Just as she returned to the lobby in search of a safe place to watch the door, two things of immense significance happened, almost simultaneously. The first was that Sally found herself immobilized by the exposed back of a woman who happened to be standing a few feet in front of her, near one of the long double-sided panels. This back, narrow but muscled, delineated by a visible spine, warm brown in color, was on display between the slim white straps of a linen dress all the way down to where it curved into hidden places, and its impact on Sally was immediate. She felt this not just in the form of conscious admiration, but in a breathlessness and a bolt of weakness, and, perhaps most distressing of all, in the sharp, hollow feeling between her legs, so powerful and so impossible to dismiss that it mocked every one of her efforts to deny the obvious. Before her eyes, as the woman that back belonged to turned to the person on her right and then to the person on her left, alternately speaking and nodding in agreement, that warm back tensed and relaxed, flexed and straightened. The woman had long dreadlocks, but they had been swept aside and over her left shoulder, obscuring her neck. The white dress was long, but not so long that Sally could not see her calves and lovely ankles. Those ankles confused her. She could not understand why they seemed to matter so much.
Anyway, that was the first thing.
The second thing followed so closely on the first that Sally did not immediately separate them, especially since, in a wave of bonus confusion, there was a certain sensory overlap. That sharp, hollow feeling where her two legs met was moving decisively into a related but distinct sensation, less sharp than dull, less hollow than unarguably … moist. Sally had a sudden powerful and unhappy conviction of what it might signify.
She turned and made her way to the bathrooms beside the gift shop, went in and took the farthest stall, and there, with trepidation, she reached under her black dress and pulled down her underpants.
Oh. Naturally.
For fuck’s sake.
A year or so earlier, when she’d gotten her period for the first time （at school, between classes, and while wearing very unfortunate white jeans）， there had been no rush of delight at having achieved, however misattributed the term, womanhood. In fact, Sally had been dreading the great milestone, and was actually enraged at the brown stain on her underpants. That she’d also been completely unprepared, from a practical standpoint, when the great day arrived, was totally her bad, since Walden had been drilling down hard on health and sexuality for years by that point and many of the girls in her class had already jumped from one side of the roster to the other, often broadcasting the fact to their classmates.
Sally had not been one of those eager for public transition. She had not been eager for transition at all. She had no great need to bleed into her underpants every month （a prospect that seemed, at the very least, totally gross） and no desire to be any closer to the awesome prospect of motherhood or, for that matter, sex. （Sex was a thing she’d been trying hard not to think about.） She was generally resentful about the extra burden she would now have to shoulder, and had a particular resentment for the kind of sacred mother-daughter sharing that was a standard scene of Young Adult fiction: Johanna, who had already burdened her with words about how important this was, and already asked, on more than one occasion, whether there had been any sign of Sally’s period. （Sign? What kind of a sign would that be? Surely it had either materialized or it hadn’t!） In response to these queries, Sally had issued a silent plea—to whom she didn’t know—for more time. More months, another year … maybe never? And indeed, at twelve-going-on-thirteen, she’d been one of the last girls in her grade to reach the momentous milestone. So yes, she’d had a decent run, but you couldn’t stay lucky forever.
It had come twice since that first time: sporadic, irregular, abbreviated. This was the third time, and once again, of course, she was totally unprepared.
Women were coming into the bathroom now, but there were plenty of stalls. Sally stayed where she was, motionless and silent, trying to play out the various options open to her. The tampon dispenser she’d noted on her way in, beside the door, was useless to her （this being a transition she still hadn’t made）， but she obviously couldn’t do nothing, and another drone of pain was even now surging through her lower abdomen. That pain was a sharp reminder of how deeply unfair this all was. Lewyn and Harrison would never hunch over a toilet seat in the name of procreation, just as they would never be called upon to waddle around with a bloody pad inside their underpants, or shove cotton up their revolting penises. （She assumed they were still revolting. She hadn’t actually seen them for years.） All for the privilege of that greatly multiplied sorrow in the bringing forth of children!