Chapter 6: (SIX) You Will Find Clothes That Fit

14:45 24 May

Everything was pretty confusing for a minute, but I finally figured out up and down and realized I was 1. Soaked through, 2. Underneath Kelly, 3. On someone’s lawn on top of the remains of a raised plastic pool, and 4. On the other side of a tall white concrete fence, which Bailey was just scrambling over with her backpack. I was glad all our music was in there instead of, say, my pockets.

She dropped to the ground and ran toward us as Kelly sat up.

“Ohmygod, are you guys alright?”

“I, I think I’m okay,” Kelly said, kind of dazedly.

“Ow,” I offered. I apparently broke her fall, but I didn’t hurt nearly as much as I should have. Except my leg. What was- Ah.

“Ow,” I reiterated, looking away from the blood for a moment. Bailey skidded to a halt next to us on her knees.

“Jay! You’re bleeding!”

“EhhhI’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean ‘you’ll be fine’?” Kelly said, kinda panicked.

“We don’t have money for a hospital visit and I don’t feel like fainting, so, I’ll be fine. ‘sides, leg wounds aren’t that bad, they just bleed a lot.”

“That’s head wounds!”

I’ve had so many concussions, it’s hard to remember. No, wait, that was high school football.

“Um.” I took a closer look; I had a long bloody scrape up my shin from a bit above the ankle almost to my knee, but I didn’t see any bone. I wiggled my foot a little. It kinda hurt, but I thought it would probably hurt worse if it was broken.

“Wack,” I said, probably over-casually. I’ve always kinda gotten calm in serious situations. It’s just a thing, I guess. Everyone else is panicking and I can finally relax and take it one step at a time.

“What?”

“Um, nevermind. This kinda hurts.” I found my hoodie and wrung it out a little. “Bay, can you help me with this? Kelly, see if anyone’s home?”

“Uh, yep, right, okay.” Bailey helped me wrap my hoodie tight around my lower leg to keep pressure on, prodding the bone gently to make sure nothing was broken.

While we were doing that, Kelly left my range of vision and I heard knocking on glass. A moment after we finished, a sliding door opened behind us and I turned as Bailey helped me stand.

“Kelly? Oh my, what’s happened?”

The homeowner was an older woman, maybe in her mid-sixties, kind of old-person spry with greying hair in a ponytail. She looks vaguely familiar…

“Mrs. Brown, thank goodness!”

Oh! Our elementary school nurse! Well, that’s convenient. I was glad I was sane, or insane, enough to make sarcastic observations on life. It meant my mental systems were more or less operational. Or I’d watched too much Daria. Could be either really.

“We got chased by a moose,” I said. “Little accident on our bikes. Sorry about your pool.”

“Oh shit, our bikes!” Bailey blurted.

###

As it turned out, Mrs. Brown was the wife of Principal Brown, and lived right across the street from Kelly’s house, so once Mrs. Brown had helped clean out my gash and bandage it up (lots of gauze and an ace bandage, mostly), she let us drip through her downstairs to head for Kelly’s. While she did that, Kelly had climbed back over the fence, after checking for moose, and walked our bikes around to meet us. Mine wasn’t in great shape – the front wheel was twisted to heck – but at least it hadn’t gotten trampled. Bailey served as my crutch while I squelched down Mrs. Brown’s driveway and across to Kelly’s.

She had a gate. Honest-to-god, wrought-iron gate in a wall. She had to tap a code in on a keypad before it would open, then we walked like thirty yards up her driveway to the front door – most of which time Bailey and I spent having a discussion consisting largely of shock and eyebrow movements, which Bailey lost.

“Sooo… you’re loaded,” Bailey noted dryly.

“A bit.” Kelly said, blushing, as she pulled out her key.

“Cool beans.”

I took stock of myself as we stood on the tile just inside Kelly’s front door.

“These clothes are getting uncomfortable,” I mentioned, peeling my shirt away from where it was stuck to my chest, again. My shorts were chafing in uncomfortable places, and my hoodie was damp and bloody.

“Ugh, tell me about it,” Kelly said. “I think I’m gonna have a rash if I don’t get changed soon. I could lend you something?”

Hmm. Girls’ clothes, or this? Not much of a dilemma. ‘sides, clothes are clothes, right?

“Please! But no skirts.”

“Well, duh.”

Kelly ran upstairs and was back a few minutes later in sweats and a loose shirt, with her wet clothes under one arm and dry clothes under the other.

“Here you go, you can get changed in the bathroom and I’ll toss our stuff in the wash.”

“Thanks K, you’re a saint.”

“Kay?” She grinned at me and raised an eyebrow.

Bailey snerked.

“I swear I didn’t even realize? Haha, Jay, Bay, and Kay!” I shook my head. “Hadn’t even noticed. That’s great. I may also be delirious with blood loss, but probably not. Whatever.” I waved off the attempted and somewhat flat joke. I was actually a little dizzy. I’m sure I’ll be fine. “Where’s your bathroom?”

Kelly pointed it out down the hall, so I ducked in and was quickly dressed like her twin. My underwear was still a bit damp but I wasn’t exactly going to ask to borrow hers. Who borrows underwear? That’s gross. I’ll just suffer a little. I was still in a bit of pain anyway, which ought to help distract me.

I frowned at myself in the mirror for a moment. In her grey sweats and black t-shirt, I did look distinctly non-male. I was weirdly fine with that, actually. But then, it would be worse to be dressed in girls’ clothes and still look like a guy, wouldn’t it?

I made a couple faces at myself in the mirror, shrugged, and opened the door. Bailey and Kelly were in the laundry room across the hall, so I grabbed my clothes and joined them. Most of our clothes went in the washer straight away (after Bailey reminded me to take my phone out, which thankfully still worked), and she held up my hoodie, which was covered in bloodstains.

“This’ll take a little more work. Can you fill that sink over there with cold water?”

“Sure.” I went to the laundry sink off to the side and turned the water on. “Hey, why do you know how to get blood out of-” Duh, Jack! “-no, wait, I’m being stupid, sorry.”

Once everything was more or less self-governing, Kelly led us upstairs to her bedroom. It was wood-paneled to half height, and wallpapered above that, with really fluffy cream carpet and a window seat in a bay window. It was also like twice the size of my room and a bit jealousy-inducing.

She had a record player and a stereo, so we had all the systems we needed to play the stuff we got.

She got a notebook out of her desk and we all sat down on her floor and got to work.

###

17:20 24 May

I sat back with a sigh, looking at our notes.

“Okay, so that’s that, assuming you guys think I can sing in that style?”

“Oh, definitely,” Bailey said, nodding.

“Honestly Jack you kinda sound like a teenybopper Joan Jett.”

I sort of stared at Kelly for a moment. “I. I really don’t know how to take that.”

“As a compliment?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well okay duh, Joan Jett’s awesome.”

“Now we just need a name.”

That shut us all up for a bit while we thought.

I’ve got it!

“Love you like a sister always,” I sang, “Soul sister, rebel girl,” pointing at Bailey and Kelly. I stopped and swung my hands out, wiggling my eyebrows. “That’s it! Band name.”

“Soul Sister, Rebel Girl?”

“Yeah!”

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“Hmm… I like it. It still needs something, though, I think. I don’t know what.”

“It kinda sounds like there’s just two people,” Kelly said, cocking her head. She thought for a second, then stared at me for just-short-of an uncomfortably long moment before pounding a fist into her palm. “Ooh! Okay, so we’re dipping in a bit of New Wave stuff, right, with the whole synth and stuff? And that got me thinking about synth-pop and the New Romantics, and those folks were all about the gender blurriness. It’ll take some dressing up, but what about… Rebel Grrl and the Soul Sisters?” Kelly put a growly emphasis on ‘grrl’ and pointed at me, then indicated Bailey and herself as the ‘soul sisters’. We gaped at her for a moment.

“…I think a choir of angels just sang a harmony on reverb,” Bailey whispered.

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. “That’s… perfect.” Something about the name and the way she’d introduced it was niggling at me slightly, but it was such a stroke of genius I had to admit to not paying a whole lot of attention to the rest of what she said.

With no sense of dramatic timing whatsoever, Kelly’s cell rang. She answered.

“Yello? ... Yeah, with a couple of friends. ... In my room.”

She held a hand over the pickup. “You guys wanna stay for dinner, get pizza?”

Bailey and I traded a glance and a shrug.

“Let’s call our folks?”

“Yeah, def.”

Kelly went back to her phone. “They’re gonna check with their parents, we’ll let you know in a minute. ... Okay Mom. ... Okay, bye.”

We checked with our parents quickly and received affirmatives, so we headed downstairs and hung a left, past the dining room (very fancy table in dark wood, a dozen matching chairs) and into the kitchen, which was pretty modern, all white and silver with dark marble countertops. Leaning against the kitchen island was a woman probably in her late thirties, Mediterranean-looking with the same black hair and olive skin that Kelly had.

“Hi, Mom!” Kelly chirped. “We’re forming a band!”

Formulating something, I cleared my throat as she turned to look at us, and then propped my left hand jauntily on my hip. “That’s right! We’re Jay, Bay, and Kay,” I said, pointing to Bailey and Kelly in turn, “and we’re Rebel Grrl and the Soul Sisters!” Wait, hang on a second-

“And you’re watching Disney Channel!” Bailey interjected, and all three of us broke up laughing. When I could breathe evenly again I saw Kelly’s mom watching us with that parental smile.

“So, are you both staying for pizza?”

“Yes, please!” Bailey and I said together, then ‘Jinx’ed at each other until Kelly put her hands over our mouths.

“Are you two always like this?”

Bailey nodded, and I felt that I’m here and this is real warmth in my chest again, because yeah, we were always like this, but at the same time it still sorta felt like it’d been a long time for me.

We hashed out what kind of pizzas we were ordering, then trooped back upstairs while Mrs. Whatever-Kelly’s-last-name-was-I-should-really-ask called the pizza place, leaving Kelly’s door open. As soon as we got back to Kelly’s room, she put her hands on her hips and looked at Bailey and I sternly. I had a flash of the football coach before a game and shuddered.

“Okay, we’ve got a band name, we’ve got a music style, but what about our look?”

That I could do. “I’ve got this picture of like… combat boots, ripped jeans, and like, a sleeveless Ramones tee.”

Bailey grinned. “And then we can, like, mix up the bright New Romantic kinda makeup and the black-eyeshadow-Joan Jett look. Sorta like a post-punk riot grrl grungy new wave vibe.”

“Ooh, that sounds awesome.” Kelly rubbed her hands together. “This is gonna be so cool. We’ll definitely need to go shopping, especially for Jay. Wednesday, maybe.”

“Wait, 'especially' for me?”

“Well, yeah? I mean… ‘Rebel Grrl’ and the Soul Sisters. We’re, like, a girl band, we gotta match.”

Oh, that’s what was niggling at me! Yes. Right. A band name entirely reliant upon the idea of me crossdressing.

Hmm. Well… I mean, I already am, aren’t I? And I haven’t died of girlness-overdose or anything.

And like, Kurt Cobain wore dresses and stuff sometimes. I’m gonna be in jeans and stuff. Like I said earlier, clothes are clothes, right?

I wasn’t totally sure – something about the whole thing was still making me a bit uneasy or anxious or something – but I shrugged.

“What the heck. Sure.”

Kelly cocked her head. “Maybe we should do something fun with our hair, too. Like Cyndi Lauper, or Jem and the Holograms.”

Bailey frowned. “What, like, dyeing it? I dunno…”

“I think you’d look good with dyed hair!” I protested.

“Maybe. I just don’t want people to, to think I’m…”

“A lesbian? And what’s wrong with being gay?” I felt a bit bad about saying it to her all defensive like that, like I was being mean what with my insider knowledge, but she needed to know I was safe. I needed her to know I was safe.

“N-nothing!” she said, blushing wildly with some very defensive hand-waving. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with, um, anyone… um, being like that.”

Kelly looked about equally nervous, which twigged something to me, possibly a ping on my gaydar. The two of them had remarkably similar reactions to the whole subject, anyway, though I don’t think either of them noticed.

Wait. Are… are all of my friends lesbians? Why are all my friends lesbians? Is that weird?

I mean, I guess I’ve heard gay people tend to find each other, but does that make me like, the token straight guy?

I coughed, to break up the very awkward staring contest the girls were having.

“Well, anyway, it’s not like we have to, but it’s another idea.”

We tossed a couple more ideas back and forth, and then we were interrupted by Kelly’s mom yelling from downstairs.

“Hey girls, come down and wash up for pizza!”

“Eh?” I looked at Kelly, and then Bailey. They shrugged, which was immensely unhelpful. Oh well. “Didn’t I introduce us?”

“Maybe she just forgot?”

“I mean, he is wearing my clothes,” Kelly pointed out. “Speaking of which, we better start the dryer.”

“Oh yeah, should we like… explain stuff to your mom?” Bailey asked as we started downstairs. “Y’know, with the moose?”

Kelly winced. “Are you kidding? She’d never let me bike anywhere again! I just hope Mrs. Brown doesn’t bring it up.”

###

19:17 24 May

After chowing down on delicious, delicious pizza, I changed back into my own clothes and Kelly’s mom drove Bailey and I home, since I had essentially become lamentably bikeless. (I wasn’t sure if Kelly’s mom didn’t notice my bandaged leg, or refrained from bringing it up, though neither option seemed especially mom-like.) We hopped out in my driveway and waved goodbye.

Bailey paused as she straddled her bike. “Wait, did you ever tell her you were a boy?”

“I mean… it’s not that important.”

She frowned. “Were you catastrophizing again?”

“I was wearing her daughter’s clothes!” I protested. “That conversation would be like, Wendy’s Guy awkward times ten!”

“So yes.”

“Yes! Yes I was. It is, as you pointed out, ‘a thing I do’. I am not proud of it.” I sighed. “But I mean, if we ever get to play somewhere I’m gonna be dressed up as a girl for the band anyway, right?”

She got off her bike and put a hand on my shoulder.

“You don’t have to, you know that, right? If it makes you uncomfortable or anything…”

I shook my head. “I don’t… I don’t really mind that much, as long as you guys aren’t gonna, like, make fun of me for it.”

She hugged me. “Never ever, Jay. Never ever.”

I didn’t say the other part, ‘cause I wasn’t really sure about it myself, but…

Honestly…

I was maybe kinda curious.

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