It was a Thursday in late April, and our living room was a picture of domestic bliss. Mom and Dad were watching television; I found it amusing that they were watching brand new episodes of shows like Cheers and The Golden Girls, shows that in my 2020s mind were ancient. It also was interesting remembering what TV was like back before the internet. I had forgotten what commercial breaks were like, or not fiddling with a smartphone. You really had no choice but to focus on stuff before the smartphone was invented. Tim was on the floor sorting some of his baseball cards, and Janie was passed out against Dad’s chest as he sat in his armchair.

  As for myself, I was on the sofa opposite of everyone leaning back on the arm with my feet on the couch. I had my nose buried in a book which I propped against my legs, since I didn’t really have a desire to watch shows that I had seen long ago. Every once in a while I would blow my brown hair away from my face. It was about nine inches long now – by far longer than I had ever had it in my previous timeline – but it was a bit dry and tangled, and unevenly lengthened since I had been simply letting it grow up haphazardly for the past…good lord, has it almost been a year since I woke up in 1991?

  It had been quite an experience, reliving life at ten years old. Everything was exactly the way I remembered it; the old house, the neighborhood, even my elementary school. Seeing my parents in their prime, as well as my siblings as children, was like stepping into a photo album. Everything was the same, except for me of course. Being reinserted in the past as the female version of myself had been quite an adjustment. In all honesty though, living as a ten year-old girl for the past year had become…normal. While I could still remember many details about the upcoming thirty years or so, it was difficult to remember what it was like to, say, be six feet tall..

  A familiar closing theme song played, which was the signal for Mom to announce, “Alright, boys and girls, it’s time for bed!”

  “Awww,” moaned Tim, who immediately started stuffing his cards back into the bin.

  “Can’t I stay up a bit longer, Mom?” I asked. “All I’m doing is reading, and I’m not tired yet.” I still resented being told when to go to bed, but I stopped resisting months ago. Well, most of the time.

  Mom relented. “Okay, fine, Just bring it down to your room and you can stay up a bit longer.” She turned her head inquisitively. “Um, Maya, what are you reading, anyway?”

  “Oh. Don Quixote.”

  “Er…why are you reading that, sweetie?”

  I shrugged as I got to my feet. “I dunno. I hadn’t read it before, and I always meant to.”

  Mom shook her head. “I mean this in the best possible way, but you are a very unusual girl.”

  I rolled my eyes and started for the basement stairs while Dad carried Janie to her bedroom. Tim and I bickered about who got to use the bathroom first, but he bolted inside first. I went into my room to change into my lavender pajamas, and once Tim was done I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. Despite the growth spurts I had had over the last year, I was still far shorter than I liked, and it was annoying having to stand on a stool to see my reflection properly. I had thinned out quite a bit, and while my facial features had softened a lot, my hair was still disheveled from letting it grow out. The pretty girl staring back at me felt normal at this point.

  I went back to my room, realizing that I had left my book up in the living room. I creeped up the stairs leading to the kitchen, noting that the door at the top of the stairs had been shut. I could hear Mom and Dad talking at the kitchen table, and curiously I pressed my ear to the door to listen in.

  “There will be a little bit of on-site training at the new plant,” Dad was explaining, “So I’d be able to start right away.”

  “That’s good, so there won’t be any downtime. It will give us enough time to unpack,” Mom mused. “It’s a very good interest rate…I think that we should sign. We’re not going to find another house that’s this affordable.”

  I knew immediately what they were talking about, since in my previous timeline it had happened almost exactly the same way. In the summer of 1992, Dad had gotten a better job north of the Twin Cities, and we moved to the house our family would live in until Janie graduated from high school in 2007. It would be the house that Tim and Janie would remember from their childhood, and where I would for my teenage years. I was pleased that considering all of the changes that had occurred in this new timeline so far that big life events were still happening the way I remembered.

  “I think we should sign as well,” agreed Dad. “So how do we tell the kids?”

  “Janie’s young, she’ll be fine. And you know Tim, he’ll bounce into anything. I’m worried about Maya, though. You know how she is.”

  Dad sighed. “Yeah, but I’ve never seen her handle changes as well as she has this year. She’ll adjust to the new house.”

  Mom paused for a moment. “She won’t talk about it, but I know how much she’s struggling with school and adjusting to her new circumstances. And now we’d be adding a new town onto that.”

  “It will be good for her, Donna. It will be a fresh start, and she’ll be able to start a new school as a girl and be in a new place where people don’t remember her as Matthew. If anything, she needs this more than any of us.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” agreed Mom. “We will just have to break it to her gently. She’s just so sentimental.”

  I suppose I was too nostalgic for my own good. Hell, I was literally reliving my life. Even though my gender had been flipped, it was worth it to be able to see dead family members again, or to even live in my old house again. It was even nice just to live in a world that had no idea what social media was! As Mom and Dad’s conversation shifted away from us kids and more into the minutiae of the lease signing, so I softly slunk down the stairs and into my bed. My mind was already racing with future plans.

  The next morning was a regular school day. It was more of the same; zoning out in class and finishing the assignments with ease, stuck mostly with my thoughts during lunch and recess. No one picked on me; on the contrary, they seemed to tolerate me because I helped most of them with their schoolwork. But it was uncomfortable around the boys, since I sensed that a few of them were really starting to notice I was a girl and I had to avoid their attentions. There was always a barrier, since I truly wasn’t “one of the guys.”

  If being around boys was a barrier, the girls in my class were an unbreakable iron wall. I still didn’t really have any female friends, mostly because I didn’t know how to make female friends. I would sometimes glance over at the girls in their circles during recess, or huddled together at lunch, and I always had a pang of sadness knowing that I was on the outside looking in. Plus, having no girlfriends meant that I had no buffer against some of the more awkward attempts for boys to interact with me. I realized first-hand why girls and women traveled in groups: they needed the support. Support that just wasn’t there for the girl who used to be a boy.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Today was my session with Dr. Walters, which we had trimmed down to once a month as it was determined that I had been making healthy progress. Mom usually picked me up at school so that we would make the appointment. I threw my backpack into the back and settled into the passenger seat.

  “Hey sweetie,” Mom greeted. “How was school today?”

  It had been long and dreadfully uneventful, which as usual metaphysically killed me. So of course, I answered with a quick, “It was fine.”

  “You know, I had a thought today,” said Mom as she pulled out of the school parking lot. “Why don’t we skip the session with Dr. Walters today?”

  I gave Mom a quizzical look. “Don’t you have to call her if you want to cancel?”

  Mom smirked. “I already did. I thought we could spend the afternoon together, just the two of us. What do you think?”

  I smiled back. “So, are we having, like, a mother-daughter day thing?”

  “I suppose we are,” laughed Mom. “I was thinking that it’s finally time we do something about your hair.”

  I reached up and ran my fingers through my temples. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

  Mom shot me a sidelong look. “Maya. Honey. We’ve been letting your hair grow out for almost a year, and it’s starting to look like a bird’s nest.. I’m happy to give you trims when you need it, but I think you’re ready to have it styled. It’s almost to your shoulders!”

  I nodded. “Alright, but I want to decide how it gets cut. And I don’t want to get a perm.”

  “Good, because I didn’t want to pay for a perm! We could also stop by the store to poke through some outfits. Sound good?”

  “Hair and clothes shopping,” I grinned. “Is this how mother-daughter days work?”

  “It absolutely is.”

  Mom took me to a beauty salon about fifteen minutes away. Apparently they had an open spot for this afternoon which Mom had been able to book. It immediately felt different than any barber I had ever gone to in Matthew’s timeline. There were a lot more sinks and bottles all over the place. The stylist was a jazzy blonde young woman who was thrilled that I was coming in to get my hair done the first time. I wouldn’t say I was all that excited, but I admit that I was curious as to what I was in for.

  “My daughter was firm that she gets to decide to get whatever kind of hair style she wants,” Mom explained to the stylist.

  “But, um,” I said as she threw the hair cloth over me, “I don’t really know what to go for.”

  She handed me a book full of different hair styles, though most required more hair than I currently had. She suggested bangs and that blown out look that screamed 90s, but I shot it down immediately. My sense of style was still stuck in the 2020s, and I wasn’t about to go for any of those weird 90s ‘dos no matter how ‘in-style’ they currently were. I said that I wanted to part to the sides and keep it relatively straight. No frizzies and no feathered bangs. Something simple that I could let grow out, because I wanted to keep going longer. I almost mentioned the Buffy the Vampire Slayer look, except that the show wasn’t going to be created for another five years.

  The stylist tapped her lips thoughtfully, and soon she went to work. I was used to my haircuts being rather quick, but having my hair done as a girl was a completely alien experience. It took a fair bit of time to wash it, as she did a much more thorough job than I usually did in the shower. She ran a few products in my hair, and layered it out to even the sides. She was able to get the ends sweep inwards gently, and I even got to use one of those domed hair dryer things.

  The finished result was quite something; it was nothing ostentatious, just a simple natural look with room to grow. The product really nourished my hair and gave it bounce, and I made a mental note to pay more attention to my shampoo from now. Since it was a bit slow that day, the stylist was able to convince Mom to get both of us manicures, and we sat together laughing while having our nails done. I went with a light pink nail polish, since it seemed like a natural color to match my skin. The stylist attempted to upsell us again with facials, but that’s where Mom drew the line.

  We went to the mall next, and while clothes shopping had never been on the top of my list as far as fun things to do was concerned, I was warming up to it. I still didn’t have the guts to look at any of the dresses, but I found a few shirts that I liked and a pair of overall shorts that I thought were cute. It didn’t even occur to me until we were walking out of the store with the bags in hand that I had chosen something because of how cute I thought it was.

  The last place that we went to was a pizza place called Carbone’s. It was a no-brainer to go there for dinner because pepperoni pizza had been my favorite food in both of my universes. We sat down in a booth by the window, and after placing our order Mom got a little serious. It was a minute or before she spoke up.

  “So Maya, there’s something I wanted to talk about. Just you and me.”

  “Uh, okay, Mom.”

  “I don’t want you to get upset or get sad or anything.”

  “Mom,” I explained, “after what’s been going on with me for the past year or so, it’s hard to imagine something that would get me that upset.”

  Mom shook her head, grinning. “You really are a smart kid, you know that?” The server came with our drinks, interrupting us momentarily. After a pause, Mom continued. “Anyway, your father has gotten another job opportunity in another city, which means in June we’re going to be moving to a new town.”

  I took a sip of my coke. “Oh, I knew that already.”

  Mom’s face dropped. “What do you mean you knew already!?”

  “Well, yeah. I heard you and Dad talking about it. And you and Dad left the lease papers in a folder on the counter.” I tapped my forehead. “Remember? I’m a smart kid!”

  Mom stifled a laugh with an amused smirk. “Apparently! So how do you feel about it?”

  I thought about it for a moment. I had been wild being able to relive a year in my childhood home, being able to see Dad again, or to reexperience the early 90s. And while I was too sentimental for my own good, I did feel that a year of the mundane realities of being a ten year-old was far too long to dwell in the past. And I still had decades of my past to relive, though with the glaring difference of reliving it as a girl this time around. Besides, I had known this move would happen ever since I arrived in the past.

  “I think it’ll be good. I will miss our old house.” That part was true. It was amazing to see our old house as it was again. “But I definitely want to move on. And honestly, I think I want to be in a different place where no one knows us. I’ve been trying really hard to act like a girl, and I just want to be away from people who know that I used to be a boy.”

  “Maya, listen to me,” Mom said as she touched my hand. “You’re not acting like a girl. You are a girl. You’ve changed so much in the last year, and I know that school has been very difficult for you, but I am so proud of you for pushing through. I just want you to be the best person you can be.”

  “Aw, Mom…”

  “You know,” she confided, “I think I might have always suspected who you really were, even when we thought you were a boy.”

  I raised my eyebrows. There is no way that was possible; in Matthew’s timeline I had been just an average boy that grew up to be an average man. Sure, I didn’t get into sports and was always soft-spoken, but I had been a consummate male! Right? Or had I just adjusted so well to being a girl that Mom was retroactively remembering things differently? Maybe there was something to it; after all, there were moments when I really enjoyed girlhood and I didn’t remember any profound moments where I particularly enjoyed boyhood.

  “I don’t know about that, I’m just trying to be me, I guess,” I eventually replied.

  “Well, whoever you are, I love you. And I always will.”

  “I love you too, Mom.” I gave a shy smile. “So, is this how mother-daughter days are supposed to go? Manicures, clothes shopping, and heartfelt talks?”

  “Oh, absolutely. And I think mother-daughter days are something that will have to happen more often!”

  We shared a laugh, and at that moment the server brought out our pizza. As we chowed down on our square pieces, I felt pretty good. I had a freshly styled head of hair, pink nail polish, and a mother to eat pizza with. I really was looking forward to the next step – more than I realized – and I knew that I had my family at my back, regardless of whatever gender I happened to be.