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Author’s Note:  Originally, I thought Pleakley’s fondness for cross-dressing was something he’d discovered on his mission to Earth, but after listening over and over to the  way his mother says, “Are you wearing female Earth clothes?” I’ve changed my mind.  Since we already know from “Fibber”  who’s playing most of the Pleakley family, feel free to imagine Dave Foley voicing Finsley.

The young Plorganarian held his breath as he pressed his back hard against the wall.  His one eye peeped around the corner into the gathering room and spotted his quarry: a head of dark green hair, resting on the lounge cushions, oblivious to his presence.  She was on the communicator – perfect, she’d be on there all day from the sound of it:  “Oh, I knowww… Well, did you hear what Quarmley said to her?  I couldn’t believe it!…  Of course, that’s what she gets for telling that Plitney Noxley anything, she never could keep her tongues in her head.  You’d might as well put it out on subspace as tell her anything…  Oh, I knowww…”

One down.  Now to the kitchen.  Just as he’d expected, Mom was standing at the rinsing bowl, washing vegetables for dinner.  Even better, she was looking out the open viewport onto the grounds behind the house.  “All right, Bertley, go on!  But be sure you’re home for dinner.  And try not to get dirty!”

This was better than he could have dreamed.  Mom was busy, Bertley was gone, Pixley was talking her head off, and Dad wouldn’t be home from work for a while yet.  At last, this was his chance…

His three feet scuttled up the stairs as quietly as they could, then they crept through the upper-floor hall, past his parents’ room, then his own, until, at last, he stood at his destination: The Chamber of Forbidden Treasures!  The door was ajar, and he gave it a gentle push, opening it just wide enough to allow his skinny young form to slip inside.  Fascinating…  He gazed longingly at the dainty dressing table littered with paints and perfumes, as he shut the door behind him.  No time for that, though; he was in pursuit of bigger game today.  Pixley was going to her first boy-girl social on Grunsday night, and Mother had brought her fancy new party dress home from the alterations shop yesterday.  Pixley had tried it on, and made a grand promenade all around the house in it, before putting it away.  She should have known better, he rationalized.  She should have known the temptation would be more than he could bear.

Trembling with excitement, he pushed the button on the closet door, and it slid open with a fizzz.  There it was.  So beautiful, it almost glowed with its own radiance.  The fabric, silvery at first glance, danced with subtle hues of blue and pink and lilac, depending on how the light caressed it.  He brushed his fingertips over the scalloped ruffles of the skirt, so soft, like pufflefly wings.   A deep sigh rose all the way from both of his hearts.  There was no resisting something so perfect, so glorious.  All at once, he was pulling his shirt, his plain, boring, boy’s shirt, over his head and tossing it on the floor.  He took the dress from the closet and laid it face down on Pixley’s bed, fingers plucking at the pearly fasteners that ran up the back.  It was the work of a moment to gather it in his hands and lift it high, letting it float down and cover him.  It felt amazing against his skin, like wearing a cloud.  He twisted his arms around, bending over backward to reach all the buttons (one of the advantages of belonging to a boneless species), and got the dress fastened up.  He wasn’t quite big enough to fill it properly, and it drooped around his shoulders, but as he turned to examine himself in the mirror, he thought it didn’t look half bad on him.  Twirling this way and that, he relished the way the skirt brushed against his legs.  He loved skirts, how they swirled and flowed.  It wasn’t fair that only girls got to wear them. Giggling with joy, he raised his arms high and turned a pirouette on one foot, followed by a second on another foot, and another on his third foot.  The dress was so light, it felt like he was flying.  Spinning in circles, he caught glimpses in the mirror of how the delicate fabric rippled in the air, catching the light, reflecting a pretty, pastel rainbow around him.  It was beautiful, he was beautiful…

“EEEEEEEEEEK!!!”

The shriek caught him by surprise and hurled him against the dressing table, where his legs got tangled with the stool and he tumbled over it onto the floor.

Pixley was staring at him, fists clenched, eye wide with shock and fury.  She opened her mouth and screamed out one word.  “MO-THER!”

The thwappity-thwap of maternal footsteps came running up the stairs as she answered her baby’s cry.  “It’s all right, darling, Mother’s coming!  What is it, what’s the matter, are you hurt?”  Panting, Mrs. Pleakley staggered into her daughter’s doorway.

Pixley pointed one finger at the pile of dress and brother on the floor.  “Wendy’s wearing my clothes again!”

“What in the name of Bluzark…!?” Mother gasped.

“I only wanted to try it on,” Wendy Pleakley whimpered, struggling to his feet.

Pixley lunged at him and dragged him up by the bodice.  “Take it off, you little freep!”

“I’m not a freep, you’re a freep!” he retorted, trying to push her away as she grabbed at him.

“Pixley!  Stop that!” Mrs. Pleakley intervened.  “You’ll tear your dress!  Young man,” she addressed her son, as his sister reluctantly let go of him, “you take that off this instant!”

“Make Pixley close her eye,” he insisted.

“Pixley, don’t look at your brother,” Mom sighed, as she turned Wendy around by the shoulders, and began unfastening buttons.

“As if I’d want to,” she sniffed, folding her arms and facing the door.

“Wendy Pleakley, how many times have I told you to stay out of your sister’s things?”

“I don’t know, seventeen?” he took an educated guess, voice muffled by the dress she was pulling over his head.

“Don’t you smart-talk me.  I have told you time and time again, you are not to try on your sister’s clothes.  And do you listen to one word I say?”

“No,” huffed Pixley.
“No,” seconded Mother.  “What do I have to do to get through to you?”

Buy me some pretty dresses of my own, he thought, but he knew better than to say this, and settled for a mopey, “I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know, either,” she shook her head, fluffing out the dress and handing it over to her daughter.  “There, darling, hang that back up.”  She picked up Wendy’s shirt from the floor and told him, “You put that back on and come downstairs with me.  You are sitting in the kitchen where I can keep an eye on you until your father gets home.  Maybe he can talk some sense into you.”

Wendy Pleakley sat with his elbows on the kitchen table, and his chin in his hands, and sulked.  Mom hadn’t stopped lecturing since she’d hauled him downstairs.

“…don’t know what gets into you sometimes.  With a name like Wendy, I’d think…”

He groaned.

“I know you don’t like it,” she acknowledged this, “but it’s a fine old Plorganarian name.  It means ‘brave warrior’…”

“‘Brave warrior,’” he said it along with her; he’d heard it enough times.

“It’s a good, strong, manly name and I’d think you’d want to live up to it...”

This was the point where he always tuned her out.  No one had bothered to ask him whether he wanted a ‘good, strong, manly’ name, and he was sick of being expected to live up to such a thing.  Mom droned on as she worked, until they both heard the front door open and close, and she called out, “Finsley, is that you?”

“No, Mom, just me,” Bertley poked his head into the kitchen.  He smirked when he spotted his kid brother at the table.  “Is Wendy in trouble again?”

The brave warrior replied by sticking out both tongues at him.

“What did he do this time?”

“Never mind that,” Mom shushed him.  “Go wash up for dinner; your father will be home soon.”

Sure enough, no sooner had Bertley vanished upstairs than the front door opened again and a cheerful voice called out, “Anyone home?”

“In the kitchen, dear,” Mom called back.

“Mmm, something smells delicious!”  Dad trundled into the room and concluded this nightly routine by putting an arm around his wife’s shoulders and planting a kiss on her cheek.  Finsley Pleakley was still as narrow as the average Plorganarian, but middle age and his wife’s good cooking had given him a little pot belly that bulged under his shirt.  “Hello, Wendy.”  Dad had already noticed him slumped at the table, and came over to give his head a fatherly pat.  “How’s my boy?”

“He’s been very naughty today,” Mom frowned.

“Our little squirt?  Never!”  Dad pulled up a chair.  “What’s the trouble, son?”

Mom answered for him, in a voice hushed by shame.  “He was wearing Pixley’s new dress.”

“Is that all?” he laughed it off.

“Is that all?!” she gaped, eye wide.

“So, he’s picking on his sister again,” Mr. Pleakley was still unfazed.  “That’s what little brothers are for.  Why, when I was your age,” he confided to his son, “I put a glurp-trog in my sister’s bed once…”

“He is not doing this to pick on his sister!  He’s doing it because – I don’t know why!”

“Wendy,” Dad made himself look solemn as he asked, “why were you wearing your sister’s dress?”

In a small voice, he answered, “It’s so pretty.  I only wanted to try it on.”

“This isn’t the first time, you know,” Mrs. Pleakley reminded her husband.

“Maudrey, let me handle this.  Son,” Dad put a hand on his shoulder.  “One of these days, you’re going to realize that a pretty dress looks best with a pretty girl in it.”

“Pixley’s not that pretty,” he sniffed at this silly notion.

Dad chuckled at this and said, “I’m not talking about Pixley.  I’m talking about – girls.  You know.”  He punctuated this sentiment with a wink and a nudge.  Wendy didn’t know, and his face must have reflected his puzzlement, because his father conceded, “Well, maybe you’re still a bit young for that.  The point is, son, girls are different than boys.  Girls wear frilly dresses, and make-up, and perfume, and boys – well, boys don’t.”

Wendy considered this for a moment before asking meekly, “Why not?”

“Well, because…  Because boys don’t like those things.  I mean – they like them on girls.  But, not on themselves.”

“I like them on myself.”

“You see?!”  Throwing her hands up, Mrs. Pleakley appealed to her husband.

“It doesn’t matter what you like!” Dad sighed, finding his wife’s exasperation contagious.  “Boys - don’t -  wear - dresses!”

“I’ll bet they do somewhere!” Wendy burst out, succumbing to the epidemic of frustration now running rampant through the kitchen.  “I’ll bet there’s a planet somewhere, where everyone wears dresses, and I’m going to move there, and then I can wear whatever I want!”

“When you grow up,” Dad snapped back at him, “you can live on any planet you like.  You can go all the way to Ee-arth if you feel like it.”

“What’s Ee-arth?”

“A primitive, uncivilized rock, far, far away from here.  I’m sure the life forms there won’t care what you wear.  But as long as you’re on Plorganar, you’re going to dress like a boy!  You are not ‘trying on’ any more of your sister’s clothes.  Do you understand me?”

He had never seen his father so stern about anything before.  Wendy’s lower lip trembled, and he blinked down a tear as he murmured, “Yes, sir.”

“There,” Dad patted his back, as if to say ‘that’s over,’ and, drawing a breath, tried to resume his usually pleasant demeanor.  “Now, what’s for dinner?”

Wendy Pleakley picked at his food as the rest of his family chattered around the table.  They’d see.  Someday, he would go to Ee-arth.  And he would wear dresses whenever he felt like it.  The Ee-arthlings would understand.  The Ee-arthlings would think he was beautiful…