Dreams, Secrets, and Transformations: Beyond the Enchanted Looking Glass

A New Family

Brennan stood in his dad’s bedroom, the blinds drawn tight against the late afternoon sun. His heart thudded so hard he thought the neighbors might hear it. On the bed lay the contraband—a black pleated skater skirt and a pair of strappy sandals with scuffed soles. He’d swiped them from the lost-and-found box at school three days ago, and they had burned a hole in his backpack ever since.

Now, finally alone during his weekend visitation at Dad’s house, he couldn’t resist.

His fingers trembled as he pulled the skirt up over his boxers. The fabric slid against his skin, light and strange, settling at mid-thigh. He turned toward the mirror propped in the corner, breath shallow. The boy staring back looked ridiculous. Wrong. And yet, for the first time in his life, right enough to sting.

The skirt flared when he shifted his hips. He slipped the sandals on, tightening the buckles, and wobbled across the carpet. His legs looking longer. Softer. Feminine. For a dizzy second he imagined what it would be like to step outside like this, to walk down the street hearing the click of his shoes, being seen. Not as Brennan, the awkward boy who never fit. But as… someone else. Maybe Samantha, Rachael, Michaela, Tiana, or any one of the other beautiful girls from school he obsessively daydreamed about trading lives with.

He swallowed hard. He’d daydreamed about it for as long as he could remember, what if he’d been born a girl? What if life had been sleepovers, salons, sandals, and sundresses instead of locker room jeers and the constant weight of pretending to enjoy being “one of the guys”? He envied the girls at school, envied how free they seemed, how their laughter always rang brighter, how their lives seemed lighter. Freeier. Better.

Secretly, Brennan had always wished he was one of them.

And as he turned one more time in the mirror, one of his sandals caught on the carpet and he lost his balance, causing humming to fall toward the mirror.

He braced for impact and the inevitable destruction of the mirror, but none of that occurred. Instead, when he came in contact with the mirror, it rippled, pulling him through. He fell, landed with a thud on the floor, then scrambled up, and froze. The mirror reflected not mearly Brennan in a skirt but a girl.

Long auburn hair spilling over her shoulders. Soft cheeks, lashes curling over wide eyes. Curves where there had never been curves.

Brennan stumbled back from the mirror, lungs heaving. The girl looking out at him wasn’t just glass and light. She blinked when he blinked, touched her lips when he lifted his fingers.

His heart rattled like a loose windowpane in a storm. He ran trembling hands down his sides, over the soft curve of his hips, the strange absence between his legs, the swell of his chest beneath the shirt that now clung differently. He pressed his palms flat against his thighs, smooth as polished stone.

“That. Her. This… she is me... I"m her,” he whispered, voice higher, musical, unfamiliar yet intoxicating.

She spun in place, the skirt fanning out, hair brushing her shoulders. Each motion confirmed it, this wasn’t him pretending anymore.

Every shift of her hips, every brush of her hair, every sound of her softer voice made her feel as though she’d been handed back a missing piece of herself.

She pinched herself to see if it was real, and the feeling hurt. It was not a dream it was real.

The house was quiet. Too quiet. She padded through the hallway, the buckles on her sandals clinking quietly with each step, fingers trailing the walls, marveling at the click of her nails. Her suitcase sat by the bed, but when she unzipped it, her chest tightened.