A grubby hand thrust itself in front of Zane.
"Spare some change, guy?"
"Uh, sure, why not?" Zane fought back the feeling of unease that came with fishing out his wallet in public, and dug out a wrinkled dollar bill. He passed it to the dirty man leaning against the wall in front of him. Instead of showing gratitude, the beggar snatched the money and lurched past Zane, who stumbled against the corner of an alley as the man zeroed in on his next target.
"Are you all right, mister?" said a voice.
Zane rubbed his elbow and looked to see who was addressing him. He saw a young girl, perhaps eight years old, looking up at him from the doorstep of a nearby store. She was dark-haired, with a bright face, wore a flower-print dress and sandals, and was looking at Zane with a very concerned but friendly visage. Zane noticed a dandelion tucked behind her ear.
"Yes, I'm fine," answered Zane. "That man just startled me a bit."
"It was really nice of you to give him some money. I see him a lot, and most people just don't talk to him."
"I can see why," mumbled Zane, unnerved by talking about poverty with a small child. He fumbled for something to say. "What's your name, young lady?" he asked finally, smiling at her.
"I'm Amanda," she answered. She switched topics suddenly, in a manner possible only for small children. "Want to play a game of jacks?" She held a ball and jacks up towards Zane, who was nonplussed. He had been heading for the local library, as he normally did on his day off, but found himself developing a fascination with this bright young person he had encountered.
"Sure, let's play," he said suddenly, grinning and squatting down on the sidewalk beside her. He had never played jacks in his life, but could think of no more interesting a person to learn the game from than Amanda. She quickly taught him the intricacies of the game, and Zane found himself enjoying himself more than he had in a long time. After thoroughly defeating him, Amanda smiled.
"You're a nice man. Will you be my friend?"
Zane suddenly felt uncomfortable again. "I'm not sure your parents would like that, Amanda. I liked playing jacks with you, but if I came by too often your parents might not like it very much."
Amanda's brow furrowed. "Why not?"
Zane took a deep breath. "Well, there are some dangerous people in this world who do bad things to children, and I'm a lot older than you are. . ." He trailed off, frustrated. "Because even though I know I won't hurt you, it's still important that you don't talk to strangers. It's not a nice world sometimes."
Amanda suddenly looked very sad, and Zane almost felt tears come to his eyes as the child in front of him tried to understand the strange concept he had put before her.
"I wish it were a nicer world then," she said finally, looking at the ground. Then she looked back at him. He was still squatting, which put him at eye level with her. "You can be my friend even if you can't come play with me. Let me give you a flower." She pulled the dandelion from behind her ear, and carefully slid it behind Zane's left ear. He felt a powerful sensation as her fingers brushed his ear, and the stem of the flower tickled the side of his neck.
"Thank you, Amanda," he said, smiling. "It's beautiful. I've got to go now, though. Maybe I'll see you around here another day." He stood up awkwardly.
"OK." she said, moving back to the doorstep she had come from. "I'll be sure to watch for you."
"Okay, goodbye." He turned away and headed on towards the library.
"Bye! Take good care of my flower," she called after him.
Zane spent several hours in the library that night, but had a hard time finding focus on any of the novels he tried to read. The sensation of the dandelion behind his ear kept reminding him of his experience that afternoon, and Zane found himself thinking that he had enjoyed playing that innocent game of jacks with a child more than he was enjoying the thick books he was now poring over. Finally, giving up on Tolstoy and Goethe for the night, he left his carrel in the depths of the stacks and began to make his way out of the library.
As Zane was heading for the exit, he passed the children's section, and stopped short. Impulsively, he went over to the rows of picture books, scanning for a book he had often read as a small child. Perhaps, he thought, he could check out the book and read it to Amanda if he saw her again.
There it was: _Goodnight Moon_.
Zane took the book from the shelf and sat down to look at it in a beanbag chair much too small for him. He opened the cover, tingling as he looked at pictures he hadn't seen in decades. And he read: "Goodnight Moon, goodnight mush, goodnight old lady whispering, 'Hush.'" Slowly he read through, curling further into the bean bag as he went through the book. Zane looked at his hand as he turned the pages, and he thought that it seemed smaller, fairer, and less calloused that it was. He closed the book, finally, amazed at how far distant in the past its words had seemed.
Zane felt his ear itching more even than before, and he removed the dandelion from its perch. He looked at it, and thought that it seemed larger and yellower now than it had before. He also realized that despite his earlier problems fitting in the beanbag chair, he was now curled up in it quite comfortably. Everything, indeed, seemed larger and brighter than it had before. Zane struggled to free himself from the chair, and stood up.
He stood up and found himself eye-level with the side of a table. Looking around in surprise, he saw a little blond-haired girl standing nearby, and he was eye-level with her as well. He started to speak to her, but then he noticed that she was holding a copy of _Goodnight Moon_ in her hand.
Zane was looking into a mirror attached to the children's play area.
Amazed, Zane moved closer to the mirror, and the small girl did as well. She was dressed in a flower-print dress and sandals, and looked no more than eight. Zane looked at his own clothes.
He was dressed the same. He was an eight-year-old girl.
Zane said nothing, made no exclamation. He merely stood and looked at his reflection a while, in shock. Not knowing what to make of his situation, he put down his book and walked out of the library.
Out in the street, it was dark. Zane felt the wind blowing through the folds of his dress, and realized that in his present form he couldn't possibly walk home. His thoughts were a blur, and he could think nothing, confronted with the raw impossibility of his situation.
Zane started walking anyway. Occasional motorists slowed down to look at this small child walking alone after dark, but none stopped. Zane came to Main Street, and as he was walking past the alley where he had met Amanda, he heard a voice.
"Wait up!"
Zane turned, and called out tenatively, "Who's there?"
"It's me, silly," came a voice from above. Zane looked up, to see Amanda waving to him from a second story window.
Zane stared. "How do you know who I am?" he asked, amazed by the high pitch of his own voice.
Amanda laughed. "Because I made you that way, silly!"
Zane jerked. "What? Why--"
Amanda cut him off. "Why don't you climb up to my room and talk to me?" she said, indicating the fire escape.
Zane could think of nothing to say, and did his best to grab ahold of the fire escape, despite his reduced height. Finally he caught hold, and made his way up to Amanda's room. He came into her room as she smiled at him, and they looked at each other eye-to-eye.
"What. . . what happened to me?" asked Zane, transfixed by his reflection in Amanda's wall mirror. The child he saw there looked so innocent, so pretty, and yet he was she.
Amanda looked at him. "I was so sad about what you said, about not being able to come see me because you were a grown-up and I was a little girl. And you seemed so sad too. So I gave you a dandelion, because they make your wishes come true."
Zane shook. "Are you saying that I wished for this? To be a little girl?"
"Didn't you?"
"I don't know," said Zane. "I was feeling nostalgic for my childhood, and I was reading one of my favorite children's books in the library, and I was thinking about how much I enjoyed playing with you this afternoon, and when I stood up, I was a little girl."
"Then you wished to be able to play with me!"
"Yes, I guess I did," mused Zane. "But why couldn't I have been a little boy?"
"Oh," said Amanda, "because then you would have wanted to play with little boys instead of me!"
Zane shook his head. "But Amanda, all of this. . . I can't do this, Amanda! I've got a life, I'm an adult, with a job, and I don't want to be a child again, certainly not a girl."
Amanda looked at him. "Don't you like this, though? Now we can really be friends." A tear came to her eyes. "I thought this would make you so happy."
Zane stood for a moment, and thought. What, really, was he losing? What was there in his old life to cling to? Nothing came to mind but the freedom of adulthood. *And what kind of freedom is that?* thought Zane. *The freedom to choose one of any number of ways to not have fun,* he answered himself. And as for being a girl, it didn't seem to bother Amanda any. This could be a fresh thought, Zane realized.
"I guess I could try this little girl business out for a while," Zane said finally.
Amanda looked up and smiled. "A game of jacks?"
"Sure."
The next day, the girls found that the magic of the dandelion had not only given Zane a fresh new life, but that it had made Zane and Amanda sisters. They were close as only children could be, but as they grew up together, Zane never forgot his former life as a man, and how Amanda rescued him from dreariness with her gift of a flower. And when Zane became a mother one day, he realized what a gift it would be to his daughter that her mother had gone through childhood twice.
The End