It was August, and I was at my grandparents’ pool with the rest of my family. It was a bright and clear blue day, and I was laying on one of the long deck chairs wearing my blue one piece and a big pair of sunglasses. My legs were crossed as I watched my brother and sister jumping in and out of the pool.

  “Maya! Maya! Watch me again!” shouted my little sister Janie, wearing her pink floaties on her upper arms.

  I rolled my eyes. “Okay, Janie, I’m watching. Again.”

  With a shriek, Janie jumped into the pool, paddling around happily as my brother Tim did handstands underwater. Us grandkids took turns staying at my grandparent’s house every summer, and this weekend had been my turn. Since it was Sunday afternoon on the last weekend of summer vacation, my family took the opportunity to use the pool before bringing me back home.

  It had been a nice weekend. On top of spoiling me with home-cooked meals, Grandma Jeannie and I spent Saturday clothes shopping and browsing bookstores. I inherited my love of books from her, but clothes shopping was something new that we started doing together. I enlisted her help in picking out new school clothes, since Mom had a bad habit of picking out my clothes for me when we went out. Grandma, for her part, let me choose whatever I wanted. And that was part of my mission for this visit.

  At this particular pool excursion I was less embarrassed wearing a girl’s swimsuit, though I still felt like my legs and butt were too exposed. I didn’t really feel like swimming, so I simply sat and soaked up the sun while I thought about my summer.

  My summer as Maya was nothing like the lonely summer Matthew had spent with video games as his only company. These days, my life was full of quiet moments of discovery, like last weekend at Erin’s. I was sitting on her floor between her knees while she stood behind me, expertly weaving my long hair into a French braid. I’d never experienced anything like it—the gentle, rhythmic tug and pull, the soft brush of her fingers against my scalp. She worked with a practiced confidence that was completely foreign to me. Looking at the intricate pattern in the mirror when she was done, I realized I was absorbing what it meant to be a girl in these small acts of simple friendship. Experiences that Matthew had never known.

  When it was time to go home, us grandkids gave hugs to Grandma and Grandpa and I lugged my suitcase to the car. In addition to my new books, I was also carrying a shopping bag over my shoulder which I tried to sneak into the car, despite its unwieldiness. Mom spotted it immediately and honed in on it.

  “Your grandmother said she had gotten you some school things, but she wouldn’t say what they were,” said Mom, trying to peek into my bag.

  I pulled it away from her. “It’s…kind of a secret. I told Grandma not to say anything, so no looking!”

  Mom tried to steal one more look, then shrugged and got into the front seat. I climbed in the back next to Janie’s car seat, keeping the bag on my lap.

  “Goodbye kids!” waved Grandma.

  “Goodbye, Poppy!” echoed Grandpa. “Thanks for staying with us! Have a good first day of middle school!”

  I was sad that summer was ending, but I had been planning meticulously for the first day of school. While last year had been a pain, because I had to publicly announce that I had mysteriously changed from a boy to a girl, this time I was starting in a school where I was just a typical girl. Well, a girl with over three decades of knowledge of the future in her brain. Academically, it would be painfully easy.

  The real challenge was how to adapt to being a girl in my school. Not an ambiguous, former boy who was the subject of being ostracized, but an authentic girl. Being Maya was my life now, and while I knew much of what to expect from middle school, having lived it once already in my previous life, this was going to be completely different. I really just wanted to be a normal girl. Well, maybe a really smart and pretty girl, hence my plans.

  I got up early when the first day of school arrived and spent a copious amount of time in the bathroom getting ready. I made sure to wash my hair the night before and put it up for bedtime. I did everything I could think of: plucking stray hairs on my face, filing my nails, I even snuck a little pink blush from Mom’s room. I knew it was a little overboard for an eleven year-old girl on her first day of middle school, but I wanted it to underscore that I was a girl.

  I purposefully laid out the outfit I had decided on, the one that Grandma and I picked out. I had only worn it in the dressing room in the store and while I was alone in my room. It was a blue patterned slip dress that ended above my knees, which I wore over a white t-shirt. I was going for simple but cute. I pulled back my thick brown hair, which now brushed past my shoulders, and tucked a matching blue headband behind my ears. I had long white socks and black slip-on shoes Mom bought a month ago to go with it.

  This was the first time I ever picked out a dress to wear in public, last Halloween notwithstanding, and I was very self-conscious. I pulled the dress down my body, adjusting it to my hips before re-fixing my hair. It fit pretty well, over my skinny girlish frame. As I primped myself a bit in the mirror, my stomach a swarm of butterflies, I assured myself that the girl in the mirror didn’t look out of place at all. I felt a little exposed, but wearing a dress was really comfortable. Way more comfortable than pants, and much airier! With a deep breath, I went upstairs for breakfast.

  My family was already seated at the table; Dad was dressed for work and reading the paper, Tim and Janie shoveling cereal into their mouths, and Mom was fixing herself some coffee. I nervously approached the table, trying my best to act casual. My hands were folded in front of me as I shyly took my seat. My dress slid up my hip, and I felt the cold wood on my bare bottom. I quickly remembered to smooth my dress under me. I felt the eyes of my family on me and tried to play it off.

  Tim, as little brothers are wont to do, immediately started giggling. “Maya’s wearing a dress!”

  “Of course I am, stupid,” I retorted, trying to keep my cool.

  “You look so…girly!”

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  I grit my teeth. “I am a girl, you dummy!”

  Tim gave an incredulous look with his mouth wide in a dumb grin, but Dad gave him a scathing look. Janie looked at him like he was nuts; what was the big deal if their sister was wearing a dress? It was Mom who cuffed his arm.

  “That is enough, young man! Apologize to your sister immediately!” Mom’s voice could dissolve iron, and Tim quickly mumbled an apology. Mom reassured, “Maya, you look very lovely today.”

  I blushed a little, and poured myself some cereal. These days, Tim was the only one who ever suggested that I had been anything other than a girl, but at the same time he consistently called me Maya rather than Matthew and treated me like an older sister, which I was. If he dared ever tell anyone that I had changed genders, I would have killed him, and my parents would have killed his ghost. Plus, I reasoned, if I was forgetting that I had been male, he certainly has by now. He was enjoying going from the mere second son of the family to the only son.

  After the obligatory first day photos and hugs from my parents, I grabbed my blue backpack and went down the hill to where the bus stop was. I could already see a group of kids milling about; There was Jerry and Tanya, a mixed pair of eighth grade twins from the Andersen house, a seventh grade boy whose name escaped me, and standing next to them was Erin and her older brother Robert. Erin and I were the only sixth graders on the street, and immediately she waved to me.

  “Oh my god, Maya! I’ve never seen you wear a dress before! You look so cute!”

  “I wanted to change it up a little,” I blushed. “You really think it looks good?”

  “Really good,” she assured me, and us girls formed a little huddle to discuss the upcoming day. One thing I was quickly learning was why girls traveled in packs: security. I had no hormones raging inside me, at least not yet, but I knew full well what kind of monsters boys our age were. They stood aloofly while we chattered, and we pointedly ignored them. I had zero interest in interacting with them, preferring the buffer that a group of girls provided.

  Erin and I sat together on the bus, of course. While I had no worries about starting sixth grade itself, I was pensive about presenting as female. Erin on the other hand had confided in me several times this summer that she was nervous about middle school. “I’m just so used to having one teacher,” she whispered on the bus ride. “What if I get lost trying to find my next class?”

  I touched her arm. “Don’t worry. Just keep your schedule on you and you’ll figure it out. Teachers will be nice the first day, because everyone is nervous about starting middle school.”

  “How are you not nervous, Maya?”

  I shrugged. “Eh. I’ve done this before.”

  Erin shook her head and smiled. “You’re so weird.”

  “Hopefully weird in a cute way.”

  When we arrived I noted that Hoover Middle School looked far larger than I remembered. But then, everything looked bigger at five feet. Erin and I had our locker numbers written on slips of paper, and it looked like they kept the sixth graders in the same area. Danielle spotted us as we were putting our bags away.

  “Oh my god,” Danielle groaned as she approached us. “I can’t even find my locker. There’s no locker #450!”

  I casually pointed to the other side of the hall. “It’s right there.”

  Danielle jerked her head, and with a muttered thanks crossed the hall to dump out her backpack. No sooner than Danielle had left, Carla bolted to us, clearly freaking out.

  “I don’t remember where my first class is supposed to be! I don’t know where anything is here!” she cried.

  I touched her arm. “What class is it?”

  “Science.”

  “No problem,’ I assured her. “The science classrooms are across from the library. It’s probably the same one as mine. I’m going that direction, so I’ll come with you.”

  Carla nodded furtively. Danielle joined us after putting her things away, and a couple of other girls gravitated towards our circle who seemed to be friendly with one or more of our group. Everyone had minor breakdowns about what they were supposed to do, so I took turns putting out each of their little fires. It seemed to work though, and one by one the girls calmed down and we made our way to our respective classes.

  I received my school schedule the previous week, and had the typical math, reading, social studies, and science classes. I was happy to see that I had at least one of the girls in my circle in each of my classes, so I had someone to sit next to on the first day. It was a relief to not have to sit at the same desk all day like I had before, so between classes I went back to my locker to switch out my books. Strangely enough, the girls seemed to congregate around my locker, and after each hour they would have a new crisis that they needed to be talked down from.

  One change I hadn’t anticipated was Home Economics. Unlike my other classes, I wasn’t going to be able to phone it in due to my lack of kitchen skills. I hated cooking, and I knew that the class would also involve learning how to sew and how to clean. I assumed that it would primarily be tasks that a sixth grader was capable of doing, so it wouldn’t be too complicated. Erin, Danielle, and Carla were all in my class, so we got to share a table and cooking station. The teacher had our group go through a checklist and name everything in the drawers, and I had to rely on the girls to help me identify them.

  The most painful class would be Gym. One of the aspects of being female that I absolutely hated was the general feeling of being weak. In Matthew’s timeline I was never that strong, but I could always muscle through basic things. Gym class just going to remind me of how weak an eleven year-old girl was. I was pensive about the locker room; I was terrified of getting undressed around other people, even if it was just to change into our white tops and black shorts. Thank god they didn’t require us to shower.

  I did notice throughout the day that everyone was very nice to me. In Matthew’s timeline, I was picked on mercilessly since I was a quiet kid and rather short and pudgy.. But everyone seemed to like Maya. Boys I had dim memories of had glanced my way occasionally, but I think that was something I had to accept. I’d rather look cute and have boys look my way every once in a while than try to hide it. Besides, it’s not like they would have the guts to actually talk to me. And if they did…well, I’d think of a way to deal with them.

  At the end of the day, Erin and I were comparing notes about the day in our seat on the bus. She looked mentally spent, since middle school was quite an adjustment for her. I was fiddling with the hem of my dress, while Erin stared dramatically at the ceiling with her tongue hanging out.

  “Maya, do we have to?” she asked.

  I raised my eyebrow at her. “Have to what?”

  “Do we have to go to school again tomorrow?” she groaned.

  I winced. This was day one of middle school, but I had three years of this ahead of me. Three years of homework, Home Ec, changing in front of other girls, and bubbling hormones. I stared blankly at the seat in front of me.

  “Yeah. Yes, we do,” I croaked.

  But at least my dress was cute.