MY GUIDE ON TALKING TO BOYS

The dream didn't end when I hit the ground.

I know that sounds against all logic, but it's what happened. I woke up the next morning expecting cuts and bruises and pain, but I felt nothing. I had woken up in bed, but it it wasn't my bed back in my home in Iowa, or even that Tegan's bed either. That meant that I had no idea where I was.

Again.

Instead of the pink "opposite room" from before, I was in some bedroom that reeked of mediocrity. It showcased no decorations whatsoever that even suggested that whoever owned this room had a personality. Was she a sports star? A music fan? There'd be no way of telling.

One thing was clear though: no alien owned a room this dull. Because of that, I almost found myself longing for that Barbie nightmare room. At least then, it felt crazy enough to be a dream. As for now, this felt plain enough to be real.

This wasn't right. Part of me was paralyzed, too afraid to move to a muscle. Taking my arm out from underneath the covers, I searched for any clues that would suggest that I was myself. Freckles littered my entire body, and that was like a slap in the face.

I begged that this was another dream. I shut my eyes and moved my hand up to pinch my arm, which was the other way to wake up from dreams that didn't involve jumping out of any windows.

If only I had thought of that sooner; I wasn't Tegan today because I murdered her.

That idea haunted me to the core. Murder? I murdered someone? I tried to bypass that idea, which led me to pinch myself on the arm three more times. But after I did that, there was nothing. No magical transformation where I woke up back home. Nothing at all. All I felt was a small nip on the arm.

What if I was supposed to be Tegan as some sort of lesson, a lesson that I had screwed up by killing her?

I took a deep breath, telling myself that it was okay, even though it was decidedly not okay. I assured myself that today would be fine, that all I had to do was not kill anyone, which I had gone every other day of my life without doing.

Getting out of bed, I realized something great: I was tall! Since I was only a mere four feet, eleven inches, this was the first and last time I would ever think that thought.

At the moment, it didn't matter that I wasn't in my body right then, because all that mattered was that I was tall. It was just perfect, until I turned my head and saw my reflection in the mirror.

I.

Was.

A.

Dude.

While shuddering at the thought of being a boy, I tried to convince myself otherwise. Could I have been a rather masculine looking lady?

That led me to make the disgusting decision to look down my pants, and discovering the masculine truth made me sick to my stomach.

I brushed away the images I just saw and tried to get myself to relax. That led me to try breathing deeply like I was meditating, but then I smirked a little.

After my shocking discovery of gender that morning, I remembered school, where I had killed Tegan, and that it might be in my future again.

Why couldn't this boy have been a dropout or something? It would be near impossible to go to school in this kid's place, considering that I knew next to nothing, so unless this boy was studying Pre-Calculus and Anatomy, I would be doomed.

And then again, I didn't even know his name.

Tegan's life yesterday was so much simpler. Under the impression that it was a dream, all I needed was an agitated mother to yell at me when I was late in the morning.

Without one of those rhino-mothers here, finding this boy's name required some snooping. And contrary to popular belief, this was not a "huge violation of his privacy". I was in his body, so didn't that entitle me to whatever he owned?Hopefully, he wouldn't mind or even notice because all I was doing was rummaging through a few of his dresser drawers because I needed an ID to start this day.

I think I'd be fine with it if I was in his place. But maybe he was. What if this boy had woken up in Iowa as me, just as confused as I was? If that were the case, what did that mean for Tegan?

I didn't want to overthink that scenario, so I went on with my searching. After opening up a sock drawer, I discovered a thin brown wallet.

Success.

And luckily, it was a sock drawer and not an "unmentionables" drawer.

When I opened the wallet, I was greeted by this boy's smile accompanied by his name, eye, and hair color: Clarke Wallace, brown, and blond. It was his learner's permit.

Before I could express more grief that I now held actual proof that I was a boy, my stomach growled like my dog, Egbert, when he was upset, so I decided to venture out to the kitchen.

That turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, as I ended up walking into a linen closet and a bathroom before I even discovered that I was on the second floor.

And when I did find the kitchen downstairs, I was not rewarded for my success. Instead, I was greeted by a bony hand on my shoulder that was chilly enough to give me goosebumps.

I yelped at the feeling. "What the hell?"

With my voice being ten times deeper than I was expecting, it cracked on the last word and nailed the pubescent boy vibe that I was supposed to be going for.

Flipping around to see who had touched me, I was met with a woman who was the same height as me, or as this "Clarke" rather.

"Language," she scolded, darting past me to reach the coffee pot.

She was my mother for today.

And I must say, she reminded me of my own mom back in Iowa. Both of these women had the same soft brown eyes and tendency to get angry over any curse word. I once got a bar of soap in my mouth for saying "naked" and I was talking about the juice brand.

"Remember, you have driver's ed for first period today," Clarke's mother said, sipping a cup of coffee.

Thinking of my own mother, I jumped at the sound of this lady's voice. The fact that I had been thinking about curse words for too long also had plenty to do with it.

But she just mentioned driving! This was on the verge of getting interesting.

"Okay," I said, all I could muster out. And in my head, I tried to think of things a typical teenage boy would say to his mother.

Swag? Testosterone?

To my luck, Clarke's mom didn't need anything else from me, especially not any odd comments from a girl pretending to be her son.

As she left the room, I grew more and more excited about driving. Already I was fonder of Clarke's life than I had been of Tegan's, but that didn't matter a whole lot though.

You know why.

With a backpack slung over my shoulder, I headed out the front door in her footsteps, daydreaming about pulling in front of school in my pimped out ride, but there was no such luck for me. The driveway was empty, and with Clarke's mother speeding off in a red Honda, there was no "pimped out ride" for me to take to school.

Right as I was prepared to just give up on the idea of showing up to school at all, a grimy school bus pulled onto the street and my stomach lurched at the sight of it. A dozen or so sweaty teenagers were packed into the thing, and now I was next. Despite the events that happened afterwords, I wished I had Tegan's mom to drive me.

I forced myself through the doors and sat down as soon as possible, ignoring the idea that only the lame kids sat in the front. At that point, I didn't even know if this Clarke was a lame kid, but I also wasn't interested in finding out.

All I wanted to do was to go through this day without any scrape ups. I just had to be Clarke for a little while, and that'll do it, right? I'd wake up back as Sadie tomorrow morning.

••••

The bus stopped ten minutes later at the school, and all the kids pushed their way through. I let droves of them pass before I even dared to move. The pack all ventured off into the courtyard, and I followed.

A boy with a pierced ear approached me in front of the school with his hand extended. "Hey Clarke," he said.

I stared at his hand for what felt like a century.

How did boys speak to each other? What did he want me to do with his hand?

"Right back at ya," I said, feeling hot.

His hand still hovered in the air. "Don't leave me hanging," he said.

"I won't," I said, smacking his hand. It wasn't a square hit and so the boy gave me a blank stare. I felt like I was going to hurl.

It was the middle of April, so why was I feeling so warm? Was that sweat? Was I sweating?

I was.

He didn't leave, so I needed to give him something else, but I was blanking.

Finger guns!

After I flashed a couple of those, I prayed that this was how boys communicated with one another.

But instead of waiting to find out, I avoided all eye contact and rushed over to a car that had 'Student Driver' stickers all over it, ducking my head so no one else would see me.

Oh boy. My face felt so red and hot that I was wondering if I was dying of embarrassment. The thought of whether or not to die again crossed my mind too. It was awful. I just wanted this day to end already.