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Millie was not a girl.
Millie had never been a girl, despite what her parents thought of him.
Millie had a girl name and a girl body, but he was a boy.
He was old enough to know, he wasn't a baby like his little sister Holly. He was in the 3rd grade, for gosh sake. He knew things! He knew lots of things! He knew all the names of the different kinds of bugs, he knew that trousers and overalls were a lot less itchy then his hand-me-down skirts he got from his big sister, Nancy, he even knew how to divide numbers by 3! Not all the numbers, mind you, but enough for it to be impressive to the rest of his friends.
Millie wanted to tell somebody about being a boy, and he decided to start with his big sister, Nancy.
A few days later, Nancy was having a sleepover with Barb, her best friend, and Millie decided to tell her then.
"Nancy, I have something important that I gotta tell you," Millie said, walking into her room without asking, which Nancy hated, and sitting down on the carpet, not noticing how close Barb and Nancy were, because way more important things were happening right now.
"What, Millie?" Nancy sighed, obviously miffed about the sudden interruption.
"Okay, so, you know how I'm a girl like you, right?" Millie started, talking really fast, with Nancy nodding yes in response. "Only, I'm not a girl, I'm a boy like Will."
"..oh." Nancy said, processing what Millie had just said. "So, you aren't my little sister, you're my little brother?" "Yeah," Millie affirmed, drawing little circles in Nancy's carpet. "Well, I guess I already have a little sister anyways," Nancy sighed. "Do you have a new name?" "What?" Millie asked, confused about what his big sister was asking him.
"Do you have a boy name, or are you still Millie?' Nancy replied, rephrasing her question. "Oh. I want a boy name, but I don't have one yet," Millie answered, still playing with the carpet. "..Can I help you think of one?" Nancy asked hopefully. She had always liked naming things. She actually had a few pages in her diary that were full of names in case she ever wanted to name something, which she pulled out from under her bed. "Oooo, yeah, we could make it like a game!" Barb said, very excited at the prospect of having a secondary little brother.
They spent the next hour trying to find a good name, eating pizza and doing each other's nails. Barb painted Millie's nails his favorite shade of blue. Nancy left her window open and Barb almost fell out of it when she tripped. Millie read Nancy's diary and got smacked in the head when she found out. At one point they ran out of options and Millie had to run downstairs and grab his mom's baby books with the names in them.
"How about Peter?" Barb suggested, mouth full of pizza. "No, that's too fancy for him," Nancy responded. "How about Davey?" "Like Davey Crockett, the explorer guy?" Millie questioned, flipping through the boy's section of the baby name book. "Didn't he eat bear poop that one time?" Barb asked, earning an "ew!" and "gross!" from the other two. "So definitely not Davey, then," Nancy concluded, still thumbing through her diary. "OH, how about Mike? It's kinda similar to Millie." "Yeah, that's a good one," Mike said.
Mike Wheeler.
It had a ring to it.