Chapter 31 -- Fishing and Shopping
For the next couple of days, I kept coming back to the picture of me as a toddler that hung in the corner by Father's computer. That was taken when I was still a girl, I would think, but it was hard to feel any connection with the picture. One afternoon, Mother came downstairs and handed me an old photograph.
"That's you as a baby," she said, "screaming your head off, it looks like." I wasn't sure why she was showing it to me. If I couldn't connect with my 3-year-old self, I'd be even less likely to connect with an infant.
"It's proof, in case you need it," she said. "Look, the baby in the picture is wearing a yellow onesie -- that means she's a girl."
"There's a make-up table in my room," she said. "You're welcome to use it, experiment a little, see what you might look like if you changed."
I'd rarely been in Mother's room, never on my own as far as I knew. In a house filled with bros, it had seemed like a bastion of femininity.
Hesitantly, I sat down at the table. Mother and I had both forgotten one thing -- as a vampire, I'd be invisible. The powder made me sneeze.
The next day I went to school, but afterwards, I went over to Al's house.
We went farther than we'd ever gone before, and I was hoping that I might get some indication from Al of his feelings. Like, would he be "Yes, Bal, you've got to stay a man!" or "Yes, you've got to become a woman!"
When we finished kissing, Al pulled away from me. "You're not going to get me to say either way," he said. "The decision is totally up to you."
"But you've got to have some preference," I said. "You're the one who's going to be making love to me for the rest of your life. Would you rather I had a man's body or a woman's?"
"Okay, I'll give you this," said Al, "before I got involved with you, I definitely preferred women."
"All right, then," I said. "do you want me to get a figure that's more like your mother's or your sister's?"
Al shuddered. "Dude, let's not even go there. If you become a woman, you'll probably be built like your mother and sisters, which would be fine with me."
I suddenly felt kind of weird, and we dropped the subject.
The day finally came when all I needed to do to complete the Good Vampire aspiration was to harvest some plasma fruit trees and go 14 days without drinking from anyone. I'd already gone more than 14 days, but apparently that didn't count. I harvested my last tree in Forgotten Hollow before going fishing.
It was really quite beautiful here, in a gloomy, mysterious sort of way.
There was a statue of a gargoyle or werewolf or some strange beast nearby with some candles in front of it. I immediately decided that was where Al and I would get married. It felt more like us than an arch with flowers on it.
I had great luck fishing, catching a wolf eel first...
...and later a batfish. I caught a vampire squid, too, but failed to get a picture.
I took the next day off school and got a phone call from Cassandra. "Al said you were interested in going shopping?" There was definitely a question in her voice. It wasn't like she was asking "Would you like to go shopping?" but "Why on earth would you want to go shopping?" I didn't feel like explaining over the phone, so I mumbled something about having to get a present for Mother. When we got to the store, I browsed a bit among the pretty glass bottles filled with perfumes and lotions and stuff.
Eventually, I found myself looking at a dress. The hat was okay and the boots, although I didn't think I would ever wear high heels. Why ruin your feet just because you were a girl?
The shoes on the second mannequin were more practical, but the dress seemed very low-cut.
"Lets go upstairs," said Cassandra.
"Why are you looking at women's clothing?" she asked. "And don't tell me you're getting a present for your mother. Guys don't get clothing for their mothers. Perfume, maybe, but not blouses."
I told her the whole story.
"My, my," she said. Cassandra was silent for a moment, looking up the ceiling. "If it helps, I'd be willing to have your baby if you and Al decide to go the same-sex route. But I have to tell you, I'd much rather
not be the one who's pregnant while you and Al are making googly eyes at each other."
So basically, I had Cassandra's permission to go either way.
"Thanks," I said awkwardly. Cassandra was looking over the balustrade and not paying much attention to me.
"Hey, future sibling-in-law, can you do me a favor?" she asked.
What she wanted was for me to become acquainted with the muscular guy in the red t-shirt. "And then you can invite him over after you move in with us," she said.
"Or you could introduce yourself," I suggested.
"That would be too obvious," she said.
I had a feeling that where Don Lothario was concerned, "obvious" was the best route to take, but I did her bidding. After all, how could I say no?
The day finally came when I'd finished my museum display -- mounted fish and portraits of my family. I included Nadia and Gretchen because they'd been in the same house for most of my life even if they'd since moved out.
And Father was the first portrait up in the Heirs' Gallery.
Al had come to the Museum with me. "I couldn't see myself in the mirror," I said, "but I found a website where you could get a picture of yourself with different hairstyles..."
"Whoa," he said. "It's Prince Valiant. Does this mean you're staying a guy?"
"I still don't know," I said. "I've been weighing the positives and negatives. One positive is that my nose won't be way too small for a guy anymore if I change, and another positive is that Cassandra won't have to go through a pregnancy that probably should be mine. But one negative is that if I become a woman, I'll have to marry a vampire, which means you'll have to change. It's not an easy process, Al. Basically you have to die of starvation before you get your fangs. So it's up to you. Do you want me to turn you?"
