“Why can’t I come in?” Linda wanted to know.

I made it to my room and sort of threw myself at the bed, pretty much like I’d been doing for fifteen years—big mistake. My bra gave up holding things in on the first bounce, and my new accessories assaulted me. I almost turned into a joke punchline with two black eyes before I got my hands up and wrangled—things.

“Damnit,” I whispered. My herding skills weren’t that good, the heifers were loose under my shirt, and my bra was sitting on top of them, more or less around my neck. I wondered if I had broken the damn thing. It took me a minute or two to sort things out. The front closure of the bra had basically come undone. I struggled a bit to re-close the row of hook-type fasteners. Boy’s clothes had no such finagling required.

But things did not seem to be quite what they had been. I worried that I had had another growth spurt. I found a trick, though, which was just o allow my pillows to fill the corners of their cages under my armpits.

I sighed when I could finally lie back and take the silent breather I had been trying for. But I made the mistake of sniffing and caught a whiff of something. I smelled of my hands; they had the odor of sweat on them. A quick feel inside my bra, and yeah, I was a bit damp there, and yeah, it did smell like sweat.

Did massive titties like mine sweat normally? I mean, just like any time they felt like it? No wonder girls got all intense about bathing and using deodorant if that were so. Better if it were true and not some fresh evidence of whatever it was that was wrong with me.

I tried to wipe the smell off on my coverlet; not an ideal solution. I surely needed a bath before I could do the fashum show Linda and Dad were expecting. All the tromping around the mall in the September humidity near the beach, even inside with A/C, maybe the excess sweating was just—normal.

I felt my lip tremble, and then tears were leaking out of my eyes and rolling toward my ears. “No fair,” I whispered.

Feeling sorry for myself didn’t seem profitable, so I gave it up after a few minutes and managed to sit up on the bed by first rolling off the side, catching myself, then standing up so I could sit down. I guess I’m a special case, but who would expect breasts to be so heavy?

I caught another whiff of ripeness in my gyrations and remembered that I had determined that I needed a bath or at least a quick shower. I trudged to the door and called down toward where everyone else had fallen into the so-called boob tube. Whoever came up with that nickname for television had no idea, I reflected.

I smiled a bit woefully and gathered things together for a bath. I guessed I would need a fresh bra, but I only owned two of the large-size over-the-shoulder-boulder-holders. If I was going to sweat enough to need a bath and a change of bra every day, did that mean I would have to wash one of the damn things every night?

I dithered a bit, but a sniff test settled it—my brand-new bra needed washing. I found a little tag on the garment and read that it should be washed in cool water with mild soap and air-dried. Mild soap shouldn’t be a problem, Donna had a bar of Ivory she kept in our shared bathroom. I gathered some clean panties, too, and my bathrobe (which didn’t quite close around my chest now); there was nothing for it. I needed a new bathrobe, too, but that could wait.

The TV still made noises in the living room, and no one was in the hall except the dog, who gave me permission to pass with a thump of his tail. “Watch for Linda, Fooler,” I told him. My darling little sister was a menace who might walk in on anyone in the bathroom. But I could only pretend that Fooler might stop her. In fact, he was often her principal accomplice.

I started the water running to warm up, then I hung my things on the extra towel bars, took off my bra and ran a basin of cool water to dunk it in. I wasn’t sure I was doing this right, but I rubbed some Ivory in the places that seemed most likely to be stinky and put the cruel device back in the water.

I pulled a shower cap on since I didn’t want to mess with wet hair in the evening. The blue cap was mine and the pink one Donna’s, but I used Donna’s this time because it was slightly larger and held my long hair well. And who cared about the gender of inanimate objects anymore? I couldn’t possibly be embarrassed by using the wrong cap after everything else that was going wrong with my life.

I adjusted the temp of the water and stepped under the artificial rain. I’d always like showers better than bathing in a tub, but our bathroom didn’t have a tub anyway. I used some of Donna’s body wash and two different kinds of soap, making sure I got everything lathered up good. Using a washcloth let me know that I did not scrub my tits. “Ow,” I said.

In fact, I felt kind of tender everywhere, as if my whole body had grown extra sets of nerve endings. Instead of scrubbing, I just sort of stroked gently; even down between my legs felt tender. Then I let the water hit me in the face and tried not to fall into self-pity again. Lots of people had worse things happening to them somewhere, I was sure.

“Joni?” came a treble voice outside the bathroom door just as I was stepping out of the shower stall and reaching for a big bath towel.

“Don’t come in, Linda,” I warned. I wrapped the towel around me, a little annoyed that it stayed in place so easily now.

“Why can’t I come in?” Linda wanted to know. “You’re a girl too, now, so we’re both the same.”

“Uh, well, I’m—I’m not quite a girl all the way. I’ve still got some boy bits, so don’t come in.”

“Huh? Well, I’m sure your boy bits won’t last much longer, then you’ll be a girl just like Donna and me and Mommy.” She laughed.

Somehow, I was afraid that she was right.

I used the big towel carefully, patting myself dry more than any kind of rubbing motion. Somehow, my skin was tender and sensitive, not just my new appendages but all over, like even the back of my neck.

I twisted the towel into a sort of dress and wiped some moisture from the big mirror on the back of the door. I still had on the pink shower cap, and the towel hung out from my body, held up by my new shape.

I stared for maybe half a minute, looking at the tiny girl with the huge breasts. They looked even bigger if I turned sideways. Had they grown even more? I closed my eyes and hoped and wished as hard as I could that they would go away. “I’m a boy,” I muttered. “I’m not supposed to have big boobs like some centerfold.”

I sighed for about the fortieth time and started getting dressed. The softness of the girls’ panties was welcome on my tender skin. My boy parts hardly caused a bulge at all, but experimentally, I tried pushing my junk up inside me. The accessories went up easily, without pain or discomfort, but the longer bit of my penis popped right back out. I tried again, pulling my panties up tight.

I couldn’t see down there very well because of my new geography; I had a much closer horizon. It seemed like Things stayed out of sight for a bit, but I could feel them inside me, sort of creeping toward the exit. I sighed again. What the heck was I doing, anyway? Did I want to look more like a girl?

That wasn’t exactly it. I just didn’t want to look like a boy with tits. Looking like a girl, even being a girl, would be better than being something in between. Maybe.

I took my clean bra and wrapped it around me, putting it on with my arms through the straps kind of like a shirt or jacket. Then I worked to close the hooks in the front and position them between my breasts. It still amazed me how heavy the damn things were. Softer than pillows but without the support of the bra, they were already making me tired of their weight and a bit sore in the lower back.

And I had to sort of mooch them into the cups, then reach inside and pull them forward so I didn’t end up with lumps of boobage in my armpits. After a bit of a struggle, I got the beasts back into their cages and had a little shake to settle things. Damn, it felt weird when they jiggled like that.

A light knock on the door told me that Linda, for once, had been patiently waiting for me in the hall. “Joni?” she called in her sweeter voice, not the one she used for removing nails from timber. “We can’t have a fashum show without you?” she said, applying a bit of subtle coercion.

“I’ll be right out,” I promised. I pulled on a pair of walking shorts that fit more or less and an oversized T-shirt of Dad’s that had ended up in my laundry months ago. If I were going to be putting on and taking off clothes again, might as well make it easier to do.

“Jo-oh-onie!” Linda knocked and called again, more forcefully and with her volume and pitch moving toward her natural range like a chainsaw looking for a spike.

I sighed to make it an even number and opened the door.