Chemystery, by Karin Bishop

Part 8

August 15

I spent part of the day at the lake with Jenny Allen and Lainey Blackwood, and then had dance class. After class, Lucy Cho and I hung out at the mall until closing. It’s been a fun day, partly because the new bikini I wore at the beach is so tiny that guys were walking into things! It’s so cute; yellow with a hot-pink trim that makes it kind of vibrate. I had my leotards with me so after Mom picked me up I changed for dance. I can almost do full splits now, and I’m trying to lean forward in splits, too.

Lucy came home with us; she’s new to the area and we just hit it off and now we do lots of things together. I love her personality, and her skin is gorgeous, not to mention straight black hair that’s almost blue, it shines so much. She moved here from outside Chicago, and although Lainey’s not really spent any time with her, Lucy and Jenny hit it off and all three of us hang together.

Mostly hanging at the mall, shopping, movies …and cruising boys! Lucy and I showered and changed–she’d brought her bag with her and is spending the night. She wore super low-cut tight jeans and a red textured top, and I wore a short pleated grey plaid skirt, and a black top of tight lace that has a deep neckline. I love showing cleavage, something Mom’s on my case about. And we both had high heels …not great for walking the whole mall but if we stand around talking with some cute boys, who’s walking?

We’ll all be in high school together this year, and I can’t wait. I don’t have any problems with having been Chris and now being Chrissie. Just like Lisa; she’s already got a boyfriend and I can’t believe how sexy she looks all the time! Gee, a sexy computer nerd …who’d have thought it? I don’t care that much about video games like I used to, because all of my computer time is taken up with Facebook with my girlfriends. Although, I do spend a lot of time tracking conspiracy stuff, too. Jenny’s dad got me interested in it and involved in a couple of groups that are like those guys on the old X-Files TV show, always researching.

***

So here’s how things all shook out after the events of June 21.

As we expected, the whole Black Hat operation couldn’t stand the light of exposure and sort of …imploded, like the house at the end of Poltergeist. Just shrank to a little black nothing and ‘pop!’ it was gone, in terms of the media. Not a single mention in the newspaper, but we’d never really expected that. An edited version of the evening was put up on YouTube that night and removed the next morning, but there were apparently video sites all over the world that carried the footage and remained up and running. I’d been so tired after that night that by the time I awoke the next day, the YouTube version was gone but Lisa sent me a copy and she’s got a future in film editing! None of our names–including doctors, lawyers, and Sgt. Rodriguez–were heard, our faces were blurred although Lisa and I were unmistakably female, and details like the town’s name were obscured, so it came across that this had been done to unknown American citizens in Anytown, USA. That made it even more shocking–that any kind of outrageous experimentation could be happening anywhere, at any time, under the name of “Homeland Security”. It made the video even more damning–and effective.

Turner or Adams or whoever he was just vanished, probably onto a new scheme with new names. We didn’t expect him to be held accountable, or even held, really; he walked out of the judge’s chambers and into the night. However, there was some fallout–in a good sense, for the most part–and that’s what was interesting. By the way, Intellia hadn’t known what was going on, only that they were ‘helping Homeland Security’. It didn’t do them any good; their company was absorbed by another company and their name went away and their games went into limbo. It happens in software.

Turner had promised us ten thousand dollars per family. I don’t know if it was pressure from Mr. Allen, who is a great guy and really doesn’t like ‘spooks’ like Turner, but we were discreetly approached with a different offer.

Some company–a front for a government agency, Lisa and Jenny both agree–appeared and asked us to write our experiences. Put everything in, they said, any length. I had already started this journal and wrote it up to the point where I turned it over to them, ending back in June. Then they got the originals and all copies from everybody …except for the ones that Lisa and I stashed, which is how this journal survives, with this August entry. Upon receipt of all materials, each family received, unbelievably, one-hundred-thousand dollars! I’m sure the Donohues sniffed and called it hush money, but it could certainly buy a lot of ‘hush’! They also gave a one-time offer to help in relocation should anyone care to move.

Lisa and her family are perfectly happy where they are, and Terry and Lisa are having a ball shopping together and just enjoying being sisters. Since they’d already moved, she is only known as Lisa Wesson to everyone, and her school records were altered in the transmission to her new school. And, of course, Dr. Sarkisian is ‘one of us’ now and knows about the whole thing. So the Wessons didn’t need any relocation funds. And the hundred grand would certainly calm down Mrs. Wesson!

Lisa’s doing great, in fact greater than great–like I said, she’s got a boyfriend! The video hookup between us now is much better, and she looks fantastic and he’s a hottie. I just hope she doesn’t get him caught up in mad schemes like Craig did.

Tommy is a different story, with sadness and hope. I went with Mom and the Donohues and Dr. Warren to explain everything to Tommy, who turned his face away from us and sobbed. We left and I came back alone a couple of hours later and he was all sobbed out.

Tommy spoke with me, with his new, girlish voice. He said he’d sobbed not because he was turned into a girl. He’d been sobbing so hard with relief; because he’d thought it was his fault, somehow. In fact, he thought it meant he could spend more time with his mom.

His face was all bandaged and wired because of the broken side of his face, and his hands were bandaged and he was in some kind of metal gadget that kept him in place so he didn’t tear the zillion stitches. Dr. Warren said it was really interesting working with Tommy because he wasn’t just healing, his body was also transforming. Staying on top of the changes in Tommy’s size and metabolism was a challenge.

The girl-bomb certainly altered our DNA to female, but it was confirmed by the geneticist–when they finally tracked him down–that by all possible yardsticks, we were becoming exactly who or what we would have been if born female. In his words, the unique combination of genes from the mother and father that would create us dictated how we looked as females. If we’d been genetically primed to be short and fat, we’d be short and fat. If we’d been genetically primed to be nearsighted and bony, that’s how we’d be. So we really, truly were our parents’ daughters.

For Lisa, that meant that she got a bit shorter, into typical girl height, and she got way prettier, like her sister Teresa, with long wavy hair–she’s gotten rid of the wig and had extensions until it’s all her own. Oh, and she doesn’t wear black all the time as Craig did; she’s added red, pink, and grey. As Christopher, I couldn’t tell you if Craig or Tommy were good-looking guys; I guess Craig was, but Lisa is a hot babe!

For me, small as a boy, I lost some height–couldn’t afford to lose too much!–but I’m a classic Petite now, five foot two, eyes of blue, and so on. Clothes are not a problem fitting, like they were for Christopher, and I’m discovering that I’m a girly-girl, just like Jenny said. I’ll wear Hollister and American Eagle like all of my girlfriends, but I’m more skirts and tops and accessories than jeans and a hoodie.

For Tommy, though, the whole process was major. He’d been tall for a fourteen-year-old and bulky like his father and brother. But his mother’s genes were stronger with females, I guess, so he had a lot of shrinking to do. It had been extremely painful and was one of the reasons he pretty much locked himself in his room. And of course his breasts developed and his penis was shrinking, although that might not have been as noticeable when the rest of him was shrinking so much. But it was a hell of agony and fear. Once his voice broke again, sliding up into his girl’s range as his larynx altered and reduced in size, he was too frightened and too embarrassed to call me or Craig.

Poor Tommy thought all of this was happening to him alone, despite the things we’d told him! I guess it was because we hadn’t taken the plunge into girlhood the last time we talked to him; we were kind of sliding into the shallow end of the pool, so to speak. We’d shown our breasts to each other, but I guess he thought that Craig and I had stopped there while he continued on, becoming more and more of a girl, all alone.

There was one other matter, and that was the part where our brains were being rewired–since Turner liked my terms so much–and we began having girlish thoughts. It hurts to think of Tommy, hurting so badly as his body mutated in the darkness of his room, having no idea how far it was going. Then Tommy starting to think about boys the way Lisa and I did, and do, as attractive members of the opposite sex? I know Tommy had a TV in his room; was he sitting there watching TV and starting to get turned on by cute boys? If so–and it probably happened–it just would have increased his misery and fear. So poor Tommy will probably need lots and lots of therapy to overcome the shame and humiliation he felt, all alone, as his body betrayed him.

Of course, Tommy’s brother betrayed him, too. Turner’s snide remark about Patrick’s ‘homophobic rage’ rings true to me, at least the ‘rage’ part. Maybe he has gay tendencies, but I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think his attack was homophobic as much as it was trying to kill a personal demon. Tommy had shrunk quite a bit and was not the big strapping kid he’d been, and his face was softening into a girlish version of his pretty mother. Also, his black hair from his father was lightening into a reddish brown that’s a cross between his two parents’ hair.

Then throw in the fact that he was developing breasts, curves, and was naked and wet in a towel. For whatever reason Patrick ripped the towel off–as a joke, to show his parents, or just to see for himself what was going on–I suspect that Patrick was …aroused, as they say. I think he found himself reacting as a horny male to a soon-to-be pretty female, who looked like a girl, shrieked like a girl when she was exposed, and all the time Patrick’s brain was screaming ‘you’re turned on by your little brother’ and he couldn’t handle the overload, and snapped.

That’s my theory, anyway.

Turner–or whoever was covering up for him–did make the charges go away but they got Patrick into anger management therapy, probably the best thing for him, and no mark on his record. In a very, very odd way, we have Patrick to thank for how things turned out. I wouldn’t have Tommy go through his agony for anything, but it was Patrick’s attack that got all of us together and flushed out Turner, or Adams or whatever he calls himself now.

Mrs. Donohue has moved out with Kathleen, once she got released from the hospital, and together they’ve moved to stay with Mrs. Donohue’s sister upstate. Supposedly it’s just until Kathleen is fully recovered from her injuries, and also fully transitioned to girlhood and Patrick is fully transitioned to …not being a knife-wielding crazy. Then they hope to patch things up between their family, and if Mr. Donohue is even half-way smart he’ll follow Turner’s advice and submit to Mrs. Donohue. Most likely, Mr. Donohue will be spending time with Patrick and Kathleen will want to be with her mother, as the family heals. But Mr. Donohue will learn to love his daughter as he loves his wife, and if Patrick can learn and grow, they’ll do better as a family of equals.

I saw Kathleen the day she was released; there were still bruising and sutures but she was pretty and actually smiling. She was so changed, the most of any of us, that I wouldn’t have known her as Tommy–there wasn’t any logical connection except for the amazing girl-bomb. Her mother had found a curly reddish wig to cover her very-short hair–Tommy had always kept his hair military short–and I could see that Kathleen will be quite attractive. Much taller than me, of course–everybody is!–but still within typical girl height. And once she’s fully healed, she’ll probably be even prettier than her mom, and that’s saying something, because with the family tragedy behind them, Mrs. Donohue was blossoming and no wonder Mr. Donohue married her! And she’s not just a beauty; she’s a strong, wonderful woman, too …but had been too scared for too long.

So Lisa and Tommy had moved away, and Mom and I moved, too, sort of. We took the offer up on relocation assistance, but only moved across town to a wonderful little two bedroom Craftsman that we just loved, with hardwood floors and a glorious stone fireplace. The reason for the move was that it was in a different school district. All the middle schools and junior highs dumped into four different high schools in town, in different districts, and so I’m close enough to still get together with Jenny–and Mom can still work at St. Joe’s–but far away enough that nobody will know me at the high school I’ll start next year, and I will be just another ‘new girl’ …in every way.

***

And that’s the final part of the journal, being a new girl. Mom hit the nail on the head about having the body but not the culture. There was so much to learn at first about how girls interact with each other and with boys and pecking orders and ‘quilting groups’ and all of that psychological stuff. Jenny’s been my guide, my angel, because my other close friend Lucy doesn’t know that I was ever a boy. How could I be? She’s seen me naked at sleepovers and changing for swimming, not to mention tight leotards in dance class. So I learned from Jenny like an anthropologist learns from a native guide, which is what she was, in a way. And her dad’s so cool!

The relationship between Mom and me has never been stronger, or sweeter, or closer. I tell her and ask her everything, which often leads to a lecture, these days. Once I had my first period at the start of August …and what a messy, scary-but-exciting thing that was! …we can pretty much assume that I can become pregnant. Nobody knows that for certain, and our doctors hammered out a deal with the Black Hats, with Mr. Allen brokering, that they’ll be updated on the other, anonymous, victims of the girl-bomb. Incidentally, it’s got a long chemical name and a short three-letter code, but pretty soon everybody was calling it the girl-bomb, thank you very much.

July was the month I got my vagina. I started the month with a tiny penis and over the weeks it kind of disappeared inside me. Peeing was an adventure for a bit, because I never knew where it was going to spray, until it stabilized to ‘normal parameters’, as Dr. Paulson described it. There was a night of what felt like the most insanely-intense case of ‘jock itch’, and by the time I finally woke, exhausted, the next day, I had an opening. Things morphed along on their merry way after that, but that hurdle had been cleared. By the end of the month I hadn’t noticed any change in what I suspect is my complete vagina. And then the next week my first period came and we can pretty much agree that the girl-bomb has run its course in me.

I’m a five-foot-two curvy girl, with long blonde hair–I went to the salon for a great style and lightening–blue eyes, and delicate fingers. Pretty darned good legs. I look darned good in a bikini, too, and I can testify to that by various males’ reactions to my body. My body reacts to good-looking males, too, and I can’t wait to start dating in high school.

All of which has earned me lectures from Mom about what girls need to do, what boys will expect, yada-yada-yada. But it’s interesting having spent time as ‘the opposite sex’–meaning boys, now–and I think I’ll have a pretty good insight to the boys that come calling. And they will!

***

I’m a girl now, and I’m finding that means that I’m seeing the world very differently than I had as a boy. For one thing, I look at relationships more than rank; I see movies and read books differently–well, I see them and read them the same way, of course, but I feel them differently. Characters that weren’t as important to me, like Princess Leia in Star Wars, have much more meaning to me now. Not just because of identifying, girl to girl, but because girls feel the world and people differently.

That became really apparent to me, and tied directly to my personal experience, when I read about a resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan and other places. It seems like every major religion, once it starts developing and gets a hierarchy and becomes established, seems to put women in second place, or third place, and I’ve been reading a lot about this and thinking about it. Early Christianity had strong women in it–remember that the male disciples ran away before the Crucifixion, leaving the Marys at the Cross. Mohammed founded Islam with the support of his wife and daughter and women around him. Yet once the religions started getting structured with priests or rabbis or mullahs or whatever, women suddenly became secondary citizens. And in several cases, women became perceived as a source of evil.

Then, at some point, the religions tend towards fundamentalism. Not the religion itself, but a faction within it. A small group, going off on its own direction–which reminds me of Turner and his group. One of the strange things I ran across was the point that, only in the late 19th Century, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all started developing a small-but-vocal group with a fundamentalist viewpoint, demanding a “return” to a supposedly-purer state of their faith that never actually existed. It seems that fundamentalism is, at its heart, a reaction against the modern world. The folks that go on about “that old time religion” would be shocked to know that their narrow beliefs weren’t known before the mid-1800s! Another strange thing is that there’s a major new idea, an upheaval, that happens about thirteen or fourteen centuries after the religion was established. Judaism’s so old that it’s probably happened several times, but for Christianity, it was the Reformation in the early 16th Century. For Islam, established in the early 7th Century, fourteen centuries takes us to right now, with groups like Al-Queda and the Taliban.

Reading about the Taliban, which calls itself a pure form of their faith but seems to be mainly angry, horny teenage males with machine guns, it was brought home how hateful and fearful men can be towards women. The women living under Taliban rule are not schooled and are kept hidden at home, and outside they have to wear those head-to-toe black sacks, burkhas. And yet, a gun-toting teen can say that a woman ‘enticed’ him–through a tiny eyehole?–and can publicly whip her or even kill her.

Madness.

The reason I went on this rant is because of Turner’s girl-bomb. I don’t believe any kind of biological warfare is allowable, but, hypothetically …

I can’t help wonder what would happen if a whole camp–or a whole village–full of Taliban yahoos morphed into females in a matter of months, as the girl-bomb seemed designed to do. While it would be some sort of karmic payback for all the women they’ve whipped or slaughtered, it could never undo the pain or bring those women back to life. I mourn those women, and agonize over the mistreatment of women worldwide. I accept that I’m female now and I’m aware of the injustice towards women in the world–even the pay inequality in my own country–but it doesn’t lessen my desire to be female. Of course, I’m biased now and think that being female is absolutely wonderful, so I think turning the terrorists into women is too good for ‘em!

And I don’t believe that being female means not going to war–there are too many warrior women in history and in the world’s armed forces to believe that. On top of that, a large number of suicide bombers have been women. Oh, yes, women are not going to drop their guns and go shopping, start baking, or any of the sexist clichés. Women can be plenty deadly. And let’s face it, a woman can shoot a Kalashnikov as well as a man. Just a little squeeze of the trigger …

It’s like guys in the street gunning their motors to show their machismo. How much manliness is required to step four inches down on a gas pedal? Sheesh; you can do it in spike high heels with pretty painted toenails and the engine will rev just as loudly!

Yes, there are women of fundamentalist groups who firmly believe the nonsense their men spout, never challenging, never thinking for themselves. I can only hope they could retain their faith but become enlightened to some degree. I think of Tommy’s mother, a wonderful loving woman who lived in fear for too long while her child was brutalized. She reached the point where she had to take a stand, to declare herself, to save her child and ultimately herself. The family is healing; but they’re healthier, and with a better future than they had while dominated by Mr. Donohue’s old-fashioned beliefs and bullying. I hope that fundamentalist women may experience the deliverance that the Donohue family experienced, and not live in fear as second-class citizens.

But I wonder about the beliefs these guys cooked up about absolute male supremacy …after the girl-bomb gets them, as they develop as females and find their minds rewired and everything else …would they modify their beliefs? Certainly it would be fantastic if it reduced their desire to blow things up, but I’m more concerned about enlightenment. About equality, humanity …about reality. Would they finally allow women to be educated, to be able to go out dressed like human beings and not like sacks of potatoes, to be full members of their society, and all the rest that modern women do? Would the light of sanity cut through the dark craziness of their fanaticism?

These are some of the things that I now think about. Being a girl is not all about malls and cute boys checking me out in my bikini. It’s also about making my own way in the world, as a female, as a human being, and doing what I can for others.

But despite my heavy thinking, all in all, I’m a happy, healthy, fairly well-adjusted almost-fifteen-year-old girl. No matter how strange a path I took to get where I am, I’m content. Craig, Tommy, and Christopher all survived and, I’m pretty sure, are better for our experience. I’ve got great friends and I’m close to my wonderful mother, and we’ve got a new home and money in the bank and if I had to do it all over again or be a boy?

I’d want to be who I am, spiritually, emotionally, and genetically–my mother’s daughter, Christina Marie Hanson.

The End