I'm Still Sadie

My Guide on Talking to Boys

MY GUIDE ON TALKING TO BOYS

The dream didn't end when I hit the ground.

I know that sounds against all logic, but it's what happened. I woke up the next morning expecting cuts and bruises and pain, but I felt nothing. I had woken up in bed, but it it wasn't my bed back in my home in Iowa, or even that Tegan's bed either. That meant that I had no idea where I was.

Again.

Instead of the pink "opposite room" from before, I was in some bedroom that reeked of mediocrity. It showcased no decorations whatsoever that even suggested that whoever owned this room had a personality. Was she a sports star? A music fan? There'd be no way of telling.

One thing was clear though: no alien owned a room this dull. Because of that, I almost found myself longing for that Barbie nightmare room. At least then, it felt crazy enough to be a dream. As for now, this felt plain enough to be real.

This wasn't right. Part of me was paralyzed, too afraid to move to a muscle. Taking my arm out from underneath the covers, I searched for any clues that would suggest that I was myself. Freckles littered my entire body, and that was like a slap in the face.

I begged that this was another dream. I shut my eyes and moved my hand up to pinch my arm, which was the other way to wake up from dreams that didn't involve jumping out of any windows.

If only I had thought of that sooner; I wasn't Tegan today because I murdered her.

That idea haunted me to the core. Murder? I murdered someone? I tried to bypass that idea, which led me to pinch myself on the arm three more times. But after I did that, there was nothing. No magical transformation where I woke up back home. Nothing at all. All I felt was a small nip on the arm.

What if I was supposed to be Tegan as some sort of lesson, a lesson that I had screwed up by killing her?

I took a deep breath, telling myself that it was okay, even though it was decidedly not okay. I assured myself that today would be fine, that all I had to do was not kill anyone, which I had gone every other day of my life without doing.

Getting out of bed, I realized something great: I was tall! Since I was only a mere four feet, eleven inches, this was the first and last time I would ever think that thought.

At the moment, it didn't matter that I wasn't in my body right then, because all that mattered was that I was tall. It was just perfect, until I turned my head and saw my reflection in the mirror.

I.

Was.

A.

Dude.

While shuddering at the thought of being a boy, I tried to convince myself otherwise. Could I have been a rather masculine looking lady?

That led me to make the disgusting decision to look down my pants, and discovering the masculine truth made me sick to my stomach.

I brushed away the images I just saw and tried to get myself to relax. That led me to try breathing deeply like I was meditating, but then I smirked a little.

After my shocking discovery of gender that morning, I remembered school, where I had killed Tegan, and that it might be in my future again.

Why couldn't this boy have been a dropout or something? It would be near impossible to go to school in this kid's place, considering that I knew next to nothing, so unless this boy was studying Pre-Calculus and Anatomy, I would be doomed.