You try to glare at her. You can't. Finally you sigh, grab the clothes, hang your head and say, "Where would I change?"
A few minutes later you're walking back uneasily in the clothes.
"Did you put on the underwear?" Panda asks. You don't answer. You do blush. You pull the edge of your jeans down a little so she can see a flash of pink. She makes a squeeing noise and says, "That's so cool." She hugs you. "I don't even really know why I wanted you to wear it so much but it's so awesome that you did!"
All of that and she didn't even know why? But the hug was so nice you can't be mad.
She give you the board you found in the bag, and you both go to skate. One of the middle school kids says, "Cool retro threads," and you're not sure whether you should be cringing at the outdated slang he probably picked up from a bad movie written by some old guy who'd never even been in the same room as a real skate board, or cringe at the fact that if the kids knew what you were wearing underneath they'd probably be laughing their asses off at you. You're pretty sure that you _should_ be cringing though. Panda just gives you a hug around your shoulders.
"They like your look, Brain" she says. "Pretty soon you'll have brought it back in style."
"Not if they see me skate, Panda," you say. "I told you, I don't board. Only blades."
One of the middle schoolers, a girl, whizzes by and says, "We'd never laugh at a first timer."
Another says, "Everyone's got to learn."
You have a feeling that the kids have an inflated sense of their own better natures. Once you take a few prat falls they'll be laughing like you were Charlie Chaplin and this was the 1920s.
"See," Panda says, "you've got to keep a positive attitude. After all, you might blade instead of board, but you got a free board today, someone must be on your side."
You both put down your boards and Panda tells you to start slow. You do, and pretty soon the two of you are falling all over the place, but instead of being humiliated you're laughing and having a great time, and the middle school kids are better people than you thought: they don't insult either of you, don't laugh at you even once, and actually encourage both of you.
Maybe having a friend isn't so bad.
You lose track of time, enjoy yourself, and think you're getting the hang of things. It took some adjusting of your posture to get your center of gravity where it needed to be, and more than a few falls to get the different muscle groups boarding required to start obeying your commands, but you start feeling good about yourself and lose yourself in euphoria.
"You'll be better than me in no time, Brain," Panda says. "I should be jealous."
You smile at her.
"This look suits you," she tell you.
You coast over to some shiny metal, to get a better look at yourself. Your hair is sweat slicked, it makes it look longer. The bra you're wearing under your t-shirt gives the illusion of very small breasts. Now you're astonished the middle schoolers didn't laugh at you; they had to know you were wearing it. Although... maybe they thought... You keep on looking at yourself. Your reflection is distorted by a raised pattern on the metal --it was designed for traction even though it isn't being used for that. Even so, you're getting a pretty good impression of how you look, and you think you could pass for... wait. What if... what if your hair didn't just _look_ longer, what if it weren't just an _illusion_ of small breasts. You poke your left breast, careful not to make it obvious what you're doing.
"I didn't really notice it before, Brain," Panda says, "but you're pretty ... _pretty_ for a guy."
"I don't think I am," you stammer.
"You don't think... Oh. Ohhh. But that's not-- I mean-- Uh. Can I poke you?"
You say, "Sure," without really noticing you've said it.
She presses your right breast and you feel the yielding flesh that wasn't there before give under the mild pressure. "That is so cool!" she says. Then quickly looks to see if the exclamation caught the middle schoolers attention. It didn't. "Do-you-think-the-clothes-were-magic-I-mean-it-has-to-be-magic-right?theres-no-way--"
"Slow down," you tell her. She's hard to follow when she doesn't pause between words."
"Okokok," Panda visibly forced herself to take a breath. "Ok, slowing down. But it has to be magic. There's no explanation in the laws of phyics so it must me magic. Right, Brain? Right?"
"I guess so," you say. He logic is sound. If something physically impossible happened then something outside of the laws of physics must have happened, and the name for that is "magic".
"Well let's check the bag again," she says and leads you over to it. You put your boards aside and start looking through it. You find a letter, she reads it out loud:
>If you are reading this, then the bag is for you.
>Make use of it, and its contents.
>Don't worry, all is as it is meant to be.
>May fortune smile upon you.
"Well, that's weird," Panda says. She looks at you. "Weird but awesome." You don't respond. "Isn't it awesome?"
You still don't respond.
"Oh come on, Brain. We just found out that magic is real, how is that not awesome?" she asks. She has a point, but you decide that you're not going to crack a smile. "There was a magical bag that was apparently destined for you." You have just a twitch of a smile, but you're pretty sure she caught it. She smiles at you, and seems to have picked up on the fact that you're playing now. "You have boobies of your very own," she says in her best impression of a stuffy upper class accent that belongs to a person who would never, ever, say the word "boobies" unless talking about birds. It's too much, you break down and laugh.
"Now let's have some fun," she says. Once you're back up of the bench she's talking fast again. "You know you're like only my third- no fourth, female friend, most of the people I hang out with are guys, they're," she gestured to the middle schoolers, "much more gender balanced than the skaters our age, even though we're supposed to be the new millennium of egalitarian crap and everything, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be their age, the world just _that much_ closer to right than it is for us, anyway we're going to have so much fun together, I can feel it, it is going to be epic."
At first you're not sure how to respond, or even if you should, letting Panda do most of the talking seems to work pretty well, but then you decide that you do have something to say, "If I'm going to be one of your girlfriends... I want a slumberparty."
"I think I can arrange that, Brain," she says as you and she join the middle school kids. You all have a good time together until the sun starts to set and you have to leave the park.