/ Everyday Sweets #1

Soul Glimpse

by

Sophie lives for the gossip. Few things bring her more joy than just knowing things about people that they meant to keep for themselves. But after finding herself in a 'be careful what you wish for' scenario, she discovers not all that is kept for oneself is for superficial reasons.

— PrincessFélicie

 

“Oh my god… Look.” I bumped Jeremy’s arm with my elbow and pointed through the window of the burger joint. “Is that Jess and Kim holding hands?”

Jeremy steadied his cup of coke before it could spill and took a sip, his gaze following my lead. “Yeah, so?”

“I thought these two were still upset at each other over Esteban two-timing them…” I smirked and pulled out my notebook, I knew I just had to file this new development. I unpinned my teddy pencil out from its spot atop my ear and started cataloging everything about the way the two girls were acting towards one another. This cold-hot relationship had been going on ever since they’d met in middle school, constantly fighting over the same boys. Prime, juicy material, for a gossip girl like me. I had information on everyone in our class, their likes and dislikes, major incidents, beef with one another, truly, real life was the ultimate soap opera, and I was the captive audience.

Jeremy took a bite out of his burger, narrowly missing staining his hoodie’s sleeves with ketchup. He always wore them almost to the halfway point of his hands, yet somehow had become an expert at keeping them clean. More to the point, he grimaced at the sight of my notebook. “You know you’re gonna get in trouble if teachers find out you’ve been doing this, Sophie, right?” He had asked me many times before to ‘stop with that creepy business’, of course, but his advice was no match for my stubbornness.

“Like I’ll ever tell anyone else about this,” I said with a grin. “And you wouldn’t rat me out, would you?” I batted my eyelashes at him, enjoying the petulant pout puffing his cheeks that was all the defiance he could muster. For all the song and dance, he had always had a soft spot for me that I never had an issue exploiting since third grade.

“I just don’t want you to get in trouble…” he muttered weakly. 

“And I’m only gonna be seventeen once, you really want me to miss out on this prime drama era? You know how far away being a middle aged office lady is?” I filed my notebook back into my bag, switching to my phone as I waited for the food slowpoke in front of me to finish his meal.

 

It wasn’t long until we were finally en route to our afternoon mall outing’s true destination: the newly opened dollar store on the upper floor. The place was a hangar half-heartedly repainted a bright fake green and beige. We rushed for the electronics aisle and marveled at the bargain bin video games and dirt cheap flip-phones, stepped to the toy one where we found brandless camping figurines and flimsy plastic water guns, and stared at the kitchen area where gadgets with too narrow functions littered the shelves with a stainless steel sheen.

“What do you think this one’s for?” I asked Jeremy, pointing at something built like a drill, whose only hint to its usage was a cardboard tag with a fried egg on it.

He grabbed one of them by the handle, and tentatively revved it up until it spun by itself in a rickety, uneven manner. “A hand mixer, maybe?” He turned back to me and jumped back, startled. Frowning, I turned around, and found myself face to face with a goth girl with makeup as dark as her hair, who wore the cheery employee jacket over her shirt with a skull on it.

“Looking for anything, dear, valued customers?” She droned in an uninterested voice, her face struggling to muster any hint of emotion.

I shook my head. “No, not particularly, just—”

The employee interrupted me. “We have a no-window-shopping policy, this is…” she sighed, and unenthusiastically fanned her hands above her head. “This is the one place on Earth where savings never stop, but this is not a museum. Manager orders.”

Jeremy and I exchanged a glance. On the one hand, that was a weird policy. On the other, for just one dollar, we weren’t such cheapskates to the point of getting barred from entry. “We’ll find something! Don’t worry!”

“Enjoy your life-defining experience,” she muttered as she walked away.

Jeremy put the egg-whisk-drill-thing back on the shelf. “...I don’t know what to get.”

“Just grab whatever,” I said.

“Sophie…” he pleaded, a grimace on his face.

“You and your damn choice paralysis…” I grabbed his hand and we started searching.

 

We ended up grabbing little collectible toys at the checkout — they came in these palm-sized orange mystery boxes.

“‘Know your future with the Fortune Folks!’,” Jeremy read off the packaging as we walked out the mall. “So some sort of… collectible figurines, fortune cookie hybrid?”

“Seems so,” I muttered. Honestly the reason why I had made us buy these was because the gimmick intrigued me. I ripped the top of the box open and pulled out my prize. Inside a clear plastic bag was an eyeball with limbs and a red ribbon at the top of its… Is it still a head if it accounts for the entire body? There was also a little bit of paper rolled up inside.

Jeremy opened his to find a schoolgirl in uniform with a multicolor prism for a head.

I pulled open the plastic bag, grabbed out the eyeball and its paper, and unrolled the latter. “‘Miss Peeping Tamara’,” I read aloud, stifling a giggle. “‘Tamara sees everything, and she wouldn’t want it any other way! But by attaching so much importance to how things look, she often misses how things are on the inside. Poor Tamara!’ Kind of preachy if you ask me,” I commented. “What’s yours?”

Jeremy unfurled his own fortune, and a frown quickly appeared on his face. “‘Misses Raina, Gaby and Beatrice… It was always noisy inside of Sam’s head, struggling to know how to feel and what to say, like everything wanted to speak at once. That was until Sam had the brilliant idea to split into three, to keep each voice distinct and organized. Raina, Gaby and Beatrice couldn’t be happier!’” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking pensive. “I’m… not sure what to make of that.”

“It’s fortune, Jeremy, it’s designed to be generic nonsense that could mean anything.” I shoved his shoulder, stuffing my fortune buddy in my pocket. “Don’t stress it out, man.”

Jeremy opened his mouth to argue, but let out a sigh instead. “I guess that’s sensible, yeah. It’s just a toy…” He stared at his, a bit mesmerized, before putting it away as well.

 

We hung out together for a bit longer before heading our separate ways. You know, late afternoon, go back home, do homework, supper with the family, boring stuff. Mom came back from work a bit late, Dad was working the kitchen and made a great veggie soup, I lied that I’d done all my homework, back to my room, chat up on the computer with my online buddies until it’s like… way too late, change to pajamas, and lie down for a short night after a well spent day!

Well spent?

Hmm. I thought about that for a minute. It had been pretty boring, actually. The new store was nowhere as interesting as I thought it would be. What would it take for an amusement park to be built around here? Or anything entertaining at all, for that matter? I realized, maybe a little late, that a whole planned trip to a store was really digging for scraps in terms of entertainment value.

At least I still had my gossip notebook. I pulled that out and started reading it again, reliving the memory of discovering the most juicy bits. Knowing things about people that they don’t know you know, oh, there’s something about that that’s exciting. Like Jess and Kim! The two girls, constantly bickering and publicly making an enemy of one another, just holding hands like good friends? I knew their hate relationship was just an act, something about it always smelled fishy. But to think they were friends, and planning this out on their off time? They must’ve loved the drama life. But as much as they loved the spotlight, I couldn’t relate. My fantasy was to be the one directing that spotlight.

I suddenly remembered the little toy in my bag, pulled it out —leaving its accompanying little pamphlet in— and held it above my head between the tips of my fingers. “Must be interesting to see everything, eh Tamara?” I said, chuckling to myself.

And then the toy slipped from my fingers and crashed right onto my forehead. I reflexively closed my eyes and recoiled. “Ow.” Frowning at my clumsiness, I tried to grab the eyeball again, only to find it wasn’t on my head anymore. Had it tumbled off? I sat up and looked around for a bit, unable to find it anywhere — even with the help of my phone’s flashlight. 

Slightly confused, but in the end mostly disinterested, I shrugged it off and went to sleep. I could always find it in the morning.

⋆⋆

I grumbled under my bed sheets as my eyes pried themselves open long enough for me to lose the blissful unawareness that I had woken up. Having squeezed out every last minute of shuteye I could’ve gotten, I stretched and got out of bed. After brushing my hair and switching out of my pajamas, I descended to the kitchen for breakfast.

I was the first one awake, it seemed. I turned on the coffeemaker and threw in enough grounded beans for three cups, then patiently waited for the jug to fill, idly catching up with my friends from the other side of the globe.

When a miniature version of the armored hero from that shooty game my little brother plays all the time waltzed into the kitchen, I rolled my eyes. “Halloween was a month ago, Ethan.”

“What are you talking about?” he replied, grabbing his box of cereal off the shelf.

I gestured vaguely in his direction, uninterested in playing along.

“Yeah, well, you look ugly too, so there. You look like a witch, with a big zit on your big nose!” he elaborated, sitting in front of me and dumping a load of his cereals into a bowl.

Well, whatever. Mom would get him to change before going to school. I resumed ignoring him and went to fetch my cup of coffee.

Speaking of, my Mom was next to come in. “Morning Sophie!” She kissed my cheek as she passed by. “Morning Ethan!” She ruffled his helmet as if nothing was wrong. She walked back towards me, getting in line to grab her own cup, and that’s when I noticed… 

Well, it was little things, really. She looked the same as always, but, maybe her hair was just a bit brighter, she had a few less wrinkles. “Dang mom, your makeup game is on point this morning.”

She shone brightly, smiling. “Oh why thank you! I’m not wearing any but, thank you!” I paused for a second, confused. She gently pushed me aside to get to the coffee pot. “But if this is about getting that new phone, flattery won’t get you anywhere, you know the deal.”

“Uh… O-kay…” I muttered, before shaking it off. “No, I genuinely thought — like, you look good this morning, Mom. Unusually good.”

“Well now you could’ve kept those last two words to yourself,” she replied as she sat down next to Ethan. Ethan, who was still in his costume.

I sat back in my chair and looked back and forth between the two of them. “Are… you not gonna tell him anything?”

Mom looked up at me, and then turned to Ethan. She looked a bit puzzled, like she wasn’t seeing anything particularly wrong. “Are you hiding your report card from me again?”

Ethan looked properly offended, for someone whose face was obscured by a completely opaque visor. “What? No! Sophie’s making sh— stuff up! I have no idea what she’s talking about!”

“Really?” I looked at both of them confusedly. “Are you both telling me you’re not seeing anything?” I leaned forward and knocked on Ethan’s metal helmet.

“Ow!” He recoiled back, holding his head. I completely reversed course, throwing myself back into my chair.

“Sophie…” Mom’s eyes grew a few sizes, warning me of an impending scolding.

“Uh… S… Sorry, I guess I must uh, not be fully awake quite yet,” I offered as an excuse. Mom kept her gaze on me for a moment. “Sorry, Ethan.”

“...S’whatever,” he grumbled back, planting his spoon into his bowl. 

Mom slowly sipped her cup as I let mine cool in my hands, honestly shocked into silence. I stared at my reddened knuckles for a moment as some thought worked itself out at the back of my mind. If this was a costume helmet, shouldn’t it be made of plastic…?

“Starting off early today, are we?” An unfamiliar feminine voice rang behind me. I turned my head to see a woman about mom’s age hang awkwardly by the door, tapping the frame of her glasses in a recognizably familiar gesture. The mystery woman walked toward mom and planted a kiss on her lips. “Morning sweetpie.”

“DAD!?” I shouted, my mouth hanging wide open.

“I thought you’d outgrown looking disgusted at your parents kissing when you were six, Sophie,” Dad smirked, tenderly hugging Mom from behind.

“No, Dad, you’re… You’re a woman?”

I could hear Ethan’s spoon drop, followed by a pin.

Dad started going very pale. He unwrapped himself from around Mom and took a step back. Mom looked very concerned as he started to speak in a meek voice. “I… I need to go.” He walked out without further warning, turning back upstairs.

Mom turned in her chair to watch the woman leave, then gave me a puzzled look. “Sophie, is everything alright? Is your eyesight going blurry?” She placed her hand on my forehead to check for my temperature, but finding nothing unusual, turned her head back towards the door and got up. “Urrrgh. John! John my darling, come back!” She followed after him, leaving us kids behind.

Awkwardly, I left my cup on the table and went to my room to grab my bag. I was going to go to school on foot before I made things any weirder.

⋆⋆⋆

On this cold winter day, my first conclusion was that whatever eerie world I had landed in was no longer my own. I had walked to the tramway station and gotten on like any other day, but intermingled amongst the more human passengers were all kinds of new creatures. Werewolves, vampires, robots and elves, hooves, tails, extra limbs, a surprising amount of dyed hair, no one batting any eye to any of it all but me. They hardly were anywhere close to outnumbering the humans, yet they were more than numerous to warrant a glance or two. It was as if I was the only one noticing anything different; hence my belief that I had somehow been thrown into a world where this was the norm.

Yet when I had poked my internet friends about it, none of them had any idea what I was talking about. You’d have assumed if whatever attitude made it cavalier to talk about people’s appearances in public, it wouldn’t carry over to the digital space. Surely, if any of my friends suddenly had actual horns or something, someone would have complimented them on it, but… nothing. So either only a specific area around me had changed, or that was still the same world, my world, yet for some reason… I was just seeing things that weren’t there.

I walked into the school’s front gate gandering at the variety of people around me. Those who noticed me staring gave me a side-eye or turned their backs to me, but I just couldn’t help it! This was beyond anything I had ever encountered, and more than my curiosity could handle! Having noticed Jeremy’s absence, I had shot him a message, but wasn’t receiving any reply.

In my daze, I accidentally bumped into someone, almost dropping my phone. “Ow!” I let out. I rubbed my nose and opened my eyes.

I hadn’t run into someone. I had run into someone’s wings, spread open wide. The someone was Lucas, another classmate of mine, who looked over his shoulder confused. He turned his gaze to me, then to his back. His wings folded back into a resting state. “Sophie…?” He greeted, seeming lost himself.

“Hi, y-yes, good morning to you too! Nice, uh… Nice talking to you, nice… nice wings,” I let slip out before slamming my hand over my mouth.

Lucas grew pale.

“No, no no no, I mean it! They’re looking… great!” I offered a toothy smile and a thumbs up. My hobby already had earned me a poor reputation, the last thing I wanted was to make it worse. “Like, what are they, dove feathers?”

He blushed, lightly tapping at his back. I… think… he was trying to get a feel for them? “I never thought that deeply about it. They’re just… white. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“My lips are sealed!” I promised, zipping them up with a gesture of the hand.

“Thank you.” He resumed walking, touching his back with one of his hands.

I ripped my notebook out of my bag and began frantically flipping pages. Lucas, calm, reserved, likes birds… ‘has wings???’ I added in with my pencil.

 

I started nervously checking my phone waiting for anything from Jeremy, to no avail. Everyone around me looked so strange, when not outright unrecognizable. Again, for some it was in the little details — no more acne, no more braces, no more glasses — but others looked nothing like they did before — complete wardrobe changes, overnight excellence at makeup, outright non-human features at times. I even saw someone change hairstyles before my eyes. Some of the other teens were… I don’t know how to describe it. They were just foggy. Foggy faces, foggy clothes, foggy hair.

I was walking down one of the corridors to my first classroom, my eyes staring down at my phone, when two pairs of footsteps rushed ahead and stopped right in front of me. I looked up to find Jess and Kim blocking my path, their arms crossed and a scowl on their faces.

“‘Sup you asshole,” Jess started.

They looked the same as ever as far as I could tell. Maybe the white shirts they were wearing were a bit uncharacteristic, but I had more pressing matters getting my attention. “I’m sorry, I’m kind of busy.”

They refused to budge. “We saw you gawking at us yesterday,” Kim said, “and writing in that book of yours.”

At that point, I resigned myself to giving up and listening to whatever mean rant they were about to howl over my hobby. That usually worked best at keeping things short. Kim shot me a glance, uncrossing her arms. It revealed a plain red text that was hidden behind them before, accompanied with an arrow pointing straight to Jess, it read ‘I desperately wish people knew she’s my…’ “girlfriend!?” I read aloud, taken aback.

Jess’s eyes grew threefold, her own arms limping to her sides. ‘Not your Token Gay Acquaintance’, her matching shirt read. “How did you…!?”

Kim shot her hands to her mouth in surprise. “I thought you’d got the wrong idea!”

I had, but they didn’t really need to know that. “If you want people to know, I can just, y’know…”

“And be the only out gays in school?” Jess complained. “Yeah, sure.”

“I’m bi,” I kind of offered nonplussed, to her surprise. “I don’t really keep secrets about myself unless I need to.”

Kim shook her head, a sympathetic smile on her face. “Look, I appreciate the offer, I really do, but it’s the kind of stuff we gotta tell people ourselves, okay? But… it’s cool that you’re cool with it.” She sighed in relief. “It does feel nice to know someone knows, I guess…”

I smiled at them, happy to hear I had helped a bit with the worries on their mind, when my phone finally rang with a welcome message from Jeremy. Then another. And a third.

‘help’

You are reading story Santa’s Secret Transfic Anthology Vol. 2 at novel35.com

‘they arent listening’

‘at the mall’

Jeremy skipping school…? Something seemed very wrong.

Another message buzzed in. 

‘sophie bestie come join us were bored’

Jeremy using the word bestie. Something was definitely wrong.

“…Sorry, I really gotta go!” I rushed back out to the entrance. Whatever the situation was, it was obviously miles more important than algebra.

⋆⋆⋆⋆

I rushed to the mall on the double, only taking a moment to catch my breath once I had arrived in the main plaza. I scanned my surroundings searching for Jeremy, but at this hour, the only people around were old people and grocery shoppers. The only other teenager I saw was a fashionable golden haired girl leaning on a railing.

I shot Jeremy a message on my phone, asking him where the hell he was. 

‘use ur eyes, silly’ was the reply I got. I didn’t have much time to ponder the answer — the girl I saw enthusiastically waved at me. 

Cautiously, I approached her, wondering if she was waving me over because she knew his whereabouts. “Hi…? Have you seen my friend Jeremy, by any chance? He’s a brunette, wears a hoodie and jeans?”

The girl chuckled, swaying her hip to the side. “Oooh, are we making jokes? I’ll go next! Who’s right in front of me and needs a pair of glasses?”

My eyes went wide. “J… Jeremy!?” It was at this moment I noticed the top she had tied around her midriff was the exact hoodie he always wore. The rest of her outfit was, well, I had already called it fashionable — a slightly pink button up shirt, jean shorts, her flowing hair tied back into a wavy ponytail. 

“No, silly, it’s you!” The girl grabbed me into a tight hug. I gasped for air as she let me go. “What are you acting all goofy for? Do I have a crooked tooth or something?”

“Jeremy, you look like a blonde girl straight out of a teen drama!” I exclaimed. “And why are you acting like one, too!?”

At that, the girl’s eyes lit up, a smile growing fast on her face. “Oh. My. Gosh. You can see me? But how?” She looked down at herself, her bright expression replaced with puppy eyes. “I look like the same sappy sack as ever. Look at this. No sense of style!”

“I don’t— What are you talking about? This is nothing like you… like Jeremy usually wears. For starters, those are denim shorts. You’ve cut like seventy percent of the length, there! And those boots sure are no sneakers!”

The girl turned back to excitement at my description. “That’s me!! How in the hell is that possible? It’s like you can… Like… ” She snapped her fingers, looking for a word. “Like you can…” I blinked in confusion as she was starting to morph right before my eyes. Her wavy golden hair turned green and straight, her ponytail undid itself, leaving a bit of a mess in its place. The hoodie draped itself back in position over her body, fluffing up, its sleeves lengthening beyond her hands. The short shorts turned back into the jeans I usually saw on Jeremy, and so too did the sneakers come back. “Like you can see inside…” She was tapping her chin, looking at the ceiling. Her gaze slowly fluttered down back to me, and she flinched as she saw me. “...Ah! S-S-Sophie!!”

“Je… remy?” I muttered.

The new girl leaped at me, hugging me weakly in between fits of sobs. “Sophieeeeeee, weeeeh… I told them we needed to go to class but they didn’t listen to me and now we’re skipping… The teachers are gonna be so mad and they’re gonna tell our parents and everything will go bad…! I’m so scareeeed…!”

Pulling myself out of her grasp was easy, but she kept coming right back to cling onto me every time. “I don’t mean that in a dismissive way, but school is the least of my worries right now, okay? What I want to know is what the hell is happening to you?” I looked around us for anyone else who had seen the scene unfold, but apparently nothing must have been particularly out of the ordinary, seeing as nobody batted an eye our way.

The girl finally let go, and started fiddling her hands against each other. “It’s complicated… I don’t know how to explain it… But I think it’s related to those figurines…”

Damn! Peeping Tamara! In all this madness, I had utterly forgotten about looking for her this morning. “How the hell could they be related to all this?”

She fiddled with her hands and turned her head, avoiding eye contact. “Well, it’s just a theory, but… Last night, well… It’s a bit embarrassing…” Her eyes darted to me, then back away. “We were in bed… looking at the figurine we got, and… You know, that thing, when you’re holding your phone above your head, but then it slips out of your grasp and slaps you in the face?”

“That happened to me too! With my figurine!” I said.

“Oh… Well, we couldn’t find it after that, it was like it had disappeared. But this morning, when I— when we,” she corrected, “woke up, we were… three.”

I was afraid to ask. “Three…?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Hold on…” She took a deep breath, and once again, slowly changed before my eyes as she exhaled. She grew one foot taller, her hair turned auburn and satin-smooth, a bang coming to cover one of her eyes. The hoodie thinned, and its hemline dipped lower and lower, until the garment looked like a long dress. She looked at me and smiled serenely. “Hello, Sophie. I believe, in a way, this is the first time we meet.”

I was honestly shocked into silence.

The girl tilted her head slightly, still the same calm expression on her face. “As… my other self, for lack of a name at present, has theorized, I believe something magical is afoot. Just as Sam, in the story of the figurine, split apart into three, so do we seem to have emerged from Jeremy. Maybe Tamara granted you her power?”

I thought for a second, and swung my bag over my shoulder to open it. I searched inside until I found Tamara’s fortune and read it again. “‘Tamara sees everything’… ”

The girl, a third of Jeremy, nodded once. “Tell me, what do I look like to you?”

“Well…” I looked at her for a moment. “Kinda regal, for starters. Tall? Definitely taller than Jeremy. Not quite the same shade of brown hair either.”

“Hmm hm. And yet, when I look down at myself, it is the same body as ever that I see, from the same height as ever. Sophie… It sounds like you see people as they see themselves, on the inside. Some sort of… How did they call it again? Sixth level divination, True Sight?”

I gave another glance at the fortune. “Wait, no, that doesn’t add up. It says that this is specifically what Tamara misses. She’s too busy looking at appearances to…” I thought back to the misconception I’d had about Kim and Jess, realization dawning on me. “see what is inside… This is some Shallow Hal karma lesson bullshit, isn’t it.”

She chuckled slowly. “It could be a possibility, it is true. More to the point, my belief is one might want to think a step further. Maybe the message of Tamara’s fortune is that there is more to people than even their interior appearance? That there is meaning, perhaps, to what they wish they could look like…”

I thought back to my encounters throughout the day. Well, again for Kim and Jess, that was more or less literally spelled out. Lucas wanted bird wings… Well, sure, flying was a popular answer to the “if you could choose a superpower” question, but… He looked almost sad that they weren’t real? Less like he wanted more, and more that they were missing to begin with… like… Like those internet furries, right? Or maybe not. That was honestly way outside my area of knowledge. Ethan was obvious. He just wants to be that Halo guy. He’s nine. I wanted to be a girl version of Ferris Bueller.

But then… my dad.

If he wanted to… be a woman, and I just… And did he know that himself? Was he… in the closet?

I couldn’t just leave that be. I had to head home. “I’m sorry Jeremy, I need to go.”

“Boo, party pooper,” the blonde girl was back in front of me, staring at her fingernails. “Well, I’m gonna go get ourselves a manicure, you know where to find us, okay? Later Soso!”

⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

I arrived back home wheezing and coughing, having exhausted myself out by running as much as my lungs could allow me. I shook my head and wiped the sweat off my arms. Too much… Today was just too much. I looked through the kitchen window as I made my way towards the front door. Nobody in the room but my own reflection, looking basically as I had ever. The same brown hair flowing over my scarf, the same lucky pencil sticking out from under my beanie. I took a deep breath and slowly blinked at the me in the glass. She of course blinked back at the same time, with all three of her eyes.

Good. I wouldn’t look too disheveled—

I stared up at my forehead and a protruding eyeball stared back down. My jaw fell agape. Tentatively, I brought my hand up, tried to touch the intruding eye… and accidentally poked it. Ow. For just a couple of seconds, the world looked almost strange; over the clear image of the front road provided by my normal eyes, was a blurry, foggy third layer, slowly recalibrating as my new addition blinked the pain away.

I finally opened the door, poking my head in. I could hear mom was in her home office.

“Sophie, is that you?” She must’ve heard me come in.

No sense in hiding it. I hung away my winter clothes. “Yeah…”

“That’s fine. The school just called me asking where you were.” I heard her step out of her rolling chair, and she came out into the landing not a few moments later. “Don’t worry, I told them you wouldn’t have to go today. I think you should go talk to your father…”

“Thanks, mom.” I gave her a half hearted smile.

“And make yourself presentable first, okay? You look like you ran yourself ragged.” She opened up her arms, offering me a hug I gladly accepted.

“Well I was already planning to, so we agree on that,” I offered nonchalantly.

“That’s my girl,” she said, letting me go.

I went upstairs and headed towards the bathroom. I shot a glance into my parents’ bedroom on the way there, catching a glimpse of the woman that was my dad sitting on the bed, looking at an old photo album.

I locked the door behind me and quickly refreshed myself, splashing some water on my face at the sink. Looking up into the mirror, I once again saw the newly added eye. I took a moment to look at myself a little longer, confirming I otherwise looked as I always did. It was a strange, ambivalent feeling than to see myself looking back through this ‘true sight’, as one of the Jeremys had called it. Was I immune to seeing myself? Or was I simply secure in my sense of identity? It sounded like the latter was incompatible with the condition of being a teenager. Maybe I just didn’t know how much I didn’t know. Maybe I knew exactly as much as I needed to know to meet the threshold of teen, if there was such a thing. I didn’t really feel like I was being a teen the ‘wrong’ way, at least. 

Yeah, maybe trying to figure all of that out by extrapolating from a magic sight I don’t understand was bound to be fruitless.

I brought my attention back to the eyeball. Hmm. An idea hatched in my head. Awkwardly, I tried to get a grip on the muscles that governed it, trying to make it blink on my terms. It was just impossible to describe, there really was no good point of comparison that wouldn’t be just as esoteric. At first, I only managed to close all my eyes, and trying to make it blink alone always ticked my right eye as well, but after a bit of weird, uncomfortable practice that made my head shiver and my eyebrows furrow, I finally managed to find a way to close it without closing my normal eyes.

I couldn’t hold the position for long, but during that short moment, looking into the mirror again, there was still me. Me, with just two eyes… and very subtly younger-looking. Huh. When my third eye forced itself open and I was confronted with my internal vision of myself, I couldn’t deny that I thought myself a couple centimeters taller and more adult-like.

Welp. I had no desire to confront that discovery right about now.

I stepped back out and approached my parents’ bedroom. Once again, I took a glance through the crack in the door, looking at the woman inside, and I tentatively forced my magic eye closed. The appearance of the woman was immediately replaced with my dad as they had always looked up until yesterday. It was really them, no doubt about it. I reopened my eye, and the woman faded back into view.

She finally noticed me, placed the photo album next to her lap, and smiled softly at me, worry visible on her face. “Oh. Hello, Sophie… Didn’t expect you’d be home right now.”

“It’s just school…” I downplayed, rubbing my neck.

Dad looked at me for a few seconds, then sighed, letting it go. “What made you ask that question this morning?” She scuttled to the side and tapped the bed. “C’mere.”

“I… saw it all with my third eye?” I gave an unsure smile as I sat down, not really certain whether I wanted to be honest about that aspect, or pass it off as a joke. I settled for spinning a vague technical truth. “In the moment it just, uh… jumped out at me, I guess. I couldn’t see anything else.”

“Was it that obvious to you, then? And here I thought I had been doing a good job ignoring it all this time.” Dad shook her head gravely, and slid the album photo to me. In the page it was open on was photos of my parents (as they physically look), but much younger. They were arranged around one in the center — my Dad, on some sort of scene, singing into a microphone, while wearing a glamorous dress and wearing over the top makeup. “This is around when I met your mom. She was still deep into her doctorate and I’d just finished college myself. And this is how I was paying my bills doing something I loved.”

“You were a drag queen?” I asked.

“Yes,” she cooed, tapping the side of her glasses. “Though ‘only while on stage,’ I thought at the time. It was fun, but when it came to social life outside of my job, I thought I had to be a man, you know? Mistress Periance was just a costume… a performance I was putting on.” She sighed. “That was as good as it was gonna get, as close to being a woman as I would be able to get, and what I had to settle for… Until I figured out what my feelings truly meant, I suppose.” 

“But why didn’t you do anything about it, then?” I stared up at her in worry.

“The timing. Your mom and I had already decided to marry, settle down and have you. So I thought I would just wait it out a bit. I put it off, and planned to get back to it once you wouldn’t need me as a father anymore. But after you was your little brother, and once the family rhythm was established… I didn’t want to put it all in jeopardy.” She flipped a dozen pages ahead, contemplating baby photos of me and my brother.

I looked at my parents’ faces in the album. Mom always smiled widely, while Dad more often looked tired, and as if his smiles, while real, were mostly for the care of the camera. “Did Mom know?”

“She had her doubts, but since I kept it all to myself, until now… she didn’t think it right to question it. Drag was just a hobby I used to have, and she believed it respectful not to suspect needing to pry beyond that. She probably thought, ‘well, if it was important, he would’ve said something about it by now’,” Dad concluded.

I didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. I’m a pathetic fool for thinking you three would’ve left me behind.” She removed her glasses and placed her hand over her eyes, holding back tears. “Why… didn’t I do this sooner? Why, oh why did I wait so long? And now I’ll just never look like anything but a man in a dress…”

That was uncharacteristic of Dad to say. “What?”

“Transition just doesn’t look good when you’re old, sweetums,” she muttered in a small, resigned tone. She sounded it out like it was a universal truth she had been taught, never pausing to question it.

“Mh mh,” I shook my head and pulled out my phone. I didn’t know much about trans people, but I at least remembered one article I had seen pass by once. It didn’t take me long at all to find it again. ‘Trans woman transitions at 96,’ the headline said, accompanied by a most lovely, radiant picture of a smiling old lady in a polka dot dress. I passed my phone to my Dad.

She took one look at the photo and tears started flowing out.

“Dad…” I spoke slowly, finally knowing what I could say. “Even if it somehow doesn’t work out, I can promise you there’ll always be at least one person seeing you for the woman you are.”

The embrace was immediate and warm, my Dad’s tears staining my shoulder. “You’re a good kid, Sophie… You’re a good kid…”

In that moment, I couldn’t help but think about my secret notebook, and the unkind words it had gained me over the years. This entire experience was making me reflect on it, and now, I felt like I had been reckless all this time. A lot of what people hid wasn’t just juicy tidbits, embarrassing memories to look back and laugh at later, and interpersonal drama. For many, what they were hiding was what they felt no one would understand, or just accept. For many, there was a lot more than met the eye. And what they wanted to be, spoke of who they were.

⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆⋆

A few weeks later…

 

“You sure this is a good idea…?” Penny meekly whispered to me, tugging on a strand of her green hair.

I shook my head and observed Lucas, Jess and Kim come out of the store, orange boxes in hand. “I think it’s what’s right. Thought I’d look out for them, and stuff.” I replied with a similarly hushed tone. “Maybe bury the hatchet a lil’ more, just in case it was still poking out,” I more honestly continued.

That didn’t stop Penny from catastrophizing. “They are probably gonna tell others… who are gonna tell others, and on, et caetera…”

“Eh,” I started, shrugging, “To be honest? Magic like that should be for everyone. I didn’t put those figurines in this store, I’m just sharing the find.”

“Morally agreeable.” Caecilia nodded calmly, taking the previous girl’s place. “Though where I do share Penny’s worry is that we never found out where they came from, is all.”

“We know they’re safe, and that’s enough by me.” I was honestly a bit worried by the possibility someone else might find them by now, and that no restock would come. Definitely not intent on rushing into it, but definitely hurrying a bit just in case.

“And me too! Honestly Soso, it is -SO- BORING in there when the girls agree on anything. ‘Leila don’t do this, Leila don’t do that, Leila don’t ask Sophie out, we still have this and that to handle first…’ still haven’t answered me on that, by the way.” Obviously, their third third wasn’t much for lengthy introspection.

“Ah, well, you know…” I evaded. Not that any of them three weren’t cute, but I still needed to wrap my head around the idea of dating multiple people at once, even if offered in the one package of my best friend. I turned off my inner vision for a moment, shot a winning smile at Leila, and beckoned our dollar store guests in our direction by shaking my arm up. “Heeeey, we’re here!”

The two lesbians and Lucas made their approach. “Alright, so we got the Fortune Folks thing like you asked. Now what?” Jess asked.

“Well, isn’t that obvious?” I replied. “All that’s left is to open them.”

 

If you haven't read my other works yet, you can come swing by on !  I do a lot of inclusive writing, with a focus on transfemininity, neurodiversity and non-human feelings. You can support my work by tipping through or joining my . The links are on my profile in the 'Tip' button!

— PrincessFélicie

 

/ Everyday Sweets #1

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