The rest of the afternoon passed by for Susan much the same as it usually did. She usually spent most of the day annoyed at her brother for one reason or another as she did this afternoon. The only difference was the reason. She had spent a lot of time on Sunday afternoon hunting out her old uniform for him to wear today. Okay, he had worn it to school for all of five minutes before disappearing.
She was looking forward to seeing his excuse as to why he had left school and how long he would try to style it out that he hadn’t done anything thinking that their Mom didn’t know what he had done. How long would Mom let him go on before letting him know? Their Mom had a nasty sense of humour. Oh, this was going to be fun, she thought to herself as she turned to walk out of the school to head to the bus stop. She was sure she had seen the group of girls in front of her somewhere before. If she looked a little closer at the group of four girls in front of her, she would have realized that one of them was her baby brother Tom.
Tom or Tammy as he had spent the entire day now being called thought that things could not get any worse. He thought back on meeting up with Jen and the girls he was now walking towards the school bus stop with. He remembered that they had met up in the girl's room and for the second time that day they had helped him put his face on.
Then he and Jen had spent the free period in the library after lunch. That was when he had his brainwave of why people hadn’t noticed he was a boy in drag and not a girl. Admittedly that was after he had read that chapter in the book that Jen had brought to the table. After the free period, he was about to thank her for spending time with him when one of her friends that he had met earlier came up to them and handed Tom his or Tammy’s ID card and schedule for the afternoon. This led to him and Jen finding out that they had all the same classes on a Monday afternoon. The two of them became inseparable for the rest of the afternoon. They sat next to each other in every class they had that afternoon. When the final bell of the day rang it was Jen that dragged him into the girls' bathroom and once again helped him with his face. Telling him “You have to look your best for the boys on the bus.” Tom just shrugged and let her do whatever she wanted to.
After all, it was the end of the school day and that meant after a short journey back home he could change out of these clothes and leave Tammy Sheppard far behind even if it meant losing Jen as a friend. It was just by chance that he had left the building ahead of his sister. She had taken a trip to the bathroom. Not the same one as he had been dragged into but one further down the hall nearer to the classroom, she had been in.
