“You ready to show me what you can do?” Brook asked quietly at we stared at the local skate park. There was a moderate number of people there. Some there to skate, some there to hang out with their friends that skated. A group of mostly guys who looked to be the same age as Brook and myself were being rowdy in a corner as they tried to show off.

There was a group of wobbly kids on roller blades with their parents glaring daggers at any of the other groups who came close, as well as a group of middle schoolers who were tentatively and loudly messing around on one of the smaller bowls. The main vert was somewhat unoccupied at the moment, only a few solitary skaters and one dude on inlines taking turns smashing themselves into the bottom of it. Pretty typical crowd really from what I remembered.

The last time Brook had dragged me here, I had looked like one of the wobbly kids, my arms windmilling as I tried to get the board to do what I wanted it to do. It had been an exquisitely embarrassing experience and I’d begged her not to make me come here again, instead asking if we could just use an unused parking lot to mess around.

“I think so…” I sighed, replying to Brook’s question and staring at the park in apprehension.

“You sure? We can just go to a parking lot like before if you’d like,” she asked kindly.

I looked over at my friend leaning casually on a railing with a look of concern on her face. She was wearing jeans that were almost tighter than mine, and they looked damn good on her. Her top was… distracting. She was wearing a lacy black bralette, which I could clearly see because the shirt she was wearing, while long sleeved, also had the front cut out of it in a U shape. The cut started at the sides and arched up until it stopped just below her breasts. If she did anything jumpy, we’d all be seeing her lace clad boobs.

She caught me staring and laughed, grasping the front of her top and flicking it upwards, giving me full view of her admittedly nice bra. I couldn’t help but shake my head with an eye rolling grin. She was shameless, flashing me in broad daylight like it was nothing, but little did she know it actually resulted in me admiring the design of her underwear. I kinda wanted something like it, it would go well with my current outfit.

“You’re terrible, and yes let’s get in there. Try not to make a fool of both of us though please,” I said with a quiet smile.

“I’ll try Glow, but no promises,” she grinned.

I blinked at her, “Glow?”

“Yeah, I just made it up. It’s your new nickname,” she said, biting her lip mischievously.

“Lovely,” I said, hiding a smile and walking forward into the park.

I went to an unoccupied flat area and stared down at my board thoughtfully. I knew how a lot of tricks worked, but a baseline human had to teach the body to follow along with what the mind already knew. So hopefully, if I was even beginning to understand how my powers worked, I could translate the moves directly from mind to movements, without the awkward learning stage to deal with.

“Whatcha’ thinkin’ about there Glow?” I heard Brook ask from behind me.

“Please no. That name is not going to be a thing,” I whined.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she laughed, dropping her own board --which we’d fetched from her house-- onto the pavement

“Sorry, um, I’m trying to think about how my powers work. I think I can just like, direct it with my imagination but I’m not sure,” I told her, stepping onto my board with a feeling of nervous anticipation.

“Try a kickflip first. I’ll stand here and catch you if things go badly,” she said, stepping around to face me.

“Thanks,” I said absently.

I visualised what I wanted to do, remembering the few times I’d gotten the damn trick right without gaining a bruise. I had to do the start of a standard ollie --something which had been hit or miss previously as it was-- and then flick my foot to the side rather than forward, catching the slightly upturned lip of the board and sending it into a spin along the central axis. That was the relatively easy part. The hard part was getting the spin to end with the board facing up at the end. I’d never been able to get the spin right.

Knowing what I needed to do, I launched into it before my anxiety could get the better of me. Kicking my right foot back I sent the rear of the board down towards the pavement, where it connected and bounced up. I felt the feeling within me surge through my limbs, responding to my call as a feeling of knowing. If you’ve ever thrown a ball at a target, and you could tell it was going to be a perfect hit before you even released the ball, that’s what this felt like.

My front foot caught the edge of the board just so and I had a perfect spin going. I realised with a detached sort of alarm that the ollie portion had taken me much higher than I was used to, but I had no time to dwell on it. Instead, my rear foot arrested the spin in time for me to land, bending my knees to let the momentum of my fall ease into the ground.

“Wow,” Brook and I both said at once.

We stared at each other with more than a modicum of awe. That had been almost flawless!

“Girl,” Brook breathed, “I am so fucking jealous.”

“I don’t know, it feels like... like cheating,” I mumbled, my cheeks flushing at her use of the word girl.

“Can you turn it off?” she asked.

I shrugged, and readied myself to try again with the intention to stop my powers.

This time, the kickflip was rough, but as with last time, my body flowed with energy and I realised that the power hadn’t controlled or guided my actions. It had been like it was correcting my balance, keeping my movements a little more precise. When I landed the kickflip, I stared down at my feet for a moment, running through the action in my mind.

“So that time, it didn’t really guide my movements. It just kinda… I don’t know. It was like I’ve always been super confident in the way I move my body. Like a dancer or a master fencer or something. One of those people who’s been training their body to do as it’s told for most of their life and knows where every limb is and how to get it accurately from point A to point B,” I explained.

Brook gave me a happy little smile and said, “Damn. That’s cool!”

“Yeah, and doing it with the guidance first is really helpful. I think my mind and muscles remembered the movements a little bit,” I nodded.

“Nice! You should run through some different tricks and stuff. Gosh, it’s like you have an internal skateboarding teacher or something,” she said.

Over the next hour or so, I did just that. I worked with the kickflip for a while, alternating between using my powers and not using them. It was odd how I was learning this. My mind responded almost eagerly to the instruction and within thirty minutes I had things going pretty well. I’d never be as good without the powers as with them, but I was happy that I could still get the enjoyment that learning and improving brought.

I swapped to a heelflip and got to work on that. It was really starting to enjoy myself, my world narrowing to just myself and the board. Brook was off doing the same thing nearby, and I stopped every now and then to watch her. She was naturally good, and always had been, her feet flying with precision as she went through her impressive repertoire. She’d been doing this for years and it definitely showed.

Something that my powers couldn’t help with was my body being unused to physical labor of any kind. It was tiring pretty fast, and I decided that I needed a rest as I finished up messing around with my heelflips. I found a bench and sat down to watch Brook, who didn’t have that problem. She had definitely built up the strength and endurance for this sort of thing.

Seeing me resting she wandered over and plopped down next to me, breathing hard and layered in a faint sheen of sweat.

“Fuck, it’s been too long,” she exhaled slowly.

“Really? I thought you were like always skating or something?” I asked quizzically.

“Nah, not for a while. It was boring on my own, and most of the skaters round here are cocks,” she told me.

“I never spoke to them when you took me he-” I started, but trailed off as Brook reached up and took off her top, “uh, Brook?”

“What?” she grinned, her eyes dancing with mischief, swivelling around on the bench and then laying down.

Wow. Okay, I swear my brain was actually throwing sparks right now. Just because I wasn’t interested in her romantically, didn’t mean I was blind to how absolutely gorgeous she was. Her stomach rose and fell with her breathing, her abs were… something else. She had just enough muscle tone to show some real definition, without compromising her lithe curves. Damn. Damn damn damn.

“You know,” she said, her eyes twinkling with a grin, “Your freckles get really bright when you blush.”

“Shut up!” I mumbled, hiding my face with my hands.

She gave a snorting laugh and poked me in the side, earning a squeal and a twitch in response.

“You’re so easy,” she laughed.

“You wish,” I giggled.

“I do,” she said frankly.

“O-oh,” I squeaked, turning away awkwardly.

We sat there awkwardly for a while, and I found myself spinning a wheel on my skateboard again. She’d started again. Flirting, being amazing and generally trying to tug on my heart strings. Sticking my tongue out of my mouth a tiny bit, I bit down lightly in thought.

I chanced a glance down at her and found her eyes closed, which gave me the perfect opportunity to trail a path up and down her body with my gaze. She was so hot, even I could see that. Seeing her lying there with her body moving in all the subtle ways of life was sending little tingling waves through my stomach.

I took a deep breath and looked away. She’s off limits. She’s my friend, and she wants more than just… than just some fun with me. I could tell that my transformation into Elsie was causing her some confusion in her mind. She was treating me more gently now, like I was valuable and fragile. The friendly ribbing had turned to flirtatious teasing, and the friendly punches to the arm had turned to hair ruffles. I needed to calm down.

“I’m going to go try out the vert,” I told her, standing up quickly.

“Huh? Really?” she asked from behind me as I moved off towards the vert.

Turning back to face her I asked, “Why not?”

“You’re probably nearing that grounded curfew time aren’t you?” she reminded me.

Sighing, I nodded and walked back to her, “Please at least put your top on before we start heading back to your’s.”

Brook just laughed.

****

Once more in my boy body, I unlocked the door warily and tried to be as quiet as possible when I got inside. It was right around the time my parents got home from their respective jobs, so I could be safe, or I could be screwed.

I had a few chores I needed to do, so that when they got home it looked like I’d been here a while, so I rushed upstairs and stowed my stuff. I got stuck into my chores, hoping I could get a significant way through them before my parents got home.

Thirty minutes later, my parents arrived home together and found me emptying the trash, having already vacuumed the main living area.

“How was college?” asked dad as he hung his coat up.

It was fucking awful at the start, then it got way better, I thought but didn’t say.

“It was okay. Admin stuff,” I told him with a shrug.

“And your professors are good?” he asked, blocking me from getting out the door.

I thought back to the guy who had watched while people bullied and harassed me. No, my professor had not been good.

“Yeah for the most part. I haven’t met the rest,” I said, telling a white lie.

He grunted in reply, and I went on with my chores and the night.

During the prep for dinner, where I helped mum bring the food out to the table, mum was drinking a glass of red wine as she sorted things out.

“Dear, could you please get the peas and put them on the table?” she asked, leaning down with her back to me to check the roast that was in the oven.

“Yeah sure,” I mumbled, and moved forward to pick the peas up from the counter.

I was about to pick up the bowl when mum turned around and seeing me closer than she expected must have given her a fright, because she jumped and sucked in a breath. My eyes slowly turned to track the wine glass as it slipped from her fingers towards the floor. Without much thought, I made a lunge for it, and felt my powers spring to life within me.

They didn’t feel right though as the moved through my limbs, where I expected the usual torrent of power, only a scant trickle came through. When my powers activated, I knew what was going to happen. My mind whirled in desperate panic even as my hands clasped around the glass, arresting it’s fall with only a small slosh of wine over the edge and onto the floor.

As time returned to normal, I gazed up at my mother in horror, as she stared at me with wide baleful eyes.

“Coby Hartley! Watch where you’re standing next time!” she shouted, then snatched the wine glass from my hand.

“W-what?” I asked, confused by her reaction to what had just happened.

“Don’t scare me like that! It’s awful!” she huffed, moving around me to do something, “And get those peas on the table, stop standing there like an idiot boy!”

I straightened, and realised with more alarm that I hadn’t transformed. I looked down at myself, shaken. Why hadn’t it worked? I numbly carried the peas to the table as I’d been asked, and then continued to help with dinner.

Dinner and the clean up passed in a daze as I worried about my non-transformation. Something had gone wrong, I was sure of it! Why couldn’t I transform now? If I was never able to return to my… to being a girl, I didn’t want to think about what I would do. I couldn’t go through that! I’d already grown used to being Elsie, far more than I had ever felt used to being Coby. I was almost in tears by the time all my nightly chores and commitments were finished.

As soon as I was able, I rushed up the stairs towards my room, only to smash my hip on the corner of a wall. Why did I keep doing that? Shit it really hurt too! I stumbled the rest of the way to my room, and in typical clumsy fashion, scraped my chest on the door as I tried to go through it too quickly. Great, now my chest really hurt on top of everything else. Fucking fantastic.

I went through my routine of locking and bolting my bedroom door, then rushed to my bed and sat, shaking with anxiety as I focused on how I was meant to transform. I pulled the image of my female body into my mind and concentrated, begging it to turn me back into the form that was such a comfort.

Then, in an instant, I was Elsie again. I was in my feminine body, my hips widened, my breasts expanded, and I felt a sense of calm return to me. It was the sense that I was whole again, that this was who I was meant to be. Thinking I’d lost it had caused me to realise that yes, I was Elsie. I was a girl. Screw being Coby, screw being a guy. That sucked, I hated it. I needed to get the fuck out of this place and never see my parents again.