Bryan Black's voice invaded Shane's morning. "God help me, I can't, just let me start over again."

"Shut up," Shane whispered, scowling, his eyes remaining closed as he slid his palm over the top of the alarm, silencing it. He burrowed more deeply into the covers, intending to bask in the morning quiet, but the plaintive wail kept replaying in his mind, this time in his own voice.

Julianna backed up, snuggling into him. He smiled, wrapped his arm around her, and made his mind sing "And I Love You So." That had been their wedding song three months before.

The cry came again. God help me, I can't, just let me start over again.

When he'd written that song, he'd thought life was about as bad as it could get. Now twenty, he was six years older but not much wiser. He still didn't understand how it was that everything he ever thought would make him happy, once obtained, ended up turning to shit.

He tightened his hold on Julianna, burrowing his face into her jasmine-scented hair, and summoned the mental image of her smiling down at him on their wedding day, her eyes twin kaleidoscopes of hope and promise. He longed to see them shine that way again. Marriage wasn't at all the way he'd dreamed it would be. We'll make it right, he told himself.

Julianna made a little sound of annoyance and inched away. He let her go and she rolled across the bed, settling on her side with a contented sigh.

God help me, I can't, just let me start over again.

He turned onto his back, looking up into the pre-dawn darkness. There was no starting over, no going back. There was only going forward and he didn't like where he and Julianna seemed to be going. He told himself daily they would make it right, but that didn't make it true.

He rolled from the bed, careful not to wake Julianna, took his cell phone from the nightstand, and made his way out of the room. Though there was a bathroom right off the bedroom, he took his morning showers in the bathroom down the hall so he wouldn't disturb her.

The soft pile carpet tickled his bare feet as he made his way down the hall. Like the rest of the house, it was new. They'd only been living there six weeks. It felt like a lot longer.

He brushed and flossed his teeth, then shaved. It never took him long to shave; he didn't grow much facial hair. Getting rid of it with depilatory cream, the way he did for all his body hair, would have been a more convenient alternative, but he thought the appearance of razor stubble, however sparse, helped people designate him as male. He set the shower water hot and stepped in. Though he happily would have done without most of the luxury touches in the opulent house Julianna had chosen, he did appreciate the massaging showers and whirlpool tubs. He imagined the water washing away the morning's melancholy, leaving him fresh to start the day--a day he wasn't entirely sure he was ready to face--his first day at Hilldale High School.

He'd long before accepted the introvert's reality that meeting new people drained him, and that was especially true when he was the new person meeting a group of people who already knew each other. He hated to be the center of attention. At least he wouldn't be the only one. Mary Greene and Dan Jackson, whom he'd met at the county's new teachers' orientation the previous week, also were bound for Hilldale. They would meet the administrative and support staff that day, then have two days to get settled and learn their way around before the other teachers reported on Wednesday.

He had one ally at the school already. He'd known Sadie Plankett, who worked in the office, since he was eleven. Her son, Michael Cook, was one of his closest friends, and Sadie had been mothering him for years. She'd been thrilled when he told her he planned to teach at Hilldale. She loved the school and had already been there for several years back when his father arrived as a freshman. Shane had never been a student at Hilldale or any other high school. All he knew of high school, he'd learned from other people's stories, books, movies, and a stint as a teaching assistant the previous spring.

He stepped out of the shower, dried himself, and pulled on the white T-shirt, gray boxers and black socks he'd set on the linen closet shelf before he went to bed. A white cotton shirt and black pants hung on the outside of the door, where he'd put them at the same time, but he wouldn't be ready for them until after he dried his hair. Before anything else, though, he wanted coffee. The night before, he'd set the pot to brew at six, and the scent now was too appealing to deny.

As he made the turn on the stairs, he saw Julianna on the couch in her pink satin robe, her knees drawn to her chest. Her face once again wore the haunted look with which he was becoming so familiar--huge, sky-blue eyes staring at things only she could see.

He gave her a gentle smile. "You're up early."

Her mouth pouted. "I had a bad dream."

His tongue travelled the inside of his cheek while he decided whether to indulge that potentially explosive theme. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"No," she said, slumping so her chin rested on her knees.

He was glad of that answer. He didn't particularly like the part of himself that generated that feeling but, being married to Julianna, he was getting to know it well.

"Okay," he said. He went into the kitchen, pulled two mugs from the cabinet, and fixed coffee, black for him and cream and sugar for her. He liked the taste better with cream and sugar, but not in the morning.

He carried the mugs into the living room, intending to set hers on the coffee table before he made his way back upstairs. The tears on her cheeks caused a change in plan. He couldn't just go upstairs as if he didn't notice or care. He set the mugs on coasters and then settled onto the coffee table in front of her. He waited.

She raised her head and regarded him with accusing eyes. "I dreamed you were a woman," she said. "And you were trying to kill me."

He swallowed. "Jul," he said quietly, "we need counseling."

"I told you," she said, "I'm not going to any stupid counseling."

"You'd rather keep having dreams like that?"

"No!" she said, kicking her feet outward.

He let them slam onto his thighs in hopes that the mini-violence of the act would help her feel better.

"I want you," she said, her teeth clenched as she ground her heels into his thighs, "to fix the things that make me have dreams like that."

"Well, then, we have a problem," he said, lifting her perfectly pedicured feet into his hands, "because I don't know what the hell would've made you dream I was trying to kill you."

"You suffocated me," she said. "With a pillow."

"And you feel like there's some meaning there," he said. Julianna wasn't a particularly self-aware individual but she loved reading astrology and dream-interpretation texts.

"Of course I do!" she said. "People don't just dream things for no reason."

"Why don't you tell me what you think it means?"

"I shouldn't have to tell you!"

He sighed, fighting off frustration. "Well, if I had to venture a guess about what you think it means, I suppose it could be that you feel stifled by our marriage. Is that how you want me to interpret it?"

"Maybe."

Only a few months before, she'd complained that they never had enough time together. He'd taken the summer off to give them time. Then she said she needed more 'me-time' and so he'd spent a lot of time in his own areas of the new house, his upstairs office and his basement recording studio and computer lab. She seemed to spend most of that time on her phone and laptop, talking to God-only-knew whom. "It'll be better," he said. "I'm working now. You'll start school next week." She was in law school but had taken the summer away from classes. "We won't be in each other's way all the time."

"You're saying I'm in your way?"

It felt that way sometimes--like when he needed to get ready for his first day at a new job and was waylaid by one of her mini-crises. She had either terrible or impeccable timing. He'd begun to suspect the latter. She sprang her moments at the worst possible times for him, which seemed to indicate some degree of intent. What he didn't know was how much of it she did on purpose and how much might be attributable to subconscious motives having their way with her--and him, by extension. He'd come to suspect she felt insecure about anything he might enjoy in life that wasn't her. All he knew for certain was that she really was miserable and she really did blame him for all of it.

"Maybe that's why I dreamed you were trying to kill me," she said. "Because you feel stifled by our marriage and maybe want to get rid of me sometimes."

No, you dreamed I was trying to kill you because you're a wacko. Unless, of course, you're just making this up because you're a bitch. That wasn't something he thought he should say to his new wife. Much better to gently suggest counseling.

It would be understandable if she needed some help to try to come to terms with their reality. Shane kept in touch with both a psychiatrist and a psychologist. He mostly did it only as a safeguard in case his grandfather decided to try again to have him committed but, now and then, they provided him a bit of advice he could use. Julianna had no one. She steadfastly refused counseling. Her mother, who'd recently witnessed one of her outbursts, had since told Shane that it had been the same throughout her adolescence and teen years, when she still lived at home. She professed a disdain for the mental health profession, but Shane suspected part of her reluctance was based on fear that if a professional began digging, he'd find out there was a great deal more wrong with her than she ever wanted to admit. Whatever the reason, she'd come into the marriage with problems that should have been addressed a long time before. How he could have lived with her for almost two years and not known how unstable she was, he could not fathom. Evidently, he'd met her at a time when she had managed to glue herself together pretty well, but the things she discovered about him in the context of their engagement and marriage had been more than she could take.

He hoped she could put herself back together, as she evidently had in the past, but thought she'd have an easier time of it--and maybe do a better job--if she had some help. He could only do so much because she was suspicious of nearly everything that came out of his mouth. She'd decided he was a very good liar, which was true. She'd also decided he cared more about giving himself what he wanted than giving her what she wanted, which wasn't true.

"Maybe a counselor could help us make sense of what's going on here, Julianna."

"I know what's going on here, Shane," she said, snatching her feet back. She rolled to a standing position and glared down at him. "What I don't know is why you won't fix it."

He lifted his mug and took a long drink. He set it down and spoke slowly. "So once again, all our problems come down to my phallus."

"Yes."

"And what does that have to do with your dreaming I wanted to kill you?"

"I told you!" she said. "I dreamed you were a woman!"

"And you think you wouldn't have dreams like that if I got another surgery on my dick?"

"I wouldn't if it worked this time."

"It worked last night, didn't it?" he said. "For about two hours, best I recall?"

"That doesn't mean it will ever work again, does it?"

He closed his eyes and bit his lip, wondering if he would ever get through to her. He pushed up from the coffee table and stood looking into her accusing eyes. In his sock-clad feet and her bare ones, they were almost exactly the same height--5'2". "Jul," he said, "you dreamed I was a woman. Not that I was a man with a messed-up dick or even a man with no dick at all. You dreamed I was a woman, which is a very different thing. Even if I got the surgery and they could make that part of me perfect, which they can't, it wouldn't erase the other things about me that made you dream I was a woman." He took her hand in his smaller one. "I'm really, really sorry," he said. "I wish I could fix this for you, but I can't. I have to live with what I am. You're the only one who can decide whether you want to live with what I am."

"It would be a lot easier if you had a fully functional body."

"Maybe it would," he said. "But I cannot get one of those, Julianna. There is no doctor on Earth who can give me that."

"Well, they could do better than what you've got."

"Maybe and maybe not," he said. "I'm sorry, Jul. I told you. I can't take that chance. Not again. Not now."

Julianna had a valid complaint. The implant the doctors had put into him in the last surgery was a lemon. It worked only when it wanted to. If it were a small appliance meant to go on a shelf, he'd have taken it back to the store for a replacement. In this case, though, replacement meant more trips to the doctors, more time in the hospital, more degradation, more pain, and more scars, all to potentially end up worse off than he was now.

A second implant might not work any better than the first, once it was in him. He had no doubt that if he agreed to that surgery, Julianna would want more. He could hear her now. "Since they're going to be working on it anyway, could they make it look a little better, too?" There was no guarantee the end result would be any more pleasing to Julianna than what he had now. She might hate it even more. Besides, there were only so many places from which they could graft. The insides of both forearms and one thigh bore the telltale scars and he hated them. Though he wasn't a huge fan of body art, he'd gotten katanas inked onto his arms to help mask them.
His male parts were far from ideal but at least they were mostly real, live human tissue. Still, he'd lost more sensation with every surgery and there was precious little left. If the doctors killed it, he'd be left with no option but to get some serious hardware down there, and he wasn't impressed with the current state of the art.

At the very least, he thought the safest thing would be to wait a few years until doctors knew a little more about what they were doing and had better products to offer. Julianna initially had agreed with that plan but had since changed her mind. She wanted him fixed and she wanted it now.

He wasn't ready to have yet more of himself sacrificed in the failed pursuit of penile excellence.

"You would do it if you loved me," she said, snatching her hand from his.

"And if you loved me, you'd let the subject go," he said. He drew a deep breath and exhaled. "Now. I need to go to work. Why don't you tell me what you think you need right now in order to feel less stifled or less like I'm feeling so stifled that I'm a threat to you? Which, I feel the need to tell you, is a ridiculous notion."

"Maybe I just need, you know, to get out sometimes," she said. "I haven't been out with my friends since you quit the band."

They'd been out with friends of hers several times over the past few months but that was a different crowd. The ones she wanted were the ones with whom she'd spent her Friday and Saturday nights while he was working. When he'd played with Painted Ghost, she'd always complained about having to find ways to keep herself entertained on the weekends. Though she could have gone to the shows, she didn't want to. It was boring hearing the same music over and over, she said, and she didn't like having to stand by and watch women paw him. She'd always said things would be perfect if he quit the band and spent all his weekends with her. Two months before, he'd quit the band. Now that he had, she evidently didn't like being with him every weekend, after all.

"Go, then," he said. "Have fun."

"It might be good for us," she said, nodding. "Married people aren't supposed to be together twenty-four-seven, right? So if I go out with them like one night a week, on Fridays, we'll appreciate our time together more."

A night a week? It was worse than he'd realized. "Fine," he said, "go."

He picked up his mug and headed for the stairs. Her voice came from behind him.

"Don't you care?"

Frankly, my dear harlot, I don't give a fuck. But the problem was, he did. "I care, Jul. But I want you to be happy. If that makes you happy, then go." But please don't go home with anybody. He started up the stairs.

"What will you do?" she asked.

"I'll find something."

"You won't go to Briar's, will you?"

"No," he said.

Briar's was a sex club in D.C. They had memberships under the names Daye Stark and Ashleigh Preston. She liked going there a great deal more than he did.

He didn't have much time to get ready. He slapped concealer over the scars at his hairline and beneath his jaw, camouflaging the evidence of the surgeries that had masculinized his face, then turned his attention to his hair. It had almost dried. He ran through it with a wet comb, added gel, and picked up the blow dryer and his brush. He bent at the waist, blowing his hair outward to give it body.

Vanity was said to be the deadliest of the seven sins. He hoped that rule didn't apply when it came to hair. He loved his hair, all eighteen golden inches of it. He knew it looked about twenty years out of date, being layered Eighties hair-band hair, but it was his style and he planned to keep it. He'd always loved long hair. He'd had it his whole childhood, until he was ten and his grandparents shaved it off. He'd revelled in growing it back once he was too smart and too fast for them to catch him. He'd loved that his grandfather hated his hair, which was probably about the same way his father had felt when he had a similar look back when it actually was in style. Shane further liked that the style helped hide the scars at the edges of his face. It also meant he could occasionally go shirtless, as society said men were supposed to, without feeling too naked, so nobody was left wondering why he never did. At the same time, it provided natural cover for the mastectomy scars.

Julianna lay on the couch, watching a movie, when he made his way back through the living room in a white, cotton shirt and black pants. She sat up, pausing the DVD player and patting the couch beside her. "Come here."

He wished she'd stop patting the couch. She didn't used to do that. He ignored the place she'd specified for him and knelt beside the couch.

Her eyes looked deeply into his. "You do know I love you," she said. "Right?"

He started to answer but the sound caught in his throat. He swallowed and nodded. She did love him, in her way. It just sucked that doing it made her so unhappy. She'd liked loving him, before. She'd been good at it. He leaned and put a kiss on her forehead. "Love you, too," he whispered, his lips against her skin. He smiled as he drew away. "Gonna wish me luck?"

"Good luck on your first official day of throwing your life away," she said--but at least she was almost smiling. For the moment, she seemed to be taking his grandmother's advice and indulging him in hopes he would come to his senses. She'd decided after they got married that becoming a high school teacher was beneath him. He blamed it on her having spent too much time listening to his grandfather.

He put a kiss on her lips, took from the refrigerator the lunch he'd packed the night before, and left for his day.

His feet felt heavier with every step toward the black Jeep. He'd put the hard-top on it the day before and packed boxes containing things he wanted to take to the school. He'd felt no misgivings then and had taken that as a good sign, an indication that, despite all his initial worries related to the prospect of the new job, he'd made the right decision.

He realized now the worries hadn't really gone away. They'd just lain in wait.

He reached the Jeep but couldn't bring himself to get in. He leaned against the door, eyes closed.

There was a possibility that, in becoming a teacher, he really would end up ruining his life, though not in the way Julianna meant. What if he ruined someone else's life? That would be incalculably worse than ruining his own. A lot of responsibility came with teaching kids. What if he couldn't handle it but didn't realize he was in over his head?

Would the kids even give a damn what he had to say to them? A lot of the students would be only two years younger than he was. More than a few would have seen a great deal more of the world than he had. And almost all of them would be bigger than he was.

What if some of them did put faith in him? And then his secrets got revealed? What would that do to them?

What about the other teachers? What right did he have making friends when so much of what he showed of himself would only be more lies? There were times he saw his life as a mountain of lies and it just kept getting bigger.

What the hell had made him think he wanted or needed to be a teacher?

He had no answer. It had just always been where he was going. Once upon a time, he'd gone to seminary, but even that had been because he wanted to teach.

Knowing this was what he wanted, why the hell hadn't he lived his life more appropriately? More importantly, why couldn't he at least now bring himself to give up the aspects of his life that were inconsistent with being a teacher? The only answer he had was that he enjoyed them and they paid well. What kind of monster did that make him?

Which mattered most? The means or the ends? He generally thought the ends but other people invariably got all caught up in the means.

He really wanted a joint. A valium or two would be good.

He pushed the drug thoughts away. He pushed all the thoughts away. He drew and exhaled several deep breaths.

"Am I supposed to take this job?" he whispered.

The answer came inside him, sure and without hesitation. It wasn't so much a word as the feeling of 'yes.' It rolled through him, gentle waves caressing him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, and everything was better. He'd always believed that was the voice of God. He realized a great many people, if they knew about it, would attribute it to some part of his admittedly warped psyche, and he had no evidence to refute that. Even in his weakest moments, though, he never doubted the voice. Whatever it was, whether the direct voice of God or a gift from God in the form of his own greater self, experience had proven it smarter than the rest of him, and so he listened when it spoke. At the times when he felt it, he was certain God was there.

Of course, just because he was supposed to take the job didn't mean it was going to be a pleasant thing in his life. God sometimes accomplished His goals in ways Shane didn't understand. It remained possible this really was the first official day of ruining his life but, if so, then that was God's plan. He considered asking that question but changed his mind. Either way, he would take the job because it was what he needed to do. Taking it, knowing it would only bring pain, would be borrowing trouble from the future. He had enough troubles already.

Still, there was another question he felt obligated to ask, though he wasn't sure he wanted it answered. This wasn't the first time he'd asked. "Do I need to stop being Daye Stark?"

No answer came. He always interpreted a non-answer as a 'no'.

"That works," he said. He pushed away from the Jeep, opened the door, threw his lunch onto the passenger seat, and jumped inside.

It might be the first official day of ruining his life, but it was time to get on with it.