After enjoying a couple of videos, Norah wanted to see what kind of clothes new Luke had at her dorm. We spent a good while basically teasing poor Luke with girly names because she refused to look at her college registration and other evidence to determine what name this twist of fate granted her.
Kasey approached it methodically, working backwards from the light related meaning of Luke to come up with Lucy, Elaine, and Phoebe. Rhea, expressing her rainbow roots, broke up that light into a variety of colors for suggestions going off of Scarlett (despite the fact that Luke didn’t have red hair), Aqua, and Hazel. Meanwhile, Norah just opted to lay on the cutest possibilities like Cassie, Blossom, and Layla.
The videos were fun, especially with an energetic group of roommates. I had a good group, with Marshall especially, but they were fundamentally different than this one. We just happened to be put together in freshman year and stuck around for two years like that. Me, Marshall, Keith, and Gordon. I did my best to forget Wade though.
He was our neighbor first year and he would come over all the time and dominate whatever situation. Keith knew him from high school so they always liked to hang out. The problem was, Wade always brought the drama.
I heard so much, too much, about his itemized list of who in that building were the good friends and who were the bad ones. He always called on me to make art for him. I liked the practice and separating myself from the art and instead making it for someone drove my focus. A lot of it was crap back then but he always lauded it.
Wade also used, posted, and shared it all over the Internet with my aspect of contribution barely an afterthought. It was about the exposure. That was fine too. But it started to get rough when he would have his moods and treat me like he didn’t even know me. I saw him throwing out his trash once and rushing back to his dorm. I wanted to discuss something with him and I hustled over. But, before I could even manage a word, he lashed out, “NO NO NOOO!”
He slammed the door so wildly that the ripple of air staggering me. I was barely a foot away with my hand and was afraid for a second that he might’ve trapped it on my fingers. I took it hard.
The rest of that day, I just crawled in bed as my head raced with a thousand explanations, a million bitter fantasies of smacking him in the face, and an endless tangle of mental confusion. I’ve often told myself that I don’t need other people. It’s easier that way. Don’t dwell on my family and don’t get tangled up in messy social crap.
But it hurt so much to be essentially ghosted in person without any possibility of explanation. All I could imagine was grumbling about Wade’s social tiers but he good-naturedly agreed with me that it was silly. We had several normal days after that before he suddenly snapped.
He ensnared me to be on his softball team which never won a game. I barely played any of sport and we were constantly up against huge guys who could launch shots into the parking lot. I tried my best and was rewarded with two concussions dashing along the base path and running into human muscle walls. Wade blamed me for those injuries.
When the ghosting ended, it was like a switch was flipped and no disagreement ever occurred between us. Wade was just as animated, energetic, and personable as before. I talked with Keith in private and I broke down. Basically, I pussed out.
The exhaustion of dealing with this crap came out as frustrated tears and struggling to speak. Fortunately, Keith didn’t hold it against me as a guy. I expressed my confusion and terror that Wade hated me. Keith explained it clearly and succinctly. Wade was an asshole.
So I had to wonder why on earth was he friends with him? Keith didn’t really have a clear answer for that. Their families were close and he mostly got amusement over the way that Wade overreacted to everything. Keith had the impressive skin of an elephant when it came to all this social crap. Wade couldn’t hurt him.
I did my best to withdraw from dealing with Wade and toughen myself up. But inevitably I fell back into his influence. The next time, he brutally ripped through my art. He pointed out a dozen failings and countless nitpicks. No construction to the criticism, just a soul blasting of how its sucked and that he never really liked it anyway. We changed dorms not too long after that and I didn’t see as much of Wade.
Bitterly, I fought to improve myself so that everything he brought up was addressed and resolved beyond reproach. After spite burned out, what I had left felt like a forest after a fire. I couldn’t quite link the mental scars of Wade to the walk of frustration that led to distracting billiards that led to my benefactor making me Beatrice, but it still felt like a tangible thread. If not for the obligation of my classes, I would’ve given up art.
While Luke revisited his designs of running away to Northern California by bus, Norah led her boyfriend downstairs to their altered dorm. I excused myself and vaguely hinted that there was something I needed to do.
The gradual trek over to room 116 was almost as daunting as my initial adventure to 212. This was unfinished business that I needed to complete. I held up with Beatrice’s slim knuckles poised before the wood. Closing my eyes and steadying all the wobbly bits inside did little for my resolve. I desperately wanted to just run away. But, as Beatrice‘s stomach gave a twisting gurgle, my hand rapped firmly but measuredly on the door. Wade daily scrutinized my methods of knocking on his door. Too hard. Too fast. His roommates, who barely said anything, were allegedly screaming at him about this.
I set aside some time to contact them and personally apologize. They confessed that they had no idea what I was talking about and said it was all right. Such a pussy, even before Beatrice.
The door slowly creaked open and an unfamiliar sliver of face emerged and expanded to reveal a fretful girl. It was clearly Marshall, drastically altered from our last, confused encounter.
“Oh. Oh my gosh. It’s you. That girl who was asking about someone named… Taylor? What do you want?” That’s right, to them I was never Taylor. Maybe this was pointless. But, considering what happened since my last visit, I hoped they might believe me.
“Hi, Marshall. You used to know me. I used to be one of your roommates, before… all this.” It was such a succinct and simple set of words to say, yet it felt like an arduous mountain climb to get through them. Not helping was the fact that Marshall had been transformed into a gorgeous, perfect all-American classical beauty.
She had an immense swath of radiant, sandy blonde hair stretching and twisting down to her chest. Marshall didn’t quite receive the same endowment as Brian in the other dorm but plenty was evident through her light maroon blouse. Did every other boy transformed into a girl receive perfect grace and poise compared to me? No, that was being too harsh on Beatrice. However, darn if Marshall didn’t look like she was meant to be plastered all over beauty ads and hanging off the arm of some equally flawless, muscular quarterback.
That was an assumption though. From how I looked, people probably expected me to fling curses, court raven familiars, and stroke black cats while smiling.
Once through the threshold, it was easy to see how unsettled and awkward Marshall appeared while wielding her new body. She awkwardly tugged her top down, then back up, then sideways, and then back down all while fussing with her hair and acting like she was holding something she needed to put down but couldn’t find the space.
The rooms were basically all the same with a little small hallway leading in and then bending towards the living room with the two bedrooms and bathroom the other way. Gordon was mostly responsible for a nice marker board with reminders and a flourish of movie posters. Marshall decorated with local sports teams and muscle cars while Keith represented artsy video game stuff. Some of those elements were still here but the video games had more of a shirtless Goku focus along with the Fist of the Northern Star and Tekken. Muscle cars had been replaced with UFC fighters and beautiful landscapes. The movie posters appeared largely unchanged but now they had more ornamentation and decorations akin to where I lived now.
To my surprise, there were three girls in the living room. Who had replaced me? Working from one side to the other, it was easy to recognize what had become of Keith. I was a mutt of ethnicities which just existed in separation from my origins because my parents wanted to forget. Keith was Thai and assumed immediate kinship.
I was too horrified to correct him until a month later. She had a luxurious sculpted dome of dark hair with light streaks that traced her jawline but didn’t reach her shoulders. And she was absolutely enormous up top and wearing gray sweater that failed to make her bust inconspicuous.
The other two, I had to scrutinize. One was a girl in a light pink flower decked blouse with cleavage much closer to mine. She had pouty pink lips and even more eyeliner than I could boast. Her dark, lightly disheveled hair looked like gentle fur settling thickly on her shoulders. Out of everyone, she appeared the most relaxed and comfortable in this moment.
I waved and pressed my fingers together as I sought the right words. “Hi. I used to live in this dorm with you all. You probably don’t remember me though. My name was… Taylor Lee.“ pushing my way through that, I learned with some careful questions that Gordon was actually the relaxed girl in the pink outfit. And Wade was the other one…
She looked very different than him. Wade was a little heavyset but this girl was lean, although not absurd so. She had some impression of a model, especially with the even, narrow structure to her face. Her blue eyes were striking as were her enormous, colorfully pink lips. They were easily the biggest of anyone I’d seen around here. A smattering of freckles spread to her cheeks and bridged her nose. She definitely had something to speak of beneath her shirt, along with the obvious traces of a bra showing through. The shirt was a pop culture filled Tarantino love letter, the usual for Wade. My college life, the good and the bad, surrounded me and I had no idea what to say.
“Taylor? I wish… Dang. Wish I could remember. So someone or something altered our memories too?” Wade said.
I took a deep breath. “Must have. I don’t know. I was just playing billiards in the common room after I went for a walk and it was like everything about me changed.”
Keith mentioned that she was taking a shower after work out when it happened. Marshall didn’t notice for several minutes because she was listening to Lo Fi with her earbuds in. And Gordon said she was taking a nap. Where Wade fit into this wasn’t especially clear but, apparently, she came over to try and get some answers. I had a few answers, especially in my pocket, with the little flashlight I brought with me. But I kept quiet on them and listened to the group.
At one point, Wade vented about her long brown hair and the garbage tie that she got from Gordon. Gordon appeared unflappable about Wade, but my heart rate lifted. During a lull, I asked to use the restroom. Glancing over at the open rooms, it was hard to tell which were whose since a new, prescribed sensibility surrounded each girl. Mitchell had way more plushies than I could ever imagine him keeping around.
A rough memory assaulted me. Stupidly, I borrowed time at a 3D printer to make gifts for everyone around. Keith got a scifi heroine. Mitchell got an action hero. I made Gordon some anime thing. And Wade received his barbarian character from a campaign he mentioned once.
I didn’t really earn me any points but the guys liked it, I thought. Several weeks later, after I quietly learned that he had used it and paraded around, I found it smashed and burned over by the trashcan. It was some thing I kept to myself and he pretended to say that he was still keeping it around but he didn’t know where it was. I clinched the side pocket in my skirt where I just managed to tuck the flashlight away.
Carefully, I manipulated the controls and offered up a few softly uttered commands. Empathy. Kindness. Sympathy. Removal of what are the fuck was wrong with Wade‘s head. Empathy and kindness linked together as a command and gave me the affirmative. If I turned it so that only I was aware of the change, then it could work. The cruel bastard version of Wade would surely be snuffed out. This wasn’t erasing him. It was just making him a nicer person. A better person.
But did I have that right? Who cares! My benefactor went wild on this entire campus without getting hung up on what people would think about it. This was a good thing. Who knew what kind of person Wade would be beyond college before and especially now that all he had to do was flash his pretty face and pouty lips? A total jerk and psychopath or sociopath or whatever the hell he was.
I wanted to tell myself that she would have a shitty life with that personality but I also understood that Wade tended to be a wildly popular guy to everyone around. Things were crazy around here, but I could only imagine his female self would soon follow in those footsteps.
Fuming with barely stemmed fury, I looked at myself in the mirror. This could be the first change I made on my own as practice towards helping others, whether they knew or understood it or not. I would have to make choices that would drastically alter entire lives. I couldn’t be hesitant.
Why was that here though? What business did I really need to finish? Everyone who knew me around here had forgotten me. But several people who had just met me wanted to be my friends. They accepted me as Beatrice but also when I laid out the truth that I had only been Beatrice for a short time and the rest was pretend. I had fun with them and I wanted to find out what sort of stuff Nora would discover in Luke’s dorm. This place was my past… And I didn’t need to amend it.
With the careful sigh, I locked the flashlight and placed it back in the pocket. For my former roommates outside and the asshole I used to know, I encourage them that I would keep looking for answers but it was helpful to stop by and try to find them. They all appeared confused that I was leaving so soon but I assured them I would see them around. And so we parted.
At Luke’s dorm, I caught up with Norah and smiled at what she had put her boyfriend in. It wasn’t anything especially fancy or feminine but it was a plain white tank through which a lot of detail could be seen about her chest. Below, she had on torn super short Jeans that barely covered much of her thigh. Luke lamented her girly alter ego, especially the blushing, crushing reality that her name turned out to not be any of our efforts or suggestions but actually Lily. She sprouted a swarm of red blush every time Norah spoke it.
As Lily’s head dipped and stayed down with every iteration, I found myself easing off. I asked her if she was all right, despite everything. She glared at me gloomily but wrapped her arms around her lean stomach. “I don’t like it, any of it, but I’m glad to be talking to Norah, because I was afraid she misunderstood and I hurt her when I first tried to explain. All of this is crazy, but I’m glad she’s here.” I rubbed her shoulder and nodded. Norah was actually listening in and tackled Lily around the back.
She apologized with a smile but also admitted that this was a lot of fun because she didn’t have a real good relationship with her sisters. She made sure Lily knew that if stuff actually hurt then she was welcome to poke her and say something. To this, Lily sighed but admitted she was still all right. She was just overwhelmed by how much her life changed, even though she clung to the slim notion that any minute could bring her restoration or awakening from this dream.
Accepting this, Nora pivoted from clothing and hair and names to put on a serious expression. “I want to make sure you’re prepared and comfortable in everything coming your way. That’s why with full sympathy and careful coaching, I’d like to talk to you about feminine hygiene.”
Lily blanched but stiffly nodded. To that, I also felt my nerves trigger. Forever girl and a lot to learn still before I could really teach others.