“You’ve got the gown on backwards,” said Dr. Verre.

I drove without saying anything for a bit as we wandered through the upscale housing around the country club where the road and the beautiful homes squiggled around the ponderosa pines. I always forget that this area isn’t actually in the city limits until I reach the highway and the welcome sign that says, “Now Entering Friendly, Arizona. Population 12,765 FRIENDLY People.”

Corny but it usually makes me smile. Not this time, though.

So, driving. Driving takes some concentration, and with a little effort, enough to keep me from thinking for a few minutes maybe.

One direction on the Beeline Highway leads to Phoenix, about sixty miles south and a little west. The other direction, called Zane Grey Avenue, goes to the center of town and then on to Winston, our chief rival in the Mogollon Rim League, almost 40 miles on the other side of the Rim itself. But I wasn’t thinking about football.

A few hours ago, I had woken up after spending the night losing my virginity to the cheerleader in the passenger seat, Megan D’Auguste. But I’d lost something else: my dick and balls were gone, replaced this morning with what looked like a girl’s pussy. It still made me cringe just to think about it.

Megan said maybe her aunt and granny could help. Aunt is a doctor and granny is a conjure woman, whatever that is. But Megan just admitted to me that Aunt Louva is a gynecologist.

“Hell, no,” I repeated. My insides still felt like ice and the missing part of me ached with absence. I tried to keep myself distracted with driving because too much thinking might cause me to start crying again. I wanted to be angry about what had happened to me, but the truth was, I felt too scared to be really mad. The best I could manage was a dogged feeling of resentment.

“Petey,” Megan began but I cut her off.

“It’s obvious this is some sort of magic, so it’s your granny’s department, not your aunt’s,” I said, prepared to get stubborn about this.

Megan had a peculiar hang-dog expression when I glanced at her. I frowned. “Something you’re not telling me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not—not really. I guess I’m just feeling guilty.”

“Did you do something?” I demanded, almost pissed suddenly.

“No, no, Petey. I didn’t do something. But… but I am something.”

“Huh?” I paused at the light at the bottom of the hill. The next light would be our turn, east on Ponderosa toward that edge of town where the hospital was across the street from the big Mormon Temple.

Megan didn’t say anything. When the light changed and we moved forward, I asked her, “You are something? What does that mean?”

“Granny Marie…” she began then stopped. “Magic? This has to be magic.” She shrugged. “It’s in my family…do you see?”

“No,” I said, biting back something mean and nasty. But she looked so hurt at the tone of my voice that I softened it a little. “You could have warned me.”

We turned at the corner and Megan moved a little closer to me. “What would I have said? I didn’t know that… that something might happen? I mean….” She trailed off.

I chewed on that.

“Would you have believed me if I had warned you?” she asked. “Petey, my family are all witches and wizards, best not… not….”

I snorted. “But it was your idea,” I pointed out. “You practically insisted!”

“I know,” she said in a small voice. “You see why I feel guilty?”

I didn’t reply, making the turn onto the apron of asphalt around the Medical Center. The parking lot was not too crowded, probably not all the offices were open on a Saturday morning, so I found a spot near the entrance easily. The four-story-tall wing was the hospital itself, but the part that was just one and two stories was medical offices and a pharmacy.

I got out and Megan scooted over to exit on the driver’s side too. I stood there a moment and she took my arm in both her hands. “You really do need to see Aunt Louva, uh, Dr. Verre. Granny’s going to want to know just what has been done to you.”

I didn’t shake her off, but let her lead me into the building. Just walking made me aware again of what was missing in my pants. The feeling of wrongness left me weak in the knees with shivers running up my spine. My eyes burned and my mouth wanted to twist up. It took effort to maintain calm and just walk.

No one stopped us when as we passed through a waiting room crowded with young mothers and small children. We did stop in front of a door marked STAFF and Megan rapped lightly on the glass.

I glanced back at the young women, some holding babies on their laps and Megan whispered to me, “Well-baby clinic.”

I’d never heard the phrase before but I could figure out what it meant. Most of the women did not look terrifically affluent, and while Friendly is not in what is known as a depressed area, the town did have a number of families that were less than wealthy. Getting a check-up for a baby was probably good, and Megan had mentioned earlier that this was something her aunt did for free on Saturdays.

A lot of the women and kids were as brown or browner than Megan, not unusual in Friendly where people with my sort of complexion were barely more than half the population. It meant a little less, locally, than maybe it did in the whole country.

While we waited for someone to let us in the side door, I looked around the room, smiling because who can scowl at a baby? Most of the women and children smiled back, and weirdly, it made me feel better. I had a problem, sure, but life is good in a world where babies smile at you.

The door finally opened and an older black woman in a blue nurse’s smock let us in. She was much darker than Megan but something about the line of her jaw or her eyes told me that this was one of my girlfriend’s relatives.

I saw she was also older than I had first thought. “Ma petite,” the old lady said. “Is this the boy you told me about?” She had a accent, or maybe more accurately, a flavor in the way she spoke. It made me think of rich coffee and jambalaya.

“Yes, Granny Marie. This is Petey Petersen. Petey, this is my Granny, Marie Duquesne.” She pronounced it Dushane, but I saw the spelling on the old lady’s name tag.

“Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” I said. Not that I was, but I’m always polite to older people.

“Call me Granny Marie,” she said, showing her very fine teeth in a smile. “Surely, your given name isn’t Peter, is it?”

I blushed. “Uh, no ma’am, but I go by Pete or Petey at school. I don’t like my first name much. Uh, my relatives call me Hunter or—or Hunt.” That’s not my given name either, but very few people knew that secret, outside of family and school administration.

“Sometimes I call him ‘Hun’,” said Megan and they both giggled. How old was Granny Marie? However old she was, she didn’t sound ridiculous giggling like a girl—she sounded like she enjoyed life.

But the old lady nodded. “Margaret here prefers to be called Megan,” she added. “I see you’re not volunteering what your first name really is.” She smirked, “Must be really embarrassing.”

I felt myself blush but I kept quiet. No one in the world needed to know that my parents had named me Gayle Hunter Petersen. Especially not now.

Another woman came into the room, just about splitting the difference in skin color and age between Megan and Granny. She was dressed in a pantsuit in some shade of violet and had a stethoscope around her neck and a clipboard in her hand. “I’m Dr. Verre, Megan’s aunt.” Like most doctors, she didn’t put out a hand to shake, but she did give me a long careful look.

Megan introduced me. “Aunt Lou, this is Hunter Petersen, called Pete, the boy I told you about on the phone.”

“I-I….” I couldn’t seem to do anything but stammer. She was a beautiful woman, as pretty as Megan, and I felt especially awkward at the thought that she would have to examine me.

“I’ve got a busy day and lots of people in the waiting room, but I’m going to squeeze in an examination for you, Mr. Hunter, and since I’m running a free clinic here today, I’m not going to ask for your insurance credentials,” Dr. Verre said, looking me directly in the eye.

“Huh?” I said. Why was she calling me Mr. Hunter?

She sighed. “Get up on the table, please. Sit with your feet on the step.”

I climbed into the position she indicated and she proceeded to take my temperature, pulse and other vitals, and use her little flashlight on my eyes, ears, nose and throat.

“You seem remarkably healthy, Mr. Hunter. Are you suffering from a mild hangover?”

“Uh….” I decided to nod in answer to that. “Yes, I guess I am. Ma’am.”

She nodded and wrote something on her clipboard. “I’m going to need you to undress for the rest of the exam, Mr. Hunter.” She looked at Megan while Granny removed something from a cabinet and placed it on the padded exam table. “We’ll all leave while you get undressed and Megan will wait outside. When you have the examination gown on, opening in the back, knock on the door and Marie and I will come back in.”

“I….” I still couldn’t think of anything to say. “Yes, ma’am,” I managed.

They left, Megan pausing to give me a peck on the cheek. “It’s nothing,” she said, trying to reassure me. “Aunt Lou is very gentle.”

Once alone, I almost panicked. What was I doing there, in a gynecologist’s office? This had to be some sort of a nightmare, it couldn’t be happening. I’d been knocked unconscious in the football game last night, or I had gotten drunk at the party and fallen downstairs…. I was really in a hospital with my head shaved waiting for brain surgery….

I put a hand on the unreasonably flat front of my pants. I stuck it down in my pants. If I was having a nightmare, it was a damned consistent one. I was glad I was alone in the room because I was very near to a panic attack. I leaked tears quietly for awhile then wiped my eyes and splashed water on my face.

I got undressed quickly after that, trying not to think about things. When the knock came at the door, I flinched. I was sitting on the padded table, holding the gown closed in front of me and trying not to cry again.

“Come in,” I called out, my voice squeaking slightly. The door opened and Dr. Verre came in followed by Granny Duquesne. Megan stayed out.

Dr. Verre smiled at me. “Nervous?” she asked.

I nodded, afraid to speak.

“Everyone has their first time, honey,” said Granny.

I winced.

“You’ve got the gown on backwards,” said Dr. Verre.

“I thought you said…” I began but she cut me off.

“I know very well what I said,” she interrupted, heading for the door again, followed by Granny who made that giggling noise again. “Put it right quickly, Mr. Hunter, please.” I felt my face turn red.

When they came back in, I had shifted the gown around, opening in the back, which mystified me a bit, and I was sitting on the padded seat again, my bare bottom on the paper cover.

The two women helped me to a new position on the table, leaning back on a slant, with my knees apart and my feet in foot-holding posts they attached to the table. A blanket had been added across my knees, but my feet were wide apart. I had never felt so vulnerable and frightened.

The doctor sat on a stool between my feet, I could just see her face looking over my belly. She had some instruments on a small table near her. Apparently, she had sat down just to make sure things were ready, because she stood up and came around to my side.

“I’m going to do an abdominal exam first, Mr. Hunter,” she announced then proceeded to poke, prod and massage my abdomen, from my ribs right down to the top of my thighs. She talked to me about what she was doing but I didn’t seem to be able to concentrate on what she said.

It wasn’t painful but it did get uncomfortable in places. She looked sharply at my face a couple of times while prodding me.

Then she went and sat back on her little stool. She appeared to be examining my groin visually while putting a plastic glove on her right hand.

“Hmm,” said Dr. Verre. “Remarkable.”

I didn’t want to know but I asked anyway. “W-what?”

“Remarkable in its ordinariness,” she expanded. “You have a perfectly normal, healthy-appearing vulva.”

I didn’t know that word but I wasn’t going to ask.

She moved closer. “Outer labia are well-formed, inner labia protrude slightly, showing pink. There is a normal sulcus separating the lips. The clitoral hood and clitoris….” I had trouble hearing her, my brain wasn’t processing what she was saying. She was touching me, I could feel her but I couldn’t tell where. It wasn’t a place that I’d ever been touched before.

“There’s no sign of inflammation or trauma of any sort.” She kept talking. “I’m putting my index finger inside your vagina, I want you to clench your muscles there.” I felt that and realized that she had her hand partly inside me. Inside….

Muscles? Clench them? I didn’t know how to do that. She may have continued talking, but I didn’t hear anything else because the roaring in my ears drowned out her voice. A shiver of icy dread reached my brain and my vision went black.