The summer passed by in the blink of an eye. It was near the end of July, and there had not been a single day where I wasn’t busy as a caffeinated bee. The house had come together pretty well and all of us had settled in nicely. It was quickly becoming the house that I remembered from Matthew’s timeline. The only major difference was my bedroom; after all, even though it was the same room it was quickly becoming the room of a preteen girl. A remarkably well-read and sophisticated girl as noted by the books and the piano, but distinctly feminine.

  The thing is, aside from practicing sheet music and sleeping, I was rarely in my room this summer. In this new neighborhood everyone only knew me as Maya, and Maya had a full social calendar. I chalked that up to two reasons: pure dumb luck, and the virtue of being fairly pretty. I was quickly finding that going through life as a cute eleven year-old girl meant that everyone was friendly to you. A welcome change from decades of being disregarded as Matthew.

  Erin, the girl who lived down the street, was easily my best friend. I found it an amusing friendship; I was very knowledgeable and had an adult mindset that read as confidence. Erin appreciated having that quality in a friend. In return, Erin was my template on how to be a girl, so in a way we taught each other. She showed me the thousand little things that girls know, such as how to braid your hair, how to girls talk to each other, even how to decorate everything from your notebooks to your walls. Erin always thought it was funny that I was so smart and well-read, yet had no idea how to paint toenails. We were inseparable.

  When I wasn’t playing with Erin or my other girlfriends, I was spending time with my family. Dad’s new job was going well, and Mom was busy buying new furniture for the house. Tim had started playing pitch baseball, meaning I was always dragged to his games if I couldn’t weasel out of it. I mostly just played with my little sister Janie, who was quickly becoming my biggest fan. Janie had always been a girly girl in Matthew’s timeline, and had the misfortune of growing up with two older brothers. In this new timeline, Janie had a big sister that she adored, and was constantly emulating me. I wasn’t sure why; I was terrible at being a girl. Of course, she had no solid memories of me as Matthew, unlike the rest of my family, so to her I had always been her big sister.

  There was a little bit of anxiety where Erin was concerned. She constantly asked me to sleep over at her house, but I always made excuses. I still had my memories of my previous life in my head, and though they were fading to the point where I was starting to forget what it had been like to be male, let alone an adult, I felt that it might be crossing some sort of line by spending the night at her house. I also assumed that my parents wouldn’t allow it, since I had only been officially female for a little over a year.

  The subject was brought up in one of my sessions with Dr. Walters. I was still meeting with her, but they were more of a formality at this point. It was only once a month, as Dr. Walters was continually impressed with the progress I had made in my transition. I also got the feeling that she was using my circumstances as a case study for gender research, but in all honesty I was interested in what her research had to say. After all, I may be the only human in history that lived life twice: once as a biological male, and now as a biological female.

  “My friend Erin is having a slumber party next week,” I told Dr. Walters.

  “That sounds like fun!” she replied. She studied my face. “Isn’t it?”

  “I dunno. She’s asked me a few times to sleep over, but I’ve always avoided it.”

  Dr. Walters scratched her chin. “Don’t you want to sleep over at her house?”

  “Sure. But I guess I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

  She raised her eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “You know,” I explained nervously, “I used to be a boy. I can’t sleep in a girl’s room!”

  Dr. Walters nodded thoughtfully. “So because you used to be Matthew, it doesn’t feel right spending the night with your friend.”

  “Right.”

  “Hm,” Dr. Walters mused. “Let me ask you this, and you can be honest. Would you do anything inappropriate with her? Something that a boy might do to a girl?”

  “What?! No, of course not!”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  I gestured at myself. “Well, for one thing, I couldn’t! I have a vagina!”

  “Well, of course you do. You’re a girl, just like she is.”

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  “And secondly, I don’t want to! She’s my friend, and I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “So if I am hearing you,” said Dr. Walters, “there’s no way you could be inappropriate with her, in addition to not wanting to be inappropriate with her. Plus you care about her as a friend and don’t want to hurt her.”

  “Uh, basically.”

  “Well Maya, you don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable with. But if you had a sleepover, it sounds like you don’t have anything to worry about.” She glanced at her watch. “Well, that’s time for today!”

  I thought really hard about the session as Dad drove us home. I did want to have a sleepover, as silly as it was. I would hear from the girls second hand about the sleepovers they had and I felt a bit out of the loop since I kept refusing to go. One particular aspect of being a child again that was a relief was that I had no sexual drive. It’s surprising how clear you can think when your body isn’t screaming for sex. But I knew it was a matter of time; female puberty would eventually arrive, and I worried that I would lose control once my body started sending those signals to my brain. But sleepovers had nothing to do with any of that.

  When Dad and I arrived home and walked into the house, I noticed Mrs. Burgess was visiting our house with her youngest daughter Korina. Janie and Korina were playing together while Mom and Mrs. Burgess spent the afternoon over coffee. Since both sets of their daughters were friends, it seemed as if they were becoming friends as well. Mrs. Burgess was on her way out the door as I stepped inside.

  “Hello, Maya,” greeted Mrs. Burgess. “You know, I was just telling your mother about Erin’s sleepover next week. I hope you’ll be able to come!”

  “The sleepover?” I gulped, looking at Mom worriedly. “I’m not sure if I would be allowed to go.”

  “Nonsense, Maya,” replied Mom, waving her hand. “I think it will be very fun for you to spend the night with your little friends.”

  “But –”

  “Great, it’s settled!” clapped Mrs. Burgess as she took Korina’s hand and opened the front door. “We’ll get the times later. It will be so nice having you over, Maya!”

  “But Mom,” I pleaded after they had left, “I can’t go to a slumber party with girls!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s not…appropriate!” I stammered.

  “Why would it be inappropriate? You’re a girl.”

  “But…my changes…”

  Mom brought herself down to my level, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Maya, sweetie, we’ve talked about this a thousand times. You are 100% a girl.”

  “I still don’t feel like a girl. Sometimes.”

  Mom took my cheeks into her hands. “Maya Peterson, you absolutely are. Maybe you’re still figuring it out, but one thing you have to learn about being a girl is that having sleepovers is a thing girls have to do. It’s a rite of passage. And you are going to have so much fun! Trust your mother.”

  The following week I found myself hauling a sleeping bag down the street to Erin’s house. I had no idea what a girl’s slumber party would be like, and I was a bit nervous. Even though it was just down the street, Mom went with me and assured me that she was just going to be upstairs with Mrs. Burgess just in case. I kept reminding myself that I had absolutely no ulterior motives; nothing weird was going to happen, I was just hanging out with my friends. Besides, even if I had lecherous notions – which I didn’t! – an 11-year-old girl like me couldn’t do anything anyway.

  Despite my apprehensions, it was practically no different than what we usually did. Well, except everyone was wearing pajamas. I changed into mine in the bathroom as soon as I arrived. The girls were all wildly dancing to a New Kids on the Block song. I would have rather head-banged to something metal, but somehow I doubted that the girls would be into that. I joined them regardless, and bopped alongside them.

  Once we mellowed out from dancing, which took quite a while, we sat around giggling and chatting. We pulled out a board game called Sweet Valley High, which I had never heard of and involves collecting items to help you get a boyfriend…or something. Seemed appropriate for a slumber party, and of course I lost spectacularly. Erin stole my boyfriend at the last minute and won the game.

  The next thing we did was pull out a big bag of cosmetics and started making a mess. None of us knew what we were doing, though to my credit I had the steadiest hand when applying eye liner. Mom poked her head in after a couple of hours, and seeing me sitting crossed-legged on the floor in my pajamas with a face full of blush and mascara, she smiled and announced that she would see me tomorrow.

  The whole evening I just lost myself in girlishness. We listened to more music on the tape player, and went into another round of dancing. When it got late, we popped a Disney movie into the VCR while we whispered and giggled during the whole film. We chatted in the dark for a while when the movie finished, and eventually they faded into sleep. It wasn’t until well after the lights went out and I lay there in my sleeping bag in a room full of gentle snoring did I even recall the anxiety I felt before.

  All my carefully constructed worries, the ones that felt so real just hours ago, seemed to dissolve into the darkness of the room. I had been so scared of crossing some invisible line, of being seen as something other than the girl I was. But my friends hadn't seen a boy in disguise; they had just seen Maya. It was that simple. A deep sense of calm washed over me as I listened to them sleep. This night felt like a promise—a promise that the scariest parts of this new life were mostly in my own head, and that everything, truly, was going to be okay.