How do you tell your best friend that you just happen to have changed gender since they saw you last?

Chapter 6
Countdown to Confession

by Jesse Rabbit

There I was, pressing the Mode and Panic buttons for all of like a second when the doors to the choir room banged open and in trooped half a dozen members of the choir. For a moment I just stared but thankfully I had the presence of mind to release the buttons before the sequence could begin and thus prevented myself from transforming in front of six of my peers. They gave me little more than a cursory glance, engaged as they were in their own conversation.

I slipped out the door and into the press of junior high kids, all streaming towards the doors like rats leave a sinking ship. I just kept my head down and let them sweep me out the doors. I didn't see anybody significant and more importantly no one seemed to notice me in the slightest except for one sixer boy who stepped on my foot and then blushed and looked scared when he realized that I was a girl.

Emerging into the bright NoCal November day, my contacts automatically darkened to shield my eyes but I was still temporarily blinded by the glare. When I could see again I slipped out of the stream and slipped around the side of the school. There were some benches and tables and trees on the grass there and it was far more exposed than I was comfortable with, but there weren't any kids on this side. Unless someone at Crestview - the Elementary school next door - was looking out of their classrooms with a pair of binoculars, I was out of sight.

I glanced about nervously as I pressed and held the buttons, pressing back against the wall and praying no one came by in the next minute or so. Eleven seconds after I pressed the buttons the watch beeped and I felt those tingles flood back through my body. This time I tried to concentrate on what it felt like but quickly decided that was a bad idea cause it felt like when your leg wakes up, sharp pains and tingles everywhere, all at once. And then, eleven seconds after it began, it ended and I realized something dreadful. I had such a wedgie!

I squirmed and tugged frantically at my underwear, trying to pull it away from where it was crushing my newly reacquired manhood (well, boyhood). Clearly I would have to be careful about how high I pulled them in the future. I finally, and with a sinking feeling in my chest and pain in my groin, realized there was really no way I could fix the problem without pulling down my pants at least to my knees.

The watch beeped and I looked down at the face. It said 4:30 remaining, and I freaked and ran, forgetting the pain, or at least trying to ignore it. I dashed towards the front of the school, slipped through the trickle of students that had lagged behind and dashed headlong across the yard to the bike racks where I saw Karen waiting, an annoyed expression on her face. The watch beeped 4:00 as I unlocked my bike and Karen bitched at me for making her wait like a minute, sheesh!

I turned to her with a forced grin and said, "Race you to my house!" Then, without waiting for her to argue I hopped onto my bike and tore off, peddling like the hounds of war were chasing me, even though we aren't supposed to ride our bikes on school paths or in the parking lot. I heard Karen scream and jump onto her bike, and I wasn't surprised, we were always doing stuff like this. It's almost a mile to my house from the school, straight down Vineyard Ridge to Firehill and Firehill to Rembrant, and if I went flat out I might just make it in time.

During the ride, which seemed to both crawl with regard to progress and fly with regard to time, the higher functions section of my brain tried to figure out what in the name of Bob I was going to tell Karen, and how. I also wondered how she would take it, whether she would scream, freak, or hit me, or all three. It was too much to hope for that she would be calm about it; Karen is many things, genius, sweet, cheerful, annoying, and good a tennis are just a few, but calm is not one of them.

I raced down the road, passing Claremont High (Get this. Claremont High, Cascade Middle, and Crestview Basic are all in a row, on Vineyard Ridge. They look exactly alike, at least the buildings do, although Crestview has a slide on its pool and more things to climb on in its exercise yard and some of the benches are smaller. But the three are identical. They even have the same animal as a mascot. The Echidnas. Joseph, Samuel, and Isiah or Joey, Sammy, and Izzy the Echidna brothers. Sigh.) So I pass the high school where I will be going next year; pass the library with its sign that says "Lets make 2018 the Literacy Year" (sic); turn onto Firehill and pass the old firehouse (now a landmark) and the new FireSquad facility with its six crimson FireHawk Hovercopters outside on their launch pads; and then down the street past the three churches, the shopping area, and then the WorldComp annex, onto Rembrant and down the street.

Karen is bigger than me and she can really ride, so by this point we're neck and neck. I dodge Missus Holister and her mini-tigers Sigfred & Roy and Mister Walker who is, as usual, playing hackey sac all over his yard, the sidewalk, and the street. My watch has started beeping non-stop now and I'm afraid too look down at it, cause a) I'd crash, and b) it might say 0:01 remaining.

Finally, after an eternity it seems, I reach my yard, leap off my bike, letting it fall onto the grass, even though I've been told not to a zillion times (a finitely large number, as opposed to infinity which is an infinitely large number, or so says my mom, the math geek. She's made me memorize the first thousand prime numbers, forwards and backwards. sigh.)

I'm racing up the steps when the tingles begin, but I force myself to keep going, slamming my hand against the palm scanner and flinging myself into the front hallway, where I hit the floor hard and just lie there, completely winded and spasming as the tingles and aches wash over me. A few seconds later it's all better, completely. I'm not kidding. No aches, no pains, no tightness in my shorts. Even my hand which should have been throbbing with the force I'd used against the palm scanner was fine. I was just a little out of breath and that was better than it had been just a second before.

As I was taking this all in, a shadow fell across me and I heard Karen say, "Well, you won. I just hope you're happy, 'cause I think you gave old lady Holister a heart attack. Elan! Hey, Elan, where were you today, you skipped class? Miss Greystoke is gonna make you write 300 words, anyway, why are you lying on the...." And that's when I think she noticed something was wrong 'cause she just trailed off.

I climbed to my feet, doing it deliberately and slowly to give myself time to think. I listened for her to say something else but she wasn't saying anything; in fact, I'm not so sure she was breathing. I slowly turned to face her and sighed. "Why don't you close the door and come on up to my lab--er, room. I want to change and Pig will be home soon." No, she wouldn't. Pig walks, and usually she and her friends stop to get some candy or at the park for a while, and Karen knew it, but she didn't argue.

I turned back away from her and slowly climbed the stairs up to my rooms.

"I put your bike up for you, Elan," Karen said quietly, as much to break the silence as for any other reason, I think. I nodded and said, "Thanks", but I wasn't really paying that much attention.

We got to my room and, after closing the door and activating the Privacy Please sign on the wall just outside, I took off my school jacket and tie, hung them in the closet and slumped onto the bed.

When I hadn't said anything for about five or ten minutes Karen finally poked me and I rolled over and looked up into her eyes. She blinked and opened her mouth to speak, once, twice, three times. Then she closed it again and slumped onto the bed next to me. After about ten more minutes of complete silence she finally asked "How?" Her voice was small and scared.

I shrugged and sighed, "Grandpa," as if that explained everything. Which, come to think of it, it did, if you knew our family, that is. Karen has been my best friend since we were three; we've skipped the same grades, been in most of the same classes, and even invented one or two things together, although nothing big, yet. If anyone knew my family she did.

She blinked and reached out one hand and poked me right in the chest. "Why?"

I jumped as she poked something soft and sensitive on my chest and shrugged again. "Dunno."

She giggled, smiling when I jumped, and poked me again.

"HEY!" I cried, "Stoppit!"

"You got titties!" I blinked and looked down, and gasped. She was right, I had these tiny little bumps, barely there but noticable 'cause I was leaning back on my arms and thus pulling my shirt tight across my chest. They were little more than bumps, a lot like the ones Karen had so proudly showed me just this summer. I groaned and flopped back on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling.

Karen poked me in the belly and peered down into my face, "Do you still have a thingy?"

Now, I don't want you to get the wrong ideas here so let me clarify two things: 1 our schools have been teaching us about our bodies, sex (safe and otherwise), and all that stuff since kindergarten, but still, using words like mammary and penis and vagina is just no fun, I mean, adults don't use them so why should kids, right? And 2; Karen and I have never, ever, EVER!, done anything sexual; she's my best friend and it would be gross, like kissing Pig, or, or, well actually I cannot think of anything worse than kissing Pig, but you get the idea. But we have shown each other our bodies, and not just in health class when everyone has to get up in front of the class completely naked (it's to make us feel more comfortable about our bodies or at least that's what the teachers say, but we think it's just an excuse to torture us more.

My dad says that in his day people didn't talk about stuff like sex, and that everyone was really uptight and republican. (It's an old political party, I checked. From before the space age.)

I nodded and blushed when she smiled. Then I had to bat at her hands 'cause she was trying to pull down my pants, crying, "Let me see, let me see!"

See, told you calm wasn't one of her traits. I rolled away from her and off the bed, grumping, "I can do that myself, thank you!"

I sighed mentally when I realized that I had just, essentially, agreed to show her, so I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it from my trousers, unbuckled my belt and let my pants fall to the floor. I had to change anyway, so I figured I might as well get it over with. I kicked my shoes into the closet, wriggleD out of my pants and shirt and stood there in my boxers and light undershirt. Blushing again now, just a little bit mind you, I peeled off my shirt and then quickly, before I could chicken out, pulled my shorts down and stepped out of them. I turned slowly 'round and then looked Karen in the eyes. "Well?"

Then I almost fell down laughing cause she looked so stunned. Her jaw was almost on the ground and her eyes had bugged out like that guy in the classic film, "The Mask". I went over to my closet and closed the door so I could see myself in the mirror.

I saw a girl, young, naked except for her socks and a tiny platinum snowflake pendant on a delicate chain round her neck. She was slender, her hips shaped slightly differently from mine, her toRso slightly slimmer with more of a taper at the waist. She had long limbs, like mine, although they were a little more delicate and angled differently at the wrists. She had no Adam's apple, and a cheerful face with bright green eyes framed by long platinum blonde hair bleached almost white by the NoCal sun. She stood just under five feet tall. Or in other words, she was a female version of me.

I hugged myself and then Karen hugged me and said, "So, whatcha gonna wear tonight?" as if this was perfectly normal. As if she wasn't hugging a naked girl who this morning had been a boy.

I blinked, having forgotten completely. "Tonight?"

She nodded and smiled "We're going to New York? To see Terminator? 'Member?"

I slapped myself in the forehead and sighed, "Oh, yeah, right."

"Are you stuck like that?" she asked, out of the blue.

I nodded, "Except for 5 minutes every twelve hours, yep."

She let go and looked me up and down. "Well then, since I take it we're trying to hide this from your parents?" She paused long enough for me to nod rapidly before continuing. "Then we need to come up with something, and fast."

I nodded and sighed.

"How about we dress you like Pig?"

I nearly fell over as Karen giggled. I shot her a dirty look and she stopped, but was clearly having to strain to hold it in. I sighed "What do you have in mind?"

She looked thoughtful for a minute or two and I began to think that maybe I should just get dressed in my suit and shave my head bald. Then she grinned, looking maniacal - and trust me, I know that look, it's what my family uses instead of the smile. She crowed, "I've got just the thing!"