Mistakes and Choices

[Jacqueline]

Brandi jumped off the swing. "Yeah, spoiler alert, Disney World isn't that fun except for the water parts."

"Did you get to be princesses?" Nicole asked.

"That's for little kids!" Brandi replied, and Nicole frowned. "Like, really little, way younger than you." Nicole's frown deepened. Couldn't Brandi tell by what Nicole was wearing that she wanted to do it?

"Out here, we get to be princesses every day, even if we're older," Margie said, holding her little sister close. "And don't say anything about Nicole's castle! We know already!" For some reason, both Braelynn and Brandi found this uproariously funny.

"Okay, um, secret," Brandi said, and Braelynn jumped off her swing to join the huddle. "Mom told us that we are really super not allowed to make fun of that after all your aunt's money got stolen," she told Margie. "I totally legit feel sorry for you.

"At least the weather's nice," Braelynn said.

"Braelynn, God!" Brandi scolded her younger sister again. "Didn't Mom tell you about the big hailstorm they had? Look at the grass we're walking on, it's still wet!"

"It was really scary," Nicole said. "It was thundering and lightning-ing and all the hail was trying to break into the house."

"That's awful!" Braelynn replied sympathetically. "But we get to have cupcakes today!"

"Cupcakes?" Margie and Nicole asked simultaneously, and all four girls giggled.

"Yeah, Mom bought some stuff to make cupcakes and lemonade with. Actual baked cupcakes."

Nicole sniffed the air. "I can smell them!" They all could, even from outside the house. Apparently, Alice and Polly had wasted no time, not with four little girls waiting.

"I wanna play a game," Brandi abruptly said. "Tag, whoever loses has to get stuff and wait on everyone else."

Margie wasn't sure if she liked the sound of that, but Nicole immediately piped up "Okay!" and Margie wouldn't contradict her. Braelynn agreed as well, but instead of going after Nicole or Margie, like she looked like she wanted to do, Brandi immediately tagged her own sister. "You're it!"

"Hey!" Braelynn shouted, confused, but the others were already running, Nicole hiking her dress up and running in her princess shoes and Margie being careful not to slip in the wet grass on her Mary Janes. Margie could have yelled at her little sister just then. Why on Earth had Nicole agreed to something like that when they were both wearing this stuff?! She waited for the tag, but of course it didn't happen. She was older. Braelynn would go for someone she thought she could more easily catch, which was, of course, Nicole.

Stephen realized, then, that it didn't matter that he was wearing petticoats and slippery Mary Janes. He could still certainly outrun Nicole, and then Nicole would be the loser, and that was something that Margie couldn't allow to happen. "Bet you can't catch me, Nicole!" Margie yelled, as Nicole was fruitlessly trying to tag Braelynn while lifting up her dress with one hand. It worked; Nicole started running after Margie instead, and Margie lifted her arms up in a very feminine and not very fast run, and the little girl caught up to and tagged her. "Gotcha!" Nicole yelled triumphantly.

"Oh no!" Margie replied, running after her with the same girly run, and then going after Braelynn and Brandi the same way. Even in those shoes, he probably still could have caught Braelynn at least, but then the girl would just tag Nicole again. "You're all faster than me," Margie said with an exaggerated pout. "I'll go get the cupcakes and lemonade now."

It was good timing; she went in just as Alice was putting on the packaged icing as Polly talked to her. "At least there isn't any asbestos up there, thank God, we had it professionally stripped of that and lead paint fifteen years ago, right after Mom moved back in here. My older sister really wasn't going to let that happen. Oh, hi Margie!"

"I'm here to get everyone cupcakes and lemonade!" Margie said happily, not mentioning the lost game of tag.

"Well that's very nice of you! Everyone gets two cupcakes and one big glass of lemonade," Alice said.

After she came out with eight cupcakes and four lemonades on two plates, she'd noticed that the other three girls had dragged three old plastic lawnchairs out to the other side of the lawn, where the trees and shade were, and she smiled as she walked over to serve the other girls. The most important part was that Nicole was seated between them, and they were talking to her as a friend. Margie would gladly serve all three of them all day if they kept that up.

"...and then the power went out and we couldn't turn it back on until the storm was gone, so... Hi Margie!" Nicole chirped, and Margie had to set the plates down on the ground to hand cupcakes and lemonade to the others, consuming her own standing up, and they all ate them happily, with Margie making sure that she didn't get too much on her pretty gloves or dress.

"Hey, Margie! Go get us towels and sunblock from our car, chop chop!" Brandi demanded, pointing to the wide open trunk of their rental car. (Stephen was suddenly more jarred by that than anything else. But of course it was safe. No one was out here to steal anything.)

"What does 'chop chop' mean?" Braelynn asked.

"I have no idea, it's something I read somewhere," Brandi replied, as Margie went to get the towels and sunblock with a smile on her face. (Sunblock was something that Stephen was fortunate enough never to need, at least not while out for only a little while during the day, and definitely not while in the shade.)

After she returned with the stuff, another hundred-yard walk in total, Margie was expecting more demands from the other girls, but Nicole, sick of watching her big sister get pushed around, told her in a firm, princess-like tone to sit down on the (now towel-covered) chair so that Nicole could sit on her lap while she applied sunblock to her own face, and of course Margie definitely obeyed that.

"Oh my God, you two are so precious together. You really are a princess, aren't you," Brandi said with sincerity in her voice.

"I'm not just a princess, I'm a mayor, too!" Nicole replied.

"A mayor of where?" Braelynn asked.

[Jacqueline]

As Nicole talked at length about the mystical city of Unicorn Town and all the ponies that lived there, Stephen almost broke character as he felt the sharp twinge in his bladder. He'd made an enormous mistake. He hadn't gone to the bathroom since that morning, Nicole was sitting on his lap putting more pressure on his bladder, and he'd just drank a full glass of lemonade. And Nicole was talking about her fantasy world, which he intuitively knew could lead to them mocking her for it. He had no other good choice, and was suddenly glad that his mother had talked him into making a prudent decision earlier. With no emotion on his face, and no hint given to the girls, Stephen quietly let himself wet his pull-up as Nicole talked all about the Unicorn Town tornadoes that moved everything around and how she needed a new box of Legos to make Unicorn Town bigger.(He was not worried about it leaking. His whole problem was his small bladder, after all; it could hold twice that without giving any sign.)

And then Braelynn had mentioned how they'd brought a jump rope, and chalk to make hopscotch with, and Stephen had never played hopscotch and somehow neither had Nicole, and Braelynn said that they should skip, so the four girls happily skipped across the lawn to play.

Margie and Nicole both found hopscotch easy, even in their pretty outfits, but jumping rope was something that was tricky. Nicole was better than her big sister, of course, and Margie struggled to keep above the rope as the other girls turned it. Both Braelynn and Brandi, it turned out, had extensive practice, and they were even able to dance while doing it. And then Brandi started talking about dances, and then so did Braelynn, and the four of them copied each other's movements without a care in the world.

(Seeing what he perceived to be a mixture of old and modern girls playing together, the 80-year-old man's confusion suddenly broke; he became convinced that he was hallucinating, and he prayed for God to take him away while he could still recognize unreal things for what they were.)

"Girls, would you come in for a moment? There's something I'd like you to try," Alice called them inside with. In her hands were two different dresses, somewhat similar to what Margie was wearing, only with fewer bows.

Braelynn looked enthused at the idea, but Brandi stepped back. "Mom, I don't wanna wear that stuff," she said, nervously.

"Not even once?" Polly asked, giving the girl a bit of puppy-dog eyes.

"Sweetie, it's just the one time, you're never going to get a chance to do it again. I know, this isn't your thing, but try it. For me, please?"

Brandi still looked very opposed to the idea, and Stephen didn't quite like what he was seeing. Margie, fully in character, could react to the emotional pressure. "If it's not going to be fun for you, then don't," she told Brandi. "If it's going to be too embarrassing, then just don't." Brandi visibly relaxed. Alice pursed her lips, knowing that she really didn't want to try to force her daughter into a dress, and the two women looked at each other, silently agreeing that they had been a bit overbearing. "But your mom's right, you're not going to get another chance to try it."

"All right," Brandi said. "But. No. Pictures," the girl told her mother and Polly firmly.

"No pictures," Alice agreed. When they were younger, she had innocently, blithely put photos of them on her Instagram page, and then she had gotten comments she really didn't want from people she couldn't believe were allowed to be there. She had never uploaded a picture of them to any social media site again, was very circ-umspect in sharing any pictures even with family, and would always listen if her children asked her not to take them.

Braelynn and Brandi wore similar, purple dresses and matching socks, with lots of lace around the holes, and Brandi let herself smile because her little sister was smiling. And then, much to the girls' surprise, it wasn't four of them wearing pretty dresses but six. There were adult clothes up in that attic as well, and Polly and Alice took similar sizes. They sat down together, the girls on the floor and the adults on the couch, around the old TV and watched a VHS - an actual VHS! - of the original Generation 1 My Little Pony movie. Nicole stayed in place mostly because everyone else was and because her big sister was physically holding on to her, although Margie was certain she was daydreaming throughout.

They said their goodbyes after the movie ended; they couldn't stay for dinner, unfortunately, as it had taken longer than expected to get there and the girls needed a good night's sleep in their hotel. Even Brandi seemed a little reluctant to change back into the clothes she'd come in with. As soon as they left, Margie's demeanor changed back into Stephen's. He wasn't crying, but he was obviously upset, and both Nicole and Polly noticed.

"Stephen, what's wrong?" Polly asked quietly.

"I've spent all day in a frilly dress with bows and the last three hours or so in a wet pull-up!" he confessed, not caring whether or not they knew. He couldn't describe his emotions. He felt so weak, so feminine, in his girly dress and wet pull-up after having done girly stuff with girls all day. And yet, a part of him was so fulfilled, so happy, so complete. He'd done things he never did before, had experiences he'd never had, enjoyed things that he as a boy had no business enjoying, and half of it was when he was in an acute, unspoken state of embarrassment, even if no one had found out. Polly didn't know what he was feeling, either, but she felt obligated to talk to him, to comfort him.

"I assure you, nobody knew about that. Even I didn't know." She was very glad she'd bought the odor-absorbing brand. "Let me help you with the dress," she said, unbuttoning it, worried that he might rip it off.

"Is Margie going to be okay?" Nicole asked as Stephen walked into his room.

"Margie will be fine, but you're a good little sister for asking," Polly told Nicole with a smile.

"Cousin today!" Nicole reminded her.

Polly smiled. "I know I said 'today', but the whole cousin thing was for them, Nicole, and they're going home. So she's your sister again, if she wants." Stephen had quietly retrieved a pair of underwear from his room and went into the bathroom. Nicole picked up on his sullen, conflicted look.

"Is Margie mad at me?" Nicole asked sadly.

"No, of course not, sweetie! She might be mad at me. Or maybe she's mad at herself. But let's see who comes out of the bathroom before we worry about things like that, okay?"

"I hope it's Margie!" Nicole replied, intentionally loud enough for Stephen to hear her.

Polly decided then and there that if it was Stephen who walked out of the bathroom rather than Margaret, she would not be cross with him; if he wanted to stay a boy for the evening, she would not penalize him; if he canceled this entirely, she would give him, oh, a month of double chores, just to show she was still serious about it, and if he did them well, it would be only a couple of weeks. Certainly, if he didn't want to be Margaret tomorrow, she would just let him have the day and not tack on another one later.

Wait, no. She really wanted him to be Margaret again tomorrow. There were things she had to do, and things she could trust him with. She'd ask tomorrow morning.

[Jacqueline]

But it was Margaret, not Stephen, who walked out of the bathroom after having used it, with even her white gloves and pretty socks still on, and the first thing she did was squat down to her little sister and hug her. Polly noticed that she'd even done up the back buttons on her own dress. "Nicole, why would I ever be mad at you?" Margaret asked her little sister. "You did nothing wrong at all." Well, there was that part where she'd accepted that game of tag, but that was a little girlish mistake to make, and Margaret - nor Stephen - couldn't blame her for that.

"Neither did you, Margaret," Polly said.

"Except forget to go to the bathroom and pee myself," Stephen muttered.

"And is anyone making fun of you for that? You took a precaution and it was the right precaution to take. No one is calling you names, not me and not your little sister. You did exactly what we needed you to today. You even stepped in on Brandi's behalf when Alice and I were being too pushy. I don't know what you see in the mirror, but what I see is someone who is doing a very good job at making amends and helping a sister who needs it. Now, would you like to help me make dinner before you play this evening?"

"Okay," Margaret said. Mom was right. No one had done anything hurtful, no one was calling him a pansy or a baby or anything else. He had simply been Margie. Even when she'd forfeited the game of tag and done things for them, the other girls had simply treated her as one of them. Margaret put her pinafore on without being asked and helped her mother prepare vegetables and chicken, and then Nicole sat next to her and talked about how much she'd enjoyed having fun with Braelynn and Brandi and how she was so glad that Margaret had been there with her.

And then Margaret retired to her room to play her game and finally, finally got to level 50 - Stephen's character with pink hair and a pink banner and a frilly dress - well before the event ended.

After fitful dreams, all of which involved him wearing a dress, Stephen woke up without peeing himself again, and he breathed a sigh of relief and went to the bathroom, feeling like he was finally gaining full continence. His bladder had overfilled yesterday and he'd let go, yes, but that wasn't the same thing. Was being Margie helping him with that somehow? He didn't know. All he knew was that he was glad it was happening.

As it had before, the sound of the water running woke Polly up, and she went into Stephen's room to talk to him again. He'd expected another morning conversation, but he was worried that she'd ask him something he didn't know how to answer. What she had said last night had stuck: no one was making fun of him.

"I don't know how much you heard of our conversation yesterday, but Alice's husband is upper management of a hardware chain. It turns out that one of the perks is being able to give a certain amount of gift certificates and discount cards. Alice very generously gave me all of that allowance, and I intend to make full use of it."

Stephen immediately understood where she was going with this. "So while you're buying that stuff, you want Margaret to babysit Nicole?"

"I really don't want to have to worry about bringing her with me into a hardware store and I know that shopping bores you silly. I need to go buy food and other stuff anyway. Listen to me carefully, Stephen. I'm trusting you by yourself, and I'm trusting you with her. I'll take another two days... wait." Combined with the days she'd already shaved off, that would put the end of this on a Wednesday. "If you take care of her while I'm gone today, and you keep being nice to her and playing with her like you have been for the rest of this week, we can start letting her down slowly starting Friday afternoon, and that will give her two days to get over it before I go back to work."

"Okay," Stephen agreed immediately. That was effectively cutting his original punishment in half, although he wasn't entirely sure if it was a punishment anymore. He could finally admit it to himself, at least: he'd kind of miss being Margie when this was over. Maybe he could get Nicole to accept him as Stephen, but it wouldn't be the same.

"You can make your own breakfast and lunch, there's enough stuff that you don't have to worry about cooking anything, and I'll be home for dinner. If you need help, call me, I mean it, and make sure you can hear your phone." Stephen nodded. He seldom used his ancient, hand-me-down flip phone, and he just left it in the charger indefinitely. Even if it wasn't a piece of crap, he'd have few uses for it; there wasn't any data service out here, and his mom didn't even have a data plan anymore. Another bill that Hunter hadn't been paying. "Don't let her get into anything dangerous, both of you stay out of the basement and the garage - and the attic, for that matter - and definitely no climbing on things!" He wanted to say something to her, that she didn't need to harp on that, but he didn't want to start an argument and so just nodded. "If you wouldn't do it while I was here, don't do it while I'm gone," she told him very seriously. "Also, I'm starting the wash before we go. Everything that's in the washing machine right now gets the lowest heat and an hour of time in the dryer, everything else can tolerate hot water and a hot dryer. Just throw it all together, there's nothing new in there and we're out of bleach anyway. You've done the wash before, you know what you're doing." She smiled at him. "I've also given you and Nicole matching outfits today," she said, draping a white-and-yellow dress onto his bed, with long, ruffled socks, sweet white gloves, and Mary Janes to match, along with a long, wide ribbon for his hair. The theme this time was daisies instead of bows, as there were little daisies embroidered all over everything, even little yellow daisy buckles on his shoes. Stephen smiled as he thought of how happy this was going to make Nicole. Leaving the pull-up on, Margie tied the arm ribbons and the hair ribbon and put on the dress, socks, and gloves. It was a little cold in the morning, after all. Polly gave her daughter a morning bath, as usual, and kissed both the girls goodbye before leaving.

"So you're going to play with me all day today?" Nicole asked as she, in her perfectly matched daisy outfit, sat down at the breakfast table with her big sister, who had poured them both bowls of cereal.

"My main job is just to keep you out of trouble," Margie replied.

"When you got into trouble, Mom turned you into a girl," Nicole said straightforwardly.

"Yeah, well, maybe if you get into trouble, she'll turn you into a boy!" Margaret replied.

Nicole froze, her gloved hand on the spoon, and she looked at her big sister with utter, absolute horror. She started hyperventilating, still frozen in place. Margie thought at first that maybe her little sister was faking it, exaggerating how offended she was, but very quickly realized that she was absolutely not faking it. "I'm so sorry, I was joking and it wasn't funny, please don't be mad at me," Margaret said. She was worried that Nicole would run to her room and slam the door behind her, spilling her cereal on the way out.

[Jacqueline]

Nicole did no such thing. Instead, she ate carefully, with very small bites, because to do otherwise would be to get in trouble. To her, the idea made total sense. If Stephen could do something bad and Mommy would turn him into a girl for a while, then Mommy could do the same thing to her in reverse and Stephen would be doing boy stuff with his new little brother, maybe even for a really long time if she got into really bad trouble. Why didn't she think of that before?

"Nicole, I really was just joking," Margaret said once the little girl was done eating.

"That doesn't mean you were wrong," Nicole replied firmly.

"Mom isn't... well, I don't think she's going to do anything like that." Stephen realized that most other boys would have reacted just as strongly as Nicole to the mere idea of wearing a dress, not quite the same way but with reactions just as fierce. Those boys' mothers would have probably known that and, therefore, would never have even suggested this. But instead of doing double chores for four months (which, he calculated, would have taken him less time overall), he'd became Margie just to make his little sister happy. He thought to himself that maybe he'd betrayed his maleness somehow and found that he really didn't care. Nicole was happy having Margie as her big sister, and her opinion was of much more value than anyone else's. "You can ask her, if you want, but maybe it's just better not to find out."

Nicole mulled that over. "Hey! You just want me not to get in trouble!"

"Oh no! You saw through me! I don't want my little sister getting in trouble the first time Mom leaves me here with her!" Margie decided to get serious the way Polly sometimes got serious. "What might happen is that if you get into trouble while I'm supposed to be looking after you, Mom won't WANT me to look after you anymore. She might not even want me to PLAY with you. So, seriously, Nicole. Don't get into things you shouldn't, today. Tell me what you want to do, and I'll do it with you." It occurred to Margie that Hunter would have had a strictly given list of dos and don'ts, needing to assert his authority. Polly had just been actually worried about them getting hurt or breaking anything.

"I wanna read my book, but I can't read it by myself," Nicole said.

"A book you can't read by yourself?! Well, let's take a look at it!" The girl read so far above her grade level that Margie actually wondered what kind of thing would be both challenging for her and that Polly would actually want to give her.

Nicole eagerly led her big sister into her room and pulled one from the well-stocked bookshelf. Margie - Stephen - was utterly shocked. The Fellowship of the Ring! The original! He wasn't even sure if he could read something that arcane properly. It wasn't just that he used words they didn't know, it was that he used common words in unfamiliar ways. Even the very first words in the foreword stumped them: "The tale grew in the telling." What, exactly, did that mean?

Fortunately, Stephen had a resource for finding out what things meant, one that Polly was certainly never going to deprive him of. "I can help you read this, let's go to my room to look stuff up," Margie told her little sister.

"But that's a boy's room!" Nicole shouted, the illusion of Margie as Stephen instantly broken.

"Nicole, it's still me," Margie said as gently as she could. "There's nothing in there that's going to jump out and bite you." There wasn't a lot in there at all; the soft ball that had gotten Stephen into trouble, his bed, his clothes, his computer, and a handful of toys he barely even touched anymore. All the furniture was old people stuff that had come with the house. "You're not gonna get cooties." Nicole was still visibly afraid, and her fear doubled as she reluctantly walked in the room. "Nothing's going to hurt you in here, Nicole. Stephen's not going to hurt you, either."

"I don't want Stephen," Nicole said, sniffling. "I want Margie."

"And Margie's right here," she replied, and kissed her little sister on the forehead. "C'mon. This book's full of boys, too. Let's find out what they did."

But Nicole, sitting on Margie's lap at the computer, drew a clear distinction between real boys and storybook boys, and Margie was getting the distinct impression that she was visualizing them all as girls. After they slogged through the foreword - they were both surprised to find that it was really about the book's authorship during World War II - they got into the details of Middle-Earth, and it helped that Nicole'd had The Hobbit read to her when she was younger.

Their slow reading, full of Internet searches and Nicole visualizing in detail everything that was going on, was interrupted by the absence of sound. "Oh, the washing machine stopped," Margie said, gently pushing Nicole off her lap and opening up a small sliding door to uncover the washer and dryer. What was that Mom had said? Right, everything in the washing machine goes in the dryer on the lowest setting for an hour. Oh! Of course, it was the girly stuff that Margie had been wearing, and Mom was worried about it breaking down. She understood and moved it over, noticing that Nicole had followed her out, still carrying her book, not wanting to be in that boy's room by herself. Margie remembered to wash everything else on hot, most of the family's clothes. Polly hadn't given precise instructions on what the dials meant, but Margie could read and knew to be careful. And she used a scoopful of the powdered detergent as well. Smiling, Margie turned on the old washer, and it rumbled louder than it had before.

"Ummm... it's gonna be okay?" Nicole asked.

"I think so, I don't think I messed up," Margie replied. "It's just really old, like everything else here." She looked around the washer for leaks, nervously thinking that she'd done something wrong, and determined that she hadn't. "C'mon, let's get back to reading." For all that she hated boys, Nicole loved hobbits, and Margie suspected that Nicole the Hobbit would be a major feature of tomorrow's playtime. Or maybe they would finish the books within the week. Nicole definitely wouldn't want to be in Stephen's room looking stuff up if Margie wasn't there with her. Maybe Mom would do it? But Margie wanted to, too.

[Jacqueline]

The washing machine stopped again, but the dryer was still going, and Margie waited for that to stop before she found a good breakpoint. It was good timing; Nicole was starting to get overwhelmed. "My head's starting to hurt, can we play outside?" Nicole asked as they left together.

"I was thinking the exact same thing," Margie replied. "Let me get the wash and we can play."

Margie took the wash out of the dryer and wasn't sure where to put it, so she folded it up as neatly as she could and left it on the living room table while Nicole went to pee. The washer hadn't done anything terrible to the clothes, and she hadn't used too much detergent. Phew. "Margie, our petticoats are dry!" Nicole pointed out as Margie moved the stuff from the washer to the dryer.

"You're right!" Margie replied. "Can you put yours on by yourself?"

"Uh-huh!"

"Okay, then I'll put mine on too." Margie figured it would keep the wind from blowing her dress around too much and decided to put on her training bra as well. It was really doubtful that anyone would see them, but it couldn't hurt to look a little less like a boy. She was just glad she remembered to go to the bathroom before she left, even if she was still wearing her pull-up. As she walked out of the house, she suddenly stopped - Mom had told her to stay near her phone, and the dress didn't have any pockets! "Wait, Nicole, I need to carry my phone in something!"

Nicole thought for two seconds. "I've got something!" She ran into her room and retrieved a plush, purple belt pack in the shape of a unicorn's face. "Here you go!"

"Thanks!" Margie replied. It fit her well and looked really cute. Her little sister was so thoughtful!

The two girls put on their matching daisy Mary Janes and sat on the swings together, their petticoats fluttering in the air, as Margie taught her little sister how to gain height by herself. "Just don't hurt yourself or we'll be in trouble!" Margie warned.

"I won't, silly," Nicole replied, and they stayed out there for a while in the breeze, when Margie's unicorn pack started ringing.

It was Mom, of course. "Hi Mom!"

"Hi Mom!" Nicole yelled.

"Hello, Stephen. Say hi to Nicole for me too." Margie wondered about the resignation in her mother's voice as she did so. "Please keep taking care of her today, but this will be the last time you'll have to take care of her like this."

Margie was suddenly very worried that she'd done something wrong or that something was going on with Mom. "Mom, what happened?!" she asked.

"I'll show you when I get home. Just keep her happy until then. Did you do the wash?"

"Yeah, the delicate stuff came out okay and the rest of it's in there now." A gust of wind picked up as she talked.

"Are you outside?" their mother asked, suddenly worried.

"Yeah, we're just playing on the swings. Mom, you gave me the shoes, I thought you wanted me to use them."

Polly laughed, relieved. "That's a good point. I've got to hang up now. You two have a very nice day."

Margie put away her phone, still very worried. What the heck could make Mom say that Margie wouldn't have to take care of her little sister? She didn't find another boyfriend, did she? Suddenly, Stephen had the terrifying idea that she would come home with a man, and that she'd show him her two girls, and then Stephen would have to stay Margie in front of him. The idea passed as quickly as it came. Mom would never do that, and Nicole would also be terrified of him.

Still, it had to be something, and Margie was still worried about what her mother would come home with even while she was fixing sandwiches for herself and her little sister and carefully reading more Tolkien afterwards (as before, the soft training bra and petticoats made it more comfortable for Margie to have Nicole sitting on her lap).

Their mother came home carrying heavy grocery bags, and Nicole immediately rushed to her. "Mommy! If I do something bad, you're not going to turn me into a boy, are you?"

"Oh, honey, no, never, I know it would actually hurt you if I did that." She was not stupid enough to ask where the little girl got the idea. "Did you have fun?" she asked instead, looking around the room. Nothing was broken, and her and Margie's laundry was folded on the table. She would have liked it to be put away, but Stephen probably didn't feel comfortable putting away his mother's underwear anyway. This was fine.

"Uh huh! We're reading The Fellowship of the Ring!"

"Really? I bet your big sister's giving you lots of help."

"Mostly it's from the Internet," Margie admitted.

"At your age, that doesn't surprise me. Help me put this stuff away and then we can talk." The cold stuff was all multiple-bagged together to keep it from warming up on the way home, and, nervously, Margie did what her mother said. What was going on?

[Jacqueline]

That question was answered from a series of text messages from Polly's phone. In the car going to the airport, Alice and her daughters had talked about Margie, Polly, and Stephen, and they'd all come to the same conclusion, the one that Alice had decided to tell Polly about after their plane landed: Margie was Stephen in a very good disguise. He'd performed very well, but his hair was still too short. He'd never played jump rope or hopscotch, but in many other ways, he was simply too girly. Polly blamed herself for being wrong: she'd thought that that couldn't happen. In return, Polly had not explained Margie's existence as a punishment. Instead, she had told Alice something very like the truth: that Stephen had done it as a favor for Nicole, providing her with much-needed companionship because the girl wouldn't have wanted to hang out with a boy and needed someone in her corner.

Nearly all of the messages in reply to that were of praise. They all agreed that Margie had been as good of a host as she could possibly be, and Alice was particularly impressed at the fact that - as she had to tell her girls - she'd obviously let Nicole tag her and lost on purpose. None of them were going to tell anyone else about this, and, Stephen thought with a bit of pique, who would they even tell? All the friends he had? He'd worried about being confronted by some weirdo, but he was unblackmailable, uncancelable, simply because he had no social life to ruin. Even the Internet's worst Sith master wouldn't have been able to affect him.

Polly had her own private thoughts as well. She couldn't live with herself if she tried to frame this as his fault. She'd considered simply not telling him, not least because dealing with Nicole was going to be tricky, but she mentally punished herself for even considering that. She was not going to be the cruel stepmother. He'd really tried his best, and she'd made an agreement. She'd also been thinking of how Stephen had been behaving, and a suspicion had been growing in her mind.

"Well, it looks like I owe you, now," she told him. "It wasn't your fault, and someone found out. Given all you've done, I figure I owe you about three hundred dollars for all this, although I don't have the means to pay it yet. If you want me to do your share of the chores, I'll do that." Margie shook her head a bit, not willing to take that deal; she wanted the money. She actually wasn't ready for this to be over at all. She loved her pretty outfits, and if nothing else, she wanted to finish the first book, if not the whole trilogy, with her little sister. "You can take that off now if you'd like, although-"

"Nooooo!" Nicole wailed from the other side of the door. She'd put her ear to the door to listen in. "Please, Mommy!"

"Nicole, don't be selfish. We had an agreement," Polly said patiently as she opened the door. "I told Stephen that if someone found out and it wasn't his fault, then it was over and he wouldn't need to wear dresses anymore if he didn't want to." Those last five words were said very clearly and carefully. She took a look at Stephen's face and her suspicions were confirmed. "But I think that Margaret has another choice to make."

"Please don't go, Margie!" Nicole begged, crying. "I'll learn how to make cupcakes and I'll push you on the swings and I'll never get mad and I'll be the nicest, best little sister ever!" Her dress and petticoats fluttering, she ran into the boy's room and jumped on her big sister, hugging her tightly as if to stop her from vanishing. "I need you!"

"Nicole..." Polly started.

Margie was suddenly very sure of many things. "I won't leave you, Nicole," she said, hugging her little sister back. "I might have to turn into Stephen sometimes, but I can always just turn right back into Margie when I'm done. And when I get older I might look more like a boy instead of a girl, and sometimes I might wear boy clothes, but I'll always be Margie when you need me to. I promise. Forever and ever. Just don't ask me to play with you all the time, that's greedy." She turned to her mother and smiled. "Mom, I wanna spend at least a little of that three hundred on Legos. There's this place called Unicorn Town that needs an expansion."

"Of course, sweetie," Polly replied, hugging her daughters close. "It's actually Stephen I need to borrow today, and probably a lot of days in the near future. I might have gotten a lot of supplies, but that doesn't mean I can afford a professional to come and fix up our roof or insulate the house. This is a two-person job, and I'm going to need the assistance of a very diligent and careful young man for this." It was actually more of a three- or four-person job, but Nicole was simply too little.

Normally, Stephen might have balked at the additional work, but this needed doing so that they could keep living there. She wasn't asking him to do anything just to teach him a lesson or because he needed to learn responsibility, and she never had. He was actually included, actually part of the family, in a way that he had never been before, and he was happier than he'd ever been in his life.

"Okay, Mom!"

--- Ten years later

There was a very important word that Nicole had learned, one of her favorites, and not just because it had once led to her victory in her school's sixth grade spelling bee. The word was 'consanguineous', and it was the reason that she and Margie would be together forever. As stepsisters, one of which happened to have fully functional boy parts instead of girl parts, they did not share consanguinity, and so there was no legal problem with them marrying each other once Polly had given her approval for her seventeen-year-old daughter. Nicole didn't care that Margie turned back into Stephen when she had to, such as when dealing with the rest of the world. Margie was Margie, and it didn't matter if she had the body of a boy and pretended to be one sometimes. That just made Margie better at protecting Nicole from real boys.

Polly had suspected, even before the day she'd seen evidence of their teenage fooling around, that this is how things would be for them. Nicole had never entirely gotten over her deep-seated fear of males, and there was only one biological male she'd ever really trusted. Margaret wasn't interested in boys that way, and even when presenting as Stephen, she would never be romantically close to any other girl than the one she'd grown up with.

The world saw Stephen and Nicole on their marriage certificate, but Margaret and Nicole knew better, and so would their children.


(If anyone is curious just what Stephen's character looks like, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmJMdzj9v28 )