Brain greeted them as they walked down the hall toward Mr. Ratburn's room. "Hey, Muffy," he inquired, "what happened to your nose?"
"I fell off my bike," Muffy lied.
"Your bike?" Brain marveled. "I've never seen you on a bike before."
"It was my first time without training wheels," Muffy lied again. "It didn't go so well."
"Yes, it does require some adjusting," said Brain academically. "The important thing is to maintain your speed. Then the angular momentum will prevent the bike from tipping over." Noticing something else unusual, he asked, "Hey, Dwayne, why are you walking funny?"
"I, uh, cut myself shaving," Dwayne replied.
When Muffy reached her desk, she pulled a red sofa pillow from her bag and placed it over the seat as a cushion for her bandaged posterior. Soon all the kids had arrived, and their one topic of conversation was the new boy.
"That's Muffy's cousin?" Sue Ellen asked Arthur. "He's so...dreamy-looking."
"I can hardly tell them apart," George remarked to Fern. "Muffy's the girl, right?"
After Mr. Ratburn had finished the roll call, he asked Dwayne to stand at the front of the class and introduce himself.
"My name's Dwayne Crosswire," he began. "I'm Muffy's cousin. I live in Crown City. My dad's a rich steelworker."
"Steelworkers are rich?" Brain interrupted.
"Shut up, Brain," Francine grumbled.
"I like a lot of the same things as Muffy," Dwayne went on. "But I also like"--he glanced at Arthur--"Bionic Bunny, and"--he looked at Binky--"wrestling, and"--he shot a quick smile at Buster--"eating, and"--he took note of George's attentive gaze--"ventriloquism."
Fern sighed audibly.
"How long will you be here?" Buster asked Dwayne.
This was a question he and Muffy hadn't prepared for. Dwayne swallowed. His eyes darted back and forth. Obviously the correct answer was "the rest of my life", but how could he justify it?
Then he saw Buster idly toying with his inhaler, and an idea struck him.
"I have asthma," he said nervously. "They just built a highway right in front of our house, and the exhaust from all the cars going by makes it hard for me to breathe. So I'm staying with Muffy until my parents move."
"Cool," said Buster, his ears perking up. "I have asthma too. Maybe we can inhale together sometime."
Mr. Ratburn delivered a humdrum lecture on the geography of Asia, and the bell rang. As the kids started to insert their notebooks into their bags, the teacher strolled past Muffy and Dwayne, and noted with interest that the two apparently shared the same handwriting style.
Dwayne had scarcely made it out the door when Francine, Sue Ellen, and Fern thronged him, expressions of delight on their faces. "I didn't know Muffy had a boy cousin," Fern gushed. "And a rich one, too. That's so awesome."
"I'm sure my parents would love to have you over for dinner," said Sue Ellen. "Do you like Lebanese?"
"I've never tried it," said Dwayne, who felt more and more uneasy as the three girls followed him toward the washrooms.
"What about sports?" Francine grilled him. "Do you like sports?"
"I hate sports," groused Dwayne as he pushed open the bathroom door and stepped inside, the girls still keeping pace with him.
"Well, nobody's perfect," Francine remarked.
"Do you like poetry at all?" asked Fern as she looked into the mirror and tightened her hair bow. "Last week I memorized The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by..." She stopped in mid-sentence and gaped in horror at Dwayne's reflection next to her own.
"Fern, what's wrong?" asked Francine with concern.
"Omigosh," uttered Sue Ellen as she realized what had happened.
The direness of the situation finally dawned upon Francine. She screamed. Fern and Sue Ellen screamed. The girls screamed and screamed.
When Dwayne recognized his mistake, he screamed as well. He raced out of the girls' room as quickly as his feet would take him, screaming bloody murder all the way.
His heart pounding, he stared at the boys' washroom door in front of him, and struggled to will himself to move forward. I have to get used to it, he thought bitterly. I'm not a girl anymore.
"Hi, Dwayne," said Arthur, hurrying past him and disappearing into the boys' room.
Dwayne's toes inched forward. "I'll bet it's a horrible mess in there," he pondered quietly. "Boys never bother to clean up after themselves."
"Hi, Dwayne," said Binky with a grin, as he strode through the door into the boys' room.
The reluctant clone boy shuffled a little closer. "I wish this was all a bad dream...I wish I would wake up...wake up, Muffy..."
"Hi, Dwayne," said George with a friendly wave as he made his way into the boys' room.
Dwayne gritted his teeth. "I'm going in," he said to himself with determination. "As soon as Arthur, Binky, and George come out, I'm going in."
"Hi, Dwayne," said Arthur, marching past him into the boys' room.
Dwayne rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Had he really just watched Arthur enter the boys' room twice without leaving? Was his mind playing tricks on him? Or did the room have a secret exit?
He knew he had to discover its secrets. Summoning all his courage, he took one step, then another.
Several minutes later, as he strolled out of the boys' washroom with a look of relief on his face, he saw Muffy sitting on a bench and staring blankly at him. "Congratulations," she said in a bored tone of voice. "Today the boys' room, tomorrow the world."
"It smells funny in there," Dwayne remarked, seating himself next to Muffy.
The monkey girl leaned over until she was within whispering range of Dwayne's ear. "Did you...did you..." she murmured.
"Did I what?"
"Did you do it standing up?"
Dwayne recoiled in disgust. Struck with shame, Muffy looked away from him and stared at her buckle shoes. They sat in awkward silence, the girl and her male clone.
Finally Dwayne spoke, almost inaudibly. "I'm sorry for punching you."
"I'm sorry for being punched by you," was Muffy's response.
Dwayne gazed forward, trying to come up with words that would do justice to his feelings.
"Yesterday was the worst day of my life," he reflected. "When I found out I was a boy, I wished I could die. I still wish I could die. What do I have to look forward to now? A lifetime of short hair, and wearing pants, and getting a wedgie every time I turn my back, and being chased by girls who want to date me because I'm rich."
Muffy sputtered incredulously.
"You saw how they looked at me," Dwayne insisted. "Tell me they're not after my money."
"They're not after your money," said Muffy, chuckling. "They're after your great personality."
"Yeah, right," Dwayne grumbled. "Arthur has a great personality, but I don't see him beating off girls with a stick."
Muffy shook her head condescendingly. "You just don't understand girls," she remarked.
"What do you mean?" Dwayne shot back. "I understand girls perfectly! I used to be one!"
Looking around, he discovered to his horror that his angry outburst had been overheard by several of his friends. Buster, Francine, Sue Ellen, and Binky had stopped in their tracks and were staring at him with open mouths.
Muffy glanced down at her Princess Peach watch. "My, my, look at the time." Quickly rising from the bench, she skipped away toward Mr. Ratburn's classroom.
----
to be continued