Christmas Tide.
by Angharad.
Jeremy hated his name, he also hated being a boy but it seemed there was little he could do about it. Another of his dislikes was Christmas. He'd secretly asked Santa to change him into a girl, he'd done the same at church and nothing happened. Then as he got a little older and towards the onset of puberty, he felt even more despair. His contemporaries in school, the boys at least, were sprouting spots and facial hair with creaky voices that were deepening and the girls were developing hips and little bulges on their chests. Jeremy looked at the girls with deep envy.

School had broken up for the Christmas holiday and Jeremy took his dog, Winnie, for her daily walk. He'd named her Winnie because when she was a puppy she'd poo anywhere. So she became Winnie the Poo named after his favourite childhood character, the famous 'Bear with little brain,' a bit like his dog.

They lived on the coast, but not a part that was heavily used by holidaymakers. The coastline here was rocky and any beaches difficult to access, especially when carrying all the paraphernalia that tourists seemed to need to use. Jeremy had grown up learning all the best places to bathe or to sunbathe and the best places for beachcombing; he had a box of treasures at home that he'd found on or near the strandline. Fossils and shark's teeth, mermaid's purses and assorted debris that had washed up from rubbish dumped overboard or lost in storms or perhaps just lost.

He'd always wanted to find a message in a bottle, it never happened but something that had happened was finding a bag of white powder weighing perhaps a kilo or more which he showed to his mum and they took it to the police. It turned out to be cocaine and he got a reward for that of two hundred pounds which he put in his savings account. He now had a thousand in it but he knew he'd need lots more and looked forward to getting a job so he could save even more, but the downside was that he'd be turning into a man but there was little he could do to stop it.

That morning, he'd looked at himself in the mirror. His dad called him a stick insect because he was painfully thin despite his healthy appetite and he was far from the tallest boy in his class, if anything he was closer to the shortest with a squeaky voice and fresh complexion, matched by his curly dark hair which was longer than perhaps most other boys wore it, but then, Jeremy was a girl, at least in his own mind.

It was 2019 and Christmas Eve and his parents were busy with shopping to fill the refrigerator with Christmas fare and other last-minute purchases so they seemed quite happy that Jeremy took the dog out instead of getting under their feet and besides, they were getting his present so his absence meant they had more chance of getting it home without him seeing it.

It was cold that day, so he wore his tights under his jeans and over his panties. If his mother had known how he was dressed, she'd have been alarmed, especially if she'd known that under the thick jumper and shirt, he wore a sports bra, hoping that one day he'd have breasts to fill the empty cups. It was why he was saving, to pay for an operation to make him a girl. One day he'd get there, he just had to be patient and at twelve years old, that was difficult as everything seemed to take so long.

Jeremy and Winnie went beachcombing as the previous two days had been quite stormy with strong sou'westerlies that smashed huge waves against the cliffs. Sometimes after that, there were treasures to be found, perhaps some more drugs which could mean another reward and more for his surgical fund.

He felt as warm as toast with all his layers of clothing topped with a weatherproof hooded coat that came down almost to his knees and kept out the wind and rain. He and Winnie scrambled down the slippery path to the shingle beach and began their search for any treasure the sea had released. Most of the strandline was marked with slippery seaweeds of various types including the kelp that had been ripped from deeper water. There was loads of plastic, old pots and bottles, wrappers of all sorts of things from tobacco to foodstuffs. It was a real eyesore but he wouldn't try and collect it today, which he sometimes did to clear the litter.

He had almost completely traversed his beach when he spotted a box, a white cardboard box wrapped in thin, transparent plastic. He trudged across the slippery algae to look at it. It had a name on it, and lots of other writing. It was medicine and as he wiped off the sandy grit from the outside of the plastic, he recognised the name of the medication, it was oestrogen, as in contraceptive pills, the same brand his mother took but had to pay for. He thought he could take them back for her to save her money but after loading the box of a thousand pills into his rucksack, as he walked back towards his house he began to see another use for the pills and wondered if perhaps his prayers had been answered.

He was home before his parents and after stashing the pills in his bedroom in the drawer under his bed, where he kept clothes he no longer wore regularly, and which his mother rarely opened, he began searching the internet for information about how he could use his newfound treasure, could he at long last start to become a girl? His excitement was hard to contain and it puzzled his parents but he passed it off as just being worked up by the thought of Christmas the next day. They didn't query it beyond that, happy to smuggle his present into the house without him seeing it. Now they all had secrets to keep, if only for a day or less or perhaps for quite a bit longer in Jeremy's case, but he'd extracted the first foil strip of the little white pills and hidden them in his wardrobe, he would take his first tomorrow on Christmas day and celebrate his good fortune then.

He continued his beachcombing but never found anything like the pills he'd discovered that Christmas.

Every day he took one of the pills and looked to see if anything was happening to his body. He didn't know how fast it would be if at all because according to his researches, it was a very individual thing. During the summer, he discovered he couldn't go without a shirt as his breasts started budding which delighted him until he realised they would eventually show through his shirts and he'd have to try and disguise it, but he kept taking the pills.

He did have the odd spot but his skin remained soft and smooth and only covered in the finest of peach fuzz, his voice remained high but his hips and bottom began to grow and his jeans which had been loose now became tight in the hips while remaining slack at the waist. By Christmas he was developing a female body, his breasts were evident with growing nipples and his narrow waist and broadening hips together with his longish curly hair made him look like a young woman, only the shrunken penis between his legs sitting in front of his very small scrotum showed his original sex. He was delighted with the changes and also that his parents hadn't noticed.

In school, he managed to get by disguising or binding his breasts or suggesting he'd got gynaecomastia or boy boobs and that they'd disappear eventually, not that he had many friends amongst the boys and he tended to sit with a gang of girls in the lunch times. One or two became his friends and he'd let them play with his long hair and put makeup on him, which they thought was a hoot to do to a boy, even a good natured one like him. He even went with his best friend Carly, to her hairdresser and had his hair trimmed, both of them pretending he was a girl called Jessica. The hairdresser told 'her' that she had lovely hair, strong and thick but needed to take more care of it. Jessica promised to do so and while she was there, Carly persuaded her to have her ears pierced, which was no big deal these days as half the boys sported one or both ears decorated with an earring or stud.

"Are you pleased with your hair?" asked Carly realising that perhaps Jessica wasn't seeing this a game.

"Oh yes, yes I love it and I'm going to ask Mummy to get some better shampoo and conditioner."

Carly smiled knowingly, Jeremy didn't usually call his mother, Mummy. Was he just role-playing or was something else going on? She decided to check. "You enjoyed being taken as a girl, didn't you?"

Jessica blushed from toes to her scalp and replied in a very small voice, "Yes."

"You like being a girl, don't you?"

Jessica's face creased as if in pain and her eyes began to fill with tears. "Yes," said the same small voice. A tear ran down her face.

"Oh, don't cry, Jess, I like you as a girl and we all think of you as one anyway. Even some of the boys think of you as more of a girl than a boy."

"I am a girl," was said so quietly that Carly had to ask Jessica to repeat it. "I'm a girl, there I've said it." Jessica stood up more straight and walked on. "I'm a girl and proud of it."

Carly wasn't sure what to think let alone say, so she walked along behind and kept quiet. After a few minutes, she asked, "Does your mum know about your, you know whats?" she nodded towards Jessica's breasts.

Jessica shrugged, "Dunno if she does she hasn't said anything.

"Do you disguise them at home like you do in school?" asked Carly.

"Usually yeah, why?"

"Shouldn't you perhaps tell her to see why you're turning into a girl?"

"Why, I'm quite happy with my body?" Jessica threw back at her but knew that at some point she would be discovered, she simply wanted to get to a stage where they would have to accept that she was more girl than boy and let her transition to her preferred role, except she knew that she'd end up at the doctor's and a blood test would show she'd taken tablets and they'd stop her. She promised herself, she wouldn't disclose where she kept them but if they really searched for them, she needed a more secure hiding place. That would need some serious thought and soon.

She decided to keep a part used strip where they could find it but keep the bulk in something like her dad's old toolbox which he hardly ever used as he wasn't very mechanical and claimed that modern cars needed a computer more than spanner to repair them. She wrapped the pills in a plastic bag and put them between the two blocks of wood the toolbox sat on to keep it off the floor of the garage and reduce risk of rusting. Unless you knew they were there, no one would see them yet they were quite accessible.

Jeremy's mother noticed the ear studs, little blue crystals and without saying anything started to look harder at her son. His hair was well below his shoulders but seemed much more shaped. Usually, he wore it in a low ponytail, but today it was down and it was only when he pushed it behind his ear to use his earbuds for his iPod that she noticed the ear stud. A bit more careful observation and she saw its matching neighbour. The tee shirt he was wearing wasn't the one he went out in, they were different colours, she was pretty sure of that and his jeans - goodness, he was wearing girl's ones and they fitted across his hips and bottom like a girl which she only noticed because the loose gilet thing he had on rode up when he bent down to pick up some money he'd dropped. His mum took a deep breath and decided she needed to talk to Jeremy and also to his dad but before that, she needed to see if changes were happening to his chest, as he seemed to deliberately try to prevent anyone seeing it. Perhaps she'd do it when he was ready for bed as no one wears very much as nightclothes. Her plan was set, she'd do it that night. Instead, it was the next day when things happened, Christmas day.

Her plan didn't actually get to implementation as she accidentally opened the bathroom door while he was washing and they both gasped, Jeremy because she had caught him unguarded and undisguised and his mum because she saw her son looked like a young woman. What the hell was going on? She told him as soon as he was dressed that she wanted to speak with him.

He nearly died and burst into tears, he knew this would end badly and even wondered about trying to jump out the window, except it was too high and if he hurt an ankle or something, they'd catch him anyway and he'd still have to deal with the interrogation. Feeling like a condemned woman, Jeremy finished shaving her legs and after creaming everything, went to get dressed. He didn't know whether to try and hide things and bluff it out or to wear some fitted stuff and tell them he was really a girl. It was Christmas day, no doctor would be working except at the hospital for the next couple of days so they wouldn't be able to prove what he was doing or for how long until after the holiday. But he was very nervous as he dressed in his girl jeans and threw on a sports bra to flatten his breasts over which he pulled on a tee-shirt and loose woolly jumper. His breasts were still slightly visible but he doubted his parents would want to see his bare chest and even if they did, he'd object and hope the embarrassment factor would prevent it.

The condemned woman made her way down to the dining room and to face her parents dreading what was going to happen but determined to resist any attempt to make her back into a boy, or worse a man.

"Come in, son, and sit down," his mother invited him to sit at the table with them. His father was already seated there. The turkey was in the oven and his mother thought she had an hour before she needed to do anything else towards dinner. Jeremy hadn't had breakfast but he wasn't feeling exactly hungry at this moment.

She passed him a glass of apple juice which he accepted, though his anxious manner and teary eyes showed he was not enjoying this family meeting. "You know why I asked to talk with you, don't you?" she asked him and he shrugged.

"Are you turning into a girl?" asked his father blushing as he asked the question. Jeremy shrugged again and tear ran down his face. "How about a simple yes or no?" his father probed. Once more the answer was a shrug and more silent tears.

His mother took up the role of tormentor, "I noticed that you had had your ears pierced and also that you'd had a haircut, but it looks like a girl's one from the shaping at the back. It is, isn't it?" Jeremy shrugged again with more silent tears.

"Are you growing breasts?" asked his father jumping into the silence not noticing the glare his wife gave him, subtlety or sensitivity seemed even more alien than usual. Jeremy didn't move but more tears ran down his face.

"Darling, we only want to help," tried his mother but still he simply sat there and cried silently aware that if they searched, he'd had his pill today, so they couldn't take his femaleness away, leastways not in the short term. He continued to resist the interrogation up to and including his father swearing and leaving Jeremy and his mother to continue, he went into the lounge to watch the telly.

Sensing a slight lightening in the atmosphere, his mother tried a different tack. "I take it that as no one has made you get your ears pierced or grow your hair like a girl, that you wanted to do it; I think you wanted to grow breasts too, didn't you?" This time as well as the tears she got a silent nod. "You want to be a girl, don't you?" Another silent nod. "I wish you'd come and told us. Are you taking something, hormones or something like that?" More tears and a silent shrug.

"Do you have a girl name?" She asked and he nodded. "Would you tell me what it is so I can address you properly?"

A very small voice said, "Jessica," accompanied by even more tears. His mother put a box of tissues on the table and a thank you was murmured again very quietly.

"Jessica, that's a lovely name for a lovely girl," she placed her hand on his and squeezed gently. On her question about choosing it, she learned that Carly, his friend, had helped him choose it. "So Carly knows all about you as a girl?" He shrugged and nodded.

Racking her brain for questions to engage him without frightening him, or perhaps that should be her, her mother asked, "D'you like wearing girl's clothes?" The reply was a nod. "Are you wearing some now or would you like to wear them?" Nods and shrugs and tears.

"Look, Jessica, why don't you go up to your room and wash your face and put on your favourite outfit and come back down when you're ready. I wouldn't bother with any makeup for the moment though, okay?" she smiled at her new daughter who saw the joke and smiled back. "Go on then, I'll see you when you come back down and I'll tell your dad what we decided and not to upset you, he's a bit out of his depth with this sort of thing, but I'll try and help him understand, okay?" Jessica nodded a reply and slowly went back upstairs tears still dripping down her face.

She heard raised voices then it seemed to go quiet as she assumed her mother was laying into her father before the banging of pots and pans showed that her mum was taking out her frustrations on the dinner and was in the kitchen.

All three of them were in uncharted waters, the two adults had seen bits on the television or in the press but had never thought they'd have to deal with it in the family. They'd both long since realised that Jeremy wasn't a macho sort of boy but some boys are like that, now they knew why and it was turning things upside down. Her mum was trying to understand why she hadn't spotted stuff before, perhaps she'd been too busy with her own life and Jessica had hidden things well. Once she had the dinner under control again, she decided that it would get more cooperation from her new daughter if she allowed her some freedom of expression over the Christmas holiday. As no one could do anything for a few days anyway and getting an appointment with a doctor was nigh on impossible at the best of times, with the Covid thing, it was likely to be New Year before they could ask for advice. Oh boy, why do these things always happen on bank holidays? Sod's law, she decided.

Jessica hadn't come back down, so risking an accusation of intrusion, she ran upstairs and after knocking on the bedroom door asked if Jessica needed any help, Jessica was sitting on the edge of the bed in a seeming trance and weeping. Her mum decided to see if she could encourage her daughter by at least trying to appear supportive not hostile, Jessica's dad could provide plenty of that if required probably because he was frightened of what the implications were if she'd got that far. She didn't think it was likely.

"Come on, girl, show me what clothes you have, please." She rubbed Jessica's shoulder and after pulling on her arm got her to rise from the bed and go to the wardrobe. Jessica pulled out her suitcase and carried it to the bed. There wasn't much in there, just bras and panties and the girly top she'd worn to the hairdresser.

"Right, put that one on and your bra and tomorrow, if you'd like, we'll see what they have in the sales and get you a couple of things like a skirt or dress and some shoes. Can't have my daughter wearing the same outfit all the time can we?" The question was obviously rhetorical but Jessica appreciated that at least she was trying. "When you've changed, come on down and help me do the dinner, okay? A bit of mother and daughter stuff," she hugged her daughter, kissed her gently on the cheek and went back to the kitchen.

It wasn't the best Christmas the family had ever had but they got through it and after taking Jessica's measurements, Jessica and her mum did do the sales and found some new outfits and shoes, plus a handbag and even a pair of boots. Her father was trying to get his head round it all and not succeeding terribly well, hiding in his office much of the time or sitting in front of the television, but he did give them a hundred pounds as a belated Christmas present to his daughter to spend at the sales, pleased in some ways to be free of the two of them for a few hours wondering if he should offer to change the colour of the new iPhone they'd got for Jeremy for his main Christmas present, in doing so he felt he was trying to help a little as well.

After breakfast, one morning between Christmas and New Year, Jessica and her mum had a serious discussion. "What do you want to do, sweetheart? asked her mum.

"I just want to be a normal girl and do girl things, well, as much as possible."

Her mum appreciated that Jessica didn't have some unrealistic expectations by the way she said this. "What about school?"

"I'm not sure what would happen there," said Jessica hesitantly. "Some of them seem to treat me like a girl now, but if I came out as one - I dunno..."

"That's assuming the school would let you."

"I don't think they have a choice, Mummy, they have an equality and diversity policy, I think." Jessica called it up on her new phone and they read it together and agreed the school would have to support her, officially, but they may be less than enthusiastic about it, especially if some parents complained.

Amanda Brown had done some research after learning about her son's gender discrepancy and discovered the biggest problems usually involved things like toilets and changing rooms. She also realised that if they went ahead and her child attended as Jessica, the school had an obligation to resolve problems and some had got around such things by allowing individual pupils to use a special or disabled toilet or even sometimes a staff loo. Disabled toilets could also act as a changing room, though showering after PE or sport would pose problems unless Jessica came home after games or made do with just washing instead.

It really depended upon the goodwill of the school and if Jesica wanted to go through with it, plus what the doctors or psychologists said and that was another bridge they'd have to cross. Amanda knew Barbara Taylor, the headmistress of Jessica's school and wondered if she might speak to her in private before they went any further. She had her number somewhere from a group they'd both belonged to trying to raise funds for local schools, so perhaps Barbara would listen more sympathetically or at least give her a chance to sound her out.

After the conversation with her daughter, Amanda called Barbara and asked if they could talk about a very personal but important matter. Visits to other people's houses were not encouraged during the epidemic but they agreed to meet and walk their dogs the next day at ten.

Carly came to see Jessica and was pleased that she was able to wear a skirt and even more so when Amanda gave Jessica a makeup kit and invited the girls to use it, so perhaps Carly could show Jessica how to use the basics. They both went off giggling and shrieking. John Brown had gone back to work so missed out on all the fun but the squealing and laughing that came from Jessica's bedroom showed that the two girls were indeed having fun.

The next morning Amanda and Winnie met up with Barbara and her black labrador, Queenie. Once they were free from eavesdroppers, Amanda got straight to the problem. Barbara listened and then said, "We had noticed Jeremy was becoming increasingly feminine in his manner but had decided just to monitor it and take care to minimise any risk of bullying. Thankfully, we don't have much of a problem there but only because we watch out for it and deal with it quickly. If and when Jessica comes to school, I'm not sure what will happen, naturally, we'll try to protect her and so will her friends, but it's not happened here before and we'd be on entirely new ground, but we will support her as best we can. We'll need some form of official notice, so she'll need to see either a specialist doctor or psychiatrist. You say she is developing a female body type, so is she taking hormones?"

"I don't know, I suspect she has managed to get some from somewhere, which tends to show she has a long term commitment to becoming female. I hate to think what the doctor will say, but he won't be pleased with her for taking them and me for not noticing, but life is just so fraught at the moment and neither John nor I know how long we'll have jobs."

Barbara sympathised with her but bemoaned her own problems of the government expecting her to find funding for all sorts of protective equipment from a budget they'd effectively been cutting for the past umpteen years. "Everyone in teaching is feeling as exhausted as the other frontline workers but we get no recognition at all. Junior and infant's teachers act in loco parentis teaching kids to how to use a knife and fork, potty train them and try to teach them other social skills as well as educate them. So many kids these days have parents who have zero parenting skills because their parents had none. Maybe there should be some sort of exam before anyone can have children?" She mused out loud. "Then we have to feed an increasing number of them every day because poverty amongst children is increasing almost exponentially and lots of them are going to suffer even more as their parents lose jobs and possibly even their homes. It keeps me awake at night."

"And there's me laying my problems on you too, Barbara. I am sorry, you have enough on your plate already."

"No, I'm glad you told me, let me know what Jessica is going to do and when and I'll do what I can to help, I won't brief the staff yet in case she chooses to stay as Jeremy, but from what you say, that's becoming increasingly untenable. However, I will flag up that we monitor her as vulnerable to bullying, I mean him for the moment."

"As soon as I know anything at all, I'll let you know as quickly as I can, but I can tell you, it looks like Jeremy's days are numbered as his body is so female looking. I may need to keep him off when the term starts, perhaps I'll say we're self-isolating."

"If you do we'll send him classwork to do over the internet so you'll need to send us an email address." The women parted and went to their respective homes.

"Where've you been, Mummy?" asked Jessica wearing more makeup than Amanda would have done to go clubbing.

"I took Winnie out, I needed some exercise and fresh air. Going for a sophisticated look are we?" she said nodding at her daughter. Jessica went red and then giggled before running back to her bedroom where more giggles emanated from Carly.

Later, after dinner and Jessica was in bed, Amanda brought John up to date including her talk with Barbara. He looked more resigned than upset though it was clear he wasn't happy. "You realise we've been out-manoeuvred by a thirteen-year-old girl, don't you?" he said quietly.

She nodded but what he said showed he'd considered what was happening and how he would help them all deal with it, that he'd recognised that Jeremy was actually a girl called Jessica showed her that he was on their side and come what may, they'd cope together as a family and as Jessica's parents. It was why she loved this man.

The end