“Now?” I asked once we were safely in the truck, Jenny squishing up against me and holding my arm, and I wanting to do the same thing to Caleb but being too embarrassed to do it seriously. “Can you tell us now?”
“Yes.” He said, but it was another minute before he spoke. “Don’t you see? What could they all be doing there? It is a small town. The cops, arresting some drug dealer or something, sure. But all those feds?” He turned and looked at me, “They are after you.”
“Me?!”
“You, the reporter, your family, the other subjects. You have seen my list. Can you imagine what half the things on the list would mean to the government if they actually worked?”
Jenny grabbed my hand, her face pale. “But,” Caleb continued, “they don’t know about you. Not unless you give yourself away. They can’t arrest all the students at the university.” He stopped talking and stopped the car.
I looked up. I hadn’t been paying attention. We were at my Dad’s hospital. “What are we doing here?” I asked.
“We need to talk to your dad.”
“Hello Mrs. Carver,” Jenny said to the Emergency Room receptionist. I was suddenly tongue tied. It was one thing to be a girl around strangers, and around family, but Mrs. Carver made me nervous. I knew her really well, and had spent many afternoons at her house playing with her son, who was about my age. Surely she would look and know it was me. I leaned up close to Caleb, gripping his arm.
“Well, hello, Jenny, Bobbi, Caleb. What brings you all here?” She asked, looking at me very curiously, and causing me to blush.
“Is my Dad busy, Mrs Carver?” Jenny asked, “We need to talk to him.”
“No… no I don’t think so. Let me call. Suzy? Is Morgan busy? Well, I think…” she covered the phone up and spoke in a whisper. “Oh, thank you. You can go right in, exam room four,” she said, and pressed the buzzer.
Exam room four? The OB/Gyn room? Why did she send us here? I looked at the pelvic exam bed in the corner and blushed. But even as I formed the thought Dad walked in.
“Well, hello,” Said Dad, and shutting the door behind himself. “I am afraid that you have started quite a rumor in our little hospital, Bobbi. Do you need a pregnancy test or a VD test?” He asked grinning hugely.
“Neither, thanks,” I said, now scarlet at the idea of everyone in the hospital discussing my supposed sexual peccadilloes, “we need some fatherly advise.”
“The interview didn’t go well?” He asked, glancing at his watch, “you can’t hardly have had any time. You were supposed to meet at one, no?”
“The interview didn’t go at all. We got there and there were police all over the place, and not police either, feds,” said Caleb, and I didn’t like the way Father’s face looked after that.
“Well, that is serious. I was a little worried about that kind of thing myself when we first discussed it, but the whole thing seemed so outrageous, that I had dismissed it. I think you guys need to get back home and lay low. When I get home we will discuss it.”
We drove home in silence.
“Hey, I have another job I need to bid out,” Caleb said. I’ll leave you guys for a while, OK? I’ll be back.“
“OK,” I said, and Jenny and I walked disconsolately upstairs, hand in hand, and into the bathroom, where I had to pee.
“I wanted to go shopping with you,” Jenny said, leaning up against the sink.
“I know, Jens,” I said. But instead you can teach me some things. We could shave my legs.“
“Oh, OK,” she said. One thing I liked about Jenny was that she was hard to keep down. So when I finished I got up and went back to my room, hanging my clothes back up, except for the bra, which I put in the laundry, and the panties, which I left on the bed for later. Jenny watched me, shaking her head and fixing the clothes mysteriously.
“I’m ready,” I said.
“OK,” she said, “Go get in the shower and I will get undressed and join you.”
So we spent the next couple of hours in the bathroom, and she showed me how to shave my legs, my arms, she showed me where we kept the pads, how to put them on (not a very difficult concept actually, but she was on a roll and I let her continue). She wanted to teach me about tampons, but I refused. She tried for makeup a couple of times, and I almost spanked her the second time. She even, in a fit of political correctness, showed me how to do a breast self-examination. I sincerely doubt that she did them herself, altho even I had heard Dad (my dad) lecturing her on them.
So I was clean, shaven, and exhausted when I went back to my room to sit and read for a while, pulling on the panties but ignoring the rest. Jenny had had a friend call and she was in her room chatting merrily on the phone.
“Hey, Bobbi, you there?” Caleb called from the door, walking through the open door and stopping abruptly.
“Yeah, come on in,” I said, enjoying the way he blushed and looked down. “Hey, I’m glad you’re here. Could you figure out my email and all?”
Boys are dense. He gladly sat down at my computer and found and wrote down all of my passwords for me… casting a not so subtle glance at me every few seconds, totally forgetting that I had been a computer literate boy just two days ago and could easily have done it myself.
“I have to go now,” he said an hour later, having carefully written down everything I might need, and he rushed out. I giggled and sat down at the computer.
Great. I had a Facebook page. I scrolled down it and went to my ‘friends’. Great. Dozens of girls I didn’t know, all talking about their lives. Oh, well, I guess this was tonights homework. I had read for about an hour when I heard a noise and turned to see Jenny, again dressed in her shorts and pink t-shirt.
“Hey Bobbi, dinner time,” Jenny said. “Dad is home and we are having stroganoff.”
“Great,” I said, getting up and going out after her, “I love stroganoff.”
“Are… aren’t you going to put something on?” She asked as we went down the stairs.
“Nope. Dad said I didn’t have to.”
“Did you come to dinner like this as a boy?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “Especially in summer.” A statement which was literally true but a little disingenuous. Mom often fed Caleb and I in our underwear in the summer in the kitchen when he was spending the night and we had been in the sprinkler in the backyard. But that was a few years ago, and never when we were all eating together, just when she was waiting to eat with Dad after a long shift. But I had something to prove, and I was going to prove it.
“Hey Dad,” I said, going up and hugging kissing him. I knew that I was supposed to because Jenny, my Jenny, always did. He looked suprised and pleased; and when we were done he backed me to arms length and stared at my chest, “Well, it has been a while since I have seen those. It seems to me they are bigger than the last time I saw them.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I laughed, “But the certainly seem big enough to me! I can hardly walk!” I said, walking around as if they drug me down.
We all laughed and no one said anything else about my dress code.
“We need to talk,” Dad said after a delicous dinner and after we had done the dishes. “Let’s go up to our room.”
I hadn’t actually been in the folks room since the change, and I stared around curiously, but it didn’t seem changed. Dad still had his big shelf of nursing books. Mom changed into her white cotton nightgown while Dad talked. I was pleased she didn’t seem embarassed in front of me, but I still didn’t watch.
“Gloria, we have some bad news,” Dad said. “We think the police came and arrested the reporter today. We are afraid they are arresting anyone that had anything to do with the experiment, in order to figure out what happened. Caleb thinks they will be searching for any student that played a role, and even their families.”
“So, what do we do Morgan?” Mom asked, coming and sitting next to him on the bed.
“I think we are going to have to send Bobbi off to school when break is over. I had thought of keeping her here. This issue is our most important priority as a family… her ‘education’ is pretty meaningless in comparison. But if they are looking for other students, someone that suddenly drops out might be a target. It isn’t like the college is that big.”
“She could stay at home, at least, couldn’t she? And commute on the train.”
“I’m afraid that would look bad, too,” Dad said, reluctantly.
“Oh, great!” I said. “That is just great!”
Just then the bell rang and, after a second, Dad said, “I will get it,” leaving the three of us together.
“Oh, Bobbi,” Mom said, “that really is hard on you. I know you are an actress… actor…” she said, awkwardly, “but that will be hard.”
“Impossible, I should say,” I responded.
“I’ll help you, Bobbi,” Jenny said.
“Thanks, I’ll need that,” I said. “You two have been just great, you know.”
“I… I have had a hard time with it, there is no denying that. I have a daughter who is somewhere else. At least, I pray that she is somewhere else… And I have problems seeing what I can do.”
“Mom,” Jenny said, “Bobbi will need a skirt for Sunday, and we couldn’t go out today. Do you think you have something?”
“A skirt?” Mom said, “Why doesn’t she… oh. Come on, Jenny, let’s go see if we can find her something in my closet,” she said, but I went back to my room.
I went over to the desk. Caleb had said he had found my school password, so I booted up the school website and, in a couple of minutes, was looking at my schedule:
MWF
College Biology II
Calculus II
Introduction to Statistics
T/Th
Biology Lab
Voice II
Basic Drawing
European History
Well, I should be able to manage most of that. I was a little worried about ‘Voice II’. I looked around the room, found the textbooks, and was deep into the Biology textbook, when Mom and Jenny burst back in, “We have found something very nice for you, Bobbi,” Mother said, “Now come here.”
I stood in front of them and, as comfortable with my nudity as I was, I found this a bit off putting. Mom held up the skirt in front of me, and the blouse, and then Jenny went to my underwear drawer. “I remembered something that Bobbi bought, that she hated, but I think you will like it.” She said. She pulled something out and, before I could really see what it was, had it over my head and was sticking my arms through it.“
“What is it?” I asked, but by then she had shoved my breasts into it and I knew.
“What do you think?” Jenny asked. looking in the mirror. Certainly it was missing all of the… emphasis that the other bras had on the femaleness of the apparatus. It was made, basically, of just cloth, all one piece…
“A sports bra?” I asked.
“For going outside in,” Mother said, “in this case to church. Now, put this blouse on.”
They must have worked very hard on this. The blouse was *almost* neutral, but still very feminine, if you see what I mean. The bra was white, and the blouse was just off white, and so the bra didn’t show through the blouse. As I put it on Jenny had grabbed a brush and was doing up my hair, and mother was making my bed. “I suppose I should thank my lucky stars that I got the girl,” she said. “My Roberta always made her bed first thing ever since you were six. I hesitate to think what your room would look like.” She picked up the stuffed animal off the floor, put it on the pillow, and nodded her head. Then she turned to look at me, “The skirt is right there,” she said, pointing to the end of the bed.
So I pulled the skirt on awkwardly while my new mother picked up my old clothes from the floor and my new sister worked frantically (and painfully) on my head. “Good,” Mother said, when I had the skirt in place, “now sit down.” I did and she shoved some fancy socks up my legs without looking at me, and then helped me put on a pair of pumps… very attractive but, in a dark brown, almost neutral.
She stood up, looking at all of me except my face, and I got up and kissed her. “Thanks Mom,” I said, while she fussed with the skirt and the blouse, and fiinshed a button I had missed. When she was done I turned to look at myself in the mirror.
She was cute, this girl, if I had to say so about myself. The sports bra squished the breasts a bit, but they were still very evident and nice. Pert, even. The overall look was subtle, but I really liked it. As a boy I appreciated the view and as a girl. It was… me. There was nothing brash or loud about it. It was very feminine but it wasn’t at all… blatant. I felt mother at my side, and she said, hesitantly, “I didn’t know if…” she said, and held out her hand.
It was a necklace. A very small, thin, gold necklace. Gold with a ruby at the end of it in a small heart.
“It’s beautiful, Mother,” I said, “How do you put it on?” I asked, and she grinned, and moved behind me.
It did very much complete the picture. Jenny had finished my hair, pulling the very edges of it back and attaching them somehow in the back, but letting the rest of it hang free. The necklace hung down, and was just visible above my buttoned second button. They had taste, my girls, as well as tact. I turned back and forth, examining it, and suddenly we heard voices and steps on the stairs.
“Bobbi,” I heard my fathers voice say, “you have a visitor.”