esperanza

Terry

Had Terry Hope, the boy on the school ID, had he been taking hormones, female hormones, the bottles of pills with labels in Spanish I had caught sight of when Kelly went through the backpack?

Was doing something like that safe?

She came back out, wearing a deep brown dress with emerald pockets and cuffs on short sleeves. She had a plastic bow in her hair, holding it away from her face on one side. The little stud earrings she had been wearing had been replaced with emerald green hoops, like the plastic bow and the plackets on her dress. The dress fit loosely and swirled around her legs. Her shoes were mocassin types I hadn't seen before, brown as the natural color of her hair. She also wore a golden-toned bracelet with lots of little gold stars on her left wrist, and a similar chain around her neck.

And... were her lips redder, had she put some makeup back on? Surely she hadn't been inside long enough.

The neckline of the dress was low enough that I glimpsed the swelling of her breasts, a promise of femininity that in lying may have spoke a truth.

I took a deep breath and said, "That's a dress."

"Brilliant, Holmes, I don't know how you do it. Dork."

"Dork?" I asked, "That doesn't sound much like George Kelly."

"I don't look much like George Kelly, now do I? I'm practicing to be a teen-ager, now get out my face!" She ordered, but with the sweetest smile.

"Um, well, uh, no, but if you are a boy w-why are you going... so... totally... uh," I could not seem to finish the question.

She didn't try to help. Maybe she didn't want to talk about it.

"What do you think? Should I try to call Terry's parents?"

"I thought you had decided to do that." I picked up the pants I had dropped and rehung them.

"What should I say?" She toyed with an earring and bit her lip.

"That you're wearing a dress and you look lovely in it?"

"I don't think they want to hear that."

She blushed. "Was that a compliment?"

"I've given you other compliments," I said. "Yes, and they always embarrass me?"

"I'm sorry that you're embarrassed. If you wouldn't provoke compliments it wouldn't happen."

"I don't know why I put this on?"

"To get a compliment so you could blush prettily?"

"Blushing prettily," she shook her head. "No, I don't think so?" She was acquiring the habit of the young and female of turning statements into questions.

We finished with the laundry and I carried most of the things in, she taking only a basket of her intimate items. It seemed natural that I carry the heavier more awkward load, even though she had carried everything out to the machines herself.

"How am I gonna call them when I don't really know their number? I mean, I've been trying to remember it but ... nothing? And look what's happening to me from trying to get comfortable with the inside of Terry's head?"

Three non-questions in a row, that trick could actually get annoying, I decided. "Come into the computer room when you put stuff away, I've got a list of people that may be your parents. Terry's parents. You think trying to use Terry's memories is making you act more like Terry would have acted?"

"Kinda. Uh, I don't really have anywhere for my things besides the backpack?"

We stood at the door to my bedroom and stared at one another a while. "It's like I know what Terry would do or would want to do? And well, I know that as George I would hate it but ... as Kelly it sounds like it would be fun?" She squirmed a little, blushed and looked away.