Thursday morning I found Delia at her locker making one last text before stashing her phone. She raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “Hemingway.”

  “Delia. Good morning.” I held out the box, a small box of light wood, thin groove-jointed paneling with a top that slid off, tied closed with silver metallic string. I’d filled it with a dozen squares of Platonic Chocolate, wrapped in golden foil and stacked in two layers like little gold bricks. “Thank you. For the party invitation, for the seat at your lunch table, for everything.”

  “Okay . . .” She accepted the box. “What is it?”

  “Heaven,” I said. “You can return the box if you’d like more next time. Thank you.” Turning away, I scooted for my own locker to get there before the first bell.

  The three rules of showing coworker appreciation; make it personal, make it public, make it brief. School wasn’t really much different than the workplace—just more people you’d never choose to see every day to get along with. I was smiling when I found my big and little sisters. “Hey, it’s Pinky and the—”

  “Don’t say it!” Pinky laughed. “We’ve heard it a dozen times already.”

  I stuck out my tongue at her. “Your fault for sneaking a terrible joke right by me. Daphne, do you want to change it? You can, as it is you’re not stuck with it.”

  She laughed. “I’m good, I guess? I mean, everybody seems to know my nickname?”

  My mouth dropped open and I stared at Pinky. “No, that was why, wasn’t it?”

  ‘Bwa ha ha ha!” my evil genius of a big sister laughed maniacally, steepling her fingers at chin level and staring at us over them. “And ha! Together we’ll take over the school.”

  Daphne giggled and I grinned. “Okay, now you’re just scaring us. But really, that was super smart.” I opened my bookbag and pulled out two more boxes, handing one to each of them. “Thanks for being my sisters. You don’t need to guess, it’s chocolate.”

  “Woah,” Pinky accepted hers with a theatrical gasp as Brain studied her box. “Where did you get these?”

  “I bought the boxes, made the chocolate.”

  Pinky ninja-hugged me. “Best sister ever! Bring it in, Brain!”

  “Pinky . . . can’t breathe . . .”

  But we were all laughing, so mission accomplished, I supposed.

  *********************************************

  “Twirl around,” Mom said from where she sat on my bed. Thursday had gone as smoothly as I could have expected; Daphne had joined us for lunch again but entered the cafeteria with the same two girls as the day before and I suspected that by next week she’d be joining their table. Delia had thanked me for the chocolates and I’d confirmed Friday with Papa with no awkwardness at all.

  After classes, the second day of Manners and Mannerisms was more greetings work, with news we’d be moving into strategic conversation—which I had prior experience with from decades of business schmoozing, but which apparently had rules and steps it would have been nice to know in advance. Back home again, after a half hour of sitting with Mom while she dialed her mental amplification up and down as I tried to put metaphorical hands over my ears, we got out my outfit for tomorrow and now I stood in front of my mirror under her watchful eye.

  I had a complicated relationship with clothes these days. In my first weeks post-transformation I hadn’t wanted to think about what I wore for one moment more than absolutely necessary. And there’d been several ironies in that, not least of which was when Mom had thrown the first tranche of April Clothes my way.

  Women’s clothes being the least strange thing I was dealing with, I’d adapted pretty quickly. Yes, bras with their band and straps, and dresses and skirts moving loose around my legs, still felt a bit weird, but I didn’t feel like I was wearing a costume anymore. And trying to be honest with myself, looking back I also had to think that my lack of real fight with the world of women’s clothing Mom had introduced me to the first day had had a lot to do with a wish to absolutely disappear into April, to not look or act in any way that would strip away what felt like my fragile mask and reveal the “changeling freak” beneath to the world.

  The instant acceptance of my two closest friends had, over the weeks, buried that particular anxiety but not killed it; the thought of Pinky, or Daphne or any of the others at Hadley Upper, finding out I wasn’t April Seever, eighteen-year-old homeschooled girl from the back of beyond, filled me with mind-numbing dread. I would do anything to avoid that.

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  Which wasn’t to say that post-transformation I was nothing more than a Barbie doll for May, now Mom, to dress and style; I’d made choices and was gradually discovering my own preferences. For one, tights were Oh hell to the no. Mom had made them part of my Sunday outfit and bought some for my Hadley uniform, but I’d found that while I could tolerate them for a couple of hours one day a week there was no way I was wearing them to school. They just felt too weird and I didn’t know if I’d ever be comfortable in them; for Hadley I wore black cable knit knee-high socks.

  And while I’d become reasonably comfortable with all the Mom-picked skater skirts and tennis skirts, I’d discovered the comfort of cargo pants and found that just lounging around the house I preferred loose shorts or sweatpants. And when it came to fashion decisions I was still disinterested and shopping was agony, especially since it meant prolonged engagement with my nemesis, the mirror.

  Because the mirror still messed with my self-perception every fucking time.

  Taking a breath, I spun as requested. Knowing my stunning lack of interest in what to wear on Friday, Mom had instead taken my measurements and shopped the outfit herself. (Okay, she sometimes dressed me like Barbie, or Skipper—I really didn’t mind and it made her happy.) And now a 1940s teen stared back at me in the mirror.

  The girl wore a white short-sleeved button down perfectly fitted for her exact modest measurements, the high sleeves turned up at the cuffs to bare her stick arms almost to her shoulders, and a belted solid green A-line skirt with a hemline below her knees and a sassy poodle silhouette imprinted on it. On her feet were brown and white saddle shoes topped by the style-naming short bobbysocks, and a wide plain white Alice band tamed her red hair.

  And she was pretty.

  “Now no teenager dares wear anything but pure white socks without a fold,” Mom said with the air of someone quoting something. “She must not let a beauty parlor do her hair, nor can she wear heavy make-up, too-long fingernails, a hat, stockings or high-heeled shoes. She must not drink, must not neck with boys she does not know well, and, above all, she must never do anything too grown-up or too sophisticated. Life Magazine, 1944.”

  I laughed even as my sense of unreality spiked and Mom frowned, obviously listening to my racecar engine, but let it go. “Well, now that we have your outfit for tomorrow sorted, we need to talk about expectations.”

  I blinked, tearing my gaze from my reflection. What expectations? I’d meet Papa there, we’d all bowl, and I’d try and get us a separate booth at the diner after so we could talk long enough for me to break it to him that I was a changeling and knew he was one too. And sure, I’d be close to him for a few hours, but I could sit on my inconvenient physical reaction to the boy for that long.

  “His expectations,” Mom clarified, mischievous smile reaching her eyes. “I know you don’t have any.”

  My gut sank even as my face heated. “No. No, no. He doesn’t have any, either. We’re just friends.”

  Her smile faded and she sighed. “Now here’s where I’m going to play the ‘telepath’ card. I know this is something you don’t want to talk about, but we need to. You’re sexually attracted to Chet.”

  I had to be redder than red. “I don’t want to have sex with Papa!”

  “That’s not what I said. I mean that something about Papa has strongly triggered your physical awareness of him. I haven’t felt your mind around him, of course, but when we’ve talked about him . . .” She patted the bed beside her, so it was going to be one of those talks. I sat, arranging my skirts, and she took my hand.

  “Believe me, I know a lot about this. From a telepath’s perspective there’s a very distinctive . . . feel to someone’s thoughts under the influence of sexual attraction. I don’t have to describe the ‘symptoms’ to you, do I?”

  “No,” I groaned, leaning my head on her shoulder. With everything that was different, this was my high school experience all over again. Sure, now it was boys instead of girls (and that was a world of weirdness all its own), but my hair-trigger sexual response to attractive people of the opposite sex who paid any positive attention to me at all was back. And boys were my chocolate now; shirtless sweaty Brad had been bad enough, and I knew what my mind was doing when I thought about Papa. “But why Papa? He hasn’t done anything.”

  “He doesn’t really have to,” she said softly. “Nor do you. There are a bunch of complex factors that trigger sexual attraction, factors we’re not even consciously aware of. Yes, them being your ‘type’ helps, and general physical attractiveness helps—symmetrical features, strength, health, a posture of confidence. But we even get olfactory cues from pheromones and scent that carries genetic information hinting at chromosomal compatibility. As for this boy, well, you told me how you met. Do you want my theory?”

  I nodded against her shoulder.

  “You got shaken, at the party. Disturbed, scared, even. They colored your memories when you told me about it, and all that was adrenaline in your system, heightening your awareness. Papa was there to help you feel safe, and he was sweet. That’s a strong positive interaction and impression. Imagine a meet-cute situation between two strangers, a girl on vacation is on a shaky suspension bridge and a strong gust of wind makes her think she’s going to go right over the rope and into the river. A strange man pulls her back to safety, stays with her until she’s off the bridge. The science says she’s far more likely to find him attractive under those circumstances, especially if he also displays attraction. Being found attractive is attractive in itself, if your engagement with the other person is positive. If they do anything about it, the mating dance begins.”

  She said all that in the same soothing voice, and even with her easy reference to the mating dance, the knot in my stomach loosened.

  “The science, huh? This is a weird mother-daughter talk.”

  She laughed, letting go of my hand to put her arm around me. “It’s not the talk I’d have with an actual eighteen-year-old, sweetheart. But,” she drew back to look at me, “this is why we need to talk about your young man’s expectations and how to manage them. So buckle up.”

  I was doomed.