Everybody has lost their minds, I think, as I enter the mall. Cool air hits me as I pass through the revolving glass door, rippling across my skin. It’s a brief moment of bliss as the pressing heat of the parking lot outside falls away.
Sinéad texted me that she and the girls are already waiting for me inside. Who ‘the girls’ are, I don’t know, and it honestly scares me that she could be talking about any number of people. The thought of having only her and Anita there with me is scary enough. But what if it’s, like, six of them? Is there an amount of people at which it would get easier, because they’d distract themselves and I could just be a part of the crowd?
I don’t have the time to reach a definite conclusion, because I see Sinéad waving at me from down the broad, marble-floored corridor. She’s standing by one of the columns that line the corridor, wearing shorts and a crop top, hair held up by a golden clasp in an artfully messy bun. Her left wrist is lined with a whole assortment of bands in different colors, and she has a pair of sunglasses pushed back into her hair, looking like an accessory more than actual glasses.
There are two other girls with her. Anita and Leslie. Anita with the gorgeous, green eyes, and Leslie with the auburn hair that somehow always looks perfect, no matter the weather.
There’s a twinge in my stomach. Am I really going to let these girls drag me through the stores around here and put clothes on me? What reason do they even have to do this?
I look around, trying hard to hide my suspicion. But none of the boys I expect to be hanging around like hyenas are here. It’s early noon on a Saturday, other people from our year probably won’t arrive for a few hours, if at all. I heard there’s something happening at one of the lakes outside of town. At least one upside to this whole shopping ordeal: I get to cop out of going swimming with the rest of my year.
“Hi, Max!” Sinéad says, and I can’t help but notice that she does not offer a hug. Is that because of me? “I hope it’s okay we brought Leslie, too. Thought this would give you the best balance between different opinions on style and not too many people following you around like paparazzi.”
Yeah, right. I can’t help the low snort that escapes me at the image. Sinéad hesitates for a split second, but then goes on. “So, do you have any preference for what you’d like to try?”
I do, of course. I spent the last three days mentally going through my shopping list. I already have five different outfits in my mind, built from pretty basic pieces, stuff that almost every store will have. But I can’t seem like I actually know what I’m doing. That’ll be the biggest challenge today, somehow hiding my true thoughts and feelings about all this. The tentative excitement and the fear that Henry will turn out to have been wrong.
“No?” I say, the slight indignation coming out perfectly in my voice. Sinéad gives a nod like she expected exactly that reaction.
“Okay, so we thought we should probably start, like, simple?”
“What does that constitute?”
She giggles. “Dresses. Probably the easiest way to make you look like a girl.”
“And after that?” I ask, as if I was confused about the point of even continuing shopping after that.
“Skirts, tops, shorts, blouses, whatever we find. I’m sure we’ll find plenty of stuff that’ll look great on you.”
“Uh, okay.” That’s the part I look forward to the most. Putting together the outfits. Not that I’ll be doing that physically, but I’ll have plenty of time to look at clothes and gather inspiration for my shopping list.
“Hi!” Anita says as we start walking towards the first store. “I hope we’re not taking up too much of your study time.” She gives me an apologetic smile that sends a jolt through me. I wish my smiles could look like that.
“Aren’t I taking up your study time as well?” It’s such a weird prospect that all three of these girls, stars of our year, took the time to play dress-up with me of all people.
Her shrug is fascinatingly choreographed. “I mean, we’ll be able to do some shopping of our own simultaneously, and it’ll be a fun hangout.”
Sinéad leads us to the women’s section of the store like she owns the place. As if on a mission, she starts sorting through the first row of hangers with dresses. These ones are white skater dresses. And even though they’re nothing super special, the sight of them, mixed with the prospect of what’s about to happen, makes my stomach queasy. This’ll be the first time I ever wear a dress.
Sinéad turns back around to me with a movement so sudden that I flinch. Her eyes squint a little as she scrutinizes me.
“Oh my God, this dress would look amazing with braided pigtails,” she says, pulling out one of the dresses.
I take them, watching her closely, waiting. Pigtails would make me look like a child, most of all. I’ve tried the look before, one of the few times when I was sure neither Drew nor Mum could possibly walk in on me braiding my hair. I wanted to get good at it before I left for uni, and by now I’m at least passable, I guess. But it would make me look so young.
Is she going to try to ‘bully’ me into looking like a middle-school girl for the day? That’d be sure to get plenty of laughs from the rest of our year.
“It’d make him look like a child,” Anita points out from the other side of the clothes rack, sorting through an assortment of skirts. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, with how young he looks already?” This story is hosted at g.com.
I almost frown in confusion. Wouldn’t they have planned this?
Sinéad scrunches her nose. “Fair. I mean, it’d look super cute, but probably not what we’re going for today. My bad.” Meeting my gaze, she hesitates. “What do you think of these dresses?” she asks, her fingers still holding onto the fabric of one of the dresses on the rack to her left.
“Iono,” I say vaguely, glancing at the dresses I’m holding. “They’re dresses?”
“Okay, would you like to go try them on, then?” She motions jerkily with both hands at the fitting rooms somewhere behind her. “We’ll be with you in a minute, probably with more clothes.”
“Okay…”
My heart is beating to my throat as I brush past her, paying close attention that I don’t grip the dresses too tightly. She could see from behind, after all. As I get out of earshot, I hear Sinéad say something to Anita that is too low for me to make out the words.
Does that mean she wasn’t out to embarrass me? I wonder as I pull the curtain closed behind me, staring at myself in the mirror. A tomboyish, flat-chested girl reflects back, scrutinizing herself with a frown, holding onto the two dresses like somebody could take them away from her.
Is it stupid of me to hope that maybe Sinéad just hadn’t thought ahead far enough to anticipate how making me look so young might not be a good idea?
With a shake of my head, I put the dresses on the hook next to the mirror and take off my T-shirt and shorts. The body that is revealed underneath is lithe, with just enough softness to not look unhealthy.
The tuck I’m wearing hides my genitals almost completely. The underpants look almost out of place on my body. I’ll have to keep them from putting me into anything that’s too tight, just so they won’t start to suspect, but that’s worth the comfort of knowing there’s no way anything might show through too flimsy fabric.
My fingers shiver as I take the first dress off the hanger. It’s a small. The zipper is in the back – the dress has a high neckline, which would make it easier to hide whatever Sinéad will come up with to give me boobs. It’ll also make warm, though, if the weather keeps up.
The fabric of the dress is a little stiff, thicker than I would anticipate for summer dresses. It rests snugly against my belly and lower chest as I pull up the zipper, but stays loose around the chest, as was to be expected. When I turn back around to the mirror, I no longer meet the frown of a tomboy, but the piercing gaze of a girl in a white dress. I can see it with perfect clarity, the girl I could become with a little more effort. If I slicked back my hair into a high ponytail, if I shaved what little leg hair I have… It would give me an almost intimidating kind of beauty.
There’s a knock at the wooden wall next to the curtain. “Are you in there, Max?” Sinéad asks brightly and I nod, only to pull open the curtain when I realize that she can’t see.
Sinéad is turned away from me when I see her, gesturing at somebody to my left, probably one of the girls. When she turns to face me, her eyes widen.
“Oh my God!”
My face heats, even as butterflies dance in my stomach. “What?”
Sinéad’s about to reply, when Anita and Lizzie come into view, both of them stifling gasps. Right then, it’s really hard to keep myself grinning. The gratification of seeing their reactions runs to the very core of my being.
“What?” I ask again, trying to mask my giddiness
“Respectfully, you look amazing,” Sinéad says, completely seriously. The others nod.
I turn back around to look at myself in the mirror. They think I’m pretty. My thoughts are completely hung up on that realization. And it’s not even that they hadn’t told me before, but up until this moment… I hadn’t believed it.
Can I allow myself to react outwardly with something other than indignation or shame? What will it change about their perception of this boy if he doesn’t mind looking good as a woman? Isn’t that a kind of confidence?
Fuck it, I decide. I don’t want to smother this high. I cannot smother this high.
“‘Kind of’ is an understatement.” Sinéad turns me back around by my shoulders, the next dress already in her hands. “Honestly I am very tempted to just leave you in this, buuuut it’s probably a little too fancy? Or do you want to be fancy?”
“I don’t think so?”
“That’s what I thought. Okay, here’s the next one. Oh, and could you take out your hair tie?”
I do as she asks, putting on the new dress before taking out the thin hair tie I use because I never had the courage to buy a scrunchy. This dress is less formal than the white one. It’s a lot lighter, the fabric of a light blue with a yellow and white floral pattern. It looks a lot more down-to-earth than the previous one, and also falls down my torso in a way that doesn’t make it immediately obvious that I don’t have any breasts.
When I open the curtain again, the others are already waiting with new clothes. Sinéad starts handing me a cardigan and a whole fistful of necklaces, before Anita points out that it will very likely be too warm to layer much.
“I think we can do much better than dresses, to be fair,” she points out when Sinéad reluctantly agrees with her objection. “I think long skirts and crop tops would look best.”
So that’s what we get to next. They have me try a whole assortment of skirt-and-top combinations, even giving me different sunglasses, necklaces, and headscarves to wear. The outfits they put together are absolutely gorgeous, and I make sure to take pictures every time I close the curtain, saving them to a hidden folder where nobody will be able to find them. I hadn’t even been aware of how great maxi skirts looked on me; I’d always dreamed of knee-length ones or miniskirts. But Anita was clearly onto something with them.
It is hard not to throw all caution to the wind at their continued enthusiasm. Once they realize I’ve stopped scowling at every skirt, they get excited over each new outfit they bring — even trying to teach me a few poses to show off the clothes. In spite of myself, I relax. Not completely, but enough to let myself smile and laugh with them and occasionally voice a vague preference regarding an outfit.
At some point, Leslie appears next to Sinéad, a little out of breath, and tells us that there’s a skirt that would go absolutely amazingly with the plain, black crop top and the burgundy bandana I’m currently wearing in my hair. So we switch stores, and work through the whole assortment there as well. They don’t leave it at just skirts and dresses, though. They hand me shorts and blouses and at some point even high-rising jeans that hug my waist absolutely amazingly.
I hadn’t expected them to be particularly enthusiastic about outfits that don’t include a skirt in some shape or form, but it turns out they love those just as much.
“You’ve got a great body for shorts,” Leslie explains at some point. “Long, thin legs. A snatched waist on top of all that — honestly, model agencies would be drooling over you, what are we even doing here?”
And then I come out of the dressing room and Sinéad doesn’t have any new clothes for me. Instead, she says, “We’re going to get some lunch, and then afterwards you can make your decision about which outfit you wanna take home.”
We sit in a bakery, where each of us gets a sandwich and some variation of an iced coffee. I hadn’t even realized how hungry I was until the sandwich was sitting in front of me, my stomach growling.
As Anita asks Leslie for advice on a jeans jacket she’s considering getting, Sinéad turns to me.
“So, Max,” she drawls, having just swallowed the first bite of her sandwich, “I hope you’re having at least a fraction of the fun we’re having with this?”
Considering my reply, I wipe mayonnaise from my lips with a napkin. “It’s nicer than I expected?” I offer after a moment.
“Tempted to start wearing skirts full time, yet?”
I snort. “Oh, absolutely. Nothing I would like to do more.” If only she knew how spot on she was. Ha!
“I was honestly a little worried at first that I was, like, bullying you into something you didn’t wanna do.” She doesn’t say it like a question. It’s a statement, and she leaves it to me whether I want to reply.
I chew thoughtfully before swallowing the first half of the food and raising my left hand in front of my mouth to say, “I mean, I was a little scared at first? I don’t really know any of you, after all.”
“Oh.” She stills, considering, then her eyes grow wide. “OH!”
She hastily puts down her sandwich, wiping her fingers on a napkin before offering her hand to me in a closed fist, only her pinky extended. I frown at her, but she only motions for me to link fingers already, so I do.
“Max,” she says, locking her gaze with mine, speaking slowly and deliberately, “I promise that nothing that happens here today will reach the ears of anybody else from our year, or anybody else for that matter. All they will ever know is that we went shopping and the rest doesn’t concern them, okay? I know, we’re friends and all that, but this is a safe space. We don’t do any of this ‘embarrassing others’ bullshit.”