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=== Twisted Throwback === by Trismegistus Shandy This novel is set, with Morpheus' permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set about a generation later than his "Twisted," "Twisted Pink," etc. A somewhat different version was serialized on the morpheuscabinet2 mailing list in January-April 2014. Thanks to Morpheus, Maggie Finson, D.A.W., Johanna, and JM for beta- reading earlier drafts. Thanks to Grover, Paps Paw, and others who commented on the earlier serial. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ ----- Monday is proverbially the most annoying day of the week, but the Monday of this particular week was so great that it gave me unreasonable expectations for the rest of it. I got back two graded tests from the previous Friday, A- in Physics and B+ in Modern History, both of which were better than I'd feared. During the lunch break, I asked Sarah Kendall if she'd go out with me, and she said yes; we made a date for that Friday. And when I got home and found my favorite uncle sitting on the porch swing, I just knew it was going to be a great week. But past performance doesn't guarantee future results. "Uncle Jack!" I cried, and we hugged. "Where have you been? Is that your ride?" I asked, pointing to the beat-up old hovercar in the driveway. It had been expensive once, one of the earliest models of hovercar back when they were new and exciting, but the chassis was dented in several places and had rust spots where the paint had peeled off, so it probably wasn't worth much as an antique. "Yeah, Cyrus, that's mine. I bought it in Oakland just after I got back to the States --" "Where from?" I hadn't seen Uncle Jack since last Christmas, and here it was early November; but that hadn't worried or surprised me. "I sold my old groundcar last January and bought a ticket for Dhaka," he said, "and I backpacked through Bangladesh, India, Bhutan, and Tibet. Then I got a hankering to see some familiar faces, and I flew back to the States, bought that thing, and drove over to see our kinfolks in Spiral." "When was that? We went out there for Kerry's wedding in June, that's the last time I saw them." "Not quite a month ago. I stayed with Kerry and Jeff for a few days, and with Paul and Lynn for a few days more, and saw everybody else at least once, and then started meandering across the country; I stayed in Austin for several days, visiting with Tim, and I had some good long talks with Mindy too." "Oh," I said carefully. "That's good. How are they doing?" I hadn't seen Aunt Mindy since before she and Uncle Jack got divorced, and hadn't seen my cousin Tim since he was a baby. "They're doing great," he said. "Tim's doing really well in school, and he's playing soccer, and he's started collecting bugs. He showed me his collection, and how he preserves and mounts them; I promised I'd bring him some specimens next time. And Mindy, well --we're still friends, don't worry about that. She was just tired of traveling, and I wasn't." And he wouldn't ever be. Uncle Jack's Twist made him a traveler; he couldn't stand to stay in one place for more than a few days, and he had a constant hankering to see places he'd never seen before. And he has a couple of neat tricks that make him good at traveling; he has a magnetic sense of direction, like a migrating bird, and he learns new languages really fast. He already spoke twenty languages by the time I was old enough to know what his trick meant, and I expect it was nearer forty by the time of this story; last time I saw him, a few months ago, he told me he was learning his hundredth language. He's a freelance translator, so he can work from anywhere in the world with a net connection. "And she even agreed to send Tim out here for Thanksgiving, since he hasn't seen his kinfolks here in so long. I'll be picking him up at the Atlanta airport that Tuesday, and taking him back on Sunday." "Great!" I said, and then what he'd said sank in: "You're staying here until Thanksgiving? Really?" That would be difficult for him, staying in one place for more than three weeks, but he cared about family almost as much as about traveling. "Not every night," he said. "I'll take a few jaunts to Atlanta, Chattanooga, maybe Huntsville -- probably in the middle of the week when y'all are busy with school and work, so I can be here on the weekends. And of course I'll go see Wendy in Milledgeville." Just about then the middle school bus pulled up and my sister got off. I realized we'd been standing there on the porch for too long, and I was forgetting my responsibilities as host. "Come on in," I said, getting out my key. "Can I get you something to drink?" Mildred came in while I was pouring Uncle Jack a glass of sweet tea, and we both neglected our homework until Mom and Dad got home, listening to Uncle Jack's stories about east Asia and the latest news from our cousins in Spiral. Of course, we'd seen their social media posts, but it wasn't the same. Dad got home from work a few minutes before Mom. "John!" he exclaimed (he's the only person who calls Uncle Jack "John"), "it is as always a pleasure to see you. I could only wish that you had given us a more precise idea of when you would arrive, that we might be better prepared to offer you our best hospitality." Dad talks like that; he can't help it, it's part of his Twist to always be formal and polite. He's a little more relaxed when he's alone with me -- or, I gather, with Mom or Mildred or other people he cares about, but even one on one he's more formal than most people. "Sorry, Oswald," he said. "But don't fret about it; you know me. I can crash on the sofa tonight if you don't have the guest bedroom all ready yet, and I'll eat whatever you put in front of me." "The guest bedroom is indeed ready," Dad said, "and, though I am aware that you would eat the humble fare we had planned for our own evening's repast without complaint, I am determined to offer you something better on this, your first night at home in many months." He called Mom and told her that Uncle Jack had arrived -- apparently they'd been expecting him sometime before Thanksgiving, but had no idea, of course, when he'd get here -- and proposed that we all go out to eat at Hanging Gardens, the best restaurant in town; Mom agreed, and Dad hung up and told me and Mildred to go get ready. We hadn't changed out of our school clothes, so we didn't have much to do, but we went. We had an idea that he wanted to talk to Uncle Jack by himself for a few minutes. ----- "I declare," Uncle Jack said as we stood near the door of the restaurant waiting to be seated, "you kids have both grown six inches since I saw you last. Are you sure you haven't gone through your Twist?" He'd spared us that kind of talk when it was just him and us, but he seemed to know that it would gratify Mom and Dad. They smiled proudly as though the inches we'd grown in the last year were their personal accomplishment. "I'm probably not going to," I said. Mom wasn't Twisted, so there'd been a fifty-fifty chance to begin with that I wouldn't be either. And now that I was seventeen, the odds had dropped way down --I forget exactly what percentage, but well over half of all Twisted go through their Twist before they're seventeen. Mildred still had a pretty good chance, though. Or a pretty bad chance; it could go either way, and our family had been really lucky overall, but that was no guarantee that she -- or I -- wouldn't be one of the unlucky ones, with a disfiguring inhuman-looking Twist or a compulsion to do horrible things. "I hope I get a really cool trick, like Kerry's," Mildred said. "And I'd like to be taller and prettier, and I wouldn't mind having exotic eyes, but..." "But you don't want to look like Kerry," I said, and she nodded. "We'll be here for you," Mom reassured us, as she did at least once a month. "Either way, whatever happens, we'll always be here for you." Dad nodded. "Your mother and I are fully agreed. Whether you Twist or not, and whatever sort of Twist you may go through, we will always support you." "Me too," Uncle Jack said. "I can't promise to be here when it happens, but I'll try to come for a visit soon afterward, and help however I can." I knew they would. The worst Twist Mildred or I might go through could hardly be worse than Aunt Wendy's, or Dad's cousin Ryan's. And Grandpa and Grandma had taken care of Aunt Wendy at home as long as they could, and after they'd had to put her in the hospital in Milledgeville, they and Dad and the rest of us had made sure that she didn't go a week without getting a visit from somebody in the family. Somebody had gone to see Ryan every weekend the whole ten years he was in prison, too, and he'd always been welcome at Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings since he got out; he chose to live in Atlanta, though, where he could disappear into a crowd of people who didn't know what he'd done or that he was Twisted. Back then, I still didn't know exactly what Ryan's Twist was or what he was sent to prison for; Dad's generation kept quiet about that around us kids. But whatever it was, they'd worked out a way for him to keep his compulsions under control and stay straight. The waitress led us to our table about then, and when we were seated, conversation turned to less serious subjects. "I meant to compliment you on your goatee earlier, Cyrus," Uncle Jack said, "but you were so full of questions I didn't have a chance. When did you start growing it?" "Over the summer vacation," I said. "I stopped shaving right after Kerry's wedding, to see how much it would grow before school started. And there wasn't much to write home about on the cheeks, but the chin was okay, so I shaved it down to just a goatee right before school started." "It looks great," he said. "I hope it looks at least as good after your Twist." I would settle for still looking human enough to live in Trittsville. Of course, if I had to move to Spiral, I already knew plenty of people there, my cousins and my Dad's cousins whose Twists made it hard for them to live anywhere else. But I'd much rather stay here. ----- There've been Harpers in Trittsville since about fifteen minutes after the Trail of Tears. That's what Uncle Greg always says; Grandpa says there was over a year between the Cherokees being kicked out of this part of Georgia and our ancestors moving in, and it was several years later before Trittsville was officially incorporated, but "fifteen minutes after" sounds better. Harpers keep popping up in history wherever you look, as mayor, or city councilman, or pastor of a church, or sheriff, or owners of important businesses. We've even sent a couple of Harpers to the state legislature, though the one Harper who ran for Congress a hundred years ago didn't get past the primary. The year of the Antarctic Flu epidemic, my great-great-grandfather was sheriff, one of his cousins was pastor of the First Baptist Church, and his brother was proprietor of the best furniture store in three counties. My great-grandparents were nothing so important just then, the year they both caught the Antarctic Flu on their honeymoon in New Orleans and brought it home to Trittsville. My great-grandfather was working in his uncle's furniture store and my great-grandmother was teaching elementary school when they got married. They barely survived the Flu, while their parents and several of their siblings and cousins died of it. But though nobody knew it at the time, their son Darren, born just over nine months later, had the distinction of being the first Twisted baby born in Georgia. Nobody figured that out until years later, after Darren and a lot of other kids born that year had gone through their Twists. By the time my Great-Uncle Darren (who died when I was eight) went through his Twist and became a boy genius detective, solving two murders and exposing several scammers before he was out of high school, my great-grandfather was running the furniture store, his brother Aaron was a respected lawyer, and their cousin Silas was a judge. That helps explain why Uncle Darren, and his younger brothers and sister and cousins who went through their Twists in the next few years, didn't suffer as much fear and hatred as the young Twisted in a lot of other places. It helped, too, that all of them still looked like normal humans, though better-looking and healthier than average, and none of the personality changes they got from their Twists were dangerous or particularly scandalous, unlike some unfortunate kids in other places. And Great-Uncle Greg's healing trick, and the way he healed the mayor's grandson right after he broke his spine in a soccer accident, didn't hurt the family's popularity any. About the time Dad and the cousins of his generation were going through their Twists, some Twisted from other places heard about Trittsville, and how respected our family was, and thought this might be a good place to live. Our family tried to make them welcome. But they -- at least, the ones who didn't look human -- soon found out that people in Trittsville weren't quite as open-minded as they looked. They didn't mind the Harpers, but we were *their* Twisted. We'd always been around, and if some of us had some odd tricks, well, they pretty much trusted us not to misuse them. Most of the less human-looking Twisted who'd moved in soon moved away again, some to Spiral, which was fairly new then, and some to big cities. And when some of Dad's cousins went through major physical Twists and couldn't pass for normal humans, or had such extreme compulsions that they couldn't function without accommodation from highly understanding neighbors, they moved to Spiral too, even though it was thousands of miles from the rest of the family. A few cousins of my generation had done the same. My cousin Kerry, Uncle Greg's granddaughter, was the latest; she'd gotten green photosynthetic skin from her Twist, and she left town right after she graduated from high school. She lived with her uncle Paul and aunt Lynn for a year, until she satisfied the residency requirements and was able to attend Spiral State College at the local tuition rate. That's where she met Jeff, whom she'd just married a few months before Uncle Jack arrived to stay with us until Thanksgiving. ----- I managed to find Sarah Kendall in the halls between Calculus and Modern History, and chatted with her for about thirty seconds before we rushed off to different classes. She hadn't changed her mind about our date Friday. I was in a good mood when I sat down to listen to Ms. Rutherford's lecture; she was talking about the presidential election the year after the Antarctic Flu. "Many people wanted to make the CDC's emergency powers permanent," she said. "They felt that the epidemic might have been stopped sooner if the CDC had had the power to quarantine whole cities at the first sign of trouble, as it began doing a few months into the epidemic. Three of the candidates in the primaries proposed giving the CDC that or even more extreme powers..." My mind wandered, thinking about Sarah Kendall. I'd broken up with my previous (and so far only) girlfriend, Laura Weller, a couple of months earlier -- or rather she broke up with me. Her family had moved to Atlanta at the end of the last school year, when her father got a new job there; we'd talked on the phone every few days and exchanged net messages every day for a while there, but she sent me fewer and fewer messages, and I was always the one calling her... and then she called me and said she wanted to break up. It didn't make sense for a couple of high schoolers to carry on a long-distance relationship, she said. She was probably right. But Sarah Kendall's family had been in Trittsville for a long time, though not as long as the Harpers, and that wasn't likely to happen to us. Unless we went to different universities... I chided myself for thinking too far ahead; we hadn't even been on our first date yet. I tried to focus on the lecture again. "But the most historic thing about that election was that the Democrats nominated Erin Ann Pendergrass, the governor of Oregon. Who can tell me what was so important about that?" I'd read far enough ahead in the textbook that I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that, but I didn't raise my hand. Olive Sanchez did, and said: "She was the first transsexual presidential candidate." "Correct," Ms. Rutherford said. "She didn't win that year, but she paved the way for Kenneth Cho's successful candidacy twenty years later..." Later, at lunch, I looked around for Sarah but didn't see her. I got my lunch tray and sat down next to my friend Lionel. Our friend Vic wasn't there; I figured he was probably still out sick, as he had been Monday, and I was going to ask Lionel if he'd heard from him. But he was engrossed in a game on his tablet and not in the mood for conversation, so I pulled out my own tablet to do some reading. Ms. Rutherford had said, a few weeks ago, that we'd need to do a term paper on some historical figure from the past hundred years. I'd considered several, but hadn't made up my mind yet, and I really needed to start working on the paper soon. I looked up articles about two or three of the people she'd talked about during the last couple of days' lectures, including Simon Ortega, the director of the CDC who'd done so much to stop the spread of the Antarctic Flu, and Erin Ann Pendergrass. With her being transsexual, and having such a successful political career, it reminded me of my own family's having so many Twisted, and our political history. My Grandpa had served several terms on the Trittsville city council, like several of our ancestors, but when he'd run for the state legislature, too many people in the wider district didn't like the fact that he was Twisted, and that was the end of his political career. (I'd actually asked Ms. Rutherford if I could write about Grandpa, or my great-great-grandfather the sheriff, but she'd said I couldn't write about someone I was kin to.) And one of the reasons I was hoping I wouldn't be Twisted was that I wanted to go into politics myself; but I didn't plan to let that stop me, unless my Twist gave me a form so inhuman or compulsions so scandalous that I couldn't hope to get elected dogcatcher. (People always say that, and I guess there must have been places that had an elected office of dogcatcher, but I don't know where or when. In Trittsville the animal control people are just employees of the city council.) I found several articles about Governor Pendergrass, including an interview she'd given when she was running for governor. I hadn't known much -- anything, really -- about transsexuals before; Trittsville had a couple of dozen Twisted, most of whom were related to me, and thousands or at least hundreds of blacks and Hispanics and Asians and gay people, but if there were any transsexuals in town I didn't know them. I'd had the vague impression that they had a sexual kink that made them want to change their sex -- not that I objected; my parents raised me to be open-minded and tolerant. But I realized I was being tolerant about the wrong thing. Governor Pendergrass said in that interview: "I didn't change my sex, and never wanted to. I've always been a girl, and I've known it since I was a little kid, just barely old enough to know something (not much!) about how girls are different from boys. The operation just made my body match my mind better." That was well-said, and made me want to know more about her. I pulled up another biographical article about her, followed several links from it, and read another one and another. Several things happened simultaneously. Lionel yelled "Yes!", and gave a thumbs up -- apparently he'd just beaten the game, and was right happy about it. I looked up from the article I'd been reading, startled, having nearly forgotten where I was. And a tingling feeling started up all over my body, like I'd touched an electric fence. It got more and more intense, and I had time for several thoughts. The first was: "I'm going through my Twist!" The next was: "Great. I'm going through my Twist while doing extra reading for History; now I'm going to grow up to be a historian instead of somebody who makes history." The third was: "Oh shit, I can't afford to buy a new tablet!" There were little sparks shooting off of me, from my arms, hands and (Lionel told me later) my ears, and when that started happening, my tablet gave an audible *pop* and its screen went black. The electric-shock feeling got steadily more intense for a few more seconds, I think, though it was hard to judge the passage of time, I was feeling so weird; I shivered and shook, and I realized everyone at the table was staring at me. Then it faded, and I slumped over, exhausted, onto the table and half onto my tray -- I got mashed potatoes all over my hand and forearm. "Dude, are you all right?" Lionel asked. "Not really," I said weakly. "I think I just went though my Twist." But it wasn't near as bad as some other Twists I'd heard about, and even seen. I'd been there when my cousin Todd went through his Twist, when we were playing in Grandpa and Grandma's back yard a few years ago, and he'd passed out completely, while the sparks shooting out of him burned off all his clothes and killed all the grass where he fell. I seemed to have burned a few holes in mine, but I was still decent, and still conscious. So I hoped I'd gotten a fairly mild Twist, nothing that would show and hopefully nothing anybody who hadn't known me really well before the Twist would even notice. "Should I go get the nurse?" he asked. "Maybe..." I sat up straighter and wiped the mashed potatoes off my hand with a napkin. "Let me see..." I stood up, or tried to stand up, but I felt dizzy. "Yeah, you'd better go get the nurse," I said, sitting back down. He went, but before he got back with the nurse, rumors about what had just happened spread in waves over the lunchroom, and my second cousin Todd (a senior, Kerry's little brother) came over, followed quickly by my first cousin Renee (a junior, my Aunt Rhoda's daughter). "You look rough," Todd said, "but not as bad as Kerry after her Twist." "You don't look any different," Renee observed. "That's good to know," I said weakly. Other people were gathering around to stare at me, probably wondering if I'd show off my new trick (if I even had one) or what new compulsions or personality changes I might have. Then Sarah came hurrying up and looked at me in horror. "Oh my God, are you okay?" she asked. "I think so," I said. "Just a little tired and dizzy. Could be a lot worse." "You don't feel anything weird yet?" "Just the aftereffects of the Twist, I guess." Then Lionel came back with the school nurse. She shooed everyone away, except Todd, whom she drafted to help her get me to the office. The nurse supported me on one side and Todd on the other; I was strong enough to stand up and walk, but still a little dizzy. Lionel grabbed my backpack and my apparently ruined tablet and followed us. Once I was laying down on a cot in the office, the nurse sent Lionel and Todd away, and checked my vital signs, and said I seemed okay except for slightly elevated blood pressure. "That's normal enough right after a Twist," she said. She should know; she'd seen several of my cousins go through their Twists at school. "I'll go call your parents." My mom came to pick me up a little later. Meanwhile I tried to get my tablet to work, and to my surprise it turned back on. But the memory had been wiped; I'd have to fix all my settings and install my games again, and I'd lost the articles I'd looked up earlier, along with all the other things I had saved on it. I pulled yesterday's homework assignments from the school website and started working on the things I'd neglected yesterday in favor of visiting with Uncle Jack. I was trying to avoid thinking about my Twist. Renee had said I didn't look any different, and the fact that my clothes hadn't been destroyed by my change proved that I certainly hadn't changed radically. But once the dizziness and bleariness I'd felt right after the Twist wore off, I started feeling weird and uncomfortable. I felt like I *had* changed physically and somehow nobody around me noticed. Maybe that was my trick, to make myself look like my old self even though I'd changed under the illusion...? Aunt Rhoda could do illusions like that, though she couldn't keep them up for more than a few hours. And I felt, too, like there was something I wanted to be doing differently, but I couldn't figure out what it was. Uncle Jack had described that feeling to me once, how right after his Twist he didn't realize he wanted to travel, he just wanted to be doing something different, and he wasn't sure what yet. Then he started going on long walks all around town and in the woods, and thought at first that was all he needed, until he'd explored the town and the nearby woods thoroughly enough that he needed to get out and see other places. He'd run away, and when the police found him and brought him home, Grandma and Grandpa realized they couldn't keep him home for long because of his Twist. They arranged for him to finish high school with online courses while riding around the country with Great-Aunt Karen's son Will, who was a long-haul trucker; once he turned eighteen, he started traveling on his own. I still didn't know what I wanted by the time Mom got there. "I've already made an appointment for you with Uncle Greg," she said. "And I'll make an appointment with the Twist specialists in Atlanta as soon as I can. How are you feeling?" "Antsy and uncomfortable," I said. "I don't look any different, do I? Renee said I didn't, but I feel... I don't know. Weird." "You look just the same, at least on the outside... Probably your Uncle Greg can figure out why you're feeling this way," she said. She looked uncomfortable, too, and worried; she'd known about Dad's Twist since before they started dating, and when she married him she must have known there was a good chance she'd someday go through this with one or more of her children. But I could tell, looking at her, that expecting it didn't make it easier. "Can you stand up?" she asked. "I think so," I said, and I stood up. "I don't feel dizzy anymore." We went home, and Mom made me go to bed right away, though I was feeling reasonably okay by then. I mean, I didn't feel dizzy or nauseous or lightheaded or anything. Just vaguely uncomfortable. When I changed out of my burned clothes and into pajamas, I realized that I'd burned some holes through my underwear too, and if those spots had burned all the way through my pants, I'd have been indecent. Fortunately my pants were of tougher material than my underwear or shirt, and weren't totally ruined, though I wouldn't wear them to school again. After I'd changed, Mom brought me a sandwich and a glass of juice on a tray, and sat by my bed and felt my forehead and took my temperature, as though I had a cold or something; it would have been funny if I hadn't felt so weird and uncomfortable. Dad came home early, and came up to my room. "How are you feeling, Cyrus?" he asked. For some reason I flinched when he said that; something wasn't quite right about it, but I wasn't sure what. "Uncomfortable," I said. "And anxious to be doing something, but I'm not sure what." "You did not lose consciousness during your Twist, I gather?" "No. I felt dizzy for a while afterward, but that passed in, I don't know, probably half an hour." He nodded. "It was much the same when I went through my Twist." He'd told me about that before, and he didn't go into detail again now. He looked around at Mom's arrangements and smiled. "I see that your mother has determined to treat this as an ordinary minor illness. Perhaps it is best if we humor her. Do tell me, son, if you begin to feel any more definite inclination. Whatever it may be --" He frowned, thinking probably of Ryan and Aunt Wendy. "It is much better if you tell us, son. To conceal any new desires you may have, through a sense of shame, could be harmful. Please be assured that we will not judge or condemn you." "Sure," I said. "I promise I'll tell you first if I, um... start wanting to hurt myself." Like Aunt Wendy. "Or anybody else." Like, I suspected, his cousin Ryan. "Thank you, son. I will retire now, and allow you to rest." Several times when he'd been talking, I'd felt a twinge of uneasiness at what he was saying, but I wasn't sure why -- as though he were saying something wrong and I wanted to correct him, maybe? But I couldn't figure out what he was wrong about; everything he'd overtly said, at least, I agreed with. I did some more homework then, and ate the sandwich Mom had brought me. After a while I needed to go pee, and I did. The weirdly uncomfortable feeling I'd been having got worse as I was peeing, and slightly better when I was done. While I washed my hands, I looked in the mirror, and flinched. Did I really look like that? Had I always looked like that? What was I thinking when I grew that goatee? Well, that was a problem I could do something about. After I washed my hands, I got out my razor and shaved it off. That made me feel slightly better, but still not right. I didn't like the way I looked, and I couldn't figure out what felt wrong, or what I wished were different. My memories told me I hadn't changed at all, physically, and Renee and Mom and Dad confirmed it, but I felt, looking in the mirror, as uncomfortable with my appearance as Kerry said she felt when she turned green, or Paul when he got his permanent clown makeup. I went back to my room, and tried to distract myself from all that by concentrating on homework. I got the homework for the afternoon classes I'd missed from the school website, and started working on that; I'd gotten through most of my Mandarin homework when there was a knock at the door. "Come in," I said, "I'm decent." But I realized that I didn't like other people looking at me any more than I liked looking at myself in the mirror. That was bad; but I wasn't going to let it make me a recluse. Uncle Jack came in; he looked sweaty. "I just got back from a long walk, and your dad told me what happened... Oh. You lost your goatee?" "I shaved it off," I said. "They say the Twist didn't affect me physically, but I'm not so sure... anyway, at least part of the personality change is that I don't like having facial hair, apparently." "Oh... well, it could be a lot worse. That's a pretty harmless quirk." "Yeah. I think there's more to it than that, but I'm not sure what yet. I don't like the way I look, and so far the goatee is the only thing I've been able to pin down and figure out *how* I want to be different." "Hmm... are you thinking of tattoos or piercings? Some people I know in Spiral are like that." "Maybe." I considered it for a few moments. "Yeah, maybe a couple of earrings would be nice... I don't have a real craving for them though, and I don't think I'd like any more than that. And I don't think I want any tattoos." "Maybe you can look at a bunch of photos of different people and see if you can find someone you want to look more like." "That might help. Thanks." Just then I heard a pounding on the stairs, and Mildred poked her head in. "I just heard -- oh, you lost your goatee." "I shaved it," I explained again. "Just a mental Twist... I think." "So your Twist is that you don't like having facial hair? Lame!" She stuck her tongue out at me, and I returned the favor. I didn't explain to her that I felt uncomfortable about my whole appearance. "What were you doing when you Twisted?" she asked. "Mom said you were eating lunch?" "Yeah, and I was reading some stuff for Modern History on my tablet. Figuring out who I'm going to write my term paper about." "Huh. I can see how that'd make you more interested in schoolwork or just in history, but why would it make you want to shave?" "You can't always explain why people Twist the way they do by what they were doing when they Twisted," I said. After Uncle Jack and Mildred left me alone, I worked on my homework for a while longer. I saw a message notice, and checked; Vic said: lionel told me you went through your twist today. you feeling okay? what kind of twist did you get? I messaged back, telling him the little I knew so far: no physical changes, but the beginnings of some vague indefinable compulsions. Later on Lionel and Sarah messaged asking me basically the same thing, and I told them the same thing. Not long after that, Mom came upstairs. "Your Aunt Rhoda called, and said she and Uncle Leland and Renee might come over if you're feeling up to visitors yet." "Sure," I said. "I'm pretty much recovered from it, physically." I didn't like the idea of them seeing me like this -- even though "like this" was exactly how they'd seen me any number of times. But I wasn't going to let that stop me from visiting with family. "And mentally?" "I haven't figured that out yet. But I haven't felt any weird compulsions yet, so I think I'm okay. I hope." "Mildred told me you'd shaved..." She looked at me. "It looks good. Not that it looked bad before, of course." "You don't have to pretend," I said. "I know it looked silly. Thanks for being so indulgent." "I wasn't pretending before," she said. "I really did like the way it looked. I suppose your Twist has changed your tastes, but I think you look good either way." By suppertime, things had snowballed until it was not only Aunt Rhoda's family coming over, but Grandma and Grandpa and Dad's cousin Vernon (Uncle Darren's son). I stayed up in my room doing homework (and finally writing a few opening paragraphs of my term paper for Modern History) until Mom told me that Aunt Rhoda and her family had arrived, then made myself put on some nicer clothes and a cheerful face and go downstairs. Uncle Jack and I were the main focus of attention during supper; after I'd told everyone about my Twist, and the little bit I'd figured out about it so far, and said I had no idea what my trick was if any, they mostly listened to Uncle Jack tell stories about his recent travels. During the conversation after supper, I had several little twinges of that feeling I'd gotten while talking with Dad, that someone had said something wrong and I needed to correct them -- but again I couldn't figure out why. I didn't quite tell them *everything* -- I said I didn't like the way I looked, and wanted to change my appearance, but hadn't figured out how yet, except that I didn't like the facial hair and wasn't keen on getting piercings or tattoos. That was all factually correct, but I downplayed just how *revolted* I was sometimes feeling at my own body, and how embarrassed I felt at them seeing me like this. "People tell me I look just the same as before, and when I look in the mirror and compare my reflection to my memories I know they're right, but I can hardly believe it; that face in the mirror doesn't look right." Grandpa said, "Your Twist is a reverse of many Twists, yet causes you to feel the same discord. When I first changed and looked into the glass, I saw a face I'd never seen before. That feeling strange took many days to pass." (Grandpa Twisted during school, like me; he was in Literature class, and they were doing a group reading of _Hamlet_ -- I think he was playing Polonius. After his Twist, he started talking in blank verse, and he sometimes uses old-fashioned words to fit the meter, or stresses a word on an unexpected syllable.) "But look at the bright side," Aunt Rhoda said, "once you figure out how you want to look, and fix yourself so you look that way, you'll be satisfied with your appearance. Some people who get a physical Twist and no mental changes to go with it never become happy with their appearance." "Poor Kerry," Renee sighed. "I hope she gets used to being green eventually." "It looked to me as though Jeff has helped her a lot," Mom said. "He adores her, and being loved always makes you feel beautiful." The conversation changed course then, as we talked about our kinfolks and other friends in Spiral we hadn't seen in a good while, and Uncle Jack told us the latest news. ----- The next morning I woke up early, but I let Mildred have the first shower, both because she needed to get ready sooner than I did, and because I was dreading having to look at my naked body for ten solid minutes. The brief glimpses of myself I'd had when I was changing clothes the day before, and when I had to open my fly to pee, had been the most uncomfortable moments I'd had since my Twist, and I wanted to put off my shower as long as I could. I did the last of my homework from the last couple of days' assignments, and then picked up the novel I'd been reading. I had a hard time concentrating on it, and I wondered if it was an effect of my Twist -- maybe I'd only be able to enjoy reading nonfiction now? Or it could be I hadn't read a word of it in a couple of days, what with visiting with Uncle Jack all Monday evening, and then being distracted by my Twist and relatives coming over Tuesday, and I'd just forgotten who some of the characters were and what they were doing. When I heard noises from the kitchen, I put the book down and went downstairs. Uncle Jack was up and fixing coffee. "Want some?" he asked. "I don't like coffee," I said. He smiled. "Are you sure?" "No," I admitted. "Pour me just a sip or two and I'll find out." No, I still didn't like coffee. That was one more bit of my old self I could hang onto. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and sat down to eat; Uncle Jack sat at the other end of the kitchen table and sipped his coffee meditatively. "Do you remember what you dreamed this morning?" he asked suddenly. "...No," I said after thinking about it for a moment. "I did dream something, but it all slipped away the moment I got up. You know how it is." "Yeah. I just wondered... sometimes a newly Twisted person has really vivid dreams for a while, and they can help you figure out your Twist. Not always, and you want to avoid jumping to conclusions based on ordinary random dreams. But... I dreamed about being in far-off places a lot, the first couple of weeks after I Twisted. Places I'd seen in movies, or on the news. In one dream I was walking down a street in Paris, looking up at the Eiffel Tower, for instance. It turned out that actual Paris was nothing like that dream; they weren't clairvoyant or precognitive or anything. But my dreaming mind knew I wanted to travel before my waking mind knew." "Do you still dream like that?" I asked. "Well, sure. I mean, I'm always traveling, so it makes sense I'd usually be traveling in my dreams too. But I sometimes get dreams of being a boy, back home, just living here in Trittsville. And... since I saw Mindy and Tim last, I've dreamed a couple of times about them. In this dream I'm living there in Austin with them, and I get up and we eat breakfast together, and then Mindy goes to work and I take Tim to school on the way to work... it's all really mundane, but completely impossible." We were silent for a while, and Mom and Mildred came downstairs about then. Mildred ate breakfast in a hurry and ran out to catch the school bus. "Your father will take you to your appointment with Uncle Greg," Mom said, as she ate her morning oatmeal. "He'll be down in a few minutes." "No hurry," I said. We had over two hours. "But it's important to be there early," she said. "Uncle Greg's squeezing you in at the last minute, and he has a lot of other patients to see." I nodded. With Uncle Greg's healing trick, and the way his mental Twist made him so caring and compassionate, he was the most popular doctor in Trittsville, and a lot of people from Rome, Cartersville, even Atlanta and Chattanooga came to see him. Mom went upstairs to shower and get dressed for work, and then left. Dad came downstairs half an hour later, already fully dressed in a business suit and tie. He always wears formal clothes when other people are around, even when he's mowing the lawn or cleaning the leaves out of the gutters. His trick keeps his suit from getting sweaty or dirty. "Are you still not ready, son?" he asked, and again I had that feeling that he'd said something wrong -- even though he'd asked a question, and hadn't asserted anything. And he wasn't wrong: I wasn't at all ready, hadn't showered or changed out of my pajamas. "No, Dad; I'll go on up and shower now." "Please do." We still had plenty of time, and I guess I'd been procrastinating my shower till the last minute. I picked some clothes out of my closet -- I hesitated over it too long; somehow none of them really appealed to me, even my favorite T-shirts. I finally forced myself to pick something at random, and went into the bathroom. I turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature just how I wanted it before I took off my pajamas, and when I did, I tried not to look at myself any more than absolutely necessary. I got in the shower and once I'd soaked myself and shampooed my hair, I closed my eyes and didn't open them again until I needed a visual check to make sure I was thoroughly rinsed. Yep. I turned off the water and closed my eyes again, groped for a towel, and dried off before I opened them again to step out and find my clean clothes. I kept my back to the mirror until I was dressed and I needed to see to brush my hair and shave. Even with all that delay and inefficiency, I was still ready to leave in plenty of time. Uncle Jack said: "I'm going down to Milledgeville to see Wendy; don't hold supper for me. I'll probably eat in Atlanta on the way home." He drove out at the same time Dad and I did. We got to Uncle Greg's clinic a few minutes after nine, and sat in the waiting room for almost an hour. Since I'd caught up on my basic homework, I decided to do research for the term paper; I found and read a bunch of newspaper and blog articles about Erin Ann Pendergrass's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Finally the nurse called us back; she led us to an exam room, drew a blood sample, and then left Dad there and took me down the hall to the scanner room. I had to take off my shoes and outer clothes, everything with buttons or zippers, to step in front of the scanner; I was pretty uncomfortable with that, though it wasn't as bad as if I were naked. Then I got dressed again and went back to the exam room, and waited with Dad for a while longer, reading more articles for my term paper. Finally Uncle Greg came in. He doesn't look his real age; he and his siblings age a little slower than most people, which is not uncommon for people with physical optimization Twists. "Your mother told me you'd gone through your Twist," he said. "How are you feeling?" "Uncomfortable," I said. "I don't like how I look, and I don't like people seeing me like this -- even though most of them have already seen me like this. I know I didn't change physically, but it feels like I did." "Hmm... you're right, you didn't change physically. Look here..." He did something with his tablet, and the holographic displays on the wall lit up with two scans of me. "The one on the left is from your last checkup in July. The one on the right is today. Overall, there's no change that can't be accounted for by a few months' growth, except in your brain --" "My brain?" I asked, alarmed. "No sign of illness -- the changes are probably related to this uncomfortable feeling you describe, and perhaps to your trick -- have you discovered a trick yet?" "No." "I can't be sure you have one, without more specialized equipment, but I think it's probable." "Nice... I hope." There was a slight chance my trick could be both dangerous and hard to control, but the news that I probably had a trick of some kind still cheered me up. "And this..." He pointed to my left big toe on the scan. "Does it hurt?" "Oh... a little, I guess. I stubbed my toe Saturday afternoon; what with feeling so uncomfortable all over after my Twist, I haven't really noticed it that much." "Well, that proves it, then. Even a subtle physical Twist, that just changed things inside you without altering your appearance -- your Aunt Rhoda's more efficient heart and lungs, for instance -- would have fixed the bruising from the stubbed toe along with everything else. Here, take off your shoe and sock and I'll take care of that, at least." "Thanks," I said. Normally he didn't use his healing trick on injuries as minor as that, but I was family. After he'd healed the remaining bruise on my toe, he sat down and said, "I'm going to ask your father a couple of questions, and then I'll ask him to leave and you and I can talk privately." "Okay," I said. "That's good." "Oswald, have you noticed any changes in Cyrus's behavior or reactions since his Twist?" Again I felt like he'd said something wrong, even though, again, it was just a question, not a statement. Dad stroked his chin thoughtfully and said: "Nothing, I think, that he has not already mentioned. He shaved his goatee yesterday evening -- I think he said that the only thing he was as yet certain of, concerning his dissatisfaction with his appearance, was that he no longer liked having facial hair." "No changes in his speech patterns?" "None that I have noticed." (Neither Grandpa nor Dad, apparently, consciously noticed how they'd started talking differently until their parents or siblings pointed it out. I think it was Uncle Darren who figured out Grandpa was talking in blank verse -- at first they'd just noticed that he was more verbose than before.) "Well. If you'll leave us alone for a bit, Cyrus and I will have a chat and perhaps learn something about his Twist." Again that feeling. After Dad left, Uncle Greg asked me: "So, tell me more about the circumstances of your Twist. I gather you were at school when it happened -- were you in class?" "No, at lunch. I was eating and studying." "Not talking with your friends?" "I was sitting with my friend Lionel, but he was busy with a game, so I decided to do some reading for Modern History." "Reading ahead in the textbook, or another book you were assigned for class?" "No, research for my term paper. I was reading old news articles about different historical figures I was thinking about writing about." "Hmm. You were already a diligent student, so if your Twist made you more avid about schoolwork it might be hard to tell... have you noticed any evidence of that?" "Maybe... I have been doing a lot of homework and term paper research in the last couple of days, but part of that is because I got behind over the weekend, and part of it is maybe just to distract me from this uncomfortable feeling. But after I caught up with my homework I read a few pages of a novel this morning, and I had a hard time concentrating on it, so maybe." "That's unfortunate, in a way, but I'm sure you'll get a lot of benefit from it as well. Try to pay attention in the next few days to your reading choices -- if you find yourself procrastinating on homework for other classes to do extra reading for History, that might help us narrow it down. Or if, during the Christmas holidays, you find yourself still reading nonfiction in preference to fiction, that would tell us something else." "Okay, that makes sense." "Now, let's see if we can figure out more about this uncomfortable feeling. You decided to shave your goatee -- when was that?" "Yesterday afternoon -- not long after I got home from school. The first time I went to the bathroom, and saw myself in the mirror." "How did looking in the mirror make you feel?" "Awful," and I gave a shudder. "It's... it just wasn't right. I could hardly believe it was my face. The goatee was the worst part, but I still don't like looking at myself in the mirror. And when I showered this morning, I couldn't stand to look at myself; I kept my eyes closed as much as I could until I dried off and was ready to get dressed." "I'm sorry," he said. "Many Twisted go through something similar, but it's usually because their bodies have changed and they haven't become accustomed to their new appearance yet. Have you any idea how you would like to look?" "No, that's the worst thing! I know I don't want hair on my face, and I know I don't want piercings or tattoos. But other than that... I just don't know. And -- oh, I thought of something else. Several times when people were talking, I've felt like they're saying something wrong and I should correct them, but I can't figure out why. When I think about what they said, I can't find anything specific to disagree with. I felt it several times when Dad said something, and once or twice with you, and several times last night during supper." "Have you acted on that urge -- to speak up and correct them, I mean?" "No. Mom and Dad raised me to be polite, and I guess the Twist didn't change that. And even if I didn't care about being rude, I just don't know *how* I would correct them when I can't figure out what they said wrong. A couple of times it's happened when somebody was asking a question. How can a question be wrong?" "Have you quit beating your wife?" "What? -- Oh. I see..." "Perhaps you've become more sensitive to false or unwarranted presuppositions people make when they talk? I can't be sure. But if you'll try to write down what people have said when you experience that feeling, and compare those utterances, you might learn something." "I'll try to do that." I pulled out my tablet and started a new file, saying: "I remember a couple of them, at least I can't remember the exact words but I know I felt it a couple of times when you were asking Dad about me. When you asked if he'd noticed any change in my behavior, I think." I made a note about that and put the tablet away. "Now -- about your discomfort with your appearance. I know you don't like to look at yourself in the mirror, but try to make yourself do it, when you get home. Stare at yourself for as long as you can stand it, and try to imagine yourself looking different in various ways. Perhaps you can pin down this feeling some more." "I'll do that... and Uncle Jack suggested I try looking at a bunch of pictures of various people and see if I see someone I'd like to look like." "Have you done that yet?" "A little. Not much." "Well, it's a good suggestion. Try it. I normally don't approve of plastic surgery, except in cases of dire need -- when someone's been disfigured by a fire, for instance. But if your Twist compulsion is making you miserable, and plastic surgery would satisfy that compulsion, it would be medically justified." "Man... I hope I don't need it. But the way I've been feeling I'm afraid I might." "Have you noticed any other unusual feelings or desires?" I thought about it. "This morning when I was getting ready to shower, I had a hard time picking out something to wear. Usually I don't give it much thought -- I decide if it's a T-shirt day or a button-up shirt day and then I grab one of whichever kind at random. But I looked at my closet for about five minutes and couldn't decide, and... I don't really like what I picked out, it just seemed less bad than some other things." "It sounds like your Twist is making you want to dress in a particular way -- like your father, or your Aunt Rhoda." (Aunt Rhoda always wears white.) "I'm afraid you'll have to buy some new clothes -- just look around at the different options in the store, and see what you like. Hopefully you'll be able to buy something off the rack, rather than needing custom-made clothes like a few Twisted I've heard about." "What do you mean? I know there are super-tall Twisted that need custom clothes..." "Or pants with a hole for a tail, or extra sleeves for extra arms. But I'm talking about compulsions; one person I've heard of has to wear shirts with exactly seven buttons, for instance, and another has to wear sixteenth-century formal dress -- hose and ruffs and so forth." "Oh... I hope it's not like that." "When you're looking at pictures of people's faces, try looking for pictures of people in a variety of costumes as well. When you figure out what kind of clothes you need, we can help you file for a Twist stipend to help pay for the new wardrobe." We talked for a few more minutes about things like that, and then he called Dad back in. "I think Cyrus will do well," he said. "I've recommended some exercises to help him figure out his Twist, and probably the Twist specialist will have more suggestions." Dad was holding his phone and looking tense. "Thank you, Uncle Greg. We need -- I --" I'd never seen him like that. "We must go to the middle school at once. The office just called me to say that Mildred has gone through her Twist." "Go," Uncle Greg urged. "I can fit her in this afternoon, I think -- I'll have my secretary call you." ----- I'd never seen Dad drive that fast before. I asked him what the office had said about Mildred's Twist, and he wouldn't say anything --it was almost like he didn't hear me. We pulled into the middle school parking lot and he got out and ran toward the office, without locking the car; I locked the doors and hurried after him. "I am Mildred Harper's father," Dad was saying to the secretary when I caught up with him. "Where is she?" "In the clinic. Go on back... Just you," she said, stopping me. "She's my sister," I said. "Wait here." So I waited. And waited. "What's going on?" I asked the secretary. "I'm not sure," she said. "I called both your parents. Your mother is on the way too." And she got there a few minutes later, carrying a large bag; she greeted me distractedly but didn't stop to hug me or anything before the secretary showed her into the room where they had Mildred. I found out later that she still hadn't regained consciousness at that point. Since Dad and I were closer to the school, and the secretary had told Mom that Mildred's new form was taller, she'd gone by the house first to pick up some clothes that probably wouldn't fit her, but would temporarily replace the stuff that was destroyed by her Twist. She got some of her own clothes, and mine, and Dad's, just to cover all the bases. Mom and Dad sat next to Mildred's bed and waited for her to wake up, ready to talk her through the initial panic she'd probably feel at her Twist -- unless she got mental changes that made her comfortable with her new body right away, like a few lucky people. I sat there for forty-five minutes, reading old articles about Erin Ann Pendergrass, or trying to; I found myself reading the opening paragraph of an article about her plan for improving communication between various health agencies over and over again, unable to concentrate for worrying about Mildred. Then she walked out, leaning on Mom and Dad's arms, wearing one of my T-shirts that was a bit too large for her, and one of Mom's skirts that was the right length for her but looser in the waist than it was on Mom. I stood up and started toward them, but when Mildred saw me, she said "Don't look at me!" and started sobbing. I looked away, though it was hard; I thought about how uncomfortable I was with people seeing me and realized, after just a glimpse of her, that she was going to have it even worse. She was hairless, and her face and arms and legs were covered with iridescent scales, purple and pink and red in a complex repeating pattern. She had no nose or lips, and very small ears, and she was completely flat-chested. She was almost as tall as me, having grown about four inches. I didn't realize, there in the office under the fluorescent lights, how iridescent her scales were -- not until we got outside and the sunlight played across the back of her scalp. Mom and Mildred got into Mom's car, and Dad and I into his, and we went home. When we got home, Mildred shut herself up in her room and hid under the blankets; she didn't want any of us to look at her, and I didn't blame her. I sort of knew what she was feeling, though I suspected she had it worse than me. Dad and I stayed out, and let Mom take care of her. As Dad and I started fixing lunch, I asked him: "What was she doing when she Twisted?" "I do not know, son," he said. "She was so distraught when she woke up that we were unable to learn much... She said something about a snake, but it was not clear how the snake was involved. She was in P.E., out on the soccer field, when the Twist occurred; perhaps she saw a snake, or perhaps it bit her -- but if so, the snakebite was healed by the Twist." I had that feeling again like I wanted to correct Dad. I got out my tablet and wrote down what he'd said as exactly as I could remember, and then had a better idea; I set it to start recording our conversation. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him, reluctantly, about the feelings I'd sometimes been having when people talked and what Uncle Greg had said to do. He frowned thoughtfully and said: "If you detect in what I say any verifiable error, son, I will not only allow but encourage you to tell me -- but not, I entreat, in front of strangers, and preferably when we are alone. Yet if your Twist compels you to speak up, I will understand." "It's not a compulsion, I think -- it's been easy to resist the impulse to say something, especially when I can't figure out why I feel like somebody's wrong about something." Mom came down from Mildred's bedroom about then, and looked at the soup we were fixing for lunch. "I'm afraid Mildred's tastes might have changed, maybe even her dietary requirements... but I'll take her some of that and see if she can eat it. I need to take her to see Uncle Greg this evening, but I'm afraid I'll have a hard time convincing her to go out in public. She's so upset about her appearance, and I don't blame her." I decided that wasn't the time to remind her that I was feeling the same way. After we ate lunch, and Mom took a bowl of soup on a tray up to Mildred's room, I went upstairs too. I wanted to work on my term paper, but I remembered what Uncle Greg had said and I made myself go into the bathroom and look hard at myself in the mirror. It wasn't easy, but it got a little easier after a minute or so. "What should be different?" I asked myself. I started at the top. My hair was a little too short, I thought -- well, I'd just have to wait for it to grow, and that problem would fix itself. Or maybe I could try a wig and see if it made me feel a lot better; that might be worth it. The dark brown was okay, I decided. My blue eyes were okay too, though something seemed vaguely wrong about my eyebrows. My nose was kind of annoying, but I couldn't express exactly what shape I wanted it to have; I didn't have the vocabulary for nose shapes. I'd run into terms like "aquiline" in books, but I didn't know exactly what they meant, guessing from context that they meant some kind of nose and not feeling any need to look them up for more details. The lips seemed a little too thin, but not as annoying as my nose. I had a very faint trace of stubble from the last few hours, hardly enough for anyone else to notice even on my chin, and only visible on my cheeks if I leaned close to the mirror. But it was really annoying. I got out my razor and shaving cream, and then paused, remembering the depilatory cream that Mildred used on her armpits and legs. She sure wouldn't be needing it anymore. I read the instructions on the package carefully, then applied it all over my cheeks, upper lip, chin and neck; that was taken care of for a few weeks now. I looked away from the mirror when I was done, and even closed my eyes, leaning against the wall and recovering my composure after the nerve- wracking ordeal I'd just put myself through. Then I decided I might as well go a little further, if I could bring myself to do it. I took off my shirt and pants and stood there in my underwear, trying to figure out what was wrong with the rest of me. After a few minutes' consideration, I used the rest of the depilatory cream to remove the hair from my arms, armpits and part of my chest. I'd wanted to do my legs too, but I'd need to buy a new tube of depilatory cream first. There was still something else wrong with what I was seeing, but I couldn't pin it down. I rewarded myself by getting dressed with my eyes half closed, then going back to my bedroom and reading for my term paper until suppertime. ----- Dad and I ate supper alone, as Mom and Mildred were at Uncle Greg's clinic. They didn't come home until after eight o'clock, and when they did, Mildred was wearing new clothes that pretty much fit her, and had a couple of bags of other clothes. "We'll need to do some more serious clothes shopping this weekend," Mom said, "at the mall in Rome, maybe... And depending on how long we spend at the Twist specialist, we might have time to stop at a mall in Atlanta on the way home." "It won't help," Mildred said. "I'll still be ugly however nice clothes I have." "I think you're beautiful," I blurted. "I mean... all those colors in your scales, and the patterns, especially in the sunlight..." "Would *you* want to look like this?" she asked. "No, but... I think that's at least partly my Twist. It's making me want to look a particular way -- I'm not sure how yet. I think before my Twist, I'd much rather have looked like you than like Paul, or some of the guests we saw at Kerry's wedding." "I know you're just trying to be nice," she said, "and I appreciate it, but just don't, okay?" I didn't say anything to that; I realized that this was just like me not believing Mom when she said she liked the way I looked with or without the goatee. I changed the subject instead, saying to Mom: "Um... I hate to break it to you, but I think I'm going to need new clothes too." "What? Why?" "I was talking with Uncle Greg about what I'd been feeling and thinking, and we figured out that I need to wear something different now. I'm not sure what, yet. I hope if I look around at a clothing store I'll see something that clicks with me." She sighed. "All right, we'll do that. Do you think you'll need to dress more formally, like your father?" "Maybe... I don't think that's it. At least I don't feel any obvious desire to wear a suit and tie." Now that I thought of it, I *particularly* didn't want to wear a tie; I'd never enjoyed wearing a tie at weddings and funerals, but I could put up with it. Now I wasn't sure I could bring myself to wear one at all. Mildred and Mom ate some of the leftovers from the supper Dad and I had cooked, and we went to bed, or at least to our bedrooms. I stayed up a while longer, running the recordings from my conversations with Dad, Mom and Mildred through a speech-to-text program and then picking out the sentences that seemed inexplicably wrong to copy into the file I'd started earlier. I couldn't see any obvious pattern to them yet. ----- After what Uncle Jack had said, I'd decided to write down as much as I could remember of my dreams. This is what I wrote that Thursday morning: I'm at school, I think, though not any particular real classroom. And I'm wearing something ridiculously inappropriate -- I can't remember exactly what, but I think a swimsuit and a big hat and boxing gloves. Nobody notices, though. Then the teacher -- not a teacher I've ever actually had, or anybody I've ever me