Excerpt: Delicate Appendages

She took the covers off of her “new” couch and tried to settle in. But there wasn't much to settle with. Having grown up with a librarian for a mother, she had always been around books. The two tapestries were nice, but they weren't a replacement for her bookshelves. Her mom had bought her some math books earlier in the summer and talked to her about getting good grades. If they were lucky, she could get her degree at Stanford, though her mother still preferred Mills.

Of course, now that she wasn't a girl, would she qualify to go to an all-girls' college? Not that anyone would ever know, because she doubted the world was ready for her new gender. Maybe Mills would accept masaba-gender students. Assuming any of them were allowed to go to college.

She intended to go there, and there was nothing the aliens could do about it. She could be pregnant and going to school. She could probably come up with a reason she was always pregnant. Nobody would ever suspect a thing. After all, she was for all intents and purposes a girl, even if she wasn't. She was the childbearing sex still, it had just put on a different meaning.