1. A Simple Favor 2. See the New You 3. Waking Up 4. Road Trip 5. Old and New 6. Bucket List 7. Self-Discovery 8. Out on the Town 9. Confronting Fears 10. Failure 11. Epilogue

Story Notes: I know that I have an enormous amount of trouble finishing stories and I'm sorry to all the readers out there who are still waiting for conclusions to Rent and Family Legacy. I have ideas for where those stories are going, but I have trouble finding the motivation to write past a certain point.



However, for those who wanted to read more of my writing, I have the cure to what ails you. In the style of Shannon Colby and her brilliant story "The Chimera of Cameron College," I'm going to start publishing a story that I've already completed minus editing and some final polishes. I hope you all enjoy.

“Good. Now try it again from the beginning of that line.”



My student, Caleb, sighed and swung his violin back onto his neck, playing the passage once more. It hadn’t really improved much since the last time — his intonation was still all over the place and his bow kept skipping around when he had to change strings — but I had cycled through my whole bag of tricks and none of them were going to help a student who didn’t practice.



“Alright, well just keep working on that for next week,” I said, signalling the end to our lesson.



I ripped my lesson notes out of my beat up notebook and handed them to Caleb as he left. I’m sure he’s a fine kid, but I wish he’d do just a little more to conceal how much he’d rather be at home playing video games than taking violin lessons with me.



The appearance of my next appointment at the door lifted my spirits.



“Hey, dude! Come on in.” I stepped out of the doorframe to make way for my best friend, Ethan.



“Hey Jake. Last one for the day?” he asked, casting a glance over his shoulder to Caleb, who was getting in his mom’s SUV.



“Yeah. Thank God…” I muttered under my breath, leading him towards the kitchen in my medium sized apartment.



“Pfft.” Ethan waived his hand. “If those little snots gave me any attitude, I’d just smack ‘em on the head. They should be more grateful.”



“I’m sure they let big shots like you do that all day at the bank, but down here in the real world things are a little different,” I said, pulling two beers out of the fridge.



Ethan accepted his and cracked it open on my countertop. “Nah. That’s only for senior executives,” he said, grinning.



In spite of not reach kid-smacking level just yet, Ethan was doing pretty well for himself. At 28 he was already in junior management at a pretty big bank, making investment decisions and stuff like that. Ethan came from money, but that’s not why he was successful. Not directly, anyway. Sure, he went to all the ritzy summer getaways when we were in college, rubbing arms with local and national moguls, but he didn’t take the easy path to success. His dad owned a local marketing agency and Ethan could’ve easily been dropped into an executive job there right out of college, but he chose to work his way up from the ground floor, and that’s exactly what he was doing.



“So how’s your family doing?” I asked, opening my own beer and taking a satisfying gulp.



Ethan shrugged. “Same old same old. My sister’s getting married next month. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about…”



My eyebrow perked up. Ethan wasn’t usually one to talk about his family. Having grown up in the same area, we actually had pretty similar backgrounds. My parents weren’t as wealthy as his — my dad was a contractor, so he kind of built our house and that enabled us to live in a wealthier part of town than we could’ve afforded otherwise — but both our families were cut from the same cloth: God-fearing Mormons who had a bone to pick with anyone who was different. Mind you, they wouldn’t pick that bone to your face, but you’d know that you were not among their chosen people.



Ethan and I had both left the church as soon as we were able. The kind of mumbo jumbo that got pushed on us every Sunday just doesn’t hold up when you can get on the internet and debunk it all the next day. Still, that kind of break from the family religion leaves a scar. In both Ethan’s and my case, that meant begrudging acceptance among family members, with the mutual understanding that we were to not to bring up religion or taboo political topics at the dinner table. Unfortunately, that restriction didn’t go both ways, and we were often subjected to self-righteous speeches from family members and former friends.



So you can understand my surprise that Ethan had his sister’s wedding on his mind.



“What’s up?” I asked, tipping my beer back for another sip.



“Kinda the same old routine,” he answered, mirroring me. “You know how I told my parents that I had a girlfriend, just to get them off my back about it?”



I nodded. Being 28 and unmarried was pretty uncommon for people from a Mormon background. I was pretty sure that my parents had written me off as a homosexual from the moment I decided to study the violin in college, but Ethan’s heterosexuality was still intact with his family. Personally, I wasn’t dating because I’d been there and done that. I dated a couple women during college, then a couple more after. I never really felt satisfied, though, so I stopped. However, Ethan was another story. I mentioned that he had risen quickly in his career. Well that comes at a price, and in Ethan’s case that price was his romantic life.



To a normal person, Ethan’s lack of a girlfriend just meant that he was more focused on his career right now, but to his family it was a giant red flag, signalling that Ethan may have been swayed by the insidious homosexuals. Nevermind that, if Ethan were actually gay and willing to date, he would’ve just dated guys. Unfortunately, when a dogma gets into your head like it did with Ethan’s family, reason doesn’t have a very big role to play.



So it’s understandable why Ethan just went ahead and made up a girlfriend. Too bad she was always away on the weekends and couldn’t make time to stop by for dinner. Oh well. It seemed to satiate his family, from what little I’d heard, and we had a good laugh about the whole thing.



“Yeah,” I said. “What about it?”



He sighed. “Well my parents invited her to the wedding.”



“Okay,” I said, slowly, not sure what the problem was. “And you told them that she couldn’t make it, right?”



“That’s the thing,” he said. “They invited her six months ago and left the wedding date open so that she could.”



“Oh.” My voice fell flat. “So what’s the plan? Try to pick up a girl on Tinder in time for the wedding?”



“Not exactly. You know know my parents. I can’t risk just bringing some random girl that I met online. There’s no telling how that would go.” I noticed that Ethan was tapping his fingers on his thigh and he hadn’t touched his beer after the first few sips. He seemed to be getting nervous, a rare quality in someone as self-confident as he was.



“Ethan, what’s up?” I asked, leaning in and starting to worry.



He took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. “I’m going to suggest something and I want you to let me say my piece before you call me crazy.”



I nodded and took a deep gulp from my bottle. “Alright. Go ahead.”



Ethan launched into a pitch that he’d clearly been rehearsing in the car. “I want you to play the role of my girlfriend for the wedding. I’ll pay for the nanosurgeon and the clinic — all the medical stuff — and with a top notch doctor, none of that back alley stuff. It’ll just be a week. A little patch of land on the Olympic Peninsula that my parents are booking. We’ll arrive a few days before the wedding, leave a few days after just to play nice, and I’ll pay for everything to change you back too.”



Ethan looked desperate for an answer, but I needed a minute. Of course, in principle his plan was feasible. Nanosurgery had come a long way in recent years and, although the main upshots were things like scarless heart surgery and super precise tumor removal, the technology around gender transition had come a long way. I had looked into it once — just as a curiosity — one late night in college, but the cost of that kind of treatment was well beyond me and my music teacher’s salary. I wasn’t even sure that it was within the impressive sums that Ethan brought home.



“Ethan,” I started, and his ears perked up. “That’s a lot of money.”



“It’s not that much,” he said, shrugging me off to get to the real heart of my answer. “I mean, it is, but, ummm…” He looked off into space for a moment. “You know how my parents were always sending me money in college?”



I nodded, recalling the hilariously over-budgeted allowance that he had received.



“Well they still do that. Apparently if I can’t afford my own private yacht, then I’m in desperate need of financial assistance.” He finally returned to his beer before adding a little more to his explanation. “I also think they’re trying to bring me back into the church in their own weird way, as though money will make me see the light. Oh, but I’m getting off track!”



“Right,” I said. “Well, even with the money, you need a therapist to diagnose you with gender dysphoria before any doctor will treat you. I’ve seen documentaries too, Ethan. I know how this works.”



“I know that,” he said. “I’ll set you up with a therapist. I talked to someone who did this a couple years ago, actually. He wanted to be a guy, but he said that he just saw a psychiatrist who asked him some really basic questions and then signed off on everything like it was no big deal. They’ll ask you if you really want to be a girl, you say yes you do, and that’s that.”



I had to give it to him, he really had thought of everything. The plan wasn’t even a bad one. I was probably the only person who knew Ethan well enough to convincingly play the role of someone with whom he was intimately close. My job was pretty flexible. One month from now would be just after the start of summer break, so most of my students would probably be traveling anyway. I could just take a week or two off from the rest and take a vacation. Albeit a vacation spent as a woman on Ethan’s arm.



“Okay I’ll do it.” I said, finishing my beer off for good measure.



“Please just thi-” Ethan froze for a moment while his brain caught up. “Wait, really?”



“Yeah,” I said, pitching my beer bottle into the recycling. “But I want to lay a few ground rules first. For one, I get that we’ll have to be a little cuddly around your parents to lend the role some credence, but when we’re in private, keep it professional. Two, and on a similar note, I get the bed. You can sleep on the couch or the floor or whatever is available.”



Ethan grinned. “That’s probably what my parents would want anyway…” he pointed out. “Anything else?”



“Yeah! Third, no cutesy nicknames. If I hear you calling me ‘pooky’ or ‘honey’ or any nonsense like that, then I’ll break up with you!”



Ethan seemed speechless for a minute. Finally he said, “Thank you.” I could tell that he meant it.



“Don’t mention it,” I said. “This is what friends do for each other. It’s just a simple favor.”