Annette/Benjamin: Graduation Parties

I've been to a couple of them in the past few weeks, and I can't say it's not kind of tough.  Sure, when I look at what Jonah is staring down, the fact that I'm skipping college seems like small potatoes - by the time he gives birth and goes back to the Inn next summer, he'll have missed his last couple years of high school, and who knows how that particular experience will change him - but I worked so hard to get there, and now I'm the townie boyfriend in the audience whom everybody thinks that Marybeth is going to eventually outgrow and leave behind.

It's a pretty tough pill to swallow, at times.  I mean, I'm proud as heck of her - her Master's is no small accomplishment, and I've got no idea whether I would have had the patience for it.  She lit up as she accepted her diploma and then, afterwards, jumped into my arms when she and all her friends finished giving each other high-fives.  We kissed for a long time, and it was a really blissful kiss - I slowly eased her to the ground, and it felt like a portion of her satisfaction and success flowed into me.  I never had that with boyfriends in high school or the ones I had as Ravi in New York, and I wonder if that's what being in love, really in love, as a grown-up feels like.

We had to come up for air eventually, and that's when she dragged me over to meet her parents.  They seem like nice folks, although I'm not sure exactly what she had told them about me and what they've assumed.  They're in their mid-fifties and Marybeth is their only child, so they were looking askance at me to begin with, and I don't know if I quite made the best first impression.

I've at least learned to navigate the whole "firm handshake" thing; the line between showing that you are a dependable person of some substance and turning it into a test-of-strength battle for dominance is a lot thinner than you may expect!  Her dad was strong but kind of recreationally strong, like he goes out and does physical things but wears custom gloves when he does it to protect his hands. He sized me up too and asked what I was studying.

I could hear Marybeth going "uh..." beside me, but I just smiled and said "same things as your daughter, just without so much institutional support and formal direction." He gave me a look that said he had it half figured out but wasn't quite there, but wanted me to say the thing that made me look bad. "I bus tables, sir, but I read and write a lot, and I hope to make a career of it someday."

He wasn't sure how to react to that, although Marybeth's mom looked at her daughter mock-seriously and asked why she hadn't said that was an option - they could have had a house on the lake! Everyone laughed at that, and her quizzing me on what sort of experiences I'd be able to bring to my writing outside of ivory-tower twenties was kind of fun. I obviously couldn't say ''well, I was a gay Indian man for a year", but I could string together just enough of my real life, Benny's, and the year that Ronan lived this life to make it sound interesting,

It was an exhausting but enlightening afternoon, and the party that night with Marybeth's classmates was a good way to blow off steam. I didn't drink quite as much as I might have last year - I'm no longer a kid excited that I can get a beer just by asking for it, and I've gotten pretty decent about just drinking enough to take the edge off in awkward social situations rather than obliterating it. Which was good; as much as I felt kind of needled that day, seeing her parents was kind of stressful for Marybeth as well, and we engaged in some terrific tension relief when we got back to her place that night. It would have sucked to be too out of it for that.

Then, the next morning, we woke up in each other's arms. I kissed her and asked what it was like for her to be both that much more overqualified for her job and that much too good for the likes of me, and she laughed before saying that it was pretty awesome, although if I keep it up with the uncanny instincts about what a girl likes, the second part will stay debatable. And as to the first, well, that's just a matter of stepping up her résumé-writing/sending game, because her student loans have officially become a ticking time bomb.

The other party wasn't really for anybody I knew, but sometimes being an "Inn Person" doesn't just mean that life dealt you an unfair supernatural hand, but that you are part of a community of people who are so much more than they seem at first glance. That I wound up in Boston makes me especially lucky in that regard; being kind of near the Inn means that there are enough other people around who have been through the same thing that your support system is not just your roommate, with whom you now likely have an even more complicated relationship. There's The Changeling, and while Ashlyn, Penny, and everyone else may be a little reluctant to immediately welcome anyone who posts on the blog or says that they've been to the Trading Post with open arms - "Pygmalion" and a number of other incidents (like how Penny is Penny rather than Arthur) have reminded them that being in the same boat doesn't mean people want to steer it the same way - the connection is wonderful.

This second party was kind of a delayed affair, as Jessica Brooks was going to law school out in California, but she still wanted to celebrate with her Inn family who know that she used to be a middle-aged cop in Baltimore, and making it here was about finding her new self as much as anything else.

She wasn't the first to arrive, though - Jonah had just finished a day shift, and didn't protest too much when I hugged her, or when Penny arrived and told her that, even though being pregnant was obviously something that, having been born a man, he wasn't prepared for, it would be amazing, changing the way he saw the world for the better. I felt a bit of a twinge - I'd never really given much thought to having children beyond it being part of some vague future but something to take precautions against for right now, but now it was an entirely different potential thing.

Soon Penny was there, and despite what she's told me before, I was still kind of surprised to be introduced to Elizabeth Kim. She read that on my face and smiled at it, saying that she was obviously still one of the villains of Penny's story when she stopped writing, but, of course, nobody is the bad guy in her own, although it took her a while to really comprehend what sort of selfish choices she had made at times and how, sometimes, you need to change your whole way of thinking. It was an interesting conversation, although I don't know if I buy it as it relates to me and Sandra.

The next person I was introduced to was Louisa Torrence, and I did kind of fangirl out meeting her, which looks funny coming from a working-class guy. I told her that when I thought that the whole blog was a piece of fiction that Penny (and others) were writing, she was one of my favorite characters because she reminded me of my mom in a couple of ways and just seemed so empathetic and genuine, and to find out she was a real person... Well, you get it. She reacted to that sort of thing about as well as she could and caught me up on what she'd been up to, and, as she put it, a bunch of other "dangling plot threads". As she said, it's not dangerous for "Marie Desjardins"in Montreal any more; the gangster boyfriend was in jail and the original Ashlyn had enough influence to keep people off her back. She's back to being a librarian again, and kind of loving it - she makes sure that she sets to work in both French and English, and the classes in library science she took (because while someone her actual age would be able to list experience but "Marie" needs to be a specialist) help her keep her mind sharp. She says she probably doesn't need to worry about senior moments, but it seems to vary for everyone. She hopes and thinks that because she dropped thirty years before her brain started to deteriorate, she's probably got the mental acuity of someone her apparent age, but that the Inn won't necessarily fix what's already brown up there.

Which, she joked, could have applied just as much to the guest of honor as anyone else, as Jessica Brooks had been a veteran cop before the Inn made him a pre-teen girl who has, in the years since, made it to adulthood, graduated college, and then finished law school out in California, which had to put her near retirement age, old enough to be my father (and then some) if we had never visited the Inn, but physically maybe a couple of years older than I look right now.  She arrived with an entourage - the road trip she and Louisa took eight years ago had led her to Dana Costello, the guy who started life as Jessica, and his best-friend's-father-turned-mother Parker (mother of Dana, not the friend, because she was now Dana's adult husband because sometimes the Inn really fucks families up), and the whole group sort of arrived together - Jessica & Kathleen Brooks and Dana & Parker & Carson & Phuong Costello.

They weren't how I'd pictured them, obviously; though my binge-reading of the blog happened within the last couple of years, the posts which introduced me to them were from 2007, so it was a bit jarring to see Jessica, Dana, and Phuong as adults in their mid-twenties, Carson as a confident middle-aged man, and Parker and Kathleen as, I don't know, the veteran moms?  You know, folks who buckled down to be parents in tough situations while still trying to do their own things, probably don't get enough credit for either, and now look at each other and know they kicked ass even if guys are just counting ways they don't look like swimsuit models.

It got loud quickly, and though I've been welcomed into the Boston group of Inn people, I'm admittedly an outsider with this collection.  Still, when I reached out to shake Jessica's hand and noticed the ring my eyebrows went up a bit.  I asked who the lucky guy was, and she nodded toward Dana.

I squealed, which is probably kind of scary coming out of someone who looks like I do, but she laughed, saying that for a moment, she could totally see the teenage girl whose fanfic had just actually happened underneath the mid-twenties male exterior.  I blushed, but nobody noticed, as they were all too busy congratulating the happy couple.  As soon as that died down, Ashlyn handed Penny a twenty, and Dana looked genuinely shocked.  "Really?  You guys were betting on this?"

Ray said that of course they were betting on it, what with them being the most hot and cold couple they've ever seen, and that's before getting into the Inn stuff.  I guess it must be kind of crazy dating someone who sort of used to be you.  "You've got no idea!" Dana said.  "But compared to watching her date losers that I never would have gone near..."

"I have never dated a loser!  Do you have any idea how high the standards someone who's secretly thirty years older than the kids who look age-appropriate are?  You're the most immature person I've ever dated, by far, in two lifetimes!"

"Oh, not the 'two lifetimes' thing!  You promised that treating me like a kid was over, because you know what this life is like and how it doesn't work if you don't trust me--"

"AFTER we're married--"

"Hey!"  Kathleen just needed one word to quiet them down as she put her hands on my and Jonah's shoulders.  "You're scaring the kids!"  They apologized to us, and the whole crowd laughed.  Ashlyn was grinning the biggest.

"This is why Penny and I had money on the two of them winding up together.  Their fights are legendary, even if they were missing something before Dana applied to the police academy."

"Which is still the most god-damn foolish mmmmph!"

Dana had put his hand over Jessica's mouth, but I guess this was a thing with them, as she quickly pulled it down, kissed him, and had the whole thing sort of turn into him embracing him from behind.  "See what I'm signing up for?"

"You love it!"  He kissed her (it was kind of a good thing she was wearing heels, because he has about a foot on her), and squeezed.  "Yeah, we fight, because we both think we know what's best for each other and broadly have a better claim than most couples.  But, let me tell you, I can't imagine my life without those fights, and when I realized that she might actually move away after graduating, and I'd have to argue with her over the internet--"

"Seriously, we weren't together two months ago, but when this goofball got down on one knee, that seemed absurd."

There was a big round of "awwwww!!!", maybe with me the loudest despite knowing them for about ten minutes.

After that, it sort of became a regular party, and it was a lot of fun.  I really found myself liking Dana; I gather that when Louisa and Jessica met her, she was really a guy's guy, but maybe it's just knowing the truth or his having spent more time with other folks who have been through the change, since it certainly feels like we've got common ground as men who used to be girls.  For insurance, he really enjoyed choosing a ring for Jessica, even as his friends broke into cops sweats.  Got some Taylor Swift on his phone, too.

Later in the night, I asked Penny if she'd bet on Jessica and Dana getting together randomly,  and she said it was because she and Ray had worked out.  I mentioned that I worried about things with Marybeth sometimes, because there was something I was holding back.  She said not to worry, because she's seen a lot of cases where it had worked out with people who couldn't know.

"So are you and Ashlyn being on me now?"

She smiled and said that if they were, it would probably be about me and Missy, chuckling when I said there was no chance of that.

I think she's just messing with me.  She's better be.

-Annette/Benjamin

Jessica: Family reunion

I've been putting off writing this stuff up because I wasn't sure how I felt about sharing it. Art, Ashlyn, and some of the others have all met predecessors and successors and written about it soon afterward. Maybe it's different if you've been waiting and both you and he have settled into your new lives. Maybe I'm still having a hard time believing that it's even possible to talk about this. Or maybe I just don't have words for what this whole thing means.

After I called Mom to find out whether or not it was okay for me to bring guests home for Christmas, Parker did her thing, arranging for flights, hotel rooms for her and Dana, and a rental car. It was an impressive job, but she said it wasn't a big deal - handling that sort of arrangement is pretty much the definition of a personal assistant's job, and her boss regularly asks her to arrange weirder things than a few days in Boston.

"You must be good at it," I say. "I remember that Dina's father - Dina's the one who became Mindy - was in over his head as an event co-ordinator, but your skills must have been pretty transferable."

"Yeah, I think that was our one bit of good luck. I think Parker was initially hired for the job I inherited based on her looks, but I was able to build on that. If you'll pardon some advice from a younger woman, don't be afraid of using that unfair advantage in your head. Nobody questions when you're too competent. You said you were a cop in your old life; are you planning to do something similar?"

"Law school, eventually. I loved being a cop, but I don't know if I'd trust myself in this body; even now, I'll sometimes act like I'm still as strong as I was, and that's no business to not know your limits."

"Trust me, that goes for everything." She didn't elaborate, and I let it go.

Louisa dropped us off at the airport that evening, promising to take care of my car until I got back and thanking Parker for letting her crash at her house until she found her own place. Parker said she was glad to, and hoped Louisa would stick around for a while, and she'd help with work and a work visa if that was necessary.

I waited for Dana and Parker to enter the gate area before giving Louisa a big hug. "Five months ago, I'd never have imagined it would turn out like this. Finding Dina and Dana--" I laughed at that, catching it for the first time. "-- learning what we have... It's almost bigger than when I changed, if you can believe that. Anyway, I'll be back here in a couple of weeks, and when we find a lead on Marie, I don't care what sort of lectures or tests or anything else I've got, I'll be all over it, you understand?" She did, and I hugged her again. Then I went to join the others.

* * *

The plane ride from LAX to Logan seemed nearly as long as the drive in the opposite direction had taken. Dana somehow fell asleep right away, but Parker flagged a stewardess down early for a drink. She just looked at Dana instead of drinking it at first, though. "I don't know if I could do this alone."

"Excuse me?"

"I still have days where I feel like a giant fake, but I can come home and see Dana practicing free throws, totally natural, and it makes me feel okay. I know he's going to go off to college next year, and I'm preparing myself for that, but we're about to meet his mother..." She took a sip. "I never asked him to call me Mom. I insisted he call me Parker, at first, in fact, and I wonder if that's just encouraging him to leave me at this first chance..."

"I sort of feel the same way. It's kind of pathetic, at my age, to be worried about what some woman I initially resisted thinking of as my mother thinks, but..."

* * *

As you might imagine, we were all plenty nervous when we got off the plane. I'd called ahead with the gate number, so I knew Mom would be waiting, but I couldn't see her in the crowd. Dana's got a foot on me, though, and when he froze, I followed his gaze and saw her. I took his hand, nodded, and led him and Parker through the crowd.

"Hi, Mom. I've got someone here you might like to meet."

Mom was speechless, and we just stood there until Dana reached out to hug his original mother. I didn't have time to feel left out, as Mom reached out from the bear hug and pulled me in.

"I can't believe... Is it really you?"

"It is, Mom. I've missed you... I didn't even know how much."

I saw Parker looking uncomfortable out of the corner of my eye, so I cleared my throat and broke the clutch up a little. "Parker, you remember--"

"Kathleen!" Mom looked a bit confused as this strange woman grabbed her, and then realized.

"Molly?"

"Barry."

Mom was a bit taken aback by that, then looked at the three of us. "Does it always...?"

I laughed. "Not always, just half the time. You remember Louisa, and Molly's still female, although... Well, it's weird."

"That's an understatement!" She looked at Dana some more. "I can't believe my little girl... Although neither of those words fits you any more, do they?"

Dana laughed. "Not really. But it's cool. I can't imagine my life going any other way, now." He realized how it sounded, and then started to apologize.

"Don't worry. I can't imagine having a normal daughter, so we're even." I gave her the exaggerated eye-rolling "Mooooooooooooom!", and we all laughed, and agreed to see what sort of places were open for breakfast on Christmas Eve.

* * *

We ate, Parker and Dana went to check into their hotel, and Mom and I decided to stick around Boston to do some last minute Christmas shopping. I wished I had time to see Ashlyn then, but Mom insisted we get home early, because there was baking to be done.

* * *

I had groaned at that, but it paid off when the Costellos arrived the next morning. Dana was carrying a stack of presents that must have weighed more than I do, but he dropped them all when we went through the kitchen. He grabbed a peanut butter cookie with an imbedded Hershey's Kiss in each hand and started shoveling them in his mouth. "You remembered!"

"Of course I did - although you weren't able to put them away like that before! I should have known something was up when this kid wasn't asking to lick beaters any more."

Dana seemed to ignore the last part, but smiled at the rest. "You are one of the two best moms ever!"

Hearing that made Parker and Mom both feel good.

We went to the living room to open presents. I laughed at the Lakers shirt Dana gave me, especially when he explained that it would provide good camouflage at school. Also because I'd gotten him a Paul Pierce jersey. Because, you know, likewise. I also got him a great big unicorn poster, leading to him warning Parker that no-one must ever know. The biggest laugh came when Parker unwrapped her present from Mom, a mirror with the Playboy logo across the top, so that if looked like a magazine cover. Dana and I didn't really get it.

"Barry was a huge breast man, and I just thought, seeing him with those..."

"Hey, they're the best money can buy!"

Mom wasn't expecting that! "You got implants?"

"Would you rather I was a total hypocrite?" Mom sort of shrug-laughed, while Dana looked uncomfortable, but Parker went on. "No, after a couple years, when I knew this was going to be my life, and everyone in L.A. seemed to wear plunging necklines that showed off more, younger cleavage than I had, I thought, why not? It was sort of the last step in accepting who I was."

"Yeah, well, I don't quite see how plastic surgery can be construed as accepting who you are, but if it makes you happy. Still, Jessica--"

Dana and I both answered "not a chance in hell!" simultaneously and laughed at it. Dana answered awkwardly that it was my body, but he wouldn't be thinking that way if it was still his, and I said I'd always been a leg man, anyway. But I still didn't like high heels.

We left the living room a mess of shredded paper while we waited for the ham to finish cooking. The half-dozen cookies Dana ate in the meantime didn't seem to diminish his appetite.

* * *

I wish I hadn't waited so long to write this down; I can't remember as many details of the next couple days, and now I wish I did. We had a good time - I introduced "my friend from California" to my friends from high school. Dana pointed out that I didn't have many of the same friends he had when this was his life, but that he liked the sort of sporty girls I hung out with, and wondered what it would have been like if we'd never visited the Inn. Would these have been his friends, or would he have grown up a total girly-girl? He seemed kind of revolted by the concept.

Mom and Parker did the same thing, although it was harder on Parker, because Mom still did have many of the same friends that she'd had nine years ago. She had two margaritas to Mom's one that night, but assured Dana that it wouldn't be an problem.

They went home on Thursday; Dana had one of those holiday basketball tournaments over the weekend.

I haven't yet stopped by to see them since arriving here; school has had me slammed. I have seen Louisa; she told me about her visit with Art/Penny; I'm going to have to find a chance to see the new Art.

So... That's me caught up. What's up with the rest of you?

-Jessica

Jessica: Arriving in California. Twice.

It's beautiful here in southern California, although it was unusually nice for New England before I got here. It was nice to see some of my friends from high school the past week; I'm a semester behind all of them right now, but they were jealous of my cross-country road trip, even if I only told them a heavily expurgated version of the story. They wouldn't believe the end, in particular.

The last time I wrote something in this blog (or even read it, really), I had met half of the family that the Wrights and I replaced, and they told me that the original Jessica - now "Dana Costello" - lived in Malibu, mere miles from where I'd be going to school. It was almost Christmas, and I'd wanted to go home, so we drove through the night in hopes of meeting her before flying back.

So, it's Sunday morning, and Louisa and I are both really tired. We drive around for a while, trying to find the address Phuong gave me. We're having no luck, mostly because we can't concentrate, so we pull up to the side of the road next to a park to get some rest. It's a nice area, so we don't feel particularly worried about sleeping in the car. A few hours later, I wake up and the passenger seat is empty. Louisa's left a note saying that she's gone to the church we saw a couple blocks away. I kind of envy that she's able to do that. I never really was a church-going man, but ever since the inn, I've been afraid of them. There's apparently real magic in the world, but it's not what they talk about there, not something that should be messed with. But Louisa takes the inn as vindication that there are powers greater than us, even if we don't understand them.

I put my glasses on, head to a corner store and grab a coffee and muffin before heading back to the park. It's warm, so I remove my sweatshirt and start walking around. There's a few parents with their kids, some people of various ages reading Sunday papers and ohter things. I wind up wandering over to the basketball court, where some teenagers are playing a little two-on-two. They're all pretty good, and the fact that it's shirts versus skins doesn't hurt at all. There's one black guy and one white guy on each team, and after a while, they must notice me, because they're starting to show off a little. It's kind of flattering, since they're good looking guys and there must be plenty of tan California girls with no glasses and bigger boobs hanging on them all the time. So I smile and wave, they wave back, play a little more, but they opt to take a break well before they're really sweaty.

One of the black guys pulls a shirt off the ground and waves in the direction of the deli I'd gone to, heading off with the other. The white guy wearing the tank top walks over to where a girl sitting on the grass had been reading. That left the shirtless white guy, who walked up to the little half-fence and leaned over, bringing his face closer to eye level. He had a good foot on me, a fit body, and a nice face that even his shaved head doesn't screw up. "Like what you see?" Even for a big guy, his voice is a little deeper than I expect. It's kind of sexy.

"Not bad."

"So, I haven't seen you around here before. You new in town?"

"Sort of passing through; I start class in Pasadena next month."

"Nice, a college girl. Guess I should tell the recruiters I want to stay close to home."

"Recruiters, huh? I don't know that you're that good."

"Oh, I'm that good. They got nicknames for me and everything. Go google Direct Current sometime."

"Riiiight."

The other white guy and his girlfriend walked up. "Who's the new girl?"

I held out my hand. "Jessica Brooks."

"Aaah!" DC recoiled, actually crouching down. "God, girl, why didn't you say so?"

His friend ran over. "What's the deal, Dana?"

Dana!? "Oh, my..." I kind of sank to the ground myself, a little queasy. Then I started to laugh, and I can't stop. I just keep laughing and laughing, and at first he looks at me like I'm some sort of monster, but before long he's laughing too.

It's at that point Louisa shows up and asks what's going on. "He's Dana Costello," I say, "and he was hitting on me!"

"I was hitting on you? Who was the one who was scoping out all this, Miss Jessica Brooks?"

That makes us both start laughing again. His friends think we're both nuts, and maybe Louisa too, if she's started laughing. She tries to do some damage control, since we're in no condition to talk rationally. She says that we were old friends back in elementary school, and why not?

He eventually gets up and offers me a hand up. I take it and we share a look. It makes us tingle a bit, but it's not totally or even primarily sexual. It's... I don't know if Ashlyn felt anything like it when she met Jean-Michel for the first time, and I'm pretty sure Art didn't feel it with Jeremy, but we've been without each other much longer, so it's like I've found a part of me that's missing, and I know from the way he's looking at me that he feels the same way.

We walk to a bench and he sits next to me, stretching his six-foot-seven frame out. "Look at all of you. You are not what I expected. I mean, I just assumed Dana was a girl's name, which was stupid. I didn't even think to ask Phuong! And your room was just full of Disney Princesses, unicorns, and... and other unicorns."

"Hey, don't you tell anyone about the princesses or unicorns. I got a rep."

"Oh, they wouldn't believe me anyway. You know how it works."

"Yeah, I do. So, you say you met Phuong and Carson? How are Mindy and Mrs. Cahill?"

"Getting by. Glad to meet others like us. We had a nice visit."

"That's cool. And your friend...?"

"Also one of us. She looks like Marie Desjardins of Montreal, but in reality she's Louisa Torrence of Baton Rouge and older than me."

"Older than..." He held up a hand to stop me. "I don't want to know. I mean, I do, but not yet. Let me process, okay?"

"Sure."

"Cool." He looked up and saw that the other two players had returned and were talking to Louisa, who looked a bit uncomfortable. "C'mon, let's go to my place."

He hopped in the car and directed us down a road that seemed obvious in retrospect. Their house wasn't enormous, but it was bigger than where Carson and Phuong lived, with an attached garage that we parked in front of. Dana led us inside and stopped in the kitchen, asking if he could get us a Coke or something; he pulled out a 2-liter and drank straight from the bottle. I still had my big coffee, but Louisa took an orange juice. Dana grabbed a box of crackers from a cupboard and led us out the back door.

I crashed into his back when he stopped suddenly as we approached the swimming pool and turned around, averting his eyes. "Geez, Parker, you should put a sign up or something."

Dana's body was blocking my view, but I saw enough to see that the woman he was talking to had been sunbathing nude, and was quickly putting her bikini on while telling him that he was usually at the park for hours. After a minute she told him it was safe, and stood to greet us. Dana made the introductions, and she did a bit of a spit-take when she heard my name. She told us to hang on a second, took a swig of the margarita that was sitting next to her lounge chair, and then grasped my hands and took a good look at me. "Wow, look at what might have been. It must be weird for you to look at her, huh, Dana?"

"Weird starts to cover it."

I was sort of taking a good look at her. Parker (who used to be Barry Cahill) wasn't as tall as Dana, so my eyes weren't quite down at breast level, but they probably would have been if she were wearing heels. She had a pretty spectacular body, although I could see some small laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. I shook my head to clear it. "Sorry, I was just having a flashback to my life as a man in his forties. You look really good."

"For a forty-three year-old woman? I'm not bad. You've got to look good in my business, though - even if Hollywood wasn't run by dirty old men, as soon as you start to let your appearance slip, they take it as a sign you might start to let your work slip too, and there's plenty of younger people out there."

"Well, you're a ways off from that."

"That's so sweet, but it's all going to come crashing down at once when my workout buddy here goes away to school this fall, I can tell."

She put her arm around Dana and gave him a squeeze, which clearly made him uncomfortable. "Look, I haven't even decided where I'm going yet. UCLA's looking pretty nice."

"But you've got a chance to get some real minutes as a freshman at Boston College..."

I gather they'd had this conversation before. But... "Wait, you're thinking of going to BC? Have you visited yet? Because I bet Mom would love to see you when you do."

They stopped dead, Parker recovering first. "Wait... Kathleen knows? How is that even possible?"

"We think people are more open to accepting it when something life-changing is already happening. I tried to tell her a hundred times, but she didn't believe me until her father died."

"Grampa Carl's dead?" Dana sat down on one of the loungers; Parker sat beside him and put her hands on his shoulders. "I hadn't even thought of him in a few years, but... Man. And you say my mom... my other mom... is she worried about me?"

"Of course she is." Parker squeezed Dana again. "You know I still worry about Mindy and Molly, even though they tell me they're doing okay whenever we talk. How could she not be?"

"I guess." Dana wiped a tear from his eye, and looked uncomfortable doing it. "Um, I gotta--"

"You go on and do what you need." Dana got up and headed into the house. Parker turned her attention back to me and Louisa, crying a little too. "He's such a guy; can't stand to let anyone see him crying no matter what, even more than most boys his age. It's like he's afraid people will find out he used to be a girl."

Louisa nodded. "He's certainly adapted pretty thoroughly."

Parker shrugged. "It's half his life; he can barely remember being Jessica Brooks. Min-- Carson is the same way, only... Well. And part of it's me. I confess, I liked having a son so much that I kind of steered him in that direction. Not that I loved my little girl less at all, but Dana being such a guy's guy - well, it lets me stay in touch with that part of my life, despite having all this." She held her hands out in front of her breasts for emphasis.

I got that; I'd certainly played a bunch of sports in high school, even if I didn't have the natural ability of some of the more athletic girls, for the same reason.

We sat silently for a bit, and then, just to break the silence, I said that they should come back East for Christmas. Unless they had other plans. Which they must...

"No, but... Won't it be weird for Kathleen? These two strangers from L.A. coming on short notice?"

"You're not strangers. She'll have a hard time believing at first, but trust me, you can convince her. She's used to me, remember."

"Well, I'll have to ask Dana, and you should really call her, but if they're all open to it..."

They were. But that will have to wait; I'm still on Eastern time and ready to crash.

-Jessica