46-SCHOOLING IN SKIRTS

about the brother she'd lost in the accident ... you ... and this might be the breakthrough we've been hoping for."

"I hope so," I agreed, motioning at the white cotton skirt and pennyloafers I was wearing. "If I get any MORE.comfortable dressing like this, I might forget that I'm a boy!"

Robin leaned toward me, almost conspiratorially. "You know, Danni, there isn't anything wrong with a boy living his life as a girl."

"You mean like your patient who had the operation?"

"No, I mean just like the way you're living now. You can keep your female name and keep dressing as a girl ... go on to college and start whatever career you want, all as Danielle Nichols. If your girlfriend is as understanding as you say, not only would she probably go along with it, she'd most likely love the idea!"

I wasn't so sure. Although Chris SAID she preferred the current arrangement, I remembered how depressed she'd been when she thought J.J. was trying to become my boyfriend. What if she found a boy who was 100% male, instead of a hybrid like me? How fast would she decide that "Danni" wasn't really the same as "Danny"? For that matter, how did I know she'd even like the male version of me?

Susan had pretty much avoided the two of us since that day at the mall, preferring to spend time with her "macho jock boyfriend", as Chris usually put it. I'd been worried that maybe she would get upset enough to tell Jim the truth about me... but eventually I realized that he wouldn't believe it without proof (no one would, I had gotten so good at being female), and Susan didn't have any to show him.

Chris did everything to further feminize my appearance. She loved buying sexy lace panties and frilly slips for me to model in front of her. One weekend, she made an appointment at a beauty shop and we had the "works." They pucked my eyebrows to thin arched curves and permed our hair into cascading, curly locks that Chris called "deliciously feminine". The beauty operator showed us how to use some ribbons and clips to produce some romantic styles. I left rosy-cheeked.

CONTEMPORARY TV FICTION 47

At school, we wore the same color panties and bras as sort of a secret love rite. We tried to look as much alike as we could, sometimes wearing matching (different color) dresses and heels. Chris even dyed her hair the exact same color as mine. We looked like sisters.

J.J., on the other hand, had stopped being shy and was trying to force his way back into my life. So far, he'd accepted my subtle hints that I really wasn't interested but he managed to try asking me out at least once a week. How much longer could I stand pretending to be someone I wasn't? Or was Robin right, that maybe I had already started to become the person I was fooling everyone into thinking I was?

My life had become so complicated since that Halloween dance, which now seemed a million years ago.

CHAPTER NINE

Chris and I managed somehow to keep our relationship going over the next couple of months, while concealing it from our classmates at Kennedy. It wasn't easy, either. We spent a lot of time looking for secret places where we could be closer without causing a scandal. Mostly, we'd go over to my house after school in the afternoon, or wait until Chris' parents went out for the evening so we could be together at her house. Once in a while, we'd do something daring like sneak a kiss in the girls' restroom when there was no one around, or hide behind a cluster of bushes at the park. Even with all the sneaking around, though, it was a good feeling to have a girlfriend who loved me, in spite of (or maybe it was BECAUSE of?) my masquerade..

I thought I'd finally found a way to go back to being a boy when our driving instructor passed out the guidelines for us to get our temporary driver licenses. Before they could be issued, the motor vehicle bureau needed to see our birth certificates! I figured even Kathy couldn't make their computer ignore the fact that it said "Daniel" on that important piece of paper. When I showed it to Chris, though,