Chapter 3 - Electric Boobs On You

I turned to smile at my friend in the other group. In answer to my smile, he brushed aside a sleek, straight curtain of beach sand blond hair from his face and wiggled his eyebrows like twisting, dusty comets.

When I turned back, Ramirez had a different face. I jerked away and gave a sudden yelp, as though an insect had just zoomed at me. Sophia followed me with a little gasp and a pained clench of her too-white teeth.

“What the fuck, man?!” was Salvador’s squinting response. What he didn’t realize was the height he’d gained back at the nurse’s office was beginning to recede from him again. Also, his ponytail, which once ended in a crumpled lump on his neck, now stretched straight over his shoulder with a dark, silken shimmer.

As for Ramirez, what I saw just wasn’t his face anymore. If you squinted and tried hard, you could kinda push features around in your head and arrive at a version of his face. Along with the loss of even the faintest shadow of facial hair, his features had softened. That jutting chin didn’t stick out as much. His nose was unchanged and he still had the same brown eyes, but his eyebrows had been culled from a wild scribble of black to a slim, curving accent.

His hair had grown again into a glossy nest of dark, downy locks, like duckling feathers all over his head. I turned to look at the teacher. He just glared at the spectacle as much as any of us.

Ramirez’s slender jaw tightened and he yelled, in what sounded like a light falsetto, “Oh, shit! Mirror!” Sophia yanked her star-embossed silver compact out of her purse and passed it across the table to him.

The conversation that followed between the two on the other side was a semi-coherent string of curses placed amidst combinations of “dude”, “what”, and “man”. Little outbreaks of anarchy rippled around the room.

I caught fragments of questions with slurs about sexuality. Par for the course on your average day in a high school classroom. I even caught a few things I hoped that Ramirez didn’t hear. He panted through his nose and shook his head. I winced from his expression.

Most days, I didn’t really have an opinion about either Ramirez or Salvador. They were just sorta there and did their thing. I got annoyed they didn’t do more group work, but they didn’t mess with my stuff and sometimes they were funny. Whatever was happening to them churned the upset in my stomach like my old allergy did.

If I’d stood up from the table and taken myself out of the situation, maybe we all would’ve figured out right then I was the catalyst. I was one twitchy leg away from actually doing it. Instead, I clung to the lip of the table and gave a sympathetic/horrified, “Oh my god…”

Soon, the biology teacher unfroze. With a stern yell and a sterner gaze, he quieted all the havoc around the room, except for Ramirez and Salvador still losing their shit.

One constant I noticed even then was how it was difficult to see the changes actually happening. I couldn’t catch Ramirez’s hair shifting nor could I pin down a particular moment that Salvador literally got shorter. Instead, it was like realizing how much had changed when you weren’t paying attention.

I could’ve spoken up right then and mentioned what happened before the holiday weekend at the restaurant. But I was afraid. I could imagine all eyes turning to me, all anger focusing its intensity on every ounce of my being. I still told myself I had no idea if it was something going on with me or not.

The biology teacher just shook his head. I remembered the first couple weeks when he drilled the scientific method into us and the fleeting times he would acquiesce begrudgingly to a variety of questions before firmly pointing out, “This is what has been proven by scientific evidence…”

All the while, Ramirez and Salvador pushed their chairs and the table back and forth. They looked in all directions like some hyperactive insect was after them too. Ramirez’s hair had sprouted to a reasonable length for a guy, but his face looked boyish if you were being exceptionally kind to his ego. His jersey had become a tent over his reduced bulk and standing appeared impossible without him embarrassing himself.

Salvador could yank his jeans up to his pits and, even sitting up at the raised lip of his hard plastic chair, he looked Sophia straight in the eye. While Ramirez’s fuller lips mashed together in a tense, stern expression, Salvador’s lip dangled low and his eyes followed it with a shake of his head.

Finally, a random cough in the back broke the spell and the biology teacher ordered, “Alright. Fire drill. Line up like we’ve practiced but stop at the end of the grass on this row. Don’t leave or you’ll have Saturday work!”

Chairs toppled over, and desks squeaked all around. For some, they were at the door as soon as he said that. For others, there were words exchanged, and books and papers crumpled into bloated backpacks. Salvador and Ramirez were not among the first to get up.

After most of the class had made its way to the door and out, the teacher fetched a couple of large, repurposed gym towels from his side office. They were usually for emergencies in the chemistry class which shared the room on different days.

By this time, Ramirez had a dangling mop of hair around his head which looked like a wig from Drama Club. I tried not to think about what the massive cloak of his jersey concealed, but his arms were almost as narrow as mine. Salvador hadn’t lost his broad eyebrows, though their edges were more distinct, like someone had carefully traced them. His checkered flannel drooped low on his shoulders. I couldn’t tell what was going on beyond the edge of the table, but he had his hands near his lap.

The teacher gave each of them a towel before they attempted to stand. For Salvador, there was no hope for his jeans as they immediately shot to the floor with the weight of his chained wallet sinking them like an anchor. Ramirez was able to catch them in the towel but only by wrapping it tightly around himself. The towel revealed an eye-opening amount as they stood there, trying to tuck the ends underneath.  

Their waists were a fraction of what they’d been when they last sat down, and their hips vividly dented the material. I felt briefly jealous of their figures before the quiet horror returned. I thought I saw a fleeting outline of something more when Ramirez tightened his jersey around his chest, but he’d always had ‘manly tits’, as he sometimes called them. I quietly hoped that was still all he had on his chest.

I hurried with gathering everything left on my desk. I gave no regard for my textbook, which had bumped, bent, and exposed corners after just a few weeks of use. So far as anything else in my backpack, only the rare, lucky papers survived and the old juice box was their god.

As my backpack gently crushed all the feeling from my shoulder, I grabbed my purse and snuggled it against my side. I lingered by the others and so did Sophia. Aside from longer nails and a few extra inches of hair, her changes had seemingly stopped.

Slowly, with Ramirez and Salvador limping so their towels wouldn’t drop, we joined the others already in two, side-by-side rows outside. The lines moved forward a little with the four of us in the back. The next person in front of me was three arm-lengths away. I could see the edge of my friend about halfway down the line in front of me.

Sophia whispered in Spanish to the guys. I’ve never known much Spanish, but I could tell there were at least a few profanities in what they were saying to one another.

I tried to give them some privacy by not staring, but I didn’t feel like there was a good moment to move away from them. I resolved to only move away when Sophia did. I thought it would deflect attention away from me. That was a shitty thing to do.

No excuses about me being a teenager with all those not-quite-developed brain parts they always talk about. No pawning it off on having no idea what the heck was happening. I knew enough to be afraid, which is why I kept quiet. Also, I kinda wanted to see what would happen to them next.

Sophia adjusted her jeans. They looked a little snug on her but then they always did. As for Ramirez and Salvador, there was no point dancing around what was happening. They looked just like girls.