room’ and like, admitting I was wearing those clothes by choice by showing them to other people, and there was like this whole social stigma thing that I never realized I felt – maybe that was what made me uncomfortable on Tuesday? – but I opened the door anyway and grinned at the girls.

“I think this girl band thing just might work.”

Bailey wolf-whistled, and then blushed. I blinked, flushed, and spent entirely too long overthinking that before I shook it out of my head and looked the girls over.

In addition to the trilby, Bailey was now wearing a collarless white button-up shirt, sunglasses, and a thin black tie. Kelly had looped the scarf loosely around her neck so it floofed up almost to her mouth, and put on the gloves, with a spiked wristband over the left one. Mel found a denim jacket at some point, and I was a little jealous that she’d been able to buy stuff for herself instead of for a Unified Band Look. I definitely wouldn’t be wearing any of this stuff everyday.

Well, except the bomber, anyway. And the combat boots. The wristbands were cool, too. And the jeans were alright.

Gah, whatever, I’ll think about it later.

“Wow, you girls look great!” I said.

“You ain’t so bad yourself, cuz!”

“So, what now?” Kelly asked.

“Hot Topic?”

Everyone looked at me for a moment, and then I realized I was the one who said it. I shrugged. “Band tees?”

“Works for me!”

We put back what didn’t work, then retraced our steps to the front room. The counter goth typed things with an impressively studied disinterest – it takes a lot of caring to not care as much as he/she/they were doing – took way too much of our money, shoved stuff into plastic bags for us and handed them over, then monotoned “have a nice day ladies” and went back to the book. Aaand I got mistaken for a girl again. Well, I guess that’s the idea.

The biking was less convenient this time, even after we’d stuffed the bags into our backpacks, but at least we were just going to the mall. The Hot Topic even had an outside entrance with a bike rack. This time, we all headed inside together.

I’d never actually been in a Hot Topic before; I guess I was sorta straight-laced before or something? Having already experienced about the worst forms of teen angst, I kind of expected to be inoculated against it, but this place was awash with the stuff. It was pretty intense, and I almost got the impression that the store as an entity was annoyed I’d decided to drop by.

“Wait,” Kelly said, frowning. “Is that the same goth behind the counter?”

“Can’t be!” Mel said.

“If there’s an easy way to tell them apart, I sure can’t see it,” I input.

“Maybe they’re twins?” Bailey suggested.

After exchanging glances, we all shrugged more or less together – we probably weren’t getting a better explanation – and moved on.

We passed a cute emo chick looking at a rack of pins, with fluffed – no, what’s the word, layered – black hair, dark purple leggings under a black skirt, and a black corset over a filmy sort of black top.

Crap. She had more earrings than I remembered, and no stud in her nose, but I recognized her. Kayleigh, Bailey’s first girlfriend, according to the whole previous-continuity thing. I would have felt guilty about seeing her, and maybe thought about setting her and Bailey up early; except it had turned out she was straight and ‘experimenting’, and she spread some pretty nasty rumors that even trapped-in-Dane’s-web Jack had gotten mad at her over. So mostly I just hated her.

Kelly’s gaze was subtly tracking her. She was less-subtly biting her lip.

“Down, girl,” I murmured. “She’s a grade-A bitch.”

Kelly “Eep!”ed and blushed. “I, uh, what are you talking about?”

I shrugged. “Nothin’ I guess. Oh, there’s the band tees!” I’d warned her; I’d just have to hope it stuck.

They didn’t just have band tees; there were a few from TV shows and stuff, too, and a manga that I’d seen on Max’s shelf. I liked the shirt, though I felt a little weird about wearing a shirt advertising something I didn’t know anything about.

Oh, but if I buy it and don’t like the manga I can just give it to Max. I added it to the pile.

A flash of motion out of the corner of my eye made me look; it was Mel, waving. Once she saw she had my attention, she held up a pair of fishnets and a black leather jacket.

What?

‘Canary’, she mouthed.

I chopped a hand in front of my neck, shaking my head.

She pouted at me. I sighed and rolled my eyes and went back to picking out t-shirts.

“Jayjayjay!” Kelly said from somewhere close behind me, and I jerked around and scanned for moose or incoming curbs; I didn’t see any, but then that didn’t necessarily prove anything, so I kept an eye out as I turned back to her.

“What?”

“Try this on!” She held up-

Oh, no!

“Kelly, that’s a skirt.”

“We’re a girl band.”

“Don’t bring logic into this.”

“Ask Bailey, I bet she agrees with me!”

Well, I’d trust Bailey for a totally honest opinion, anyway – I don’t think she’d ever once lied to me. I was pretty sure I could trust Kelly anyway, but a second opinion wouldn’t hurt.

“And here!” She handed me another skirt, longer, and held up –

“Nope! If Bailey agrees with you, I’ll try the skirts, but I draw the line at plaid bell-bottoms.”

I scanned the store, pinpointed Bailey, and headed her way. As I approached, she was staring at something in her hands. I peered over her shoulder; box of purple hair dye, hm. She really should. She looks good with dyed hair. Though the shade of purple reminded me of… something…

“You’ll look good!” I said, when my brain didn’t give me anything else to go on.

She jumped and whirled, clutching the box to her chest. “Ack!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you!” I held up one of the skirts Kelly had impressed upon me. “I wanted a second opinion, Kay says I should try this on.”

“Yes!” she blurted, startling me a little. “I mean, only if you want to? But I bet it’d look good. It’d really help sell the image, I mean. I promise, if it looks bad I’ll tell you, I won’t laugh.”

I chewed my lip for a while, letting that percolate while I psyched myself up – talk about trying new things! – then nodded and headed for the changing rooms.

“Soooo?” Mel asked, holding up the Black Canary-esque outfit as she intercepted me right outside them. I sighed again.

“Oh, fine. Guess it’s not like it’s the first time.” She squealed and added them to my pile. And it would look good on stage. I’d watch a band with a singer dressed like that, anyway. Which might have been Dazzler’s methodology, come to think of it, and- hey, there’s an idea! A couple of her outfits weren’t half bad, in recent years anyway. So, maybe a tanktop and a pair of bright colored jeans under the bomber jacket or this leather one, maybe paint something on my face. Oh, but if I was wearing a tanktop I’d probably have to wear a bra under that or something if we wanted to keep the whole ‘girl band’ thing up… I shoved that thought in the ‘deal with later’ pile and closed the door behind me. So I was standing in a changing room with an armful of clothes for the second time that day, except this time those clothes included not one but two skirts, one knee-length and the other probably mid-thigh.

Okay, come on. It’s just clothes, and you’ll be a lot more believable as a girl band singer if you’re dressed as one. Besides, the skirt did look good on the mannequin, and if I’m gonna do this I’d rather look good too.

And anyway I’ve got the fishnets-shorts-leather jacket combo in this pile too, so honestly this can’t be worse.

I tried the shirts first, all of which fit: Green Day’s American Idiot album, AC/DC, Ramones, Led Zeppelin, YuYu Hakusho, and the one I finished with, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I took a deep breath and tugged the longer of the two skirts on over my leggings, then I looked at myself in the mirror before I could chicken out. I twisted a little, making the skirt flare out.

I…

Okay…

Actually, I kinda…

…I like this.

I like this?

What is happening to me??