Becoming Her (Trans)

Chapter 22

The first place we go to is where I say is one of the greatest main attractions in Seattle: Pike Place Market. Laugh all you want, but it's pretty interesting, depending on when you go. In the morning, just as it's opening up for the day, it's like they're getting ready to perform a play, and you're wandering around the backstage, looking at cool things from various booths and stores up close.

During the day, however, it's pleasantly crowded, especially with the fish catching area and a guitar player singing his lungs out. You can buy a bag of mini doughnuts and sit quietly in an eating area not far from the doughnut booth. It's the best time to sit there and read or write while you're savoring the chocolate frosted baked dough. Trust me when I say it feels nice to do just that.

At night, well, anything that happens at night such as a fair is awesome. The lighting's brighter, and the air smells different. An hour at night can be either endless or only feel like a minute. And did I mention the food? They're good, but eating them at night is better.

"Yo, Daydreamer," Joey interrupts my train of thought. "You're about to trip over the bronze pig."

"Wha-oof!" I take a step back after smacking my knee onto the sculpture. I wince in pain as I rub my knee. "Yeah. Thanks for the warning," I say, sarcasm dripping from my tone.

Joey glares at me. "Be glad I warned you at all," she sniffs.

"Guys," Gwen pipes up. "You promised."

"We didn't promise anything, hon." Joey brushes off an imaginary piece of lint from her sweater. "Now, where would you like to go first?"

Gwen shrugs. "I don't know. There's a lot of places to go to," she admits. Turning to me, she asks, "What would you suggest?"

Behind me, I can hear the loud employees at the well-known fish booth, yelling, "Two crabs here!" From a cheering crowd, I know one of the guys have picked up the crabs from the front of the high booth and thrown them to another guy behind it, who had caught them both. They've been doing this routine for so long I don't remember a time when they didn't.

I put my thumb in a pocket. "We can just walk around, see if anything catches our eyes," I say. Gwen nods in agreement.

Whenever I walk on the tile floor, I always make sure to be careful not to step on the ones with names on them. Unfortunately there are a lot, so half the time I end up stepping on them. A couple of people have given me strange looks while I trip over my feet. One time Kelly noticed what I was doing.

"Why were you avoiding the names?" she asked. "It makes you look ridiculous."

"I don't want to disrespect the ones who donated a lot of money to support this place," I said, dodging a James Riley tile.

My sister put her hand on her face. "You're an idiot. If they didn't want to have their names stomped on 24/7, then they wouldn't have used tiles to display their names." With that, she grabbed my arm and rushed me to somewhere she wanted to go to.

"Matthew?" Gwen says softly now. "Are you still here?" She snaps her fingers in front of me.

I jerk my head back. "Uh, yeah. Lost in thought."

"Ah. Well, I'm hungry," she declares.

I don't help Joey leading her to the doughnut booth. I know it takes a while to get the order, so I wait outside the area. As soon as Gwen gets her powdered doughnuts (I may have snitched a couple), I have her follow me out of the Market and towards the Space Needle. There's another floor below the Market, but I can tell from Gwen's look that she's kind of bored already. She wants to explore somewhere new for a bit.

After about 20 minutes of walking Gwen, the mega bitch, and I are in front of the entrance doors. Gwen takes a couple steps back to look at the whole building. "Wow," she breathes. "It's better up close."

She takes a moment to gaze before she enters the gift shop, which is basically the whole first floor. There aren't a lot of people here, just an elderly man with an eye on a mini Space Needle chain and a young-looking man with a screaming child. The father looks irritated about the tantrum, but he doesn't show it.

Gwen picks up a globe. Shaking it, her face suddenly has confusion written all over. "What's this supposed to be?" she asks. Since Joey's off to God-knows-where, I'm the only one here who can answer.

"It's a 'rainglobe'," I explain.

"A what?"

I start smiling out of amusement. "You know what a snowglobe is, right?" I ask.

"Yeah," Gwen drawls, still confused.

"Well, what you're holding is like a snowglobe, but it's raining instead."

She shakes it again. "Why does it exist?"

By now, I'm laughing. "Seattle gets a lot more rain than snow," I say. "It's kind of pointless to have a picture of the city in a snowglobe when it rarely gets snow."

"Oh." Gwen puts it back, having a grin on her own face. "That's interesting."

She averts her attention on a different item. I walk around, curious as to if the shop has added anything new lately. So far, not much. They've added a couple of toys, but that's about it. I start to walk back to Gwen when I see something else that's new, and definitely not a toy.

I pick up a bottle labeled "Eu de Seattle". Finding the name a little odd, I take off the lid and sniff the perfume. It smells pretty good, though I don't know what it is specifically. Turning to see if anyone's looking my way, I discreetly spray some of the perfume on my wrists. I then add some on behind my ears, like what I've seen women do on TV. After I'm done, I put it away and act like I haven't done anything wrong.

If Joey haven't decided to appear now, my 'escape plan' would've worked.

She smirks. "So, did someone want to be 'rebellious'?" Joey asks sarcastically, using air quotations. "Way to go, buddy."

"Back off."

"Yeah. As if I'm going to do that." The mega bitch gets a bit closer. "Did you want to add the perfume to your gay phone case?"

I hold up a finger. "What part of 'back off' don't you understand?" I ask.

"Hey guys!" Gwen calls out. "I want to go to the next floor!" She waves us over when we both glance over the next aisle for her. "Come on! I want to see it!"

"Coming!" Joey says cheerfully, sending me a death glare at the same time. I stare back, but don't say anything as we follow Gwen to the elevator.

The bitch better not say anything to Gwen about what she witnessed.