My Awkward Phase

“What’s your plan after high school, kid?”
“I’m going to college.”
He snorted disbelief, as though I had told him I was moving to Mars.
“Waste of time, money.”
He looked back at the soccer scores in L’Opinion. I stammered, wondering whether he was right. Why should a transsexual bother?
My gloom faded when we left the chaotic apartment and sat in my mom’s Acura. Marta was bubbly and kissed me as soon as she got in the front seat. I flinched, and she laughed.
"Seventeen and never been-"
“I’m eighteen, the older-”
Her tongue slipped between my lips and invited mine to dance. I twirled my tongue on hers and followed it into her mouth. I was melting into her, becoming part of her. She broke away. Our cheeks blushed; our eyelashes fluttered. Through dewy eyes I gazed into her soul and immersed myself in her inner beauty until I was overcome. She mopped the tears from my cheeks.
“You’re a good kisser. Let’s change."
I had a perfect place. My parents had moved my grandma to an assisted living from her modest Spanish bungalow in Rancho Park. They had tasked me to clear out her belongings and organize her papers and photographs, so I had a key. We slipped in through the side door and changed in Grandma’s musty bedroom.
Harry’s school uniform hid Marta’s lush curves and his scarf concealed her boobs. Hermione’s robe draped loosely over the emerging contours of my slim figure. We admired ourselves in the mirror and toasted our debut as the ultimate Sadie Hawkins couple with glasses of Two Buck Chuck.
I had been too timid to experience dances in middle school and had avoided St. Aybert’s mixers with opposite-sexed boarding schools. Unless you were a great athlete, or your family belonged to one of the exclusive clubs, you were untouchable at these stilted affairs. I spent the night of my only St. Aybert’s dance in the shadows, drinking contraband vodka but never getting drunk enough to ask a girl to dance. Although I was an academic senior, I was a freshman in social life. I didn’t know what to expect in the University High auditorium.