Chapter 4: Georgie

  Kate slid on the second of her trainers and tied up the ce. “I need to be off, sweetie, if you’re sure you’re going to be ok?”

  “It’s only a few hours of lectures,” Harry answered, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

  “Alright. Look, I’ll be in css myself until eleven, but if you need anything at all,” she held up a battered pink Nokia, “Just call me, ok?”

  He nodded, “Will do,” and they looked at each other awkwardly, unsure what ought to come next.

  “Alright,” she said again after a moment, settling for squeezing his hand as she opened the door, “I’ll see you soon, Ok?”

  Harry took a deep breath as the door swung closed, and once more his heart began to race. It had only been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes since he had opened his eyes, and in that time the world had been racing around him as people came and went and id their pns. Now, for the first time, he was alone with his thoughts, and he gasped as the enormity of it hit him.

  ‘I’m a fucking girl.’

  The thought bounced around his head like an errant football. Harry was gone, at least for the moment; the handsome star of the university team changed into a petite blonde. He thought of the girl on his ID card picture, imagined her strutting through the students’ union, perhaps wearing a nice vest and that lovely grey maxi skirt in the closet – the weather was too cold for such an outfit right now of course, but perhaps in a few weeks…

  Harry froze. What the fuck was that? He had allowed the image to compose itself in his mind, admittedly, but he had expected to meet it with horror, or at least grim resignation. Yet try though he might to recoil in disgust, instead something inside had thrilled at the thought of wearing such a pretty outfit. He gave a nervous swallow as he realised there was no telling just how deep Georgie’s magic had run. It had changed his appearance, obviously, but so too had it re-written the memory of his friend Violet, and even his university record. Was it so impossible that the spell might have affected his mind as well, made him think and act like the girl he appeared to be?

  He put a thin strip of toothpaste on his brush and, stubbornly avoiding the face in the mirror, he tried to think. Now he had set himself the task, he realised, it wasn’t immediately apparent to him how he could tell if he was thinking like a girl. He still felt mostly like himself, maybe a little more demure, less brash and robust, but that could just be his imagination, and to be fair he had just spent the st twenty minutes with all his friends towering over him.

  ‘Dark, smoky eyeshadow’, the thought popped into his mind. ‘The better to bring out the blue in my eyes. But not too much of it or I’d look like one of those townie girls.’

  He raised his eyebrows at this strange consideration. It was true, of course it was. It was just one of those facts that floated around in the back of his mind, the same as ‘pineapple is fantastic on pizza,’ and though his take on eyeshadow was new, it coexisted perfectly amongst what had been there before.

  He still felt like Harry then, more or less, but it was as though he had been equipped with a little suite of girlish likes and preferences that with a little thought could be brought forward for inspection. Nail polish was fun, for example, and she liked bright blues and turquoises, but it was prone to chip when pying sports and something in her felt it could be more trouble than it was worth. She preferred to present casually, and her days were best spent in hoodies, or her beloved Arsenal football jersey, and jeans; yet she did like to get dolled up from time to time, and a night out in a party frock or miniskirt once or twice a week struck a good bance. And she couldn’t quite understand the fascination that other girls had with shoes for their own sake, but she did like heels, and instinctively approved of the way they would compensate for her own ck of height.

  Who ‘She’ was, Harry still felt unsure. For the most part this new aspect of himself was silent, as though with ‘Her’ wants and desires almost perfectly in alignment with his own, a second inner voice was redundant. It was only these new, specifically feminine, preferences that brought her forth, as though she were filling in the gaps that Harry had never even known existed.

  Still, he told himself as he rinsed his mouth out and ambled back into the main room, none of this would matter soon anyway. He had two csses, running until twelve, and then it would be time for all of them to meet with Georgie, to expin that this had all been a terrible mistake. He nodded bullishly – his was the manner of anxiety that swung wildly between hope and despair, and right now he found himself at the crest of an upward swing. It might even be an interesting opportunity; he went so far as to tell himself as he pulled on the bck leggings and dared to finish with a pair of toasty-looking Ugg boots. After all, who wouldn’t be curious to spend a morning as the other sex?

  It occurred to him as he lifted the hoodie for a spray of deodorant that he wasn’t wearing a bra, but with a quick gnce at the clock he shook his head – he didn’t have time to try to figure that out. He did slip on a bck vest under the hoodie though, which he reasoned was sort of the same thing, and with a purple bomber jacket over the top, the whole thing didn’t look too bad. He found his new muscle memory easily up to the task of twisting his blonde hair into a serviceable ponytail and then, being sure to lock the door behind him, he set off for his morning as Holly Owen.

  *

  It really hadn’t been going too badly, he thought as he tossed his textbook into his canvas bookbag and made his way out of the lecture theatre. As it turned out, attending a double politics lecture was much the same as a girl as it had been as a boy. The lights had dimmed the moment he sat down, the better to see the Keynote, and really there was nothing much to do other than lose himself in taking notes for his essay on Isiah Berlin.

  “Hey Holly, how’s things?” asked a girl. Harry thought she might be called Britney, but apparently, she and Holly were better acquainted.

  “Pretty good,” he smiled back bndly. “And you?”

  He didn’t seem to be making a complete pig’s ear of things, he thought with a little relief, but was no time to continue the exchange with the girl as the crush of exiting students (all of whom seemed fucking gigantic) bustled both of them out into the campus.

  “How’d you find it, Owen?”

  Harry whipped round, recognising the voice.

  “Oh… Er, Hey Charlie. It wasn’t too bad.” He gnced down at his boots as he felt his cheeks go bright red. Casual acquaintances were all well and good, but his friend and team captain was a different thing entirely. “Not sure I got all of the stuff on positive and negative freedoms, so I might need to read up on that bit some more.”

  “Yeah, it’s difficult, right?” he shrugged haplessly. “Actually, a couple of us are heading to the library to swot up some more, wanna come? We could get lunch – erm, we all are, I mean.”

  It was a casual enough offer, but something in the question sent a nervous shiver down his spine. He met the boy’s eye and he suddenly felt very aware of the way that Charlie was looking at him, as though Harry was a girl that he had just asked out for lunch. “I – er, I can’t today,” he stammered, “Kate and I, we arranged to meet up in town.”

  “Oh, fair enough,” he smiled, “Maybe another time?”

  “Sure, erm – maybe?” He gnced down at his feet and hoped for the ground to swallow him. It would never come to pass, surely? He had all but made it through his morning as a girl, even if what had only a moment before felt like an interesting experiment had suddenly become more like a desperate exercise in keeping his head above the water. It only remained to head over to Starbucks and then, God help him, all of this would be over.

  “I think he likes you,” Violet Bradshaw smirked, coming up behind him just a moment after Charlie had made his farewell and ambled off to join his friends.

  “Yeah, I…” Harry felt a million miles away, “Well, I made pns to meet Kate, so…”

  “What’s going on with the two of you anyway, Holls?” she asked as they left the dispersing crowd behind them. “You and Kate I mean, are you two… You know?”

  “What? Erm…” He didn’t know quite how to answer that. It didn’t feel right to deny it – he and Kate were together after all (or something like it at least), but nor did he wish to accidentally implicate her in some sort of lesbian tryst. “Do you mean this morning? It’s like she told you, we were just pying FIFA and sort of conked out.”

  “Sure, I get it,” Violet grinned brightly, “But look, if you’re worried then don’t be on my account – you know my sister’s bi, right?”

  “You don’t ‘get it’ – there’s nothing to get!” Harry snorted in exasperation. “Wait, Rose is bi?”

  “Sure, you didn’t know that? She was going out with her ‘Spoons manager all st summer – I thought the whole team knew that! So, I just mean, if there ever is something to ‘get’, you can always talk to me.”

  She gave Harry such a warm smile that he couldn’t help but return it. “Thanks Vi. I mean, I do appreciate the thought, but there really is nothing…”

  “Oh, hey Kate!” she called out, waving over across the quad.

  “Hey, you two,” She said, tucking ‘Principles of Business and Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century’ into her canvas satchel as she strode over. “How was css?”

  “Pretty bad,” Violet rolled her eyes, “I got stuck next to this bloke with B.O., and…”

  “Yeah, it was Ok,” Harry put in restlessly. “Or was for me at least. Look, are you ready to head off then, or…?”

  “Where are you two off?” Violet asked.

  “Just Starbucks,” Kate said. She checked herself a moment and went on. “Just thought it’d be nice to get some lunch, you know?”

  Harry nodded, chaffing a bit at the feeling of impoliteness as he resisted the impetus to invite Violet along. The girl seemed to get the message, though, as she simply smiled and hoisted her bookbag a little up her shoulder. “Oh, that sounds fun. I’m off to the library myself, so I’ll probably pick up a coffee and a bacon toastie at the tuckshop.”

  “Have to get that studying in,” Kate smiled, “You could take a leaf from her book…”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Harry rolled his eyes as he waved Violet off. “I’ll see you back at the halls, then, Vi?”

  “Cool boots,” Kate smirked, eying the new Uggs covetously. “I’ve wanted a pair for ages.”

  He gnced over, making sure Violet was out of earshot. “Yeah well, if they’re still about when I change back you can have them.”

  “I don’t see why they would be, though,” Kate said wistfully, “Speaking of, have you heard from our friend ‘Maddy’?”

  “No, just got out of css,” Harry shook his head as he pulled out his scuffed cmshell and flicked it open.

  *No New Messages*

  “You could call her – or him?” Kate said, reading the screen over his shoulder.

  “Yeah good idea,” Harry said, opening the address book and scrolling down until he came to an entry titled ‘Mathilde.’

  “Hello?” He said as the line opened.

  “Oh, erm Holly?” came the response. “Did you get out of css?”

  “Obviously,” he answered, agreeably enough, “Listen, have you gotten hold of Georgie, or…”

  “Well about that, actually she didn’t come to css today.”

  Harry felt his heart drop. He had feared at worst that she would be angry, that she would refuse to speak with Matt, and they might need to go over to the medical faculty themselves to talk her round - but it hadn’t even occurred to him that she would be absent entirely. Medical students almost never missed a day of css, and even amongst that elite cohort Georgie was famously diligent.

  “What do you mean absent, Matt – Where the hell is she?”

  “How should I fucking know. I have her phone number now at least, but she isn’t answering.”

  “Right,” He cast around desperately. It was already Friday, the st day of the school week, and if he couldn’t think of a way to find Matt’s pissed off ex-girlfriend, they were both stuck like this for the entire weekend. “Look, she might be on campus somewhere – in the library, or Rio’s? Let’s scout about a bit, we might run into her.”

  “Ja,” Matt answered, “I have one more lecture this afternoon, but I will stay in the medical centre to study and keep a look-out. Maybe she could still turn up?”

  “Fine, Kate and I will scout around the rest of the campus. Let me know if you see anything.” He nodded abruptly as he ended the call.

  “What the fuck?” Kate said, giving voice to the sentiment she had been mouthing silently through the ter part of the call. “Where could the bitch be?”

  “The library, maybe?” Harry said, gncing over to the old red-brick building. “She’s a hard worker, even if she was trying to avoid Matt, she might have wanted to get some studying done?”

  “Makes sense,” Kate agreed, “Want to take a look?”

  They did try the library first, both floors and the basement archive where the paper journals were kept, but there was no sign of Georgie. It wasn’t entirely surprising, in hindsight, the Medical Centre had its own dedicated library and Medicine itself was of course too specialised a discipline for the general collection to be of much use. She wasn’t at the bar either, or at Starbucks, and in desperation they even checked the health club, in case the girl had decided to expunge Matt from her system with a vigorous workout.

  “Do you know where she lives?” Harry said wearily as they sat in the Union lounge, picking lukewarm chips from a white Styrofoam tray. They had been scouring the campus for hours now, and he was beginning to feel cold and worn out, but even so his foot tapped itself restlessly under the table. “Perhaps we could go to her hall and –“

  “No,” Kate shook her head, “I don’t think Georgie lives on campus. She’s a local, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Harry said, recalling that Matt had occasionally compined about her still living with her mother. “So, what do we do now – We could try the library again?”

  “We could,” Kate took a breath, “Listen, I’m not going to abandon you, sweetheart. But it’s half-past five now, and we can’t go on looking all night. She’s probably holed up at home, like you said.”

  “I – We need to find her,” Harry answered, drumming his fingers on the table anxiously. Though he dared not say it out loud, the worst part was how completely natural it had all felt. Sure, he had spent the afternoon marching around the campus until he was bone tired and freezing cold and that in itself had numbed his capacity for outright panic, but there was more to it as well. He had thought nothing of it when his hands moved automatically to fix his wind-frayed ponytail, nor when his ankles crossed themselves demurely under the seat as he took little sips of his coffee. He could choose not to do those things, just as he could choose to make himself breathe in a funny rhythm, but like with the breathing game, the moment he forgot to supervise himself was the moment that his inner nature reasserted itself.

  It was the same inner nature, in fact, that had just that morning informed him of his preferences in clothes and makeup. It was only that then, confident that he would soon be back to his old self, he had allowed himself to regard those thoughts with a sort of amused curiosity, almost as though he were looking into a kind of carnival mirror that showed him how he might appear and think if he were a girl. Now, with the sun setting and still no sign of Georgie, the novelty of the thing was well and truly wearing away, and it was becoming harder and harder to ignore the fear and doubt that weighed upon him.

  “Kate, I can’t spend the weekend like –“ He said after a moment, gesturing to himself, “Like this!”

  Kate looked at him sadly. “I hate to say it, but you might have to. I’ll do what I can – we can just sit in our pyjamas and watch movies if you like – but I can’t make Georgie appear out of thin air.”

  Harry sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. Alright, one more scope around the library then at least?” Irrationally he looked around, seeking some other arrow to nock, “And we could talk to the witches as well?”

  “The witches?” Kate followed his eye. Over by the corner a girl in heavy bck makeup was dealing a tarot reading to her friend. “Oh, you mean the Wiccan Club?”

  “Yeah sure,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “The spell that Georgie cast, it sounded witchy, right? Maybe those two know something about how it all works?”

  Kate frowned but allowed herself to follow along in his wake as he marched up to the girls’ table.

  “Hey, erm, good evening girls?” Harry began awkwardly, unsure of how to go on.

  “Hey, you alright?” said the first of the two. “Anything we can help you with?”

  “Well, we were just watching you from across the cafeteria –“ (here Harry winced to himself and felt at least a little grateful that he appeared no more than a tired and slightly bedraggled girl) – “And we were just interested, you know, in the magic and witchcraft and stuff?”

  “Oh cool,” the second girl said happily, “Why don’t you sit with us, we could do you a reading if you like?” She shuffled the tarot deck, absently ying out a trio of cards.

  “Oh, the chariot!” Her friend said enthusiastically.

  “It’s alright, really,” Harry said quickly, trying not to look at the upside-down leering skull at the centre of the triptych. “Actually, we were wondering if you know anything about the, erm… the ‘Lord-and-Lady?”

  “The Lord and Lady of what?” The first girl said, a little nonplussed.

  Her friend regarded her thoughtfully. “The Lord and Lady, Roxy – You know, ‘Tengri, the Eternal Sky,’ ‘Loki the Trickster,’ ‘Izanami-No-Mikoto,’” she rolled her eyes, exasperated at her companion’s ck of arcane wisdom, “’Apollo-Artemis!’”

  “Apollo and Artemis?” Kate interrupted, trying to find some part of this strange pronouncement that she could grab hold of, “You mean like the Greek gods?”

  “A God – just the one,” the girl nodded, “Though they have several, erm, aspects.”

  “So, Apollo is the Sun, Artemis the moon?” Harry bit his lip. If he thought on it, he could just about recall Georgie saying something about ‘Lady of the Moon,’ but what that had to do with changing him into a girl he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

  “In some ways, yes, but its more than that. Sun and Moon, Day and Night, Male and Female. The Lord-and-Lady flits between them at will, you see – they represent change, chaos, freedom to find and be yourself outside of silly social constructs.” She pulled back the sleeve of her bck cardigan and wriggled the little rainbow bracelet on her wrist, “And they are the special patron of people who don’t fit so easily into those social constructs – queer people, minorities, wanderers and non-conformists; that’s how it is in all the stories anyway.”

  “These stories…” Harry said, “Do any of them have people, well, turning into girls?”

  “Oh yes, there’s a few, now you mention it…” the girl looked at him curiously, “Why do you ask?”

  “It’s only that…” Harry gnced down at the ground. He was on the right track, he was sure of it, but it was hard to feel that even this peculiar girl was equal to the sheer madness of what had befallen him. “I…”

  “Oh, Bloody Hell…” Kate whispered, seizing his wrist.

  The words caught in Harry’s throat as he followed her eye. Another girl had appeared, blonde and ruddy faced, she was the sort to smile easily though there were lines of tiredness under her green eyes.

  “Hey guys,” she said absently to the two Wiccan girls. She pulled from her satchel a little blue book with the title ‘Songs of Hecate’ embossed on the front. “Just wanted to return this to you, Cass’, thanks so much for letting me borrow it.”

  “Cheers Georgie,” answered the girl with the rainbow bracelet. “We’ve loads of old books like that, so anytime you want to have a look around our shelf, just let me know.”

  “Thanks, I might just take you up on that,” she shot her a grateful grin.

  “Georgie!” Kate said suddenly.

  Her head went up and she turned to the other girl with a toothy smile. “Hey Kate,” she said, “Long time no see, my love. How’ve you been, how’s footy?”

  Kate looked at her in astonishment. Far from lying low, the girl seemed happy to see them. “Actually, we’ve been looking all over for you!”

  “Really?” she raised her eyes in mild surprise, “What can I help you with?”

  Harry opened his mouth – after all this, was Georgie somehow oblivious to all that had happened? He had spent the whole day scouring the length and breadth of the campus for a sight of his tormentor but now, face to face, he found that no words would come.

  “Hi,” Georgie said cheerfully into the silence as she turned to catch his eye. “Are you Kate’s friend? I’m Georgie, good to meet…” She trailed off and her cheerful face grew pale with horror as recognition dawned in her eyes. “Oh… Shit.”