Sleepover Part 2

Once Lauren, my dear Michelle's younger sister, had greeted all her friends she looked at me intently. "Who are you?" she asked. Quickly my little sister Carla replied, "Uh, this is Brenda, my distant cousin." Lauren replied in turn, "I didn't know you had a cousin. You never told me about any female cousins."

The rest of my sister's friends giggled, looking at me with complicity as if asking me to stretch the joke as long as possible. The rest of my sister's friends giggled, looking at me with complicity as if asking me to stretch the joke as long as possible. I remained silent, only able to greet Lauren with a kiss on the cheek and a "Hi" in a thin woman's voice that I managed to improvise.

As part of the joke, my sister asked me to accompany her newly arrived friend so we could get more tea and cookies. Lauren and I went downstairs together. We heated up the tea some more and put the cookies in the microwave for a few seconds. The whole time she was looking at me like she was a detective about to solve a mystery. Deep down I knew that sooner or later she was going to find out about me. I just hoped she wouldn't say anything to her older sister. I asked her about her grandmother. She looked at me quizzically, perhaps it was suspicious that I knew about her grandmother's health. "She's fine, it was just a scare. Thanks for asking." I noticed sadness in her voice and hugged her tightly. She thanked me for the kind gesture.

We went back to Carla's room with the cookies, tea and some chocolate I took from the fridge. I didn't eat anything else, just stayed quiet, waiting for an opportunity to take off my costume and go back to being Brandon. But the opportunity didn't present itself, because my sister asked Lauren if she wanted to help them paint my nails. All the girls were excited to paint both my fingernails and toenails. They let Lauren pick the color. "I think a red color would look pretty, contrasting with the pink of her lips. Don't you think, girls?" The others nodded and got to work, much to my chagrin.

While my nails were being filled with red, my mother came into the room to take the trays and cups back to the kitchen. She smiled when she saw that my nails were being painted. "Every time I come into the room you look prettier, Brenda. Next time you're going to look like a Disney princess," she joked, winking at me. She bade us goodnight and said she was going to sleep. She asked us not to play the music so loud and wished us to keep having fun. "Don't go to sleep so late," she advised us. However, we all know that sleepovers are not for sleeping in. So I had to continue dressed as a girl for several more hours.

They finished painting my nails. I stood for several minutes staring at the red color on my hands and feet. It's hard for me to admit, but I think my nails looked pretty. "No wonder girls paint their nails," I thought. Then the girls got to talking about pop music. Of course, I had no idea what they were talking about. I listen to heavy metal and rock, I have no idea who "Ariana Grande" or "Dua Lipa" are. I feigned interest though, mostly so as not to further Lauren's suspicions about me.

My sister went through some drawers in her dressing table and pulled out some pretty red bows. "Oh, no," I thought, and I was correct in my fears. With a smile Carla came over to me and started putting bows in my brown wig. Every so often she would show me my decorated hair in the mirror. The more I was painted and embellished, the more I looked like a girl. My true identity as Brandon would be very hard to decipher for someone who didn't know me.

Time went on and the pop music was still playing, although at my mother's request it was not as loud as before. It seemed to me that Taylor Swift was playing, as I could recognize the music from what I remembered from my high school years. The lyrics talked about heartbreak, cheating and having a new boyfriend. Typical topics that teenage girls and young women liked. One of my sister's friends happened to ask me if I liked any boys. "Brenda, do you like anyone, do you have any boyfriends?" I didn't know what to answer at first. I had to make up that I liked a guy named Steve, but I hadn't seen him since we graduated from college. Steve was actually a friend from college, and it wasn't true that I hadn't seen him in a while because we actually work together now. "If only Steve knew I am dressed as a girl and using him as a supposed love interest..." I thought with embarrassment.

I could see Michelle's sister Lauren getting more and more suspicious. Maybe my fake girl voice wasn't so convincing. The whole lie about "Brenda" ended when my sister proposed to pierce my ears, since I didn't have them pierced. At first I refused, but gave in to pressure from the girls. I didn't want them to make so much noise because they might wake my parents. So I agreed on the condition that they would lower their voices and turn off the music. My sister Carla pierced my ears. It hurt more than I thought it would, which elicited teasing from the girls. It was at that moment that Lauren said, "You're not Brenda, are you? It's rare that a girl over 20 doesn't have pierced ears. Are you Brandon?" My sister's friends burst out laughing when they saw that I had been discovered. I motioned for them to shut up, partly so my parents wouldn't wake up, but also because I felt pretty embarrassed about the whole thing.

Lauren told me, "don't worry, I won't tell my sister you're gay." I was startled and said, "No! I'm not gay, I'm just dressing up as a girl for this special occasion". "It's okay," Lauren told me. She asked me to take a picture of us together. I stood next to her and smiled. Then we both took a picture with my sister Carla. And finally one with all the girls.

I asked Lauren not to say anything about the whole thing to her sister Michelle. She promised me. After all those pictures I felt like going to the bathroom. I walked out of the room to the bathroom and took the opportunity to look at myself in the mirror. My appearance looked completely amazing. I had never worn makeup before and I was impressed to see how the girls had managed to change the way my face looked. And the wig with the pretty bows just made me look even more like a real woman.

Before going back to my sister's room I went into my old room and grabbed my cell phone. I discovered that Michelle had left me a voice mail. I got so anxious I didn't even listen to it. I called her on the phone and luckily she answered instantly. I asked her about her grandmother and she told me everything was fine. She apologized because it was too late to meet up and she was very tired. I told her it was all right, we could meet tomorrow. Finally she asked me if her sister had arrived and if everything was okay. "Oh, don't worry, your sister is having a great time," I told her. We said goodbye and hung up. "Good thing she can't see me dressed as a girl," I said to myself.

I was tired. I didn't feel like going back to the sleepover. I lay down on my old bed. I realized I was about to go to sleep with my dress and wig on. Just as I was about to change my sister Carla and a friend came to get me. "We need to use your mattress," my sister told me. Turns out they hadn't brought sleeping bags, so they needed an extra mattress to put on the floor. I was so tired I didn't feel like fighting over a silly mattress in the middle of the night. The girls helped me drag my mattress into the other room.

We left the mattress on the floor. My sister opened her closet and pulled out sheets that were mostly pink.I noticed they were old sheets with Barbie doll artwork on them.  She put them on the mattress and then placed two pink pillows. Now it really looked like a girl's bed. Lauren, Carla and I took a couple of pictures with our cell phones and lay on the mattress on the floor. The other girls spread out as best they could on my sister's bed. We turned out the light and supposedly went to sleep, though the girls continued to talk in whispers. "Hey, Lauren," my sister whispered, "don't you think my "cousin" Brenda is a beautiful girl? We should get her a boyfriend." Both girls giggled. I asked them to be quiet. A few minutes later I fell asleep.

Only a couple of hours later I awoke, disturbed by the light of dawn streaming through the open window. In a very tender scene, both my little sister and Michelle's sister were hugging me. They were still sound asleep. I looked down at the sheets and was shocked to see Barbie smiling up at me. It was only then that I remembered all the strange events of the night before.

I got up trying not to wake anyone, either by my movements or by the noise. I put on my pink sandals, opened the door slowly and walked out into the hallway. I headed straight to the bathroom. There I looked in the mirror: my lips were parched. I opened the cabinet and found some lip balm. I applied it and was impressed by how naturally I did it. Without thinking I grabbed a comb and fixed my wig. "Wow," I thought, "what would Michelle say if she saw me acting like a girl? I really hope she never finds out about any of this."

As I continued to stare at the strange female image returned to me by the bathroom mirror, someone knocked on the door. It was my father. " Is it occupied?" he asked, in the husky voice he always had when he got up. I didn't know what to say, so I just answered what came naturally, "Yes, Dad, it''s occupied, this is Brandon." Of course this was said in my own male voice. My dad didn't answer me. For a moment I had an irrational fear, I thought my dad might come in anyway and see me dressed as a woman. I calmed down and listened for his footsteps coming down the stairs. I had narrowly escaped.

I realized that my experience as "Brenda" had to come to an end. I went back to my room and changed my clothes. Then I went to the bathroom to wash my face. My dad knocked on the door again. Once I made sure there was no more traces of makeup on my face I opened the door and greeted my dad. He looked at me with a strange look on his face, as if he could smell that something strange had happened the night before, but didn't know exactly what it had been. Luckily he failed to notice that I now had my ears pierced. In a grumpy voice he asked me to take my breakfast and help him mow the grass in the backyard.

I ate the delicious breakfast prepared by my mother. For a moment I felt like a kid again. Without much delay I started mowing the grass. After that I headed into the garden to help my mom with some weeds. I could see through a window my sister and her friends taking breakfast. A couple of them laughed and started talking to each other, "Maybe we should try red lipstick this time, Brenda would look good wearing it." My heart almost stopped, I was afraid my father was overhearing the conversation. But I looked closely and he wasn't in the kitchen. Maybe he had gone to the living room to read the newspaper.

My sister's friends left the house, one by one. All except for Lauren, who was waiting for Michelle to pick her up. This time my heart started jumping for joy. After a long time I would see Michelle. I couldn't remember when our last face-to-face conversation had been. At one point a cab parked in front of my parents' house. Michelle got out of it, her long straight black hair as beautiful as ever. Even though she had come specifically to pick up her sister, the first thing she did was smile and wave at me. We hugged each other tightly. It was my happiest moment in the last year, without a doubt. A moment later I invited her into the house.

We headed to the kitchen. Michelle greeted my mom and then her sister and mine. Both girls looked at me complicitly, with a smile on both their faces. With my eyes I tried to gesture as if asking them to say absolutely nothing about "Brenda".

I made coffee for Michelle and me, grabbed some cookies and chocolate and we went together to my old room. We were finally able to talk about our lives, our jobs and our plans for the future. I even went so far as to slip in my idea of her coming to live with me. Surely I could get her a job. She was a girl with a lot of skills. She asked me for time to think about it.

"First we have to go on a date like when we were teenagers...don't you think?Although I doubt I could look as cute as Brenda, I hope you won't be disappointed, ha."  I froze. At this she laughed and showed me her cell phone. She had downloaded the video we had recorded last night, the one where I was dressed as a girl and dancing to Spice Girls music....

"I told your sister not to tell you anything," I said, annoyed. "Oh, no," Michelle replied, "she didn't say anything. Don't blame her. It's just that watching the video I had been struck by the tall, brown-haired girl in there. She wasn't a friend of my sister's, I was sure. Then I saw a picture of my sister, your sister and the brown-haired girl."

After drinking some of her coffee, she continued, "I asked my sister who that girl was. She told me her name was Brenda, she was Carla's distant cousin. But I know you guys don't have any female cousins. It was just a matter of time and looking closely to find out the truth. My sister didn't tell me anything".

At that point I didn't care. After all, Michelle hadn't thought it was ridiculous, but rather cute. We continued drinking coffee. At some point we started kissing. Her kisses were as tender as I remembered them.

When we stopped, she said, "Speaking of kissing... I think you should try red for your lips. I think it would look better on you." I didn't know if she was joking or serious. I just know that when she saw my surprised face she burst out laughing and hugged me. However, I kept thinking about her comment. I didn't say it out loud, but I was curious. While I told her that her idea was ridiculous, inside I was thinking about how I could buy a red lipstick without anyone noticing that it was a man buying makeup.

I just had to come up with a plan. It was obvious that "Brenda" hadn't finished existing that day. It was just the beginning.

END OF STORY