Barbara Hendriks was among the students who had stopped in mid-step when Lauren Levine had yelled at Officer Anna Harris. Barbara glanced at the security officer. There was something familiar about the woman, but Barbara couldn't figure out what. The officer was taking Lauren away. Lauren, of all people. The daughter of the headmistress' secretary. The last person who'd be expected to make a scene. Strange.
Then again, Barbara had also seen something bizarre earlier today ...
Barb Harris had been sitting in her morning Spanish class with the rest of the Tech Squad, waiting for it to end so they could get back to building a set for a sci-fi play during the following break period. The Techie's black outfits diversified in color. She looked behind her to see her own black jacket hanging from her chair turn red. Her video game T-shirt blanked out and reformed into a blouse. Her black jeans lightened to blue and her shoes grew heels. No one noticed anything ... except for her ... and Gladys Brewer.
"Oh my God!" cried Gladys. "We're all changing!"
Barb confirmed Gladys' claim. She had only noticed the alterations among her friends, but now she saw that everyone else wasn't quite who they used to be. The boys were all slightly more effeminate in one or another way: a dash of lipstick or blush or eyeshadow, an earring, a skirt, a purse, a subtly resculpted figure.
"Settle down, Gladys," said the teacher. Ms. Gonzalez didn't like using English in class, but discipline necessitated getting to the point.
"No!" Gladys stood up. "You're changing too! You're turning Asian!"
"What? Shenme? Don't be ridiculous." Ms. Gonzalez erased the Spanish verb forms she had just written on the board.
No one in the class even noticed that Ms. Lopez had said "what" in Mandarin. They couldn't understand her in Spanish half the time anyway, and they welcomed Gladys' weird diversion from conjugation.
"But Ms. Gonzalez -" pleaded Gladys.
"Guan Laoshi," said the former Ms. Gonzalez.
"Laoshi?" Gladys pronounced the tones in the Mandarin word for "teacher" more or less correctly.
Ms. Guan adopted a cold tone that Gladys had never heard from Ms. Gonzalez. "Please sit down."
"I ... I ..." Gladys ran her thick fingers through her brown curls. They were straightening! "I can't." If she had sat down, it would take her less energy to stand up. She was losing a pound every few seconds.
"Gladys Brauer, that's enough. Please go to the principal's office."
Barb thought to herself in Dutch, If I said anything, I'd end up at Davison's too.
"I can't be the only one!" yelled Gladys.
No, you're not, thought Barb.
"Maybe it's those glasses that are messing up your vision!" snarled Stephanie Wright, who was now wearing a girls' suit not unlike the kind that Sarah Taylor wore.
Gladys took off her thick glasses. "I ... don't need these anymore." She blinked. Her brown eyes had lightened to hazel. "Where's Sarah?"
"Who?" the students asked each other.
"Sarah." Gladys now had a touch of a German accent. Her "r" was different. "Sarah Taylor." She pointed at an empty seat. "She was sitting right there! A blonde girl in a girls' suit. Where'd she go!?" Gladys' green eyes futilely darted back and forth.
Barb looked out the window and saw Sarah Taylor walking outside in front of a dormitory rising out of a grassy field. Her flaxen hair was now a dirty blonde and getting darker by the second. We must've been so distracted by Gladys that we didn't even notice her leave, thought Barb. Is everyone else here? She looked around. I think so ... oh, no, she's looking at me! With blue eyes like ... mine?
"Barbara! You must know what's going on." Gladys had noticed that Barbara had been the only person searching for Sarah, a girl everyone else had totally forgotten about.
Barbara shook her head. "No, no, I don't know what you're talking about," she lied. "What's gotten into you?" Or me, Barbara asked herself in English. She could still think in English if she applied a little effort. But it was so much easier to accept the facts that were in the soon-to-be ex-principal's file: that she was Barbara Hendriks, the daughter of Dutch parents back home in Amsterdam ... that she lived in a room in the dorm now standing three stories tall outside. That her roommate was Greta Brauer from Berlin.
"Don't pretend!" shouted Greta. "You know I didn't use to look like ... this!" Greta was no longer morbidly obese. "I can see it in your eyes ... eyes that used to be brown!"
Like yours used to be, thought Barbara. I must keep my cool. Don't want to end up like her. This is not going to be pretty ...
Ms. Guan gestured at a tall blond boy in a dress. "Jason, please take Greta to the headmistress' office."
"Yes, Laoshi." Jason Knight's voice was a bit higher than its original tenor. Barb noticed he was an inch or two shorter when he stood up. "Come on, Greta." His lips were thickening under lipstick. "Don't make this hard."
"Jason, don't you see you've become a transvestite?" asked Greta. "And your hair, your eyes, your skin ... it's all getting darker!"
"Stop it, Greta," said Jason. "Let's go!"
Greta looked at Barbara one last time, as if to ask, Won't you join me? She knew the answer. "No!" She slammed the door behind herself and ran into the hallway.
"I hope security can take care of her," said Ms. Guan. "Let's get back to Hanyu ..." She effortlessly wrote Chinese characters on the board.
Barbara was amazed that she could recognize them. Once that novelty faded, she wondered what would happen to Greta. She had never been friends with Gladys, but she feared what might happen to her if she opened her mouth.
Hours later, Barbara had managed to stay silent through it all: boys turning into girls, even women, classmates becoming faculty and staff and vice versa, gaining new friends and losing old ones, seeing Lauren freak out just now, and worst of all, finding the campus theater of Barb Harris' dreams, only to feel absolutely nothing as Barbara Hendriks. That numbness haunted her. Her whole purpose in life was gone. Who had taken it from her, and why? She suspected the quest for the answers to those questions would be dangerous. Maybe Greta had found them, wherever she was. Good for her. Barbara preferred to go on a safer quest. Theater was in her past now. What was in her future? She walked toward ...
