Take a Lemon

Finally, the week was over and I had to return to school.

“Daddy” drove me to the train, and we might have had another potentially uncomfortable half-hour together; however, this time I actually did have something to ask him about. Something about our earlier conversation, as well as the general way he had treated me all week had bothered me, and it had taken some time for me to figure it out: he was happy to be with me.

Now that sounds really stupid, which is why it took me so long to work things out. In the past, he had told me how much he enjoyed having a son to do things with; we had done lots of stuff that he simply never did with Tina. I knew that he had also taken her out from time to time, and although I didn’t know the details, those times were never nearly long enough for them to have been watching or playing games, and they’d never come back home with stuff from the hardware store or anything similar. Now, thanks to the time travel business, he no longer had a son to do these things with, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

Part of me knew that I was being irrational. He no longer knew that he had previously had a son, so maybe he was just used to it; but I somehow expected him to be less happy as a result, or at least wished he were. So I asked him.

“D-daddy,” I started, still not quite getting the name right, “Does it ever bother you that you have only daughters?”

“What a question, Princess!” he answered, smiling. “Why would it bother me to have two of the most wonderful daughters in the world?”

“I mean… don’t men usually want a son? You know, to carry on the name, and do guy things with? Weren’t you disappointed? Why didn’t you try again for a boy?”

“Marsh, I wouldn’t trade my girls for a dozen sons. I have no complaints, and your mother and I were quite satisfied with the two of you. What brought this on?”

It wasn’t exactly the answer I’d been looking for, but I couldn’t think of a good explanation. I could hardly fault him for missing the real me, after all. It just kind of hurt a bit that I could disappear from his life and not leave a gap, even though in this timeline I’d never been there at all. “I… I don’t know. I was just thinking about things.”

“Thinking of things is always good.” And he smiled indulgently at me again. “When you have children, you never know what you’re going to get, but your mother and I feel quite fortunate.”

“But…”

“Besides, I figure between you and your sister, I’m likely to wind up with at least one grandson, eventually. I have no complaints.”

And I guess my only complaint was that I couldn’t get a rise out of him on this. Foolish, I know, but I think I had good cause; it’s not everybody who gets changed into somebody else, only to discover that nobody seems to care.

He dropped me off at the station and kissed me goodbye – again on the forehead. Then he lifted my suitcase onto the train for me. Now full of clean laundry, it felt a lot heavier than it had when I was Marshall; fortunately it had wheels, so I just dragged it behind me on the train. With a train ride of nearly an hour, I had a bit of time to think.

The ride also gave me a chance to drop out of character, partly, since none of the other passengers seemed to know me. Part of my coping strategy was to do this as much as I could; many sophomores had individual bedrooms in suites, so I would probably be safe there at least. I would just have to remember to get into character before coming out of my bedroom, and for that, I planned to rely on a trick Mr. Condrin had mentioned. The idea was that if you could carry a regular hand prop onstage, you could make an association between it and your character; picking it up would trigger you to fall back into character. In my case, I could use Marsha’s purse; I had worked on carrying it everywhere, as it was something that was so obviously Marsha and not Marshall.

The past week, although extremely disconcerting, had at least the virtue that I had had two close allies whom I had known very well, and who knew my secret. I had no intention of revealing the truth to Marsha’s friends, most of whom I probably didn’t know at all. Aside from phone contact with Tina and Chad, then, I was sort of on my own.

The first order of business, of course, was to meet her roommates. Girls seem to share a lot more about themselves than guys do, and Marsha had been living with these girls for a few months already; she had also probably known them for a while last year before they decided to room together. Tina had assured me that they would be friendly and understanding, but would also know Marsha well enough to spot egregious personality changes. So there were plusses and minuses, there.

Marsha also would have had a larger circle of friends, and I was going to need to learn their names pretty quickly. The three of us had discussed some strategies for finding out things without seeming to be ignorant. At the very least, the next couple of months were going to be interesting, but I saw no reason that I couldn’t manage.

There was a shuttle from the train to campus waiting when the train pulled in, and one of the returning male students carried my bag off the train and into the van. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or humiliated. I had just always taken my ability to lift heavy things for granted. Girls obviously had to find other ways to cope with such things.

The campus was pretty much unchanged. Not that I had really expected the time-regressed DNA-alteration of students to have an effect, but you never knew. I saw about the same mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces, and a few nodded at me, or said hello. Having the same nickname kept things from feeling stranger than they could have. About the most uncomfortable incident was bumping into my “ex-“roommate, Rajiv. My initial reaction was to greet him, and I only caught myself after I had opened my mouth – there was no reason to think that Marsha would have known him. Nor did he know me, but the sight of a pretty girl noticing him was enough to pique his interest.

“I’m sorry,” I stammered. “For a moment there, I thought I knew you.”

“Well, that’s easily fixed if you don’t,” he smiled at me – and I wasn’t completely sure that it wasn’t more of a leer. “I’m Rajiv Shah.” And he held out his hand, which made me have to take it so as not to be rude.

“Marsha Steen,” I responded, pleased to have remembered “my” name, despite being flustered. “And thanks, “ I interrupted his attempt to say anything more. “I’ve got to go.” And, heart pounding, I tried to walk past him, which would have worked a lot better if my suitcase hadn’t chosen that moment to tip over.

“Why don’t I carry your suitcase and walk you to your dorm?” he offered.

“Um, thanks, I appreciate the offer,” I managed. “But… I… I have to meet somebody, and…”

“Hey, it’s OK!” he laughed at me. “I was just trying to be helpful, not stalk you!”

“Oh, sorry,” I said, reddening. And I knew I had overreacted, even as I managed to right my recalcitrant luggage and get it moving again. Rajiv is a decent sort. I wouldn’t have roomed with a jerk. It’s just… he was actually the first boy, other than Chad, that I had spoken with since my… alteration. It could have been worse. I’d heard that some guys don’t easily take ‘no’ for an answer. At least I didn’t have to deal with that, this time. I was going to have to come up with a better response. Getting all flustered probably made me look… well, I wasn’t sure what, but it didn’t seem like a good idea.

Laramie Hall seemed much further from South Campus than I had remembered. Maybe it was just the pain of lugging the suitcase around. But Marsha had managed, so I should be able to, as well. Finally, I stood outside. This was going to be my first real test – talking with my roommates, girls who presumably knew me very well. Oh well. I took a deep breath. Showtime.

There was an elevator in the dorm, so I didn’t have to lug my suitcase up the steps. When I stepped out onto the second floor, I saw close to a dozen girls, standing in the hallway, chatting. As I threaded my way through them, searching for number 218, many of them greeted me as either “Marsh” or “Marsha.” If I had been a bit less nervous, I might have tried to draw some conclusions from the way they addressed me as to how close they were as friends. A couple of the girls looked familiar, but the only one whose name I knew at all was Lee Ann’s friend, Chandra-something-or-other.

There were a couple of girls standing next to the door to room 208 when I got there, one with her back to me, in a white top and a cute short blue skirt that framed her rear perfectly. I automatically started to admire her backside, but remembered in time and  started to fumble in Marsha’s purse for the room key. Before I could find it, she suddenly turned around and said, “Let me get that for you, Marsh,” and opened the door with her own key. It was Lee Ann Taylor.

Lee Ann Taylor! My crush for the last several weeks, was Marsha’s roommate? Was this some kind of a cruel joke? I could just see myself pining for her, watching her select a new boyfriend in front of me. Even if it would be undone in the timeline when they changed me back, in the meantime it was just going to be torture. When I had accepted that I was giving up on her for this fall’s House Parties, I hadn’t expected to have it rubbed in like this.

But I’m an actor, right? I’m skilled at managing my emotions – that’s what I always tell myself. That has to include pretending that I’m really the girl Lee Ann knows as a friend and roommate, instead of the guy who’d been flirting with her. Fortunately, her back was to me as she opened the door and preceded me into “our” dorm room. It gave me a chance to get my face under control.

I set down my suitcase and closed the door behind us as Lee Ann turned around. “How was your break, Marsh?” She was as gorgeous as I remembered, and her voice was like music; no changes there, thank goodness. Even if she was now off-limits to me, I would have hated to see such perfection spoiled. That’s speaking strictly as a connoisseur, of course. My own vested interests seemed to be massively on hold.

“Um…” I stammered. Apparently, I had not gotten myself quite as under control as I had thought. “It was… refreshing.” I’d had to think about that. “Interesting” would have prompted questions I didn’t want to have to answer or parry. “Relaxing” was an outright lie. “I feel as though I’m ready for a brand new start.”

“Great!” she said, smiling. “Did Phil ever call?”

Phil? Who in heck was Phil?

“Um, no,”

She sighed. “I warned you, Marsh. With a boy like Phil, you’re going to have to take the initiative. He wants to ask you out, that’s obvious, but he won’t allow himself to believe that a girl as pretty as you would ever say yes. We’ll have to come up with a scheme to make him do it.”

“Actually,” I gasped, “I’m… going to be a bit busy just now. I think I could have done better on my midterms… and this play is going to take a lot of my time. This really isn’t a good time for me to be dating.”

“You are not going to back out on this again,” she snapped. “Don’t you remember how miserable you were last May when you didn’t have a date for House Parties? How I had to argue with you about asking your ex-boyfriend from home? Do you really want to go through that again?”

“This… this just really isn’t a good time for me, Lee Ann. I mean, I appreciate your help, but I think… it’s just not…”

Lee Ann sighed again. “I don’t know what you’re afraid of, Marsh. Phil’s a perfectly nice boy, and you’ve known each other since the beginning of the year. But I’m not going to force you. If you’re afraid, you can just let some other girl snap him up. Your loss.”

“I’m sorry, Lee Ann,” I told her, actually feeling a bit guilty. The real Marsha would probably have been eager to date this guy, but getting into character only went so far. “Um, so, how was your break?”

“Stephen is so exasperating. You know what he did? I swear, this time I really was thinking of breaking it off with him. But Saturday morning, bright and early, he rang my bell. The sweetheart had driven overnight all the way from St. Louis to see me. He was exhausted, of course, so I kissed him and sent him off to bed, but we got to spend a day and a half together before he had to drive back to school.”

“That’s… great, Lee Ann. I mean, really, that’s great!” I said, trying to force enthusiasm into my voice. Inwardly, I was both totally crushed and at the same time, relieved. Thanks a lot, Chandra. Apparently, the rumors of her relationship’s demise were premature. Looking at the bright side, it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about watching some other guy win her heart. I had too many dark sides to look at already to want to think about this one too much.

“Mm Hmm. That’s what I’m telling you, Marsh. There are a lot of nice guys out there. I think Phil is one of them, but you’re going to have to figure that out for yourself, apparently.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I just wanted to check in with you when you got back. I should probably finish the reading for tomorrow’s classes. If I don’t see you later, good night.” And she went into what was obviously her bedroom and closed the door.

I finally had a chance to look around. I was standing in the living room, with four doors leading off it, in addition to the main door. One of them was obviously a bathroom, which meant that this was a three-girl suite. I knew which door was Lee Ann’s, but I didn’t know which was Marsha’s or, for that matter, who our third roommate was. For a moment, I dithered. I could knock at one of the other doors, but what if it was Marsha’s door and one of the other girls saw me? I didn’t want them wondering why I didn’t know which door was ‘mine.’ I could just open a door, but again, I didn’t want to do that if ‘my’ other roommate was there. So I temporized. I sat down on the couch and picked up The Decameron, which I was reading for EuroLit. I figured that I could just sit there for maybe an hour. If nobody came in or I didn’t figure things out, I would take a chance on one of the doors.

As it happened, I had to wait just over half an hour before the main door opened in, and our other roommate entered, wheeling a duffel and carrying a garment bag. She was a tall girl with a calm disposition that seemed at odds with her fiery red hair. Of course, when I say, ‘tall’, that doesn’t mean much, since just about everybody looked tall to me, these days. She didn’t see me at first, dropping her duffel and turning to close the door, until I stood and greeted her.

“Welcome back,” I said. “How was your break?”

“Oh, hey, Marsh,” she answered. “You’re just the person I wanted to see. Let me put my stuff in my room, and then I have something to show you.”

She pushed open the door next to Lee Ann’s and dragged her duffel inside. I congratulated myself on my stratagem; I had just learned that Marsha’s room was the one on the other side of the bathroom, without her roommates learning that I hadn’t known. My as-yet-nameless roommate returned quickly and opened the garment bag, taking out a formal gown.

“What do you think?” she asked, holding it up in front of herself.

“Um, the color looks good on you,” I managed, trying to recall how my mother had answered similar questions when Tina had asked her. “And the cut looks good for your figure.”

“Thanks,” she said, “but please look more carefully. I want your professional opinion. I… got this on the bargain rack.”

Professional opinion? What was that supposed to mean? I got a very queasy sensation in my stomach as one possibility suggested itself to me. But I stood and came closer, taking the top of the gown in my hand.

I rubbed it between my fingers, trying to invent something that would sound good. “The material seems good quality, and the lining should be comfortable and warm – that’ll be important for the fall.” I tugged at a seam. “The stitching is strong and tight. I’d say you got a good buy.”

I had no idea if what I’d said made any sense at all, but she seemed pleased. “I was really worried,” she admitted, “but I really couldn’t afford anything more expensive. When would you be able to take it in for me?”

“I’m… not really sure, yet.” I forced myself to say, my suspicions bolstered. “There’s plenty of time – I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, Marsh,” she smiled.

“I- I really need to start preparing for classes,” I said, hurriedly, wanting to know the worst as quickly as possible. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“OK. G’night, Marsh.”

“Good night.”

And I picked up my book and dragged my suitcase to the last door. Pushing it open, I saw what was largely a typical dorm room, not all that different from the one I’d had a week ago as Marshall: the standard bed, wardrobe, and desk, arranged to give a reasonable impression of space. But there were a couple of major differences. Next to the desk was Mom’s old sewing machine, and beside the wardrobe was a garment rack, with about a dozen articles of clothing with customer’s names pinned to them, waiting for Marsha to repair or adjust them.

I was so screwed.

With 20-20 hindsight, I should have been able to figure this out. I had grants and loans to help pay for tuition, but I needed to supplement that; my agreement with Mom and Dad was that I was responsible for a few thousand dollars a year, which wasn’t all that difficult for me, playing occasional gigs. Since she didn’t have my guitar, Marsha would have needed some other way to pick up cash. Mom had been bringing in a decent income as a seamstress, and had taught Tina to sew. Obviously, she would have taught her older daughter as well, if she’d had one – as she did, now. I knew nothing about sewing, but there was clearly a lot involved, or Mom wouldn’t have been able to make money at it.

I had arranged to call Tina in the evenings on a regular basis, for more coaching as needed, and this certainly counted. I dialed her cell.

“Hi, Marsh. Everything OK?”

“Not quite,” I answered, as calmly as I could. “Tina, remember I asked you to warn me about things that would be different?”

“Yeah…?”

“Teen, how does Marsha bring in money for school?”

“You- I mean she’s a seamstress, Marsh…” she started. Then she got it. “Oh. Wait. You… you probably don’t know how to sew, do you?”

“Bingo. When Mom was teaching you, I was practicing my guitar.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. Oh man. I’m sorry, Marsh, I guess it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t have taught a boy to sew.”

“Yeah, maybe I should have told her I wanted to learn, ‘just in case some mad scientists turn me into a girl, one day’! Tina, what the Hell – I mean,” I corrected myself, “‘what in the world’ – am I supposed to do now? There are lots of people expecting me to sew things for them, and I don’t know the first thing about it!”

“Um… I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, I think I have to give up, now,” I said, tightly. “I’ll go to classes tomorrow, but afterwards I’m going to have to go back to the guys who changed me and have them undo it. There’s no way for me to fake this.”

“What??” The panic was evident in her voice. “Marsh, you promised! You said you’d give me at least until the end of the year!”

“Yeah, but that was before I found out how impossible it was going to be. I can act like a girl, Teen. I can pretend to know Marsha’s friends and I can take her courses, but sewing…? That’s a skill, Teen. You know how much is involved. It’s not like I haven’t tried, but there’s no possible way around this. To keep playing the role of Marsha, I need to be able to sew, and I can’t.”

“Wait, Marsh! Please wait! Give me time – let me figure something out. This is my life we’re talking about, here.”

“It’s not your life, Teen,” I said, exasperated. “You’re the same little sister I remember. The only change is that you’ll remember having a brother again, not a sister.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Marsh. It’s not your entire memory that will be ripped away and replaced. Please, Marsh, give me some time.”

I sighed. She knew I couldn’t do anything that might hurt her. I was pretty sure it wouldn’t, but she was so panicky, and she was my little sister… “OK, I’ll wait. I’ll see when these things are promised for, and I’ll try to make excuses about being late. But I need a solution, Teen. I can’t just go the rest of the term without delivering what Marsha promised, and I can’t afford to stay in school if I don’t have any kind of an income. Do you have any ideas?”

“Maybe you can learn, Marsh. You have Mom’s old sewing machine, right? Why don’t you start by learning how to use it? The manual should tell you how to thread it and how to do some basic stitches. I’ll think about what else we can do, OK?”

“Sure, Teen.” I guess she wasn’t the only who had been panicking. I didn’t see how reading the manual was going to do me much good, but it at least let me put off any irreversible decisions, and Dad had always taught me to delay those as much as possible. I could always give up later, if things really started to become impossible. Promising to talk again tomorrow, we hung up.

There was no manual attached to the sewing machine, but I knew that some appliance manuals were available online; after all, the manufacturer makes their money by selling the hardware, and having a manual available can cut down on calls to their support lines, so it was in their interest to make it easy to get one. A quick web search using the make and model number brought me to an electronic version. I was a bit annoyed to find that I had to pay for it, but my need was great enough to make it worthwhile, so I did so and downloaded an electronic copy. Since I’d spent my break catching up on my course reading, I had time to deal with this problem. I started to read the manual from cover to cover. Some of the terms in it were things I’d overheard Mom and Tina using, like ‘bobbin’ but I’d never been quite clear on what they were. Using the pictures included, I managed to find the bobbin. Apparently, I had to wind it somehow, which meant finding the thread.

Marsha’s sewing basket was next to the machine, and contained dozens of spools of thread, as well as needles, pins, scissors, and other tools I didn’t recognize. There were also several bobbins, some loaded with varying colors of thread, and some empty. For a moment, I sagged in my chair. This whole thing just seemed impossible. “One step at a time, Marsh,” I reminded myself. Other trite sayings came to me then, like “in for a penny, in for a pound,” and “look before you leap,” although the last probably should have been something like, “look before you are pushed.”

Deep breath time. The first few steps were purely mechanical, and didn’t seem to require an excess of skill. I found an empty bobbin and put it in the machine, then picked one of the larger spools of thread. I figured that I was going to be wasting some of it, and didn’t want to run out of something I might need later. Winding the bobbin wasn’t really all that difficult – it took me a few tries, but after a bit I thought I had the knack of it.

Pleased with an early success, I next tackled actually threading the machine. After several false starts, I discovered that it could pretty much thread itself, if I just started it properly. The acid test, of course, was whether I could actually sew anything with it. There were lots of descriptions in the manual about all kinds of fancy things you could do with the machine, which I just ignored. Finally, I found what I was looking for – starting a stitch. It didn’t seem all that hard. The biggest problem was that I had hold onto some cloth really close to the needle. And I needed some cloth to experiment with – I was not about to practice on actual clothing.

I did find a few scraps in the sewing basket, but they were really small, perhaps an inch by six inches. Following the instructions, I put one of them under the ‘foot’ crosswise, so that I could keep my hands a couple of inches away from the needle. In some ways, it felt like using a table saw – I had to guide the work through the danger area without letting my hands get too close.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped on the pedal and the cloth shot quickly through the area where the needle was. I hadn’t actually expected that – with a table saw, you have to push against the blade and the wood tries to kick away from it. With the sewing machine, the cloth was actually pulled into the needle. In a slight panic, I lifted my foot and found that I had sewn a line of thread most of the way through my cloth strip. The directions told me how to end it, so I pulled it back and tried again.

It took me a few tries, but I discovered that it was actually a lot easier than a table saw. For one thing, the cloth was being moved by a separate mechanism; you didn’t have to push. For another, since the needle just moved up and down, I wasn’t really in any danger of hurting my fingers. I practiced for close to an hour before I was satisfied. Now I could… sew a line into a strip of cloth, which was probably not very useful. At least the machine was becoming slightly less foreign. I think if I’d had any idea how much I really needed to know, I would have felt a bit more confident – or possibly more intimidated.

I got up early the next morning, because I was about to face my next challenge. Presumably, Marsha ate breakfast with her friends in the dining room, and I still didn’t know who they were. Chad and I had discussed this, and figured out that I had two options. First, I could hope that my roommates ate with me – that way, I could just follow them. Failing that, I could get to the dining room early, ideally before any of Marsha’s friends, and sit where they would find me.

The roommate whose name I didn’t know was waiting when I came out of the bathroom. “Are you heading for breakfast?” I asked her.

“Naw, I’m going to wait for Lee Ann. Are you in a hurry?”

“Yeah, I need to go check on something at the registrar,” I explained. Which I did, actually, since aside from the science lectures, which should be the same, I didn’t know Marsha’s class schedule. I might have just blown my chance to follow my roommates. I wasn’t sure whether the conversation meant that Miss No-name usually ate with Marsha or not. Well, that would just have to wait until tomorrow, I guessed.

The meal ticket in Marsha’s purse indicated that I was supposed to eat in the Danby Hall dining hall, which was a couple of dorms away. There were a few students already sitting after I went through the food line, and I tried to catch their eyes, but they showed no sign of recognition or invitation, so I picked a table near the end of the line and sat down to wait. I had brought my script to study, since I had no idea what time Marsha’s friends usually ate, and I didn’t want to finish before they arrived.

I needn’t have bothered, as it was only a couple of minutes before I was no longer alone at the table. “Why are we sitting here today, Marsh?” I heard.

I looked up to see two blondes just sitting down next to me. Both were wearing t-shirts and jeans, which didn’t really surprise me. That was the college uniform; girls like Marsha who always wore dresses or skirts were rare. It was the taller of the two who had spoken, and I had to stop myself from automatically evaluating her attractiveness. That was a habit that could only cause me problems, especially with girls as pretty as this one was.

“I just felt like randomly picking a different table this morning,” I shrugged. “Consider it a tribute to the second half of the term.”

The girls chuckled at that. “How was your break?” the second one asked.

The first one added, “And did Phil ever call?”

Apparently, the whole idea of Marsha and Phil had been on the mind of more than one of her friends. Maybe if I shot it down for these two, they’d pass it on to anyone else rooting for “us.”

“No, and he’s missed his chance,” I informed them. “I’ve decided to put my dating plans on hold for the rest of the year.”

“Oh, you’re so brave, Marsha. Good for you,” the shorter one complimented me. “Um, if you’re not interested, do you mind if I go after him?”

“Susie!” the other one hissed.

“What’s the problem? Marsh said she wasn’t interested.”

“I’m not,” I confirmed. “Susie is welcome to him.” And thank you for telling me your friend’s name.

“Why are we sitting here today?” asked a new voice, belonging to a dark-haired boy.

“Marsh was feeling random,” the girl who was not Susie answered. “Morning, Jay.”

“Good morning, ladies,” Jay said to the three of us, as he sat across from her.

Thus armed with yet another name, I joined Susie in responding, “Good morning, Jay,” and managed to sound as though I had known him all along.

Over the next twenty minutes, a half dozen more students joined us, including my roommates, so I really could have waited for them. I learned the names of most of them. I already knew Chandra. The girl who had first greeted me was Lisa, and my other roommate was named Terry. I also caught a glimpse of Phil who indeed gave me more of a look-over than I would have liked, but was easily diverted by Susie, who moved to sit next to him.

The first class period was 8:00, and the registrar wasn’t open until 8:30, so I just had to hope that I didn’t have a class that early. Two of the guys at our table did, and excused themselves early to make it there on time. My roommates and I returned to our room together, with me listening more and speaking less than they seemed to expect, and at one point Lee Ann leaned over to Terry and told her something quietly. Terry gave me a sympathetic look afterwards, and seemed to press me a bit less.

I found a shoulder bag in Marsha’s room, which I loaded with all of my notebooks, since I didn’t know yet when I was going to need them, and headed for the registrar. A few minutes later, I had a copy of Marsha’s schedule and was ready to head to my first class. Marsha was in a different Spanish class than I had been, and a different Orgo lab, but the rest of our shared courses were the same: both lectures, the bio lab, and both science sections, which probably indicated that they had been divided by last name.

Second period was the Organic Chemistry lecture. I streamed into the hall with dozens of other students, half of whom were pre-med, like me. I had no idea where Marsha was used to sitting, so I sat in my usual area – left side, about a third of the way back. This put me almost directly behind Geoff, my ex-roommate, with whom I had been accustomed to walking to class. I had no idea if he and Marsha knew each other, so this time I made it a point not to call attention to myself. At some point, I would probably have to force the issue, but I had way too many other things to figure out just now.

The lecture itself was as straightforward as it had been before Midterms. Professor Jones is an excellent lecturer with the interesting habit of illustrating reactions with different colored markers; his students purchase a four-color pen specifically for his class to keep up. Oh, there was the occasional student who would decide to defy convention and take notes all in one color, but those who have tried have generally reported that it was a mistake, as it makes it much more difficult to understand the diagrams in their notes.

Focusing on his lecture and his illustrations was probably the first real shot of normality I had had in over a week. A lecture this technical requires you to concentrate on the matter at hand. All thoughts of unfamiliar physical sensations fade into nothing. I’m sure that had somebody addressed me as ‘Marshall’ just then, I could have had a conversation for some time before realizing that I wasn’t actually Marshall right now.

Before the change, my next class used to be math; now, it was Spanish, which was actually a bit of a positive for me, as it gave me a much shorter walk. I’d gone about halfway between classes when I heard, “Morning, Marsh.”

I turned to see a female student I didn’t know, falling into step beside me. “Congratulations on ‘Mollie’,” she continued. “Are you getting excited about it yet?”

“Very much so,” I replied, honestly. “I can’t wait for the read through.” I was definitely getting the hang of open-ended comments. There should have been no indication that I didn’t know who this girl was.

“Yeah, me, too. I love being the stuffy old lady. Lots of attitude to my role.”

That meant that she was playing Mrs. Boyle, thus giving me one more piece of information that Marsha had somehow had. As Marshall, I hadn’t actually known any of the other cast members; apparently Marsha had already met this girl.

Aloud, I agreed with her description of the role in question. “I’ll say. Do it well, and the audience might even sigh with relief when you’re murdered.”

That brought a giggle, which was so contrary to the personality of the role she was going to be playing that I almost giggled in return. Well, to be fair, I did giggle, just a bit, and was so shocked that I even had the capacity to do anything of the kind that I stopped almost immediately and settled for a smile, which my new friend shared. I had taken an immediate liking to this girl, and wondered what kind of relationship she and Marsha were supposed to have.

I was a bit disappointed, then, when she veered off the path to Spanish and headed for a different classroom, with a “See you tonight, Marsh.” I had hoped to sneak a glance at her notebook to learn her name. It wasn’t a major deal, of course, since I would undoubtedly learn it at tonight’s read through.

My ability to concentrate in Spanish class was hindered by the memory of having giggled. There were so many facets to my role as Marsha, and I never knew in advance what was going to bother me, but this did. Girls both laughed and giggled, but boys were only supposed to laugh. Giggling was… not manly. Giggling was for girls only. Getting into character was fine, but this was dangerously close to going over the edge. And I had only been at it for a bit over a week!

It was a real relief to get to lunch after my final morning class, which was European Literature. It was the only class that was completely new to me, and I had spent most of the class just taking notes; I wouldn’t say that I had actually understood more than half of what Professor Tipton had said. Lunch was at least partially familiar, as I sat with most of the same people from breakfast, most of whose names I had managed to recall.

So far I had managed to identify Phil and Jay and Susie, Lisa, and Sheila, in addition to my two roommates. I hadn’t seen Sheila at breakfast, and Lisa didn’t join us for lunch, nor did Phil and one other boy and girl. There were also two more boys with us at lunch whose names I had not yet learned. I discovered that Jay was a junior, majoring in Physics, and Sheila seemed to be some kind of language major. I made a mental note to write all of this down after my last class, which was a biology lab.

In the meantime, I wondered what the others had heard about the cause of my problems. I would have expected it to be a prime topic of conversation, students finding their very beings transformed by a rogue experiment, but nobody had even mentioned it at breakfast. Was it possible that it was old news that I had somehow missed before break? So I asked, “Hey, did any of you guys hear about the time-travel experiment that was changing people’s DNA?”

One of the boys snorted.

Jay gave me a disdainful look. “Oh for… Marsh, you didn’t really believe that nonsense, did you?” The rest of the gang looked confused, so he explained. “The Evening Local had an article which said that several Piques students claimed that some scientists went back in time and changed their DNA.” Most of the others snickered.

“What’s funny about that?” I demanded.

“Marsh… in the first place, there’s no such thing as time travel. It’s physically impossible. Haven’t you taken any physics?”

“Not yet,” I admitted.

“Well trust me on this one. In the second place, the alleged victims are just exactly the way everybody remembers. The only ones who are supposed to have remembered anything different are the victims themselves. It’s like the bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the guy claims a witch turned him into a newt, even though he’s clearly not one.”

“Got better…” one of the other boys muttered, showing that he knew the scene Jay meant.

“And in the third place, the article doesn’t even mention any names! There are no specifics of any kind, no way to verify anything. So it’s a hoax, an urban legend. Either the writer got bored and made something up, or a bunch of students snookered him.”

“Well… how can you be sure?” I asked, not sure whether I would have preferred that he believe the story or not.

He exhaled in exasperation.

“What did they say happened?” Sheila asked.

The boy who had snorted chimed in, “One girl claims she’d lost 3 inches from her bust.”

Two of the girls laughed at that, with one commenting, “Gee, I’d be pissed if that happened to me…”

“The bottom line, Marsh,” Jay concluded, “is that there is no supporting evidence for what is certainly an extraordinary claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Q.E.D.”

I shrugged. I had to admit that if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I probably would have been convinced. But, while I happened to know he was wrong, I had no way to argue against him. As he said, I had no evidence that I used to be a guy. Tina and Chad had believed me only because they knew me so well, or rather, because they had known Marsha so well, and were more willing to believe that science worked differently than they had believed it did than believe that Marsha would behave so far out of character. I doubted that any of Marsha’s friends would know her so well as to give me the opportunity to prove this to them, even if I had wanted to, and even if I hadn’t already triggered an argument that had pulled the rug out from any case I might choose to make.

Not that it should really have mattered to me. I certainly didn’t want most of Marsha’s friends knowing about this – not only would it be horribly embarrassing, I wasn’t sure how they would respond to knowing that I wasn’t really Marsha – and I didn’t actually have any friends of my own in this timeline. That was kind of a sobering thought to take back to my dorm room. I didn’t actually exist anymore, except as a passenger in Marsha’s head – a passenger now responsible for flying the airplane, but without the requisite training. So far, I had managed to avoid crashing, but the whole seamstress issue was looming on the horizon.

It was fortunate that my only afternoon class, biology lab, was very familiar to me, as my level of concentration was nowhere near where it should have been. I was worrying about sewing, and excited about the read-through, and of course, I was still in the midst of my first-ever period. We were studying human anatomy and “my” lab partner (Rob Sullivan, according to Marsha’s class notes) and I had to identify bones on the skeletons in the lab. Fortunately, we were concentrating on the arms and legs – the “appendicular skeleton” and most of them were pretty easy, although I had trouble remembering which was the radius and which the ulna.

Returning to my dorm, I collapsed and actually napped for about an hour. Apparently, the stress of playing the role and pretending to know all of the people that Marsha knew was starting to get to me, and my room was the only place I could drop character. It was very fortunate that my sister and Chad knew about it – at least I had somebody I could talk to.

Afternoon study was already a habit with me, and I saw no need to change it. Typically, I would at least review my notes and recopy any that were hard to understand. I hadn’t decided exactly when I was going to do all of the new reading that Marsha’s literature course demanded – not to mention the papers. Most science majors weren’t all that great at writing, and didn’t enjoy it. Apparently, that hadn’t bothered Marsha, or at least she wasn’t afraid of trying it.

The EuroLit notes were the only ones that gave me any real trouble, mostly because I wasn’t as familiar with the material that had come before. The review was supposed to reinforce what I had heard, but since I hadn’t understood the notes when I took them, reviewing them mostly only let me clean up my handwriting and see the same odd explanations. A one-week quick review was certainly not going to be able to make up for the two months or so of classes that I had missed, but I did my best. Getting familiar with the new material was at least worth something, even if I didn’t fully understand it.

The review took me just under an hour. Since I had the read-through for Mousetrap that evening, I decided to devote the remaining hours of the afternoon to getting familiar with the sewing machine. Any solution that Tina devised would undoubtedly require me to do some sewing, and I needed to be ready. Despite my panic of the night before, I really didn’t want to quit this adventure prematurely. Aside from the one-time chance to do a really plum role in an Alvin Tomlinson production, I could see possibilities in learning things about girls by being one that would just have to help me with my relationships once I changed back.

I’d already figured out how to do a basic stitch, so the next step was presumably to sew two pieces of cloth together. I didn’t bother rethreading the machine, since I didn’t really care what the result looked like and the thread that was already in it would be fine. I pulled out some scraps from Marsha’s sewing basket, held them together under the foot, and pushed the pedal. I had expected the feed mechanism to move them together and keep them aligned, but it didn’t. The pieces moved partly together, but the top one slipped, and the seam I got was a complete mess, crooked and uneven.

I didn’t have to be an expert to know that I was missing something yet again. There was obviously a way to keep the pieces together; was it technique? I tried to reason things out. It was possible that it was just a question of my lack of skill, but the machine was pulling kind of hard. It just didn’t seem possible that you were supposed to keep the two pieces pinched together with your fingers and keep up with the machine. If it were pieces of wood I was trying to fasten together, I would have used some sort of a clamp, but I couldn’t find anything in the basket that even resembled one. I tried it a few more times, but had little success. I was going to have to ask Tina when I spoke to her tonight, after the read-through.

In the meantime, I grabbed The Decameron, and went into the living room to read it. That way, I would not appear to be more anti-social than necessary, and besides, the couch was much more comfortable for reading than my bed, and at the same time, less conducive to sleep. As it happened, I had about as much privacy in the living room as I would have had in my bedroom, as neither of my roommates appeared to be around. Terry came in about a half hour before dinner and headed almost immediately to the bathroom, where the sound of the shower confirmed my impression that she had had a great workout somewhere.

She and I went to dinner together without Lee Ann, who hadn’t come back to the room yet. At this point, with my first Alvin Tomlinson rehearsal so close, it was getting hard to concentrate on anything else, and I’m sure I was much worse company than usual. In fact, I’m not really sure that I can remember what I was eating, but I excused myself a bit early to make sure I made it to the theater on time.

When I got to the rehearsal room, several people were already there, including Alvin himself, and the girl who was playing Mrs. Boyle. As she was the only one I recognized other than the director, I sat next to her as we waited for the rest of the cast to show up. I hadn’t mastered the knack that girls seemed to have of always finding something to talk about, but I was a fairly good listener, which seemed to be good enough for now. More cast members came in, and some of them greeted me or her – apparently, her name or nickname was “Jo” – but, while I recognized some of them from the plays Alvin had directed the previous year, I didn’t actually know any of them.

Finally, everybody was present, and Alvin stood up to address us.

“Thank you all for coming, and welcome to our production of The Mousetrap. For those of you who have not done a show with me before, I’d like to tell you something about the way I work. I expect my actors to take the lead in developing their characters. I will guide you and make suggestions, but ultimately you are the ones who will actually be on stage before the audience, so you need to own your interpretations. I see acting as very much a team exercise, and we will probably be doing some exercises and improv to develop your characters.”

He next introduced the students who were sitting next to him. Each received a brief round of applause, which Jo and I hurriedly joined. “I’m very pleased to have a strong team working with me. In addition to the actors, let me introduce Cheryl Yeats, our producer, Nikki Forsberg, our costumes mistress, and Bill Bradshaw, our props master. I’d like the cast members to introduce themselves. Each of you should say your name, your role, and tell us a little bit about yourself. Let’s begin with Jared.”

I cannot say that I remembered all of the names, or even all of the roles. I did make special note of Jared Milner, who was playing Mollie’s husband, Giles, and Peter Engelmann, who was playing Paravicini, which was originally to have been my role. And I learned that “Jo” was Josephine Perez, who also went by the nickname, “Josie.” The cast all seemed to be calling her, “Jo”, so I did, too.

The self-introductions gave me a problem I had not anticipated. Each actor mentioned previous roles he or she had done; quite a few had worked with Alvin before, which explained why so many of them had known each other. But I didn’t know what roles Marsha had done! Tina would have known if I had only thought to ask her, but I hadn’t.

So when it was my turn, I simply said, “My name is Marsha Steen, and I am playing the role of Mollie. I played a lady-in-waiting in my high school production of Camelot and a couple of other roles since. I am very thrilled to be part of this show,” hoping that my enthusiasm would make up for my lack of detail. The role in Camelot was a complete guess. There weren’t any named female roles comparable to the one I had done as Marshall, but there were several minor “ladies-in-waiting” in our production.

I noticed several actors giving me puzzled looks. I presume that they were either surprised that somebody with as thin a resume as mine would have gotten such a major role in this production, or that they had found me unusually modest. Well, I just had to hope that I would be able to live up to Alvin’s trust in me, or rather, Marsha.

The read-through itself was fairly non-eventful. Some of the actors played around with their roles, trying one interpretation and then another. My own part was pretty straightforward, but did require some interesting emotional range in a few places. It was definitely a more difficult role than any I had ever tried before.

After we finished, Alvin stood again and thanked us, announcing that we would be blocking act one on Wednesday. As Jo and I walked out together, several of the students who had worked with Alvin in the past went over to speak with him. I was a bit uncomfortable to note Alvin watching me leave as they did. I didn’t really want to think that people would already be talking about me – I just wasn’t confident enough in my abilities to be certain that their comments would be positive. But it was just a read-through. Surely they couldn’t expect all that much from a read-through?

I called Tina as soon as I got to my room, and asked her about a tool to hold the material together while sewing it. I don’t think I had heard her laugh so hard in a long time.

“Excuse me?” she asked, when she had recovered. “Marsh, that’s what pins are for!”

“I don’t get it,” I admitted.

“You’ve never actually watched Mom sew? You pin the material together, Marsh. The pins go across the seam you are going to sew and then you pull them out afterwards. And you put in enough that it will stay together.”

“Oh. I see.”

She laughed some more.

“I’ve seen pins used before,” I said. “When I bought pants, they just put in one to mark where the seam was – I don’t see how that was supposed to hold anything together.”

“No, you can do that, too. You can use pins for lots of different things, but what you are talking about is probably the biggest use of them.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know this stuff – I’m a boy!”

That brought yet another laugh. “Do you have any idea how strange it is to hear you say things like that?”

Now I laughed. “Probably not any stranger than what I’m dealing with on a daily basis. Did you have any ideas for how I’m going to manage all of this?”

“Not yet. Exactly what needs to be done?”

“You mean of what I have already sitting on the rack? Let me check.” I went over and looked more carefully. “Let’s see… there’s eleven things here. This is a skirt that needs a zipper repaired…”

“Well that’s an easy one.”

“Glad to hear it. Of course, I haven’t the faintest idea how… Um, this dress has… aha, pins all over it.”

“That’s alteration – that’ll take a bit of time. Look for other things like that. How many need a lot of alteration?”

“Checking… um, one… mm hmm… looks like four of them are like that. There’s one that says it needs buttons moved… and a bunch with the comment, ‘repair.’”

“Only four? That’s not so bad.”

“Teen,” I pointed out, “that’s just what I have here now. My roommate expects me to alter a gown for her, and that’s not on the rack, and probably a lot of other people will bring me stuff.”

“Well, you’ll just have to tell them, ‘no’”

“And how do I get money for tuition, Teen? That’s the problem, here. If I announce that ‘Marsha’ is no longer in the seamstress biz, I still need something that will bring in money.”

“Oh. I thought…” She paused, confused. “I’m still thinking, Marsh. We can do this, somehow, right? ‘Sisters strong’, right?”

I sighed. “If you say so, Teen. I wouldn’t exactly have used that phrase.”

“Oh, right.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have reminded her. My poor sister must be having a lot of trouble thinking of her ‘sister’ as a boy as it was, and she really was trying to help me out as best she could. So I thanked her for her help, and hung up. I still had a bit of reading to do, but fortunately, no class assignments as yet. So, after a bit of work, I managed to fall asleep.

The next rehearsal, “blocking” the first act, was pretty straightforward. Pencil in hand, we moved around the stage as directed, reading our lines. Jared, who was playing Giles, pantomimed a kiss when we reached the appropriate place, but did not attempt to make contact, for which I was grateful. There was no way that I was going to be able to kiss him without first getting into character, and even that was going to take some preparation. After blocking, we walked through the scene a couple more times, trying to get used to the requisite combination of movement and lines, and experimenting a bit with delivery.

“OK, great job all,” Alvin said when we were done. “I need everybody back here Sunday except for Jo, and we’ll block act two. We’ll start getting into character on Monday. Have a good night.” Jo, of course, wasn’t needed for act two, as her character’s death was the climax of act one.

Then he turned directly to me and asked, “Marsh, can you stick around for bit?”

My heart clenched at being singled out like that. What had I done wrong? Given that Marsha had been cast in a much larger role than I had, it seemed likely that I was not as good an actor as she – had Alvin been able to tell? Was he taking me aside to remove me from the cast? I thought for a moment that he might have me trade roles with one of the other girls, but if so… if he wanted me to take over Jo’s role, surely he would have told her to come back for the act two blocking rehearsal.

So I just agonized in private as the rest of the cast trooped out. Several of them gave me odd looks as they did, and I thought they were the same ones who had spoken to Alvin after the previous rehearsal. Maybe they had told him that I was obviously not up to the role?

We were alone in the rehearsal room and Alvin closed the door and then came over to sit down next to me. As I held my breath, he said slowly, “Marsha. What the Hell are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Have you not heard me say that acting is a team activity? When did you turn into a prima donna? Nikki, Jack, and Naomi all greeted you and you just looked through them as though they were strangers.”

I just stared in astonishment. Marsha had known these people?

“And why did you answer like that when we were talking about previous roles? ‘Lady-in-waiting’? Did you think it would sound better if you didn’t tell everybody you were Guinevere?”

My eyes bulged. I had thought it didn’t matter what I said about high school, as nobody would know. Marsha must have listed past roles on her audition sheet.

“And not to toot my own horn or anything, but don’t you think when discussing past roles for a director’s play, that it would be appropriate to mention roles you’ve done for that director?”

Now my jaw dropped, in addition to everything else. Since I hadn’t been cast last year, I had just assumed that neither had Marsha. I kept forgetting that her life wasn’t necessarily always the same as mine.

“Marsh, I cannot have you creating bad feelings in my cast. I need you to get over yourself. Having a lead does not make you better than everyone else. We need everyone to be able to work together. Do you understand me?”

I understood. I understood that I had screwed up very badly, and that I was on the verge of losing this opportunity. Worse yet, it sounded as though I – or rather, Marsha – had had friends here and I had just hurt them. And for some reason I had started to cry. I couldn’t help myself.

“Alvin,” I started, “I-”

But I wasn’t really used to talking through tears like this. To feeling like this. I needed this relationship. And hadn’t Mr. Condrin told me how important a director was? My only choice now was honesty – at least as much as I could afford.

I took a deep breath and started again, tears and all. “Alvin, to be really honest… I don’t remember. I mean, I remember what I did last year and all… but my memories don’t seem to match… to match what everybody else remembers. I remember auditioning last year… but in my memories, you didn’t cast me. I… I didn’t even know I’d gotten this role until I found the script in my bag. I didn’t know that… that I had played Guinevere in high school. Everything’s so different…”

My tears were just getting worse.

“I really want to do this. I mean it. I want to make it right. I want… I want to be able to work with your cast. To be friends with everybody who remembers me as a friend. I just… I just don’t know who they are…”

Alvin stared at me. I had probably just told him about the stupidest thing he had ever heard, and I was obviously not stable. How could I blame him for bouncing me from his show now? By all rights, he should have simply told me to hand in my script and leave. But he didn’t. He closed his eyes for a moment in disbelief. Then he shocked me.

“Marsh, please tell you didn’t volunteer for that stupid time-warp experiment.”

“You… you know about that?” I had assumed that everyone on campus had either never heard of it, or dismissed it as Jay had.

“You did, didn’t you?” Now he stood up, agitated. “Damn it! Marsh, how could you…?” He sat down again, and put his hand to his forehead. “Yeah, I know about it. Nikki’s brother, Ben…” He exhaled, angry. “He volunteered also. Now he says he used to be about six inches taller, but nobody else remembers that.”

“I heard about that,” I breathed. “The article-“

He cut me off. “Yes, that stupid article. Made it all sound like a real joke, didn’t it?”

“It’s not a joke.”

“No, it’s not. Ben used to be this really happy guy – at least that’s how Nikki and I remember him. Oh… you said you don’t remember Nikki?”

“No.”

“Nikki is my girlfriend, and our costume mistress. You two are, or at least were, pretty good friends, actually. Anyway, Ben used to be a pretty happy guy, but now he’s completely sullen. Says that what he really wants is to play basketball, that he used to be on the team, but when he went to practice, they ran him off. He’s barely trying anymore. Shows no interest in most of the things he used to love…”

“That’s terrible.”

“Mm hmm. So, yeah, I do know about this, this… stupid experiment. And the same thing happened to you?” He paced, agitated. Then he looked straight at me. “At least you seem to be trying. I wish Ben would.”

“It’s the only way I know how to cope,” I explained. “And… well, I am an act- an actress,” I continued, realizing that I had almost said actor. “I’m used to being somebody other than I really am. My problem is, I just don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I don’t know what Mar- what I’m supposed to have done.” I thought he might have caught my stumble, so I explained, “Sometimes I think of myself as ‘Marsh’ and the girl everybody else remembers as ‘Marsha.’”

“Sounds useful. Give me a sec to take this in. I hadn’t expected to have to deal with it with somebody else.” He paced for a bit before coming back to face me. “OK, Let me see if I can fill you in. I cast you as Miss Forsythe in Death of a Salesman. It’s a small role, but I really liked what you did with it. You also helped Nikki with costumes.”

“Makes sense. Marsha was – is – a seamstress.”

“So’s Nikki. So you two hit it off really well. Based on your performance in Salesman, and your audition, of course, I cast you as Peggy in Come Blow Your Horn. Naomi, who is our Miss Casewell, played Connie. And Jack was Hap Loman and Buddy. He’s doing Trotter in Mousetrap, so you’ve worked with both of them before. I assume you don’t want me to tell the cast what happened to you?”

“I’d prefer not. My sister and a friend at home know… and you. Nobody else, so far.”

“More power to you. Ben’s been telling everyone, and it’s alienating people. That may well be his intent, of course.”

“My biggest problem now – aside from not knowing people – is that I don’t know how to sew, and that’s apparently how Marsha made money. I have a bunch of garments in my room now, waiting for me to do something with them, and I haven’t the vaguest idea of where to start.”

“You don’t know how…? Wow, that’s going to take some getting used to. It’s sort of one of the main things I remember about you. May I offer some unsolicited advice?”

“Please.”

“Tell Nikki. I’ll do what I can to help, but Nikki is your best ally. Not only has she seen what’s happened to another victim, she knows you and likes you, and can help you better than anybody else when it comes to sewing.”

“That – that would be incredible! If she could help me…” I had just done the proverbial fall into a pile of sh— er, manure and came up smelling like roses.

“If you want, I can tell her what happened. I’m sure she’d be happy to come talk to you.”

“Alvin, I don’t know what to say… “

“Just remember this, since you are obviously hearing it for the first time. When I say acting is teamwork, I mean it. We need to support each other, Marsh. You’ve always come through for me in the past, and I’m going to do what is necessary to make sure you succeed in this one as well. OK?” He smiled at me for the first time since the rehearsal ended. “Talk to Nikki, take care of yourself, and I’ll see you on Sunday.”

When I left the rehearsal room, I was flying. Not only had he not tossed me, he was going to help me – really help me! For the first time, I was starting to be a bit jealous of Marsha. She’d managed, not only to be cast in three of his productions, but also to become close enough to be treated as an asset, if not a friend. Now, I was going to be the beneficiary of her efforts, since I had temporarily taken over her life. I could really enjoy some of this.

Marsha’s roommates were surprised by the sheer glee in my step when I swept into the room and greeted them with a cheerful, “Hey, guys!”

“Hey, Marsh,” Lee Ann replied, looking up from the reality show she was watching with Terry and Chandra-whatever. “You’re in a good mood tonight. Rehearsal went well?”

“Very well,” I said. “Well, actually the rehearsal wasn’t all that special – it was just a blocking rehearsal, after all – but I had a terrific conversation with Alvin, afterwards.”

“What’s a ‘blocking rehearsal’?” Chandra-something asked. Lee Ann looked as though she already knew, but Terry looked curious. Given my mood, it felt really good to be able to explain.

“You know how when you see a play, the actors move around during their scenes? The director usually plans that out beforehand, making sure that people will be in the proper places so that they can react to one another, or make nice pictures on the stage. So when you’re acting with somebody, they always know where you are, without looking.”

“Like having set plays in basketball?” Terry suggested.

“Do they?” I asked. “I guess I didn’t realize that.”

“Uh huh. That way you can pass and pretty much know where everybody is going to be.”

“OK, then, I guess it’s a lot like that,” I continued. “Usually, the director gives out the blocking at one of the first rehearsals, and we write it in our scripts. Of course, he might make adjustments during later rehearsals, depending on how things work, but the idea is that you learn the blocking along with your lines and interpretations. The point is, we don’t do an awful lot of acting at a blocking rehearsal. With a director like Alvin, we might try out different ways of saying our lines, but he doesn’t say anything about it unless he really likes it,” He had in fact complimented Jo on one of her readings, presumably to make sure she knew to do it that way again.

“So what was the great conversation you had with Alvin?” Lee Ann asked.

“Oh, I was having some problems and I sort of panicked a bit, and he told me how valuable I was to the show and he had enjoyed working with me in the past and would give me all the help I needed,” I said, trying to be as general as I could get away with. “And Nikki’s probably going to come over and talk to me as well.” I didn’t want to ask if she knew Nikki. It seemed as though she had been closer to Marsha than Terry had been, so she probably did.

“Well that’s great, Marsh,” she responded. “I’m glad it’s all working out for you.”

The other girls agreed, and I joined them in watching the end of the show. The biggest difference I noticed from the times I had watched with the guys as Marshall was the conversation, although I couldn’t quite figure out why, only that I was having to work harder at feigning interest. That might just have been my preoccupation with the evening’s events.

It wasn’t until I’d gotten back to my bedroom that reality started to intrude. Marsha had achieved that because of her abilities. Because of her sewing, which I couldn’t do, and because of her acting, which I wasn’t quite sure I could match. This wasn’t just me being given an incredible opportunity; Alvin was expecting ‘Marsha’ to deliver, and I wasn’t completely certain I could. He didn’t know that I wasn’t really the girl he’d known. What if I let him down? At least I knew that I could have handled Paravicini…

So far, I had been able to use the fact of my participation in that experiment as an excuse; but we hadn’t actually gotten to the hard part. What if I couldn’t handle the role of Mollie? Even his friendship or affection for Marsha wouldn’t save me, would it? At least, it would hardly be fair to the rest of the cast if their leading lady couldn’t do her share. He’d have to replace me in that case, wouldn’t he? If I wasn’t careful, I could wind up losing big.

And what about the sewing? He had promised to tell Nikki what had happened to me and to get her to help. She was Marsha’s friend, so she would probably be willing. But would it be enough? I had essentially no knowledge of how to be a seamstress. Would she really be able to teach me to do what I needed in a reasonable amount of time? I didn’t exactly have years to learn, after all. And would she get frustrated with my ignorance and just give up on me? What if she expected me to react the way Marsha had to things, and I didn’t? Would she really be as patient with me as Alvin had implied?

It was really getting to me. I wound up doing my course reading almost perfunctorily. All I could think about was that I was a fraud, an interloper. I was trying to play the role of Marsha, but I didn’t have all of her knowledge or her skills, and it was going to be way too easy for people to find me out. I didn’t want to be a quitter. I didn’t want to pull the plug on this performance. Even though I would be the only one to know it, it would live with me for the rest of my life. And would I be able to look Tina in the eye again, knowing that she would have known about my failure if the very fact of it hadn’t wiped her memory of the whole thing. Finally, I put my books down and called it a night, frustrated.

I slept, but not particularly well. I dreamed that I was myself – Marshall – and that I was in the hallway of Marsha’s dormitory, carrying my guitar. All the girls were in the hallway, just as they had been when I came to school Sunday night, but instead of greeting me as a friend, they were pointing and laughing. I looked behind me, hoping that their target was somebody else, but it wasn’t. It was me. Then I caught some of their words and looked down. They were laughing because I was wearing a dress, and for a moment I didn’t understand why that was funny.

When I realized it, I tried to take it off, but there was another one right underneath it. I ran into Marsha’s dorm room and she and her roommates were there, also laughing at me. I thought that if I played my guitar, maybe they wouldn’t laugh, but suddenly I was a girl again and the guitar was gone, and I had a sewing needle and thread and didn’t know how to use them.

“Marsha,” I pleaded. “You have to help me! I’m your brother Marshall who should have been born instead of you, but now I’m stuck in your body and I don’t know how to use it. Please. Please, I need you to teach me!”

But she just laughed and told me, “You’re the one who likes to look up user manuals online. Why don’t you look up the one for ‘Jennifer Marsha Steen’?”

When I awoke, it was about three in the morning, and I had the feeling that there was something I needed to do. That I should do a web search for ‘Jennifer Marsha Steen.’ I was still half asleep, so it seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do. What surprised me was that I actually got a hit.

It wasn’t a user manual, of course. It was a Facebook page. Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Marsha would have one? Sitting right there were pictures of some of her friends, along with their names. I didn’t know her password, of course, but I had her email account, so I was able to request a reset. A minute or so later, I was able to see all of her Facebook friends, as well as postings she had made. I recognized many of the faces; now I had their names as well, and she had also talked about performing in Alvin’s shows. If only I had thought to do this a week ago! It would have made things so much easier.

“Nikki Forsberg” was there, her picture definitely resembling the girl who had been sitting next to Alvin at the read-through. The two had exchanged quite a few messages in the past year, according to their “wall-to-wall.” They had talked about sewing, and Alvin’s plays, and Alvin himself, and – to my slight embarrassment – about boys Marsha might have been interested in, but was too timid to approach.

Both of my roommates were there, of course. Terry’s full name was “Theresa Baldwin” and she was a member of the women’s basketball team. Given her comments earlier, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. And while I had known Lee Ann before this, she had never let me see her page; it had been part of her flirting with me that it was supposed to have some dark secret. The secret turns out to have been that she’d had no intention of breaking up with her boyfriend. It really made me wonder why “Chandraki Kumar” (according to Facebook, that was her full name) had led me to believe otherwise.

I was going to have to recognize and greet Jack and Naomi, so I looked them up next. Naomi was easy, as she was the only female member of the cast I didn’t know, but I looked her up anyway, just to be safe. There was a Naomi Katz listed, but her picture was just a joke image, so I couldn’t initially be certain that it was she. The page did mention that she was a junior, majoring in economics. There wasn’t anybody named Jack on Marsha’s friend list, but there were several boys named John something or other; looking through their pages, I found one who claimed to have performed in Alvin’s shows. He was a senior philosophy major, and was apparently dating Naomi, which Alvin had not mentioned. I spent extra time on both of their pages, looking for facts that Marsha should have known.

I couldn’t remember the names of everybody in the cast, and Marsha might not have known them all previously, although Jo was there; as far as I could tell, she and Marsha had met during auditions for Mousetrap. I hadn’t met anybody; I’d been too nervous, but Marsha had apparently managed to socialize while auditioning for and receiving the best role she could have wanted.

I was too tired to sit and memorize everybody, but now that I knew about the page, I would make it a point to return to it frequently. People had posted on ‘my’ wall and were apparently expecting responses; I put that off for a bit until I had a better understanding of their relationships to Marsha. I was feeling much better, now. I hadn’t solved the skill and knowledge problems, but at least I had made some major steps – and I’d only been back to school for three days.

I could finally sleep soundly until morning.

After class the next day, I had to start on a paper for my literature class. It was the first one I had had to write since my freshman writing class, and I was not looking forward to it; however, I had found a subject that seemed appropriate. In homage to my own situation, I was going to write a comparison of cross-dressing in the works of Bocaccio and in Shakespeare. I had so far found one example of it in The Decameron, which is what gave me the idea, and of course I knew Shakespeare had used it in As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Wikipedia reminded me that it was found in The Merchant of Venice, as well.

All of the examples I had found so far were of females dressing as males, and that was going to be my focus. In some ways, it was probably wish fulfillment for me. I would really have preferred not to keep wearing dresses, or at least to have something else to put on when I got to drop out of character in the privacy of my bedroom. The problem, of course, was that wearing pants was not something that I had figured out a way to explain Marsha doing if I were caught.

I started my research for the paper by re-reading As You Like It, which took me about half of the afternoon. Then I decided to get back to my sewing-machine practice. I was now able to get a reasonably straight line when sewing two strips of cloth together, but the stitches didn’t really look much like the ones in any clothes I’d ever seen. Instead of a row of neat line segments, there were these little bumps all over the place. I tried tugging on the material as it fed through the machine, but that just made the lengths uneven as well.

“You need to adjust the tension, Marsh,” a female voice said in my ear, causing me to jump. I looked up to see Alvin’s girlfriend, Nikki, wearing a green Piques College T-shirt that didn’t quite reach the top of her short denim skirt. Her brown hair was tied back in a complex braid, which gave her an almost boyish look, if one only looked at her above the neck..

“I knocked several times and you didn’t answer, but I heard the machine going, so I let myself in. You must have been really intent on what you were doing. Anyway,” she continued as I gaped foolishly, “the knots on top mean that your tension is too high.”

“Nikki…” I started.

“I know,” she interrupted. “Alvin told me. You don’t remember me, do you? Come here.” And she opened her arms for a hug.

Like pretty much everybody else I knew, she was taller than I was now, and her hug felt very motherly. “You poor thing. I’ve seen what this has done to Ben, and I can only imagine what it must be like for you.” At the same time, the revealing outfit that she was wearing was causing my brain to expect me to be attracted but not show it because she had a boyfriend. I wasn’t sure how my female body was supposed to handle that mixed message, but it did cause me to miss part of what she was saying.

“… different for you?” she was asking me.

“Yes,” I managed, trying to cover my distraction. “And it’s been really uncomfortable and confusing. The university should never have allowed that experiment.”

“I know, right?” she replied. “The damage those morons did…”

“Um, I hope you don’t mind my asking this…” I started.

“Ask, Marsh. With what you’ve gone through, how can I get angry?”

“If your brother is so miserable, why hasn’t he gone back to ask them to change him back?”

With an angry sigh, she released me and turned away, wringing her hands in frustration. “He’s paranoid. He’s convinced they did this to him on purpose. Because they hated the basketball team or something. I don’t know. Maybe because they thought that he would have made the team really good and they’re really on our rivals’ side.” She looked at me with a face starting to tear. “He’s my little brother, and I don’t know how to help him! He’s miserable, but refuses to hear anything I suggest. He’s passing his courses… barely, but he just doesn’t care about anything. What’s your secret? How do you keep going? What… Alvin said you were embarrassed to tell him, but can you tell me what changed for you?”

“Nikki, I’m sorry. It’s really personal, and I’d be humiliated if anybody knew.”

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “OK, we won’t talk about it, right? At least you’re trying.”

“Well… I sort of got mad and boasted in front of my sister that I could act the role of… my new self, without people knowing. Not sure how well that’s working right now. Plus, since I am an act- tress…” I didn’t stumble over the word quite so much this time.

“I understand. Right. So… what can I do to help you? I only really know mostly your theater friends, and Alvin’s already told you about Naomi and Jack, right?”

“It’s OK. I found Marsha’s… my Facebook page, and I’m finding out who all I’m supposed to know. What I really need help with is… this.” I indicated the garment rack and the sewing machine.

“Yes, you told Alvin. OK, so… how much do you remember about sewing?”

“Nothing, actually. In my previous life, Mom never taught me to sew.” It was a dangerous admission. If Nikki really knew my family, she might ask why Mom hadn’t taught me, and I was afraid of what would happen if I told her that I used to be a guy.

She was indeed surprised, but didn’t pry. “Wow! So then… let’s start really simple. Come away from the machine.” She fished in Marsha’s sewing basket and pulled out a needle, a spool of thread and a pair of scissors. After snipping off a couple of feet of thread, she sat down on the bed next to me. “First lesson is threading a needle. A basic skill, but you cannot sew without it.”

I took the needle and the cut thread. I’d certainly seen Mom do this from time to time, but had never tried it myself. “The hole in the needle’s pretty small,” I complained. Shouldn’t I be using a bigger one? Or thinner thread?”

“That hole is called an eye, Marsh, and it is just the right size. Here, look.” She took them from me, licked the end of the thread and then somehow poked it right through the hole… the eye of the needle in one try, just as Mom had always done it. Then she pulled it back out and handed the needle and thread back to me. “Now you try it.”

So I did. I poked the thread at the eye, and missed. I pulled it back and tried again, and this time I was sure I had hit it, but no luck.

“OK, stop,” she said. “Why do you have one eye closed?”

I do? I opened both eyes and looked at her. “I… guess I was just trying to see it better.”

“You need both eyes to do this, Marsh. Try again, keeping both eyes open.”

That actually made a lot of sense. I was trying to connect two objects in three-dimensional space, and needed my depth perception. It was obvious, once she had pointed it out. This time I got it on the second try.

“Very good,” she said. “Now knot the end to make a loop.” As I started to put down the needle to knot the long end, she added, “With one hand.”

I just stared.

“Hold the thread at the eye so that it won’t come out,” she instructed me. Once I had done that, she continued. “Now grab the other end with your right hand and loop the thread around your finger twice. Good. Now use your thumb to roll the thread off the end of your finger. See? Now you have a loop in the thread. I never saw how you used to do it, but I usually use that loop to start my stitches.”

I shrugged. “That sounds fine to me.”

“You see, some girls pull the loop closed into a knot, but we’ll do it my way for now.”

She used the scissors to snip off the loop.

“Why cut it off?”

“So that you can practice some more. Try it again.”

It turned out not to be all that difficult when I followed Nikki’s instructions, and after a few more tries, she pronounced herself satisfied.

“OK, great. But how does this help me? Won’t I just be using the sewing machine?”

“Not this time, you won’t. It’s easy enough to sew buttons on by hand, and there’s always somebody who needs help with buttons.” As she said that, she had started examining the garment rack. “Here. This is a simple one. Somebody must have lost weight, and she just needs the buttons moved on this skirt.” She dove again into the sewing basket and came up with a razor blade. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. “You’ve marked these two buttons as needing to be moved, so cut them off. Slide this blade against the back of each button, being careful not to cut the skirt itself.”

“Oh, I think I see.” I took the blade and made short work of the threads holding it on the skirt, then looked at where Marsha had marked the new location of the first one. The next step seemed obvious, so I pushed the threaded needle into the marking and pulled it out through the loop. “Now, I just pull the loop tight, right?”

“Yes, exactly.”

A few passes through the holes and I had the button in its new location. Nikki watched me as I pondered how to finish it off, but didn’t say anything. Something told me that a few interlocking knots would work, and when I was done, she raised her eyebrows.

“Atta girl, Marsh! Are you sure you never learned this?”

“I’m sure,” I answered, trying to bask in the intended praise without being overly bothered by the ‘atta girl’ comment.”

“Well, you’re obviously a natural. That would explain why I remember you as being so good a seamstress. Just cut off that loose end and why don’t you do the second button from the beginning?”

Threading the needle again and moving the other button took me amazingly little time. I was feeling a bit smug when I finished, as Nikki praised me again.

“If you don’t mind,” she said, taking three garments off the rack, “why don’t I take care of these? The work is a bit complex, and even with your aptitude, it’s going to take a bit of time for you to learn how. I’ll bring you some of my simpler jobs to work on for now, and we can pass things back and forth as needed. How does that sound?”

Quite frankly, it sounded terrific to me, and I said so. The tunnel was actually beginning to show a bit of light at the end. So I thanked her and she left.

The next rehearsal wasn’t going to be until Sunday, and I didn’t think I should let the issue with Naomi and Jack fester, so after dinner, I spent about half an hour reading everything I could on Facebook about them and their relationships with Marsha. Neither seemed to be all that close to her; she and Naomi had spoken from time to time about Alvin’s plays, and I couldn’t find any evidence that Marsha and Jack had communicated at all – at least via Facebook. I presumed that this meant that they were just acquaintances rather than friends, which made things easier.

I debated apologizing over the phone; surely an involved conversation wouldn’t really be needed? In the end, however, I felt that a face-to-face apology would work better, and I really did need to be able to speak with them in person at the next rehearsal. At least I was going to need to be able to speak with Naomi; with Jo not needed for Act II, she and I would be the only girls in the cast present, and would naturally have been expected to chat. Of course, as soon as I came to that conclusion, I had to smile at myself. It was getting way too easy to think of myself as a girl.

Naomi’s dorm room was only a few minutes walk from mine. I spent the walk prepping myself and psyching myself up for what might be a tense confrontation. Alvin had been pretty angry with me; I had to assume that anger had come from Jack and Naomi, so I was a bit afraid of the kind of reaction I was going to get.

Naomi took about ten seconds to answer the door, and seemed surprised to see me. Even as she said, “Marsh?” I could tell from her mussed hair and the way she was tucking her t-shirt into her jeans that she had not been expecting any visitors.

“Marsh?” Jack echoed, coming to the door behind her. The two of them exchanged glances and then fixed me with a not particularly friendly gaze.

Embarrassed slightly by what I had evidently interrupted, I stammered out the apology I had planned to offer smoothly. “I- I- I’m really sorry, guys. I acted l-like a jerk at rehearsals this w-week.” I caught myself, took a breath and continue under their impassive stares. “I guess I was really nervous about this role. I hadn’t… I mean, I’ve never quite done a role like…”

They looked at each other again and back at me. Then Jack chuckled, “It’s OK, Marsh. Alvin already called us. I take it he kind of smacked you down?”

“Yeah,” I answered, relieved. “He really came down hard on me. And he was right. I was a bit… no, a lot preoccupied and I…” I sighed. “Anyway, I’m really sorry, and I promise at least not to ignore you like that again.”

“You do that,” Naomi said. She wasn’t quite smiling, but at least she didn’t look hostile. “As Alvin always says, we have to work as a team.”

“Yeah.” I had said my piece, had it accepted, and now I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Um… you guys are obviously… busy… and I don’t really want to get in your way…”

They shared yet another look, this time definitely amused at my discomfort.

“So… I’ll just go… and I’ll see you at rehearsal!”

Even as I stepped back out of Naomi’s room and closed the door, I could hear them laugh, which only made me turn redder. I was a bit surprised at my reaction. My primary thought was envy; envy at what Jack and Naomi had been doing or possibly were on the verge of doing, as I couldn’t do anything similar just now. But somehow, that wasn’t what I was actually feeling. Why should I have been embarrassed? A couple of weeks ago, I don’t think I would have been. Apologetic, sure. But not embarrassed. It was as though I wasn’t completely in control, as though my body was trying to react in ways of its own, ways that didn’t match my own inclinations.

Before going to bed that night, I practiced needle-threading again. It was starting to come pretty easily to me, including the one-handed loop tie. There was a second garment that just needed a button replaced, so I tackled that one. A couple of minutes later, I was pleased to see that I had managed to do a repair without any further coaching. Unfortunately, none of the others required any button work, so I was sort of stuck. I made a mental note to deliver the two completed garments to their owners the next day after classes.

By lunch the next day, things were definitely feeling as though they were falling into a rhythm. Thanks to Facebook, I figured that I could now identify pretty much all of the students who regularly ate with Marsha and her roommates. At least, I didn’t have to worry about being too obviously ignorant in casual conversation. I was a bit surprised then, to see that a newcomer had joined the group. He was sitting next to a fairly animated Chandra and nodding patiently to her comments. There was something familiar about him from the back, but I couldn’t tell any more that. until I had circled the table to sit in the empty seat next to Lee Ann roughly opposite the two of them. Then I did recognize him.

“Rajiv!” I exclaimed, surprised.

It was as if a wind had blown the clouds from his visage on to Chandra’s, because she scowled at me even as he looked up and smiled. “Hey! Um, Marcy, right?”

“Marsha, actually,” I corrected him, remembering just in time that I wasn’t supposed to know him very well.

“How do you two know each other?” Chandra asked, a not particularly pleased expression on her face.

He laughed. “I saw Marsha struggling with a suitcase after break and offered to carry it for her. But she was afraid of me, or something.” As I sat down, a bit embarrassed, he added, “I take it she’s a friend of yours?”

“Um… sort of. I mean she’s Lee Ann’s roommate.”

When Rajiv looked away from me, I leaned over to Lee Ann and whispered, “what’s going on?”

“Parental interference,” she whispered back, and shook her head when I looked about to ask more.

I wasn’t really sure what to think about the news that Rajiv and Chandra were apparently a couple, or might be one, depending on what ‘parental interference’ meant. Did that mean that their parents were interfering with an established relationship? Trying to create one? I thought that she was going to get the better of such an arrangement, as I knew him to be a good guy, while all I really knew about her was that she had lied to me about Lee Ann – but that was hardly something I could mention.

“So,” Lee Ann said aloud to Chandra. “I take it you guys have plans for tonight?”

The two of them looked at each other before he shrugged, “I figure we’re just going to take in a movie.”

“OK, in case we pick the same movie, we’ll just make sure to stay out of your way then. Right, Marsh?”

Surprised, I just nodded. I’d had no idea that she and I were going to do something tonight together. It made sense, given that her boyfriend didn’t go to Piques, and Marsha didn’t even have a boyfriend; it must have been an ongoing arrangement she and Marsha had had, as we hadn’t discussed it. As a matter of fact, I’d sort of avoided thinking about the weekend altogether, given my hiatus from dating because of the whole “Marsha” charade. It was ironic then, that my first weekend evening out was apparently going to be spent with the girl I’d be dreaming of before the break, if not quite in the fashion I had expected.

My bio lab that afternoon was a bit trickier than Monday’s had been, since we were now studying the axial skeleton, from the skull on down, and the bone names were mostly unfamiliar to me. Ron started to read the description from the lab notes, “The cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone is received into the ethmoidal notch of the frontal bone…” and we sort of goggled at each other. Then he switched into a bad German accent to read the next section, “…and the christa galli serves as an attachment for the falx cerebri” which I thought was hilarious.

I wouldn’t have laughed of course, not in a lab full of other serious students, if he hadn’t continued with the line from The Court Jester, “the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true,” at which point I lost it.

That brought on dirty looks from those near us, so we forced ourselves to be serious as we started to record our observations of the skeletons. But he managed to make me laugh – and yes, even giggle – several more times by catching me off guard, raising his eyebrows and whispering things like “… gonna poison the potion on the cribriform plate…” I think I had noticed him in the lab before, but had never spoken with him, so hadn’t realized that he had this sense of humor that worked well with mine. Of course, as Marshall, I wouldn’t have giggled. Definitely not.

We managed to get through the lab with a few minutes to spare, and checked out with the lab TA a bit early. As we were leaving he suddenly asked, “Do you have plans for the weekend?”

I looked at him sharply, but he seemed to be pretty casual – at least he didn’t act as though he was hitting on me. I told myself that Marsha probably would have mentioned it to Lee Ann if the two of them had been flirting, and answered neutrally, “My roommate and I are going to be hanging out.”

“Ok, that’s cool,” he answered, which didn’t really answer my question. Maybe I was just being paranoid; I was so averse to any hint of actual flirtation with boys that I was probably seeing it where it didn’t exist. On the other hand, I had already decided that Marsha was attractive enough that it would be more than reasonable for somebody to come on to me; I was going to have to figure out a good way to deflect advances. Eventually, they were certainly going to come.