Be a girl

Josh laughed maniacally at the sight of Jesse and me on the floor. He just had to show up, didn’t he? I just wanted to go home where I was safe, where I didn’t need to worry about assholes who took pleasure in seeing me suffer, but nothing could ever go my way, could it?

It seemed though, that Josh wasn’t only laughing at me. The sight of his friend wailing on the floor sent him into hysterics. I may not have had any friends, but I was damn sure that was still better than having someone whom you thought you could trust laughing at you when you’re at you’re most vulnerable.

“You wanna fuckin’ go cunt?” Jesse snarled, standing back up, approaching the other boy and getting right in his face.

Josh smirked at Jesse without budging even slightly. “I told you, I don’t hit girls,” he remarked smugly.

The scowl on Jesse’s face only became more aggressive at Josh’s response. He took a single step back and wound up a punch aimed directly at Josh’s gut. The smug boy made no attempt to dodge or block the attack. He simply took the full brunt of the blow, the smirk never once leaving his face.

This only served to anger Jesse even more. He launched another punch, but this time, Josh made an effort to defend himself, parrying the swipe and gently nudging Jesse off to the side. I may not have been an expert on fighting, but I did know my physics: if these two decided to exchange blows, Jesse was at a severe disadvantage. Although they were now the same height, Josh had much more mass.

At this point I realised that now was the perfect opportunity to make my getaway. So long as those two were busy, I could slip by them and hide before they wizened up. As quietly as I could manage, I got back onto my feet and tiptoed away from them. I briefly glanced back at the fighting boys, seeing them still distracted by each other, before running in the opposite direction. I heard a loud groan behind me, but I did not stop to check what had happened.

Only a few moments after the groan, I heard footsteps rushing up behind me. I willed myself to run faster, but it was futile. Two hands landed on my shoulders, grinding me to a halt. I squealed, nearly falling over as my inertia tried keep me moving forward, but the hands held fast, preventing me from tripping. “You’re not going anywhere,” Jesse growled softly into my ear.

He forced me around to face Josh, who was lying on the ground, clutching at his groin. He pushed me toward the groaning boy, and I was powerless to stop him. Despite now being much smaller physically than before, and losing quite a bit of muscle mass, Jesse was still much stronger and bigger than me. As we neared Josh, Jesse ripped a glove off one of my hands, tossing it to the floor, stating that I wouldn’t be needing it.

I was properly panicking now. I knew what Jesse was planning, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it. This couldn’t happen again. I had no idea what his motive was, but that didn’t really matter at this time. I began squirming in his grip, trying to break free, but his hold on me was too strong to overcome. Josh still hadn’t realised what his former friend was planning, too busy writhing around in pain.

Jesse grabbed me by the wrist and directed my hand towards Josh’s exposed leg. Finally, the boy on the ground noticed the two of us and his eyes widened. He may not have been aware of exactly how my ‘gift’ worked, but he saw Jesse transform, so he knew of what I was capable. He quickly wizened up to Jesse’s plan, rolling away from the both of us, just as Jesse applied more force to my hand to accelerate it along the final stretch toward Josh’s leg. Clearly, I underestimated Josh; he was smarter than I previously thought. Turns out he wasn’t completely braindead.

Josh was probably thanking his lucky stars that my hand had missed him by a hair. He stood faster than should have been possible and glared at Jesse and me. An arm wrapped itself around my waist and lifted me clean off the ground. I yelped, honestly surprised that Jesse was even strong enough to pick me up in the first place, especially now. As fast as he could, Jesse carried me over to Josh, forcing my arm to flail about wildly.

The other boy wasn’t going to let us get close again, easily increasing the distance between us before we could get back into range. “You sneaky little fuck,” he said, frowning. He dusted himself off, eyeing us warily. “You almost had me there.”

Jesse tossed me to the side, without a single care for my safety. “Useless,” he muttered as I stumbled onto the ground, just barely catching myself with my hands as I landed. “Mark my words, Josh. I will

find a way to turn you into a girl, just so I can wipe that stupid grin off your smug face. You will suffer the same as me.”

He spat on the ground at my feet then left with a huff. Josh leered at Jesse’s behind before focusing his vision onto me. “Freak,” he muttered at me, also taking his leave. I was unhappy that Jesse would use me in his petty squabble with his former friend, hoping that this scenario wouldn’t repeat itself after tomorrow’s exam.

***

The next few days were surprisingly uneventful. Jesse didn’t start anything with me, and there was no sign of Josh or their other friend, Neil. Jesse must have realised that attempting to have me change him back was futile. Not only that, but it seemed he would no longer derive pleasure from seeing me suffer. Josh must have also been properly scared of me now, as I had the potential to change him into a girl. And since I was attending my exams with Jesse, he didn’t bother either of us.

We had the same teacher each day, so we didn’t have to go through the whole ‘Jesse is a girl now’ rigmarole over and over. Both Jesse and I didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the week, for which I was thankful. Handing up my final exam paper, I was finally free from all those who had terrorised me for so many years.

I arrived home after my final exam with a sense of relief. I was finally done with that god awful establishment, and I would never have the misfortune of meeting Jesse and his goons again. Of course, I had never once worried about the exams themselves, but I was glad that I wouldn’t have to worry about any sort of schooling until next year. I had no idea to which school my parents would send me, but that was a problem for future me to deal with. It didn’t matter anyway. No matter the school they sent me to, the result would be the same: I would be all alone in a strange place, unable to make friends, continuing to be my lonely, isolated self. The only question was whether new people took over Jesse and his cronies’ place as my bullies.

It was still early afternoon on a weekday, which meant the house was completely empty aside from me. I now had a few hours all to my lonesome to relax and distract myself from all the issues currently going on in my life. I had a feeling I would be doing a lot of that over the summer holidays. The less I thought about the family collapsing, or everything that was wrong with me, the less I would feel awful about myself.

I of course holed myself up in my room, browsing the internet, watching videos, playing some games, as per usual. Mum came round a little before four to drop James off. She departed as quickly as she arrived, leaving me to look after my little brother until dad finally arrived home from work. I wished she didn’t have to leave so soon. I was starting to miss her. At least James and I were seeing her and our aunty this weekend.

I tried to ignore James when he came home, though he just had to pester me. I made it clear that I wasn’t interested in playing with him at the moment. He eventually got the message and left my room, perhaps a little more defeated than I would have liked. I probably shouldn’t have acted so harshly to the kid, but I needed time to myself to destress after this week. Even if Jesse hadn’t tried anything after that first day, having to spend several hours a day in the same room as him still stressed me out. I also probably shouldn’t have left James to his own devices for several hours, but I figured he was mature enough to not do anything that would land him in trouble with dad.

It was a harder for me to ignore dad when he arrived home. He made sure his presence was known when he entered the house, and then proceeded to lay down on my bed. I swivelled in my chair to face him, annoyed that he would interrupt the time I was enjoying on my own. Unlike James, dad would be much more difficult to dismiss. He had taken up position lying on his back, with his hands resting on the pillow beneath his head and staring at the ceiling.

“All done with exams I take it?” he asked without taking his eyes off the roof.

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“Just yeah? No telling me how you went?”

“What’s there to say?” I said, “I went to my exam, finished in half the allotted time because it was easy, then I left. Nothing much to it.”

“Which one was it?”

“Spec maths.”

Dad chuckled at that. “Only you could rock up to the exam for the hardest maths subject without studying, and still call it easy.”

His little remark put a small smile on my face. He was right of course. I doubted any other students could deem the specialist mathematics exam ‘easy’, especially without studying beforehand.

“Relieved that you’re done for the year?” he asked.

“Yeah. I’m finally free from that god-forsaken place forever.”

Dad propped himself up on his elbows and raised an eyebrow at me. “What do you mean by that?”

“They made Jesse and me take our exams together,” I grumbled. Seeing the confused look on my dad’s face, I clarified. “He was the first guy I turned into a girl. Who also beat me up.” I sighed. “I’m just glad I never have to see him ever again.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s a terrible person who simply loved to make me suffer purely for his own enjoyment.”

Dad’s expression shifted from one of confusion, to one of concern. “This goes deeper than you transforming him, doesn’t it? Why didn’t you tell us you were being bullied earlier? We could have pulled you out of there sooner.”

I hung my head and sighed. “I couldn’t,” I simply said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I just couldn’t.”

He frowned at me, unhappy with my response, but he didn’t push any further. It sounded like a half-hearted reply from me, but it was the truth. I was a little shocked that I’d even managed to say everything I did. Somehow it just spilt out of me. Normally, I would never be able to say something like that; I’d just clam up and be unable to say anything. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Jesse was now officially out of my life. Whatever the reason, my dad finally knew the truth, but it was now useless information to him, so it no longer mattered.

The silence that followed was as awkward as it was tense. It soon became unbearable, and I needed to break it, so I changed the topic.

“How was work today?” I asked.

“Ugh, awful,” he replied, placing his hand on his forehead flopping his head back down onto my pillow. “Half the time it’s like I’m invisible, with people simply ignoring me and my ideas, and the other half of the time it’s like people think I’m some disgusting little creature that they have the displeasure of being in the presence of.”

I sighed. “I’m surprised you even managed to convince your work of your identity.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy, though at least my face is still similar to before, and I didn’t change my name at all. Handy that ‘Joe’ becomes a woman’s name just by chopping off the silent e at the end.” He let out a deep sigh before continuing, “Eventually my colleagues believed me. They probably just think I randomly decided to get a sex change and had always wanted to become a woman or something. That’s probably why some of them give me disgusted looks. I’d rather not tell them the truth, not that they would believe it anyway.”

I hung my head a little. It was awful that dad was forced to go through all this because of me. “Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” he replied, “It was an accident, and you promised me you wouldn’t feel guilty about this, remember? There’s nothing either of us can do about it now, so we’ll just have to make the best of it.” He turned onto his side so that he could look at me, weakly smiling at me as he did so.