Chapter 4
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1.

“So,” Steve said, taking hold of my hand. Why was he holding my hand and why was I letting him? “What do we do now?”

I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

He grabbed my other hand now. Were we about to do the Ring Around the Rosie thing? I didn’t want to do that. “Amanda, c’mon, we’re just sitting around.” No, we’re not. We’re clearly standing.

“So what?”

He let go of my hands and grabbed me by the shoulders. “C’mon! We never do anything fun anymore.”

“We do plenty of stuff.”

“Not really.”

Why was he making a big deal out of this?

“We do lots of stuff!”

“We haven’t really hung out since you finished changing. You barely talk to me anymore.”

I looked away from him. He wasn’t right, was he? Was there even a chance that he was right? No. No, there wasn’t. Steve was my best friend, and I’ve clearly hung out with him more than a few times since…

2.

I sat upright and started coughing. What the hell?! What was with that dream? What caused me to dream that?

I scratched my itchy chest again. It was mild irritation, but it was constant. What the hell caused that? I sighed. Itchy chest, weird dreams, were these signs of that curse, or just me being freaked?

I stood up and grabbed a shirt. I slipped my arms through the sleeves, then pulled the shirt down over my head. As it brushed against my chest, I felt something odd, but I couldn’t quite place what it was. I glanced at myself in my mirror and realized that nothing looked any different than it had yesterday. Great. Either I’m going nuts, or these changes are going to happen so slowly that I don’t notice them.

As I kept looking at my reflection, I could have sworn my hair was a little longer. I didn’t really have short hair, but I didn’t remember it completely covering my ears. Had it? Dammit… I’m going nuts again.

I sat at my desk and just stared out the window for a minute. What was I going to do with my Sunday? I didn’t really have anything to do. Sunday was a lazy day for me, always had been.

There was a knock on my door. “Come in, Melanie,” I said. It was obvious who it was. She opened the door and tossed me a pair of pants. “What’s this for?”

“Put those on.”

“Why?”

“I’m curious.”

I looked the pants over. “These are your pants.”

“And you’re going to put them on, this isn’t rocket science.”

Why?”

“Suppose you’re turning into a girl slowly, then at some point soon, you should be able to fit in those pants.”

“Why soon?”

“Because you only have five days before you’re officially supposed to be a girl.”

I sighed. Why was I even entertaining this idea? I slipped my legs into the pants and then struggled, only a little, to get them over my hips. I tried zipping them up, but that was futile, and the button was nothing but a lost cause. “There, you happy?” I asked, certain I looked like an idiot.

Much to my surprise, there was a look of shock on her face. “You… uh… shouldn’t have been able to get that far.”

“Why?”

“Remember my old boyfriend, Billy? He was smaller than you, and he couldn’t get my pants on that far.”

The only question that ran through my mind was, “Why was Billy wearing your pants?”

She rubbed at her arm. “Well… He kinda liked to wear my clothes...“ She shook her head. “That’s not important, what’s important is that you’re smaller now than you used to be.”

I looked at myself in the mirror again, but I couldn’t see anything. I didn’t look any smaller, I didn’t feel any smaller, but the pants barely looked out of place on me, aside from not being zipped or buttoned. Was Melanie right? Come to think of it, my shirt seemed a little bigger than it used to be, now.

I rapidly stripped the pants off and tossed them back to Melanie. “Get these pants away from me,” I said, and even I could hear the fear in my voice.

She folded them up and came closer to me. “Your hair’s different,” she said, reaching out and touching it. I jerked back. “It’s okay, jeez. It’s just a little longer, is all. That’s not something to worry about, right?”

I threw my arms up. “I don’t know! Has it ever been noticeably longer before?”

She shook her head. “Not really.”

I collapsed into my chair. “Great. So, what, I’m turning slowly?”

She sighed, then sat down on my bed. “I dunno, little bro. I think it’s time we called Mom and Dad.”

I shook my head. “No. We wait this out, and if I’m more girl than guy on Tuesday, we call them then. I don’t want to rob them of their second honeymoon just because I’m turning into a girl.”

3.

She didn’t look happy, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t calling Mom and Dad. How would they even react? Would Mom be happy to have another daughter to poke and prod and dress up? Would Dad be sad that he was losing his one and only son? Now that I thought about it, would Melaniebe happy that she had a little sister? Would both her and Mom be happy that there was only one person left to leave the seat up?

I slumped in my chair. “Mel…”

“Yeah?”

“How do you feel with all of this?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“How are you gonna feel when Mom starts mixing your panties and mine up when she does the laundry?”

She looked away from me for a second, then looked back at me. “Well, I dunno. You’re not the worst brother out there, and I don’t mind you the way you are. I can’t say it won’t be nice having a sister, but I don’t really want to lose you.” She put on a nervous smirk. “Plus, it’s gonna be tough teaching you all the new feminine stuff you’re going to have to learn.”

I don’t think she meant for that to be frightening, but the idea of what I’d have to put up with scared me. Even if I were to be a simple girl like Melanie, she still woke up about an hour before school started to get ready, and she didn’t wear much make-up or even outrageously fancy clothes. It just seemed to be something girls did, no matter what. And what if I had periods? Could I have periods? How would I deal with that?

“What?” she asked. “What is it?”

“All that new feminine stuff I’m gonna havta learn, that’s what.”

The smirk came back, this time far less nervous. “Oh. Hey, it’s not that hard. A little bit of fashion knowledge and use a tampon every month, it’s not as hard to deal with as guys think it is.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not?”

She shook her head. “No. Probably the worst part for you will be shaving your legs.”

I looked at my legs. Even that probably wouldn’t be as hard as she thought it would be. I didn’t exactly grow a lot of hair. Then again, I’ve never shaved my legs. Maybe it would be the biggest pain in the ass in my life.

“And your armpits.”

“Wha?”

“What? Girls shave their armpits, because guys think it’s disgusting for girls to have pit hair. You trying to tell me you’ve never noticed?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never paid that much attention to a girl’s armpits before.”

“You’ve never seen me do it?”

“Not really.”

“I do.”

“And I’ll have to?”

“Well, if you want a boyfriend who’s not from Europe.”

Why was the idea of having a boyfriend not the most disturbing thing I’d heard all day?

4.

“What are we doing here?” Steve asked. “And why are you wearing your sister’s pants?”

“They fit better than mine do,” I answered. “And we’re here to see how people react to… well… me.”

He looked around at everyone, which wasn’t hard, considering how packed the gym was. Neither he nor I were regular attendees at a school basketball game, but this was the last one of the year, and it would be a less cliched public place to be in than the mall.

“What are they supposed to see? A kinda skinny guy wearing girl pants? That’s not exactly uncommon, y’know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are you telling me that you can’t tell that I look a little different? Melanie and I could.”

“Like I said. Kinda skinny. You don’t look that much different.”

“But I look different.”

“I still recognized you when I spotted you outside, remember?”

He had a point. We hadn’t even tried to meet up, I was coming to the basketball game all by myself. He’d just been outside walking his dog. It was one of exactly three times he’d said he was happy to live half a block away from the school. I’d simply asked him to come because I really didn’t want to be seen at a basketball game alone.

The seats weren’t that great, but we had a decent view of the court. The opposing team came out first, much to the boos of one side of the gym and the cheers of the other. After that, our team came out, which incited cheers from our side of the gym and boos from the other.

It was then that I saw him. Dean Garnet, the very reason I was in this situation. He didn’t look like he was suffering from any punishment. I sat back in my seat and sighed. Dammit. If it weren’t for him and then Steve, I’d still be male on Friday. Hell, I wouldn’t be changing today.

It was about thirty minutes into the game that I saw something. The ball was passed to Dean, he made it to the shot line, tried for his shot - and the throw came up wrong. He was shooting like a girl. And he was shooting like a girl who’s never played basketball before.

“Do you see that?” I asked Steve, pointing to Dean.

“Yeah. Jock’s off his A-Game tonight.”

“Steve, what if that’s his punishment?”

“To suck at basketball? Not really much of a punishment considering you havta turn into a girl. Why would the punishments be so completely different? Especially since I don’t even know what mine is yet?”

I shrugged. “I dunno, but Dean’s a billion times better than this all the time. I find it hard to believe that tonight, two days after we were cursed, he suddenly has a random bad day.”

The entire game, Dean’s shots came up short, he was suddenly the weakest link in the team as opposed to his usual role as the team point winner. I even saw Max Caulfield purposefully knock him down once. Max was his best friend, and now he was practically beating him to death.

Okay, so my punishment was turning into a girl, Dean’s was being humiliated at sports, what would Steve’s be?

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