On a perfect spring morning at the very beginning of May, a boy named Dave Henson was sauntering down Lancaster Parade, a lanky red-haired lad trailing a bright red yo-yo from his right hand. School had been out for just over a week and the sidewalks were wavering with soft white heat. It was a wonderful time to be twelve years old with the entire summer spread out before you. Ridgewick was a sleepy little burg famed for its clement seasons, the kind of place you read about in Ray Bradbury stories. Lawn mowers droned in some remote distance, dragon flies whickered across moist, green lawns.

Crossing the intersection at Memorial Drive, Dave slung the yo-yo into a perfect overhand spin, letting it hover half an inch over the asphalt. The days were getting warmer; you could almost feel the afternoons leaning into summer. In a few weeks, the roads would be bubbling with hot black tar. He continued on towards Memorial Park, leading the yo-yo and keeping to the shade. A fresh spring mistral flickered down the avenue, rustling the overhanging branches.

"Hi Dave."

The voice came from somewhere overhead; high, clear and rather sweet. Dave glanced up and saw Janey Watson sitting on a low-hanging bough, feet swinging idly back and forth. Janey wasn't exactly a friend, but they were on pretty good terms. Dave was on pretty good terms with everybody. Janey lived up on The Crest, so they often crossed paths on the way home from school.

"Hey, Janey," Dave replied, snapping the yo-yo up to his palm, "whatcha doing up there?"

"Just climbing," Janey answered with a shrug, "you can see all the way to Chamberlain if you climb high enough."

"Yeah?" Dave asked, eyebrows raised in vague disbelief. Chamberlain was a collection of distant skyscrapers on the eastern horizon, regarded with semi-mythical awe by the local kids. Dave sincerely doubted you could see much of anything from Janey's vantage point, but he was tempted to climb up for a look, all the same. A glimpse of Chamberlain's gleaming towers would be tantamount to seeing God or something. Unfortunately, he'd grown a little wary of the whole Tarzan thing since he took that fall last year. He'd spent the whole summer in plaster up to his hips, and he didn't much care for a repeat performance.

Anyway, the view was pretty good from where he was standing. Janey's dress was breathtakingly short, barely reaching down to her thighs. Slim coltish legs descended towards the sidewalk, smooth and tanned and rather shapely for a kid of twelve. A light spring breeze was whispering through the leaves, lifting Janey's abbreviated hemline. Dave found himself craning his neck to see what lay beneath. Which was rather odd, considering that Janey wasn't really a girl.

Janey Watson was a tranzie.

There were a lot of tranzies around Ridgewick these days. Seemed like every second kid you met was one - although you probably wouldn't have known, not unless you'd lived here all your life as Dave had. Half the time, you hardly noticed they were even there. Dave knew most of the tranzies out at Ridgewick Elementary, he'd been through the system with them. There were eight in the sixth grade alone – something like ninety in the school, all up. A pretty sizable number, considering the school's population was barely four hundred.

Tranzies were transgendered children – kids who were neither male nor female. They were also known as transfems or T-girls, depending on which part of town you came from. They seemed to have a lot of different names, actually. Chamberlain Central News referred to them as "The Transsexual Generation" (the one that came after the Pepsi Generation, evidently). The Ridgewick Advertiser had labeled them "The Third Sex," while the North American Journal of Genetic Research described the phenomenon as Toxically Induced Sexual Morphosis; TISM for short.

On the other hand, some of the local epithets were dubious to say the least. Old man Nevin at the Beef 'n' Burger called them "fruits." Coach Phillips out at the high school dismissed them as "queer-boys" (and later claimed he was the victim of a "fag conspiracy" when he lost his job). Reverend Daniels from the League of Christian Decency denounced them as "an abomination in the eyes of God."

Of course, the kids around Dave's neighborhood – none of whom ate at the Beef 'n' Burger – had eventually settled for "tranzies," a child's diminutive which seemed less threatening and somehow more familiar. No one quite remembered who had coined the phrase, but it had passed into the vernacular back in the third grade, and was now the generally accepted term on the east side of town.

Dave had once asked his mother how a boy became a tranzie. Looking Back, David realized that his Mom had been expecting this particular question for quite some time, as she had a long and rather complicated answer prepared. Most parents discuss the birds and the bees with their children; in Ridgewick, they talk about something else entirely.

Apparently, it all had something to do with a chemical refinery over in Blaxland. The place used to make insecticides and defoliants (whatever that was), and there'd been this big chemical leakage about fifteen years ago, several years before Dave was born. The EPA had shut the refinery down, hoping to limit the damage to the surrounding environment, but by that time, the damage was already done. The seepage had reached the water table, and had been absorbed into the food chain.

A whole bunch of weird stuff started to happen over the next couple of years. Babies were born with webbed feet, some with mashed-up faces and crazy, twisted bodies. Others had gills and tails and the damp, moist skins of amphibians. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone. All of these died very young (which Mom thought was something of a blessing) and people hoped that was the end of it.

But then the first tranzies came along.

According to the medical journals, there were two distinct forms of Toxically Induced Sexual Morphism (Dave's mother had read a lot of articles on the topic for some reason). The first were "intersexuals" – anatomical hermaphrodites with a foot in both camps – although they more often passed as female. These were comparatively rare, despite being the first to appear after the Blaxland disaster.The second (and more common) form of TISM was known as transfemininity.

Transfems were biological transsexuals; young boys who morphed into little girls over a period of years. Exactly how this happened, no one was entirely sure, but Dave's mother had told him it was a little like going through puberty – except that you changed from one sex to another (this particular revelation had provided Dave with more than a few sleepless summer nights). Transfems tended to be frail and delicate from birth, with girlish features and slender proportions. Most began to 'turn' around the age of seven, taking at least three years to complete the process. From there, they continued through a more conventional puberty – though none were capable of menstruating or bearing children.

Janey Watson was a typical transfem.

He was, in fact, the quintessential transfem: small, petite, and indistinguishable from a real girl. It wasn't just his appearance, either: it was his behavior, his voice, his overall personality. He walked and talked and acted like a girl. Always had, even back in the first grade, when he wore Osh-Kosh overalls and Doc Martins For Boys. Dave himself wouldn't have known the difference, if they hadn't started out in the same class six years before. He found it easier to think of Janey Watson as a girl nowadays. Truth be told, he found it practically impossible to think of Janey Watson as anything else.

Especially since she'd begun wearing a training bra.

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