CRASH!

Ian Bradford paused at his computer, glancing up at the ceiling in growing irritation. What the hell was Aggie up to now? He had two papers due next Monday and she'd been bumping around upstairs all afternoon. The constant pounding was wreaking havoc with his concentration; he'd just written the same paragraph four times. God, he wished he'd headed down to the library this morning. His life had descended into chaos since his precocious young cousin moved in. He turned back to the keyboard, shaking his head in mounting annoyance.

CRASH!!

"HEY!" Ian yelled, almost leaping out of his skin. Another concussion, loud enough to rattle the windows this time. What was going on up there? She couldn't have been jumping around on the bed again: not even that would've have made so much noise (unless the legs gave way, which was entirely possible). Then again, what else could it be? Mom had told her off about that last week, so she should have known better. Evidently, she'd suffered a relapse. Aggie tended to act up whenever Mom wasn't around to regulate her behavior, particularly when she was seeking attention. Oh well, the hell with it. He had more pressing concerns than playing hall monitor to a hyperactive twelve year old. Shifting his chair closer to the computer desk, Ian placed his fingers on the keys and started typing.

A third, catastrophic detonation, shaking the foundations beneath his feet: CRASH!!!

And Ian saw finally red.

Pushing back from the desk, he stood up, saved his file and stalked out towards the staircase. Any more of this and the roof was likely to collapse. Aggie was - without exception - the most exasperating child in the universe. For all her endearing qualities (and there were many), she could be insufferably naughty when it suited her. Well, enough was enough. Time for some direct intervention, so to speak. Ian started up the stairs, heavy brown boots announcing his approach.

Aggie's quarters were at the far end of the first floor landing, a spacious, skylit bedroom with a slanting attic ceiling and cedar paneling. Ian loped down the hallway, listening for the tell-tale sounds of tortured bedsprings. He drew in a deep breath, willing himself to be calm. Truth be told, he didn't mind her jumping on the mattress, he just wanted her to keep it down to an acceptable level. He strode down to her room and stuck his head in the door.

"Aggie!" he barked, a little louder than he intended.

Framed a hazy shaft of afternoon sunlight, Aggie Preston was a pretty young girl with rose-petal lips and curly blond hair spilling down to her waist. Her petite figure was outlined by a red cotton sun frock, so translucent that Ian could see the ghost of her underwear. She was standing before a large cheval mirror (an heirloom passed down from their mutual grandmother) with her arms raised over her head. She looked like a high diver about to catapult from a springboard.

"What're you doing? You're making enough noise to wake the dead!"

Aggie lowered her hands and looked over at the door, her face as bright and open as a summer morning.

"I'm practicing," she told him.

"Practicing? Practicing what?"

"Handstands."

Yeah, that'd be right, he thought ruefully, serves me right for teaching her how to do cartwheels yesterday. He shook his head incredulously. When would he ever learn? Next it'll be backflips and somersaults.

"Why don't you go practice down in the backyard?"

"I want to watch myself in the mirror," she replied, gesturing towards the cheval, "only I can't because my dress keeps getting in the way."

Ian rubbed his temples in disbelief. Was that why she'd been thumping around like a goddam elephant for the past two hours? Surely not.

"Well, put some shorts on, then."

"I want to see what I look like wearing the dress."

"Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," Ian commented wearily. The conversation was getting loopier by the second. He couldn't believe this was happening. Two book reports due next Monday and here he was, talking gobbledygook with a twelve year old. No, sorry - a twelve year old who likes turning handstands in front of the mirror. Wearing a dress.

And the loopiest thing of all? She wasn't even a girl. Not really.

Aggie was a tranzie.

To quote one of Ian's contemporaries, you saw a lot of tranzies around Ridgewick nowadays. Seemed like every second kid you met was one - although you'd simply never have guessed, not unless you'd lived here all your life. Half the time, you hardly noticed they were even there. Ian knew most of the tranzies out at Ridgewick Consolidated, he'd been through the system with them. There were two dozen in the eighth grade alone – close on two hundred in the school, all up - a rather significant number, considering the school's general population was somewhat less than a thousand.

Tranzies were biological transsexuals; genetic males who morphed into anatomical females during early childhood. Nobody was completely sure how this occurred, but the scientific literature theorized it was caused by an alpha-five mutation, similar to the cases documented in the Dominican Republic. Apparently, it was a little like going through puberty – except that you changed from one sex to another. Most began to 'turn' around the age of seven, taking around three years to complete the process. From there, they continued through a more conventional puberty – though few – if any – ever experienced the rigors of menstruation.

Aggie Preston was your typical tranzie. No, actually, she more than that. She was your archetypal tranzie: frail and delicate, with girlish features and slender proportions. It wasn't just her appearance, either: it was her voice, her attitude, her overall bearing. She was literally indistinguishable from a 'regular' girl. Always had been, as far back as Ian could remember.

OK, she could be a little rough-and-tumble at times, scaling trees and hurling snowballs with the best of them, no doubt about that whatsoever. But behind all the tomboy bravado, there was an underlying softness to Aggie's character – genuinely feminine, rather than effeminate.

Ian, who was Aggie's senior by (barely) one year, had enjoyed – or maybe suffered – a particularly close relationship with A.G. Preston throughout most of his childhood. As first cousins, they'd been virtually inseparable in elementary school, blackening eyes and fattening lips whenever trouble reared its ugly head in the playground (escapades which landed both in the principal's office on more than one occasion).

In that regard at least, Ian had looked on Aggie as a kid brother, one who was always watching his back when the chips were down and the daggers were drawn.

This had lasted all the way through to the third grade, when Aggie's change had become apparent. Her transition had been remarkably swift, lasting barely eighteen months. Looking back now, it seemed to have happened in the blink of an eye, stunning even the endocrinologists who were researching her case files. It was like watching Tom Sawyer turn into Becky Thatcher between the space of two summers.

And quite suddenly, Ian no longer viewed Aggie Preston as his kid brother.

No, this was an entirely different ball game, played by rules neither of them quite understood. There had, inevitably, been a brief period where they'd drifted apart – perhaps by only the slightest of degrees – as Aggie had adjusted to her new social role and Ian discovered there were plenty of others willing to watch his back (though none of them ever accompanied him to the principal's office).

And yeah, a few awkward moments had ensued – like that trip to Lake Ridgewick where he'd seen Aggie in a one-piece for the first time – but they'd been amazingly few and far between, considering that she'd undergone a complete gender reversal. The most difficult part (for Ian at least) was adapting to the new pronouns, and that was only due to force of habit.

There was, however, one significant difference that everybody else seemed to notice. Ian and Aggie had somehow changed – virtually overnight – from the closest of sibling comrades to the bitterest of sibling rivals. It wasn't the sort of schoolyard competition you might have expected from a couple of boys, either: it was a full-on sis vs bro, guy vs gal, knock-em-down, drag-em-out gender-feud of Homeric proportions.

The situation had naturally been exacerbated when Aggie had relocated to the Bradford residence last fall (a move necessitated by her father's unexpected business transferal to Europe). Placing the pair in such close proximity was the equivalent of housing two scorpions in a depth charge. And despite all appearances, it wasn't so much the constant fights and bickering that drove Ian to the brink of insanity. It was the incessant smart-mouthing, back-chatting and batspit crazy girl-talk!

All the same, Ian – who had only recently turned thirteen and had inherited all of the hormonal calamities that accompanied that memorable age – was about to learn that there were at least a few advantages to having a transgendered cousin around the house.

Especially since she'd started to … well, grow up.

"Can you watch me to see if I'm doing it right?" she asked, oblivious to the mayhem she'd wrought in his work schedule. That was Aggie Preston all over. Not content with simply ruining his afternoon, she expected him to stand around praising her gymnastic abilities to the skies. All the same, Ian felt inclined to capitulate for the time being. She'd probably lose interest if he indulged her whims for a few minutes. He sat down on the bed, resigning himself to the inevitable.

"OK. Show me what you've got."

Aggie turned back toward the mirror, paused for several seconds, then dropped over onto her palms. Her dress fluttered inside out, allowing Ian a generous view of her fresh, white underpants. She arched her spine for balance, feet waving precariously in mid-air. Ian noted her locked elbows, the subtle curve of her belly. Not bad, for a beginner. She held her legs up for about five seconds, then fell back on to her feet.

"How was I?" she asked, eyebrows raised enquiringly. Her dress was still rucked up over one hip, holding on by a thread and a promise. A sliver of cheeky white panty peeked out from under the scarlet hem. Ian didn't bother pointing it out; the lesson obviously wasn't finished yet.

"Not bad," he replied fairly enough, "but you're supposed to keep your feet together when you go up into your stance."

"...my stance?" she asked doubtfully.

"When you're upside down," he explained, reminding himself she'd never had any formal training. Aggie's face lit up with understanding.

"Oh, right. Like this," she said, and sailed over once more. Her skirt fell across her face, hanging almost to the floor. Pristine cotton panties went on open display, tightly stretched across her pudgy, round bottom. Aggie wavered at the height of her arc for maybe two seconds then started to topple backwards toward the bed. Ian caught her in his arms before she hit the floor.

"That's better," he nodded, setting her back on her feet, "just don't come crashing down that way. Feels like an earthquake."

"I want to try again," she chirped eagerly, "can you hold my legs, Ian?"

"Yeah, OK," he agreed, rising laboriously from the bed, "come over here." His academic responsibilities were swept aside in the torrent of Aggie's excitement. She had that effect on everybody. Reaching down, he took her under the arms and hoisted her up to his shoulder. She wrapped her legs around his waist, eyes glittering with innocent pleasure.

"Lean backwards and put your hands on the floor," Ian instructed, lowering her carefully towards the carpet. Her frock began to invert, exposing her creamy thighs as gravity snatched at the hemline. Ian glanced down to make sure she was bracing herself properly. Her panties were trimmed with pink lace.

"You ready down there?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm ready," she piped back, voice shrill with expectation.

"All right, here we go."

Holding her firmly by the ankles, Ian dangled Aggie upside-down facing the mirror, then allowed her to take some of her own weight. Careful to maintain his grip, he paused to check her stance. The reflection showed a slim young girl standing on her hands with her legs slightly apart. Her frock was trailing on the floor, completely covering her arms and head and upper body. Ian floated his gaze over her smooth tummy, her glaring white panties, her supple thighs. The dress continued inching southward, exposing more of her ivory flesh. An impudent little belly button pouted out of an alabaster torso. By this time, Ian was completely engrossed; all thought of his impending assignments had vanished from his mind.

"OK," he said, "bring your feet together. And point your toes at the ceiling."

"Like this?"

"Yeah, that's good, almost perfect," he answered. Aggie's frock had crept halfway down her midsection. Her full brief pants sat snug against the delicate rose of her skin. Tiny white ripples flowed across the fabric as she adjusted her weight from side to side. A fine lace tracery encircled the waistband, dimpling her slightly protruding belly. She'd never completely lost her puppy fat.

"I still can't see," Aggie twittered beneath a veil of scarlet cotton.

"Push your skirt out of the way."

"I'll fall over."

"No, you won't," Ian assured her, "I've got you."

Shifting her center of balance, Aggie raised the hemline with her right hand, eyes widening as she glimpsed her reflection. It shouldn't have been such a surprise; she'd seen her friends turning handstands at school, pretty much every day. But this was different, somehow. She'd never actually seen herself hanging upside down with her dress over her head (even though she spent half her life on the jungle gym like most girls her age).

"I wanna do it again!" she chortled, wriggling her hips impatiently. Her pert, plump bottom-cheeks jostled back and forth in joyful abandon. Ian smiled in spite of himself. She really had no idea how engaging she was. He set her on her feet once again, mindful to cushion her descent as much as possible. She'd weakened the floorboards sufficiently for one day. Aggie straightened up, literally dancing with excitement. She spun around, skirt flaring out around her calves, then cast a backward glance over her shoulder.

"Ian, can you undo me?" she trilled, indicating the back of her sun-frock. Ian arched an eyebrow, mildly amused by the request. He should have seen this coming; in his experience, tranzies tended to be natural exhibitionists.

"Why?" he asked, already knowing what the answer would be.

"So I can see what I look like without my dress." She started bouncing wildly up and down, blonde curls whipping around her head in a platinum cloud.

"OK then," he nodded, managing to keep a straight face. He fumbled with the buttons for a few seconds, then sat back down on the bed while Aggie slipped the straps off her shoulders. She shimmied her hips for a couple of seconds, sliding the frock to the floor and unveiling her sleek figure in a silken whisper. She stepped out of the discarded remnant and stood up in nothing but her socks and panties. A faint rose tint began to spread through her features, though it probably wasn't due to embarrassment; she'd never been coy about showing off her underwear in front of anybody (least all him).

Ian took a moment to scope her over. It was odd: he'd seen her undressed more times than he could number, but he'd never found her quite so ..appealing. Perhaps it was the sultry flush permeating her flesh. Perhaps it was her simple, innocence, her unconscious femininity. He noted in vague surprise that she was plump and curved in all the places a real girl would have been. More than he would have expected, as a matter of fact.

She ran over to the bed, grabbing his arm and and trying to haul him to his feet.

"Help me turn upside down again! I wanna stand on my hands like before!"

"All right, all right," he said, sounding mildly harassed. Reaching forward, he planted her on his lap, sitting face-to-face so that her tummy was pressed against his. His fingertips stroked her bare ribs, raising gooseflesh in their wake. Ian breathed in her natural scent, a combination of apples and honey and warm, fresh cream. Her heart was racing like a miniature trip-hammer, he could feel it pounding against his chest.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

Laying hold of her midriff, Ian tilted Aggie back, allowing her to drop onto her down-stretched palms. She swung her legs up at the same time, remembering to aim her feet at the roof. She could feel Ian's hands gliding over her belly, adjusting her position whenever she started losing balance. Her body was a shining arabesque in the mirror.

Ian transferred his grip to Aggie's ankles, then unwound himself to his full height (which was not inconsiderable, at just thirteen he was regarded as a 'jock' by most of his friends at school), hefting her off the floor by several inches. Aggie shrieked in happy protest as he walked her closer to the cheval. Lowering her gingerly to the rug, Ian fine-tuned her posture and leaned in for a closer look.

Aggie hung topsy-turvey with her arms braced and her blond tresses sweeping the carpet. Her panties shimmered in the mid-afternoon haze; Ian noticed for the first time they had a little tag on the front, just below the waistband. So fine, so translucent he could see her milky flesh-tones through the material. Catching her reflection in the mirror, Aggie giggled in sheer delight. High, silvery laughter tinkled around the room.

Ian knelt down on one knee, encircling her waist with both hands. One of his fingers brushed her belly button; Aggie squirmed with ticklish rapture. She kicked her feet in mid air, lacy white socks flashing in the mirror.

"Hey, don't! I'm gonna fall!"

"No, you won't," Ian said, making himself more comfortable, "now - pretend your legs are like a pair of scissors. Understand? Open them as wide as they'll go. Then I'll show you how to dismount."

"How to what?" she gasped, breathless with laughter.

"Don't worry, you'll see," he replied. Aggie was giggling so hard that her eyes were overflowing with liquid mirth. Watching herself in the cheval, she began to part her legs - hesitantly at first, then with increasing confidence when she realized Ian was holding her up.

"That's right," he encouraged, "straighten your legs out. And don't forget to point your toes." He found that she was surprisingly limber. Her legs were splayed into a classic aerial splits, stretching her panties tight between the thighs. The gusset was framed on each side by a dainty lace trim, and if she'd ever been a boy at any point of her life, there was absolutely no sign of it now. Ian returned his attention to the business at hand.

"All right, you ready to come down now?" he asked.

"Yeah, OK." She replied, still giggling. Tears of laughter trickled down her face, running into her hairline. Moving with an almost professional ease, Ian tilted the girl to the right, allowing her to overbalance into a half-cartwheel. Taken completely unawares, Aggie gave a little shriek as she went over, flailing her legs in surprise. What was he doing?! He said he wouldn't let her fall!

"IIIIIAAAAN!!" she screamed.

But Ian was already there.

He scooped her up in his arms the instant before she struck the floor, sweeping her onto his shoulder with a rakish laugh. She clung to his neck, squealing with both fright and pleasure, a beautiful young girl in cotton panties and frilly white socks. Ian dropped backward onto the carpet with a resounding THUMP, shaking the floorboards himself this time.

Seized by a sudden but utterly irresistible impulse, Ian ran his fingers over her midsection, tickling her ribs and back and tummy. Her reaction was as violent as it was immediate: Aggie thrashed and kicked in his grasp, desperate to evade those merciless, probing digits.

"Hey! Cut it out!" she screamed in helpless mirth, "stop it!"

"Make me," Ian challenged in devilish mockery.

After a time (or maybe two), she managed to fight him off with open handed slaps of her palms, screaming with indignant laughter as he tried to pin her to the floor. Ian never really stood a chance on this occasion: it wasn't the first time he'd subjected her to the Torture of a Thousand Tickles, and she'd always been one heck of a little scrapper, dating all the way back to their playground years.

Once she'd managed to roll beyond his immediate reach, they lay panting and breathless on the rug, choking back on their laughter and struggling to draw breath. Ian made a few half-hearted attempts to catch her by the wrist, which she fended off with the ease of long practice.

"You can be a real bastard sometimes," she finally gasped, "you know that, Ian Bradford?"

They both erupted into fresh peals of laughter, Ian cracking up so hard that tears wavered in his peripheral vision. Aggie kicked him once – no, twice – in the right leg to emphasize her point, though nowhere near hard enough to cause any real pain. They lay grinning at each other for another four or five minutes until their heart-rates dropped to something approaching a brisk canter.

"That was fun," Ian mused, propping himself up on one elbow, "want to try it again?"

"Shut up," she replied offhand, and began to rise strenuously to her feet. Between the kamikaze acrobatics and the battle of the bedroom floor, she felt fit to drop. Glancing carelessly about the room, she walked over to the bed in her prim white underwear, heedless of her cousin's wandering gaze.

"What do you want to do now?" he asked, knowing that another skin-tight wrestling match was probably out of the question (but still holding out for considerably more in the meantime).

"I dunno," she answered, stepping indifferently back into her dress, "you wanna go downtown?"

Ian considered the question for a few moments before raising his eyebrows in a comic-book expression of inspiration.

"Baskin Robbins?"

Aggie started to nod her agreement, then gave her lip a rueful nip.

"Can't," she replied glumly, "I'm skint." She started working the frock down over her hips, covering her lace-trimmed panties from his view. Ian felt a jolt of genuine disappointment as the hemline slipped to her mid-thighs, surprising himself in the process.

"That's OK, I've still got that tenner from last week."

"That enough for both of us?"

"Enough for one of us. We can share."

"You sure about that?" she asked skeptically, "this isn't just another one of your gigantic lies?"

"No, no, swear to jeezus," Ian promised on the Holy Name, and for once, his fingers weren't crossed firmly behind his back. At that moment, he would've offered her the sun, the moon and every star in the frigging galaxy for a chance to go another two rounds on the carpet with her. He also would have sold his mother's soul, his father's manhood and every last drop of his adolescent blood if need be.

"OK then," she shrugged without further debate, then started tugging with the buttons at the back of her dress, "come over and help me with this."

Ian clambered unsteadily up from the carpet – he was close to depleted himself – and stepped over to his cousin, reaching eagerly out for the back of her sunfrock. He briefly considered jamming his fingers into her undefended ribs, but Aggie was already miles ahead of him in that particular respect.

"Don't even think about it," she warned in a tone that threatened the direst of consequences.

"OK, OK!" he exclaimed in mock innocence, "I wasn't gonna try anything." A complete lie, of course. Under normal circumstances, he would have tried anything he could get away with, but the circumstances were anything but normal, and he was well aware that Aggie Preston could throw a mean right hook when she had her Irish up.

He slid the last button into place, silently reflecting on how much had changed in the space of single afternoon. He no longer saw Aggie as a rival sibling or an annoying brat. He didn't even see her as his cousin anymore, not exactly. He just saw her as…a girl. A girl near his own age, a girl who was bright and funny and as free as a wooddland nymph. A girl who'd started out as a boy, true enough; no sense in denying the obvious, but one who was at least as pretty as any he knew from school. No, the hell with that – she was the hands down the prettiest girl he'd ever known (and the fact that she wasn't adverse to stripping to her panties right in front him tended to add a little spice to the mixture).

"You sure about that tenner?" she demanded, smoothing out the front of her dress without looking up.

"Right here," Ian replied, scraping around in his back pocket. Flipping open a scuffed and faded vinyl wallet, he produced the required evidence, laying all suspicion immediately to rest.

"Okay, let's get going," Aggie nodded, casting her doubts to the wind as she turned toward the bedroom door.

They trotted down the stairs together, Ian clutching the banknote in his right hand like a talisman. They both felt tired, but their eyelids drooped in kind of blissful exhaustion. Out in the study, the computer sat unattended, its monitor flickering into standby mode. Ian didn't spare it a second thought. The final reports could wait, he could always get an extension. Well, probably not, but who cares? Like any other boy of thirteen, he had more important things to do now.

Pocketing his wallet, Ian followed his cousin through the front door and down the porch steps. Aggie's laughter receded down the sidewalk as they walked off into a perfect summer afternoon.

It was going to be a wonderful day.

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