“Eighteen years you have walked this Earth, now this number is but fourteen. Each roll of the dice returns more of what you have lost.”
Finally, some good luck! The golden light appeared again. Nicholas began to shrink. When he was back to fourteen, he removed his now thoroughly baggy shirt and slipped on the blouse. It fit perfectly. So perfectly that Nicholas was a bit unnerved, but he didn’t let that distract him. Of course Margaret would be a similar size to him, she was his daughter, after all.
Nicholas blindly pulled things out of the box, looking for something he could tolerate. When he was done, he’d managed to make three different outfits. One was a more masculine, gender-neutral outfit, consisting of a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. One was more feminine, consisting of a blouse, skirt, and ballet slippers. And the third was actually Margaret’s spare school uniform, which was made up of a blouse, jacket, skirt, knee high socks, and nice black shoes.
Immediately, Nicholas gravitated towards the masculine outfit, but he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror he kept in his walk-in closet. He’d forgotten that when he was a teenager, he’d gone through a phase where he had his hair long to spite his parents. With the long hair and still wearing Margaret’s blouse, he looked like a teenage girl.
Nicholas sat back, thinking. Yes, dressing up as a girl would be humiliating. But more humiliating would be if anyone he knew somehow managed to recognize him, and the odds of that were lower if he dressed up as a girl. After a few moments, Nicholas knew exactly which outfit he was going to wear.