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=== You Could Go Home Again === by Trismegistus Shandy This story is set in my "Valentine Divergence" setting. The earlier stories in the setting are: 1. Butterflies are the Gentlest 2. A House Divided 3. Nora and the Nomads All the stories are supposed to be stand-alone, but if you find this one confusing, try reading "Butterflies are the Gentlest" first. Thanks to Unicornzvi, epain, and Scott Jamison for their comments on the first draft. This story is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may repost it on other sites, for instance, or write new stories based on it, as long as you give me credit and release your own stories under the same license. My other stories on this site are released under Creative Commons license as well, though I may have forgotten to put the license notice on some of them. ----- "Be careful," Aunt Ellen said, hugging me tight. "And call or write us as soon as you get settled in, and at least once a week for a while after that." "I will," I promised, and when she let go, I started to shake Uncle Tyler's hand. He grabbed me in a hug instead, and I hugged him back, careful to avoid his horns. "If you don't want to talk to us at the same time every week, I understand," he said, with a glance at Aunt Ellen. "But do keep in touch." "And be sure to tell us as soon as you know how you're changing," Aunt Ellen said, an anxious look on her face. "Of course." "And... if you develop into a girl, be sure to remember everything I told you." "I will," I said, my ears twitching with embarrassment. Just then there was an announcement over the loudspeaker: "All aboard!" "I've got to go. See you at Christmas!" And I gripped my cane and climbed the stairs to the train, pausing in the door to wave to Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler. They waved back, and even before I found a seat, the conductor was closing the door behind me. I sat down between a family of Lincoln bison, probably mother and grandmother with two cute little kids, and a Chicago tripod who looked to be about my age. I guessed she was female from the way she was dressed, though with Chicago tripods it's hard for an outsider to tell the sexes apart. "Hi," I said to them. "I'm Joel." "I'm Karen," the tripod said. "I'm going to New Orleans -- this is my second year at Tulane University. Where are you going?" "I'm changing trains in New Orleans to go to Raleigh -- this will be my first year at NC State. Are you from Chicago?" "Originally, but my family moved to Minneapolis a few years after the Divergence. Um... is it okay if I ask what you are? I've never seen anyone like you." "I'm a Raleigh rabbit," I said. "There aren't many of us in the Midwest... I'm the only one in my town, or in all of Nebraska as far as I know." "Oh. So you're going home, then?" "Pretty much. I was born in Lincoln, but my family moved to Raleigh when I was a baby, and I lived there until the Divergence." I hesitated; I liked her, but I wasn't ready to talk about what happened next with a stranger. The day of the Divergence, a lot of people lost control of their bodies while they were transforming, and were too much in shock right afterward to know what they were doing. There were tens of thousands of car crashes and dozens of plane crashes -- that was one of the reasons we were riding a train instead of a plane like in the old days. And when we all changed, I was in the car with my parents. I was young enough that I don't remember where we were going or why; probably something routine, or it would have stuck in my memory better. But when we were all paralyzed for a few seconds while our bodies changed, my dad lost control of the car and we veered across the divider line into an oncoming truck. When I woke up in the hospital, I couldn't remember what had happened just before I lost consciousness; I didn't remember the transformation itself, or the crash. I was confused and frightened more by my changed body than by the fact that my right leg was in a cast and raised up with chains. The first thing I noticed was the thin grey fur on my arms; then I felt myself all over, under the hospital gown, and noticed the long tall ears sticking up through the bandages on my head, and the smooth absence where my penis and testicles had been. I think I must have screamed. A nurse came running in and said, "Oh, good, honey, you're awake." I stared at her: she had fur and long ears like I'd felt on my own head. "What happened to me?" I asked. "Where's my mom and dad?" "You were in a car accident," she explained. "Do you not remember? You hurt your head, so you might forget some of what happened." "But why do I have fur? And why do you have fur, too, and those ears...?" I was assuming I must have lost my boy parts in the accident that injured my leg. "We don't know, honey. Lots of people changed earlier today -- maybe everybody in the world. People around here got fur and long ears, and... and little boys and girls changed more, they don't seem to be boys or girls anymore." "What do you mean?" In reply she gently lifted up my gown to expose my crotch, and helped me prop up on my pillows so I could see. "We don't know why, but it seems like every boy or girl younger than about eleven or twelve lost their boy or girl parts. We hope they'll grow back when you're older, but we don't know yet." "Oh. But where's my mom and dad?" "They were hurt in the car accident too." Apparently telling me my parents were dead was above her pay-grade; she let the chaplain, who came around the next morning after the doctor had examined me, tell me about that. And he told me they'd been in touch with my aunt and uncle, who were coming to get me as soon as they could. But travel was difficult in the first few days after the Divergence, with planes grounded and roads blocked with thousands of wrecked cars. It took Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler over a week to come get me; I had no visitors all that time, except for the nurses and doctors and the chaplain, who came to see me several times. They never could completely fix my leg and hip; I still have a bad limp, and walk with a cane. It took me a long time to get over my parents' death, but I loved Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler, and was glad I hadn't ended up in an orphanage. I didn't tell Karen any of that, but we shared stories of what it was like to be of a minority neospecies in a high school where most of the students were native to the local change-region. Seventy percent of the kids in Karen's high school had been Minneapolis turtles; ninety-five percent of the kids in my school had been Lincoln bison, and almost all the rest were Omaha sheepdogs, except for me. I'd been asexual since the change, and probably wouldn't have felt any attraction for people of other species even if I were still male, but I still thought of myself as a boy by default and mostly hung out with boys, who tended to share more of my interests than girls. But as my friends got older and got interested in girls, I felt left out of their conversations more and more. "Man, that must have been rough. There were ten tripods in my school, but six of us were girls, and one of the guys was a real creep; I dated all three of the other guys at different times, but I broke up with the last one not long after graduation, since we were going to different colleges and I didn't feel all that strongly about him. And then there was this xenophile, a St. Paul elk, who kept asking me out even after I'd told him I wasn't interested..." She shook her head. "There weren't any xenophiles at my school," I said. "Or at least none that were open about it." Xenophilia was pretty rare as far as I knew, a lot rarer than being gay, but in a small town like Hebron xenophiles were even more likely to keep quiet about their predilections than gays. I'd been doing a lot of reading about sexual orientations and kinks in the last few months, as I was looking forward to finally entering puberty and wondering what sex and orientation I'd end up with. After a few moments' thought I asked: "Why didn't you go to college in Chicago?" She shrugged. "There are a fair number of us tripods in New Orleans -- more than in Minneapolis, actually. There's enough at Tulane and UNO for a decent dating pool. And I want to try living somewhere warm for a while. What about you? I'm guessing you're looking forward to finally meeting some girls of your species?" "Yeah," I said, glancing away from her. "I can hardly wait." I'd glossed over the fact that I was prepubescent and asexual; I'd just told her there weren't any other people of my species at Thayer Central High. She probably thought all Raleigh rabbits were as short as me; I hadn't grown an inch since I was twelve. She shook her head. "Good luck. And don't get so obsessed with girls that you fail your classes." "I hope not." I had no idea what my sex drive was going to be like, but from what I'd read, mature Raleigh rabbits tended to have a stronger sex drive than the average old-style human. Our conversation drifted to other, more innocuous topics, and then petered out. Karen took out a tablet and started reading, and after looking out the window at the passing countryside for a while, I did the same. ----- Karen and I got out at New Orleans and said goodbye. I went to the nearby hotel where I'd reserved a room, and returned to the station the next morning to board the train that would take me to Atlanta. When I looked around the car, I saw (among people of a dozen neospecies, some of which I'd never heard of) three Raleigh rabbits, two women and a man. They were all a lot older than me, in their thirties or forties, but I sat down next to them and introduced myself. "Hi, Joel, I'm Rachel," said one of the women, who had lighter fur than mine, almost white. "Are you traveling by yourself?" "Yes," I said. "I'm going to NC State -- as a freshman." "You don't look old enough to be starting college," the man said. "I'm eighteen," I said. "But I haven't started puberty because I've lived in Nebraska since I was a child, and there weren't any other rabbits around to trigger it." Unconsciously I took a deep breath; it must have already started, though I couldn't feel it yet, my body finally absorbing the pheromones of other Raleigh rabbits and starting to grow up. "Oh! That must have been terrible," said the other woman. "What were your parents thinking?" "My parents died in a car crash," I said, "and I was raised by my aunt and uncle. They're Lincoln bison. I don't blame them for not relocating to Raleigh when they adopted me, their jobs and all their friends were in Hebron. And it wasn't that bad, I was able to make friends with some other kids even though I was different." I wasn't sure why I told her things right away that I hadn't wanted to talk with Karen about; maybe she gave off a motherly vibe. It was a powerful experience, meeting people of my own kind for the first time in nine years. "But still -- to be going through puberty while you're dealing with leaving home and living on your own for the first time... I can't imagine how hard that will be. Here," she said, pulling a card out of her purse, "call me if you're having trouble and need to talk to someone." The card read "Terry Davenport -- Counselor," and had her contact information in smaller type; it was a Raleigh address. "Thanks," I said. "I guess the school has counselors too, though." "Yes, that might be more convenient. Still, if you don't feel comfortable with whoever the school assigns you, feel free to call me." The man introduced himself then, as Jason Davenport. "Were you changing trains in New Orleans or staying here for a while?" "I had some business meetings in town, and my wives took a few days of vacation to join me," he said. I nodded; I'd heard that a lot of Raleigh rabbits were polygamous, since the sex ratio wasn't even. The odds were about seventy-thirty that I'd develop as a girl, but it depended a lot on who I hung out with. If a group of people who spent most of their time together had too many or too few of one sex, some of them would change; if I spent most of my time at college with girls, there was a decent chance I'd develop as a boy. I wasn't sure how strongly I wanted that; I was used to wearing pants, but there was no reason I couldn't keep doing that if I were a girl, and I'd long since gotten used to not having a penis. Either a penis or a vagina would have to be a big improvement on my nerveless little pee-hole. Rachel and Jason started watching a movie on her tablet, but I kept talking with Terry for a while; she asked me more questions about growing up in isolation from others of my species, and gave me some advice about dating. "Don't," she said. "Not for a while after your body settles down in your new sex, at least. Maybe spring semester, or next fall might be even better. I know you're eighteen, but if you're like most people going through puberty, you won't be sure of your sexual preferences for some while after your body starts developing. Homosexuality is rarer among Raleigh rabbits than in some neospecies, but it's not unheard of..." "Yeah, I've been reading about stuff. I think I sort of know what to expect." "And... are you going to be okay if you develop as a girl? It looks like you identify as a boy." I shrugged, my ears twitching. "Well, yeah. I was a boy before the Divergence and I guess I've been acting like a boy ever since even though I know I might turn out to be a girl." "Your aunt and uncle should have encouraged you to explore your gender more, to try different things and see how you liked them. That's what we generally encourage parents to do nowadays, since we don't know what sex children will be when they grow up and we can't be sure they'll stay the same sex their whole lives." I nodded. "What about you? Have you always been the same?" She shook her head. "I was a man until the Divergence and for a while afterward. I was married, and my wife was running some errands in a neighboring change-region when the Divergence happened; she became a Cary hyena." I'd done some reading about the other neospecies that I might meet in the Triangle area, and I gasped at the implications. "Oh." "Yeah, our marriage didn't last long after that. And I was working in an office where more than half of us were male; I changed, and my orientation changed too though it took me a while to realize it. I dated one of the guys from my office who remained male, but we didn't click. A year or so later I met Jason and Rachel, and I joined their marriage a few months after that." I took that in silently. It wasn't any of my business to ask about their sexual practices, though I had some clinical curiosity about it. "What about your... gender identity? Did that change too?" "Gradually, to some degree. I'm still have the same interests, pretty much the same personality, but after I fell in love with Jason I started experimenting more with clothing and jewelry, trying to look nice for him. Don't feel like you have to do the same if you become female, though. It's up to you whether and how fast you change your presentation." "I'll keep that in mind." ----- I spent the night at a hotel in Atlanta, and got on another train to Raleigh the next morning. The Davenports were on the same train; I waved to them and Terry waved back, but there wasn't a free seat next to them. There were a few other Raleigh rabbits around, though, and I found a seat near some who looked to be near my age, a girl and a boy. I introduced myself, but they didn't seem interested in talking to me, and after chatting a little bit with the man on the other side of me -- an Allatoona otter who was going to Washington, DC on business -- I took out my tablet and read for a while before taking a nap. I woke up when the train stopped. I was in Raleigh for the first time since I was nine, when I was discharged from the hospital and I got in Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler's car for the two-day drive to Nebraska. The young people sitting next to me had already grabbed their luggage and gotten off by the time I was completely awake; I grabbed my backpack and my cane and made my way to the door and down the stairs to the platform. I looked around for signs pointing me to the shuttles, and saw the Davenports making their way toward the parking deck. Terry saw me and said something I couldn't hear to the others, then came over to me. "Don't forget what I said. Call me if you need someone to talk to, and good luck with college. And puberty." "Thanks." A few minutes later I found the NC State shuttle, and got on. I looked around; I recognized the girl and boy who'd sat next to me on the train, and another person who'd been in our car, of a species I wasn't familiar with. He or she looked pretty much like an old-style human; she had long hair and wore an ankle-length skirt, so I guessed she identified as female, though she had very small breasts or none, and her hips and waist weren't very pronounced. "Hi, I'm Joel," I said as I sat down in an empty seat across the aisle from her. "I'm Amy," she said, confirming my guess. "Are you a freshman?" "Yes." "So am I." "Can I ask why you picked NC State?" "I wanted to go to school a good distance away from my family," she said. "Close enough I could visit for holidays without breaking the bank, far enough my parents wouldn't drop in all the time without notice. And close enough there might be a few people of my species in the city, if not at the same school." "Sounds good," I said. "I grew up here, but I've lived in Nebraska since --" Just then the shuttle driver got on and spoke up loudly. "Okay, we're fixing to leave for the NC State campus. I can stop at any of the dorms, or at the administration building. Who needs to stop where?" I dug through my backpack for my registration packet. While I was doing that, the girl and boy sitting in front of us called out the names of different dorms, and Amy said: "Alexander Hall." "I'm in Alexander Hall too," I said, finding the paper I wanted. The shuttle driver made a couple of notes on a pad, then sat down and told the shuttle where to go. Amy and I chatted a little more on the way to the dorm. The driver stopped at the other kids' dorms first; when he let us off, Amy got a couple of big suitcases out of the shuttle's luggage compartment. "Don't you have anything else?" she asked, eying my backpack. "I shipped everything else to the dorm," I said. "The UPS tracking system said it's already arrived; I just hope the university hasn't misplaced it." We walked up to the dorm entrance and found the registration area. The desk clerk was a female Raleigh rabbit, probably just a little older than us, with dark grey fur. I let Amy get herself checked in first; she got her room assignment and waved goodbye to me as she headed down the hall to our left. "I should have a big package to pick up," I said, after I'd given the clerk my name. "And I'll need help getting it to my room." She looked me up on her computer and said: "This says we already put your package in your room. You're in 114, by the way... for now." She eyed me curiously. "If you or your roommate change sex, we'll move one of you." She gave me a keycard, a sheet of dorm rules, and an invitation to a dorm party the following evening. "Okay." I looked at the signage and saw that 114 was down the hall to the left, and went that way. But when I stepped into the open door of 114, I had a surprise. "You!" Amy was unpacking one of her suitcases on the right-hand bed. There was a big packing crate on the left-hand side of the room, one Aunt Ellen and I had packed and shipped a week ago. "Oh, hi, Joel. You're on this hall too?" "I'm in this room -- or so they said." "That can't be right. Let's go complain about it." "That's my stuff in that packing crate right there." "Then I'll ask them to move me to a different room, so you don't have to move all that stuff. It looks heavy." "It is..." We walked back down the hall to the clerk's desk, Amy going slow to match my pace. There were several Raleigh rabbits checking in at the desk, and we waited our turn. "You made a mistake," Amy said when we got to the head of the line, "you put Joel and me in the same room." The clerk looked stuff up on her computer and said: "Oh, I think I see why they did that. You're registered as a hermaphrodite, and Joel Hampton is registered as asexual. Is either of those incorrect?" Amy and I looked at each other appraisingly. I was wondering what she had had under that skirt; there wasn't an obvious bulge in front. "No, that's right," I said. "Yeah, I'm biologically hermaphrodite, but I identify as female. And Joel -- I had the impression you identify as male?" she asked, turning to me. "More or less," I said, and shrugged. "So far. But I guess I'll probably be a girl in a few weeks." The clerk said: "I'll make some calls, but it's probably too late in the day to get a change made. If Mr. Hampton develops as a male, we'll certainly move him to the other hall, but for now... just try to make the best of it, please?" "All right," I said. "I guess we can keep our backs turned while the other one's changing, at least for a day or two." Amy looked dissatisfied, and said: "Who do I need to talk to if they won't let us change roommates?" "The housing authority -- here, I'll give you the number. But talk to whoever's on duty here first, tomorrow afternoon." Amy and I walked back to our room, casting curious glances at each other. "So," she said, "asexual... do you mean you're not attracted to anybody sexually, or that you reproduce asexually, or...?" I waited until we were inside the room with the door closed before I answered. "I'm sexless myself," I said, sitting down on the bed next to my packing crate, "and not attracted to anybody, like you said, but most people of my species are male or female. Like that girl at the desk, and those kids on the bus. It's because I grew up in isolation, and Raleigh rabbits need exposure to other rabbits' pheromones to start puberty." She stared at me. "Oh. And you said you'd probably be a girl in a few weeks?" "I don't know -- kids start out asexual and develop as boys or girls depending on what pheromones they're most exposed to when they get to the right age. I'm not sure how it's going to work for me since my puberty's so delayed. But seventy percent of Raleigh rabbits are female, so yeah, I'm more likely to be a girl." "And yet." She looked me up and down, probably thinking of the comfortable loose jeans and T-shirt I'd worn on the train. "Well, like you said, we can keep our backs turned while we change until we get the housing authority to listen to us." "Is it okay if I ask you what kind of hermaphroditism the clerk was talking about?" She flushed. "Yeah, I guess so, since I asked you... Athens magnolias are hermaphroditic when we're in heat, which is only for a few days every summer. The rest of the time we're asexual... kind of like you, maybe. We don't have any reproductive organs except when we're mating or pregnant." "Oh. Then maybe we don't need to change rooms." She sighed. "Maybe. Let's see how this works out." I opened my crate and started unpacking, and Amy unpacked the rest of her stuff. ----- After we got unpacked, we walked over to the nearest dining hall for supper, and sat together. Most of the people we saw were Raleigh rabbits; I also recognized several other North Carolina neospecies from my research, and saw a handful of people from farther off, like Amy. We sat down and talked for a few minutes about our high school experiences, what we planned to do in college, and so forth. After we'd been eating for maybe ten minutes a girl came over to us and said, "Mind if I sit here?" The dining hall was getting crowded and there weren't a lot of empty seats left. "Sure," I said, and Amy nodded, her mouth being full. The new girl was, I guessed from her height, the stripey pattern of her curly hair, and the bulge in her pants, a Cary hyena. She introduced herself as Radhika; her mother was from India, but she'd lived in Raleigh all her life. She was also a freshman, but lived in a different dorm from us. Amy and I told her a little of our own history, but by mutual consent didn't tell her about our spat with the housing clerk. A couple of Raleigh rabbits, both boys, sat down near us as well, but didn't join in our conversation at first. But when their conversation hit a lull, one of them looked at me and said, "If you're smart enough to start college at twelve, why didn't you go to Duke or Harvard or somewhere?" "I'm eighteen," I said angrily, my ears trembling. "Oh. Sorry." He looked like he wanted to ask me something, but was too embarrassed or too polite to say it. After a few moments' hesitation, I volunteered the information he was probably curious about, and he said: "Welcome back to Raleigh, I guess. Do you remember a lot about the city from when you were a kid?" "A few things," I said. "We lived in Garner and didn't come into downtown much as far as I can recall." He nodded. "My family's from Auburn, not far from there. I'm Katie Cartwright." So a girl before the Divergence, apparently, but developed as a boy at puberty. Or maybe he'd been a girl until a short time ago; I didn't want to ask. "Joel Hampton," I said. "And this is Amy Taniger, and Radhika Eames. We're all freshmen." "My buddy Quill and I are sophomores," he said. "Let me know if you've got any more questions after you get through with the orientation tour tomorrow," and he wrote his contact information on a slip of paper and gave it to me. I thanked him, but I wasn't sure I wanted to spend much time with guys for a while yet. I needed to meet more girls, Raleigh rabbits in particular, to have any chance of developing as a boy. ----- That night, after talking on the phone with Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler, I went down the hall to shower; I figured it would be less busy than in the mornings. The bathrooms in Alexander Hall were unisex, but I didn't see any guys using it when I was in there, just girls, all but one of them rabbits. I blow-dried my fur -- the dorm bathroom had a wonderful full-body blow dryer, much better than the hand dryer I'd used back home -- and put on my bathrobe, and when I got back to the room, Amy had changed into her pajamas and gotten into bed. "I'll close my eyes while you dress," she said, and she also pulled a pillow over her head. I dressed for bed and read for a few minutes before turning out the light. ----- The next morning after breakfast, Amy and I found ourselves in the same orientation tour group. There were about twenty people in the group, more than half of us Raleigh rabbits, about twelve or fourteen girls and six or eight boys (if you counted me as a boy). The leader of our tour group was a Greensboro tiger, and an RA in our dorm; he showed us around the campus and answered a lot of questions, and left us at the administration building where some of us needed to talk to people about changing classes or other things. "Do you want to talk to the housing authority?" I asked Amy. "Nah. Let's see how things go for a few days. Or until we know how you're changing. How long does that normally take?" I shrugged. "I don't know. With kids going through puberty at the normal time it's over two or three years; with adults changing because they're in a group that doesn't have the right sex ratio it can be just a few weeks. I wasn't able to find anything about people like me; maybe there aren't any." "If it takes you a year or more to change, are you going to know which way you're changing before it finishes?" "Oh, yeah. Probably within weeks. Maybe days." I didn't see Amy again until that night, at the party in the common room of our dorm. I said hi to her, but I spent most of the party introducing myself to other people, mostly female Raleigh rabbits, and trying to get to know any of them who seemed at all interested in talking to me. "So you grew up out in the middle of nowhere?" asked Sarah, a girl from Knightdale, an eastern suburb. "What do you think of Raleigh?" "I haven't seen much except for the campus, and I don't remember a lot from when I was a kid. I vaguely remember going to the capitol and the natural history museum on elementary school field trips." "We can show you some things next weekend, maybe," said her friend Rob. They'd gone to the same high school and were roommates. I guessed Rob had been a boy until the Divergence, but from what they said I gathered that she'd been a girl since puberty, and a pretty girly girl at that; she was dressed fancier than anyone else at the party, wearing a long dress with puffed sleeves, a silver necklace, and a tiara. In our age group, kids who were prepubescent at the time of the Divergence, there was almost no correlation between names and sexes. A few people had changed their name when they entered puberty and saw what sex they were going to be, but most didn't. I chatted with Sarah and Rob for a little while. Then a guy came in and sat down between them, and they scooted aside on the sofa to make room for him; Sarah was now wedged up against my thigh. A few months later that might have been exciting; for now it was just uncomfortable. "Hi, girls," the new guy said, and kissed both of them. "Who's your little friend?" "This is Joel," Sarah said. "Joel, this is our boyfriend Rico." "Hi, Joel. I'd guess you're a genius to graduate high school so early... do you do tutoring?" "I'm eighteen," I said. "I haven't grown up all the way because I lived in Hebron, Nebraska where there aren't any other Raleigh rabbits." I was getting tired of explaining that. "Huh. Why'd your parents move there?" Sarah swatted him on the arm and he looked at her in bewilderment. "They died and my aunt and uncle adopted me," I explained briefly. I'd already told Sarah and Rob about it in a little more detail. "I'll see you guys later," and I went to introduce myself to some more people. Even though my goal was to meet a lot of female Raleigh rabbits and nudge my puberty toward the "male" setting, I wound up spending the last hour of the party hanging with Amy and George, a Nashville bat who was apparently the only person of his species in our dorm, maybe at the university. He had no eyes, and sensed things by echolocation. His family had moved to North Carolina a couple of years after the Divergence. He had a good sense of humor and we shared several interests; it was nice, too, to talk with someone who didn't treat me like a kid, like too many of the Raleigh rabbits I'd met in the last couple of days. ----- Classes started the next day. Amy, George and I had compared schedules; I shared one class with each of them, English 101 with Amy and Biology 101 with George. We walked together to breakfast and then George and I walked together to Biology. Dr. Wilson was a Cary hyena, not as tall and massive as Radhika (most older Cary hyena women weren't as big as the younger women who'd gone through puberty after the Divergence) but taller and broader-shouldered than the average Raleigh rabbit of either sex. She spent little time going over the syllabus and other administrative details, but got straight into lecturing on different types of single-celled organisms. I'd gotten to class too late to talk to anyone beforehand, but after class I introduced myself to some of the girls I'd been sitting near. All were too busy to do much more than tell me their names before they had to go to their next class, and one was too rude to do even that. I had Political Science next, with Dr. Ashton, a male Raleigh rabbit who used a wheelchair, then lunch. I didn't see anyone I knew when I walked into the dining hall, so I found a table with more girls than boys (that wasn't hard) and asked if I could join them. They were polite enough to let me sit there, but didn't include me in their conversation. I watched and listened and learned a few things. I knew what flirtation looked like; I may have been asexual but I'd spent plenty of time around horny teenage Lincoln bison. But the thing where a girl leans over so her ears brush the boy's ears was new to me. Was I going to be the brush-er or the brush-ee? Amy came in while I was partway through lunch, and we waved to each other, but she didn't try to sit near me. There wasn't any more room at the table by then. I joined her after I finished eating and walked to English from there; we got there early enough that I could talk to a few people before class started. Radhika and Rob were also in that section of English, taught by Ms. Allen, a Durham bull. Durham bulls look a lot like Lincoln bison, but they're generally taller and skinnier; Ms. Allen didn't have horns but she had the distinctive facial features of a bull. (I wasn't sure why they named the whole neospecies "bulls" when that's a sex-specific name for male cattle, elephants and so forth. I found out later it's because before the Divergence, Durham had a sports team called the Bulls -- I can't remember what sport they played. Of course almost all sports are local now, so most of the big city-based teams that played teams from other cities are all gone.) Amy had somewhere else she wanted to go, so I walked with Rob back to our dorm, where I worked on homework until Amy got back and for a while longer. Except for brief greetings when she came in we were silent until near bedtime. "Is it okay if I ask you something?" I asked, looking up from my biology textbook. "Maybe," she said. "What is it?" "If you identify as female... does that mean that when you're, um, -- I think you said 'in heat'? -- that you're attracted to other hermaphrodites who identify as male? Or...?" She flushed, and for a moment I thought she was going to refuse to answer. "No. When we're in heat we aren't attracted to other people -- we just want our flowers pollinated." At first I thought that was a weird euphemism, but then she explained that Athens magnolias actually grow *flowers* for a few days each year, and they lounge around outdoors while insects and hummingbirds come along and pollinate them. "At least, if you're old enough. My parents always made me stay indoors all during the blooming so I wouldn't get pregnant. Even after scientists developed birth control pills that worked for us, they still made me stay indoors just in case." "Huh. So even when you're -- in heat, you aren't attracted to other people?" "No... we're asexual, not aromantic. We can fall in love like people of other species, we're just not obsessed with their bodies. I --" She broke off, and I didn't press her. After a minute or two of silence I said: "I'm scared. Of turning into a girl, or even a boy. I've done all the research, I have all the facts, but I still have no idea what it's going to *feel* like. Looking at Rob and Sarah, and the way they hang onto Rico... I envy them and I'm scared of becoming like them. Does that make sense?" "I guess. Why'd you come here, though, if you were afraid of -- all that?" "It... seemed like an important part of life. Something I should experience. And now -- well, it's too late to back out. Even if I got on a train to Nebraska tomorrow, I've still been exposed to enough Raleigh rabbit pheromones that I'm going to go through puberty one way or another." "I think you'll do fine. Almost everybody goes through it, and it's rough for some people, but... I think you'll have an advantage, being more mature. You've done all the research, like you said." "Yeah. I hope it's enough." ----- By the end of my first week in college, I'd made the acquaintance of several dozen people and started to become good friends with a few. Unfortunately, most of those were foreigners; the only Raleigh rabbit I was really friends with was Rob, and that perforce meant spending time with Rico as well as Sarah. (Back in Hebron we called anybody who wasn't a Lincoln bison -- such as me -- a "foreigner", even if they were native to Hebron and just happened to be in Omaha or Kansas City on Valentine's Day. That wasn't the custom in Raleigh, which was a lot more cosmopolitan, but I found myself thinking of non-rabbits as "foreigners." I tried not to say it out loud.) Saturday after the first week of classes, Amy and I joined Sarah, Rob, and Rico on a trip to see more of the city. Rico was the only one of us who had a car; Sarah sat up front with him and the rest of us squeezed into the back. With new post-Divergence safety regulations that forbid manually operated cars, and the increasing fuel costs, not as many people can afford to own and operate cars; there aren't a lot of cheap used cars around for young people to get started with like there were when Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler were growing up. I gathered that Rico's family was tolerably well off. He showed us the capitol, the cathedral, the convention center, and some historic buildings. I remembered some of them from when I was a kid, but most of it was new to me. Finally we stopped at a restaurant near a mall on the outskirts of the city, and then went to the mall itself. Amy, Rob and Sarah wanted to shop for clothes. Rico looked down at me and said: "You want to go with them, kid, or hang with me? I'm going by the GameStop first, not sure where to after that." I was torn. I didn't really want to go clothes-shopping; I'd always worn fairly simple boys' clothes and let Aunt Ellen do most of the shopping for me. But I didn't want to spend hours one-on-one with Rico; that might seal my fate as a girl. And even if I didn't care what sex I was, I wasn't keen on spending more time with Rico, period. "I'll go with them," I said, and Amy looked surprised. "Suit yourself," Rico said, and kissed Rob and Sarah. "Give me a call when y'all are done." I learned more about girls' clothes in the next few hours than I'd learned in all my previous Internet research. I found out that Rob needed two different size bras for her upper and lower breasts, for instance; Amy looked as bemused at that as I did. She wouldn't need a bra until and unless she got pregnant; Athens magnolias don't develop breasts until they start lactating. Sarah tried on and bought a dress that had a high neckline, but two little peepholes, one between each pair of breasts; Rob preferred more modest garments. Sarah persuaded Amy to try on a dress with a low neckline, but she didn't buy it, saying it looked silly without breasts to fill it out. They persuaded me to try on a child-size skirt, but I declined to buy it. "I still don't know if I'm going to be a girl; if I turn out to be a boy, this would be a waste of money." "Not necessarily," Rob said. "Some boys wear skirts. But I guess it might not fit you for very long." "I hope so." I didn't know if I'd finish growing up once I hit puberty, or if my growth was permanently stunted by not starting puberty at the right age. My pediatrician back in Hebron had done some research and said it was anybody's guess. That reminded me I needed to find a local doctor, somebody who knew Raleigh rabbit biology. After visiting a shoe store and a jewelry store (Rob bought a pair of shoes; the others didn't buy anything), we met up with Rico at the food court, where he was drinking a smoothie and playing a game on his tablet. Sarah and Rob sat down on either side of him and Amy and I sat across the table. "You girls find anything good?" he asked. "We'll show you later," Sarah said, and whispered something in his ear. He smiled. "What about you?" I asked. "Last Dragon to Avondale," he said, holding up his tablet. "There are these dragons that live in the subway tunnels, and people ride them, but if you don't treat them right they'll eat passengers and driver both. You buy anything, kid?" I was sick of him calling me "kid." "No, I tried on some things but I didn't want to waste money on stuff that probably won't fit me when I've grown some more." "That's good sense." We returned to campus, and Rico walked with us back to Alexander Hall, though he didn't live there. I saw him go into the stairwell with Sarah and Rob as Amy and I turned to go down the hall to our room. ----- Sunday morning, I got up early and showered before going to chapel. I examined myself carefully before I turned on the water in the shower. Was there a little puffiness behind my nipples or was I imagining it? Being a girl wouldn't be too bad, I decided; I'd mostly enjoyed hanging out with the girls yesterday. Except for the parts involving Rico. Why did Sarah and Rob like him so much? Or did they love him? What was that about, anyway? Some of the stuff I'd read suggested that sex made you like people you wouldn't like otherwise. Other sources seemed to say that it made you like one of your friends a lot more than all the others. It was pretty confusing, especially when some of it was pre-Divergence stuff that might not apply anymore, or might apply to other neospecies but not to Raleigh rabbits. Radhika was the only one of my new friends I saw at chapel. We chatted for a few minutes after the service, and then walked to the library together; both of us had some research to do for different classes. "Do you have a boyfriend?" I asked her. "I had two boyfriends in high school, at different times. I broke up with the last one, Miguel, a few months ago... he was too clingy." I wasn't sure what to say to that. I had a vague idea what "clingy" meant from looking at some of the teen couples back in Hebron, and I was pretty sure some people would describe Sarah and Rob as clingy, but Rico didn't seem to mind. She continued after a brief pause: "Here, I've met several boys like me, and I asked Paul out. We went to dinner last night; I think we'll go out again." "How do you know? I mean, how did you know you wanted to go out with him, and not one of the other Cary hyenas you've met here?" "He's smart," she said; "he's on a full academic scholarship. And we both like a lot of the same movies. And he is just a little taller than you -- very cute, just the right size to sit in my lap. Next date, or no later than the one after that." She smiled. All the male Cary hyenas I'd seen were shorter than the girls, except for one librarian who'd been an adult at the time of the Divergence, but most of them were taller than me. If this was the Paul who sat in front of me in Political Science, he was just an inch or so taller than me, more than a foot shorter than Radhika. We parted when we got to the library, and went in different directions to do our research. ----- By the end of my second week of school, I was sure. The puffiness behind my nipples was too marked to be my imagination, and I was pretty sure the pee-hole between my legs was getting longer if not deeper. "It's official," I told Amy when I got back from the shower. "I'm going to be a girl." "Oh," she said, and then she came over and sat next to me on my bed. "Are you going to be okay?" "I... I think so. It's something to have the uncertainty out of the way. I don't know how much longer it's going to take before I have to start wearing bras and, um, and tampons. And start noticing boys." Or maybe girls, but that wasn't likely. "I wish I could help more, but... I don't really know what you're going through. I've never worn a bra or had a period. I guess our blooming is kind of similar, but it's only once a year, not once a month." "For Raleigh rabbits it's every six weeks. One advantage we have over old-style humans." I laughed nervously. "Probably Rob or Sarah can help you." "Yeah. I'll go talk to them -- when Rico's not around." ----- But first, I got up and ate breakfast early, when the dining hall was almost empty, so I could go by the clinic before Biology. Katie Cartwright was sitting in the waiting room, a bloody makeshift bandage around his hand. "What happened?" I asked, sitting next to him. "Freak accident," he said. "I cut my hand trying to open a package. How are you settling in? Ah -- Joel, right?" "Classes are going pretty well, and I've met several cool people." "That's good. You join any clubs yet?" "No... I wanted to make sure I'm able to keep up with my classes before I get involved with anything like that." "Probably a good idea. Don't study so hard you forget to enjoy life, though. What are you here for?" "Um, I haven't decided on my major yet --" "No, I mean in the clinic," and he waved his bandaged hand. "Oh." My ears twitched. "Uh, just a general checkup. I haven't had a physical back home in quite a while, and I've never seen a doctor who was familiar with Raleigh rabbit biology, so..." "Yeah, better let them check you out. No telling what growing up in isolation might have done to you." The nurse called him back then, and I waited a while longer, studying, before she called me. "What seems to be the trouble?" she asked, starting to check my vital signs. She was a Greensboro tiger. "Well... my puberty was delayed because of growing up in isolation from other Raleigh rabbits. Now that I'm here, it seems to be finally starting, and I wanted to have you check and make sure it's working right." The nurse drew several vials of blood, weighed me, and measured my height. I'd put on half an inch and several pounds since the last time I measured myself back in Hebron. When Dr. Mathers came in -- a female Raleigh rabbit -- she listened to my story, then asked me to change into a hospital gown so she could examine me. She felt the puffiness around my nipples, and looked carefully at the space between my legs. "You look like a child of about twelve or thirteen who's developing into a girl," she said. "If you were a child, I'd expect you to have your first period in three to six months. But at your age... I can't tell. I want you to come in once a week to have your height and weight measured, and for blood tests, to make sure the hormone levels are right." "Okay, I will. Is there anything else I need to do?" "Not yet. Once your vagina is fully formed, you should start wearing a pad just in case your period starts sooner than we expect. And once I have two or three weeks' worth of blood test results, I may decide to start you on hormone shots if the levels don't look right. I'll order an ultrasound in about a month to see if your internal organs are forming correctly. But for now let's see if nature takes care of everything. "Another thing. I don't think it will be safe to put you on birth control until after you've finished puberty, or at least until we have more data on how your puberty is proceeding. So if you want to become sexually active soon after your vagina is fully formed -- which I don't recommend --" "I won't," I hastily interrupted. "I'm not planning to date, much less have sex, until at least a few months after I finish puberty." I was late to Biology, so I didn't call Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler with the news right away. After English, I told Amy, Radhika and Rob what the doctor had said. "Welcome to the club," Rob said, and gave me a hug. "Do you want to go shopping again this weekend?" I hesitated. Did I want to start wearing girly clothes just because I was developing girl parts? "Let's wait a few weeks," I said. "I've already grown half an inch and if I buy stuff now it won't fit when I'm finished growing." "You'll probably have to buy new things several times in the next two or three years," she said, "if you grow as much as a young teen does and at the same rate." "Well, I'm going to keep wearing what I've got while it fits. When I outgrow it, we can go shopping." "Deal!" ----- That evening, I left Amy studying in our room and went out for a walk in front of the dorm. When I was out of earshot of anybody, I called home. "Joel? How are you doing?" "Pretty well, Aunt Ellen. I -- um, I went to see the doctor today, at the school clinic. She examined me and did some blood tests, and... she said I'm developing into a girl." There was a long silence at the other end of the line. When I was about to fill it, Aunt Ellen said: "Oh, Joel, I'm sorry. I know you wanted to be a boy." "It will be okay," I said. "I've got friends here who will help me through it. One who's been through the same thing -- well, not the long delay and isolation part, but she was a boy until the Divergence and then she developed as a girl a few years later." "I'm glad you're making friends there, Joel. I wish we could come see you, but..." "I'll see you at Christmas. Maybe I'll be wearing bras by then." "Remember what I told you. I can't make you do something you don't want to do, now, but I think you'll be happier if you listen." "I will, Aunt Ellen." *I'll try*, I thought. But maybe once my new girl hormones got through with my brain, I'd find it hard to remember and pay attention to Aunt Ellen's warnings about boys and sex. Or to my own observations of how boys -- Lincoln bison boys, anyway -- acted around girls. She called Uncle Tyler to the phone and we chatted for a few more minutes before I hung up and went back inside. ----- Two weeks later, I'd grown another half inch in height and a couple of inches in the hips. Some of my shirts were getting tight in the shoulders, and there was only one pair of pants I could fit into anymore. I had to go shopping. Rico gave Sarah, Rob and me a ride to the mall again. Amy didn't come with us; she had a test to study for. Rico dropped us off and said he'd meet us for supper. "Come on," Sarah said. "Macy's is having a sale, let's start there." At first I just got a few T-shirts that were too big for me, but not ridiculously big; stuff I could grow into. I tried on some blouses that fit better, but I didn't want to spend that much money on stuff I'd probably outgrow within weeks at the rate I was going. But when it came to covering my legs, Sarah and Rob had good arguments for going with skirts. "If you buy a pair of pants, they'll be too tight on you pretty soon. But a skirt that's long on you now will be just right when you finish growing; you can adjust the waist." When I still balked at it, they pointed out that some Raleigh rabbit males wore skirts -- a lot of adults who transformed during or soon after the Divergence refused to change their clothing style just because they'd changed sex, and the custom had started to spread to some of the neighboring change-regions. I'd never seen a man of any neospecies wearing a skirt in Hebron or Lincoln, but if it was okay around here, okay... besides, I was soon going to be a girl now and should get used to it. So I wound up with three ankle-length skirts, which were a little loose and needed a belt, and then bought a discounted pair of tennis shoes (my old shoes were starting to pinch by then). I ditched my too-tight pants and wore the denim skirt out of the store. I bought new panties, too; I didn't need bras yet, but it probably wouldn't be much longer. "You're looking kind of cute there, kid," Rico said when we found him at the food court a few hours later. "I might say pretty if my girlfriends weren't standing right here." Rob swatted him on the arm; Sarah rolled her eyes. My ears were twitching something fierce; I sat down opposite him. Were his eyes glancing at my little baby breasts? I'd noticed boys doing that to girls back home, but... now it was happening to me. I felt like I was going to cry, and I didn't want to do it in front of Rico. "I'm going to the restroom," I said, and walked off. Rob came with me. I hesitated between the restroom doors, and then followed Rob into the ladies' room. It was the first time I'd entered a ladies' room. I'd always used the men's room back home, and for the first few weeks at college -- though the restrooms in the dorm and some of the others on campus were unisex. But my breasts were getting just big enough to notice; I couldn't hide the fact that I was becoming a girl. I managed to avoid bursting into tears until I was sitting in a stall. The stream of pee was getting wider and messier every day as my pee-hole widened and deepened; I needed more toilet paper to wipe than I used to. It was another reminder of what was happening to me. "Are you okay, Joel?" Rob asked from the next stall. "I guess. No, not really. It's just too much all at once." After we flushed and washed our hands -- and I'd washed my face -- she put her hands on my shoulders and turned me to face her. She looked me up and down and said: "You're going to be a beautiful girl." I started to cry again. She went on: "And it's going to be awesome. You'll really like being a girl once you get over the shock. If you don't have two or three boys asking you out within a week after you start needing bras, I'll buy you a new dress." "I'm not sure I want that," I said. "I'm -- maybe it was a mistake to come here. I should have gone to school in Nebraska where I'd be safe..." "What are you worried about?" "Being attracted to boys. Not being able to control myself. Sex. Getting pregnant. STDs..." She hugged me. "You're seeing a doctor at the clinic every week, right? Ask them to prescribe you birth control before your system's finished changing. And be sensible, make sure your guy's protecting you. You've nothing to worry about if you take reasonable precautions." She took a tissue from her purse and wiped my eyes. "And if you want advice about boys, once you start feeling attracted to them, you know who to ask." "Thanks." "Come on, let's go back and eat." "I -- okay. But can you punch Rico in the arm if he looks at my breasts again?" She laughed. "I'll make him regret it." ----- A couple of weeks later, Dr. Mathers was able to get a speculum several inches into my new vagina. She sent me over to Raleigh General Hospital for an ultrasound, which confirmed that my ovaries and uterus were forming and looked normal. What wasn't normal was how fast this was happening; after a slow first couple of weeks, I seemed to be going through several years' development in a few months. I needed A-cup bras by Halloween, not to keep my breasts from wobbling but to keep the nipples from showing. As with some other girls including Rob, my lower breasts were a little bigger than the upper ones, but not (not yet anyway) a full cup size difference. I still wasn't feeling any attraction to boys, and I knew there was a slight chance I might end up attracted to girls; sometimes I'd look at the people sitting in front of me in class, or at the next table in the dining hall, wondering "Is he attractive? Is she?" I could tell that some people were good-looking, but none of them made my nipples hard or my crotch wet any more than a beautiful butterfly or a beautiful waterfall. One Saturday near the end of October, I went shopping again with Amy and Radhika. Rob and Sarah were going somewhere with Rico, but Radhika had a car. It was so old it had a steering wheel and an emergency switch to operate it manually if the self-driving software failed. I was outgrowing some of the stuff I'd bought a few weeks earlier, including my new shoes. And worse, I was getting too tall to use my cane without leaning over; I needed a longer one. With puberty changing the shape of my hips, my old injury was aching worse than usual and I really needed the cane all the time, not just on rough ground or stairs. A couple of days later, I met Katie coming out of the library. "Joel? Is that you?" "Yeah," I said self-consciously. "I see you decided which way to go. You look nice." "Thanks," I said. I wondered what he meant by "decided" and decided it was a joke. "Have you thought about joining any clubs yet?" "Yeah, I went with the science club on a trip to the natural history museum weekend before last." George had gotten involved with the science club his first day, and had invited me to join; I took him up on it after I got my first couple of exam grades and decided I could afford to take some time from studying to socialize more. "Well, the science fiction and fantasy society is having a Halloween party Thursday night. Costumes, of course, but they don't have to be fancy. You might enjoy that." Was he inviting me on a date? Rob had predicted that guys would start asking me out soon after I started having to wear bras. "I might come," I said, and we stood there looking at each other for a few more seconds before he said: "Well, I'll see you around if I don't see you there." So it wasn't a date per se, or he'd have been more definite. But I decided I'd go to the party anyway. ----- I told my friends about the Halloween party; Amy, George and Radhika said they wanted to come, but Rob had other plans with Sarah and Rico. We brainstormed about costumes, and scrounged up bits and pieces from the things we'd brought and things we ran out and bought at the last minute. Radhika and George, whose families lived nearby, went home to find stuff for their costumes and for mine and Amy's. On Halloween Amy and I returned our dorm after supper and changed, then met up with George in the lobby of Alexander Hall. Radhika and Paul were waiting for us. Radhika was wearing a warrior princess outfit, with fake chainmail over a bikini and a plastic sword as long as her arm. She was also wearing a tiara she'd borrowed from Rob. Paul -- I'd outgrown him in the weeks since the semester started, so he was now the shortest of us -- was wearing a bushy beard and plastic plate-mail with a helmet, and an ax at his side. The effect was spoiled somewhat because he was sitting in Radhika's lap. George was wearing an officer's uniform from one of the old pre-Divergence Star Trek shows, with a plastic visor that covered the smooth space where most other species have eyes. He said his dad used to wear the uniform to conventions back in the day; he'd adjusted it to fit him better. Amy and I were dressed as characters from post-Divergence serials; she was India West, a spy from an obscure serial produced in Athens (she'd shown me a couple of episodes and it was fairly good). I was Ed Crenshaw, a girl about the age I appeared to be, from "Shifting Alliances," a Raleigh-based dramedy I'd been watching for several years. She (and the actor who played her) was kind of like me; she'd been a boy before the Divergence. I wore my denim skirt and a glittery T-shirt with green ribbons on my head, Ed's signature outfit from the show. Maybe I was cheating by not wearing a science fictional or fantastic costume, but I suspected I wouldn't be the only one. ("Shifting Alliances" had some fantasy elements now and then, but not every episode.) We walked together to the student center, where the science fiction and fantasy society was hosting the party. "Nice costumes," I said to Radhika and Paul. "Are you just generally a warrior princess and a dwarf, or some specific characters I should recognize?" "Nobody in particular," said Radhika. "What about you?" "I'm Ed Crenshaw from 'Shifting Alliances,'" I explained. "I've seen a few episodes," Paul said. "A friend of mine in high school was a big fan, but I couldn't get into it... I didn't like the way it portrayed the hyena characters." I nodded. "I guess the first season was kind of problematic that way. They've done better in later seasons, though." We went into the student center and looked around. The party was supposed to be in a big meeting hall, but it looked like it had spilled into the lobby; there were people in costume standing around talking, and couples and triads sitting on the couches making out. We went into the meeting hall where the main party was. Radhika saw someone she knew and went off to talk with them, and Paul went with her. Amy, George and I headed over to the refreshments table; after I got a plate of cheese and crackers, and looked around the room again, I saw Katie nearby. There was a girl with him, a Raleigh rabbit; they were dressed in matching uniforms, probably from some TV show or vid serial I wasn't familiar with. I went over to say hi. "Oh, hi, Joel," Katie said as I approached. "This is my girlfriend, Madison." "Hi," Madison said. "Oh, I know, you're that girl from 'Shifting Alliances' -- I love that show. Have you seen the latest episode?" "No, I've gotten behind trying to keep up with classes." "I won't tell you about it, then. But it's a good one." "So how are you doing?" Katie asked. "You adjusting okay?" "Yeah, I think so. It was... a little bit of a disappointment, at first, but I knew what to expect, so it wasn't a big surprise." "This is the person I told you about," Katie said to Madison; "she grew up a long way from any other Raleigh rabbits and didn't start puberty until she came here for college." "Oh! You didn't start until the end of August?" "Yeah," I said. "The doctor says it's going faster than normal." "I'll say... Um, what did you mean by disappointment?" "Oh," I said, looking intently at my shoes, "I was kind of hoping I'd be a boy. But, like I said, I knew it wasn't likely." "There's nothing wrong with being a girl." "I didn't say there was." We talked about "Shifting Alliances" for a little while -- mostly me and Madison, with Katie pitching in now and then. After a few minutes I said I'd talk to them later, and circulated to talk to other people. I found George talking to a couple of Raleigh rabbits, also dressed in Star Trek uniforms but from a different era of the show, and he introduced me to them. Of course they thought I was a child prodigy who'd started college early. I was getting really tired of explaining myself to every Raleigh rabbit I met, and I decided to have some fun with these two. "Yeah, I graduated when I was twelve, but I took a year off to start a business before I started college." "Really? What kind of business?" asked Larry, the guy of the pair. I noticed George was looking really amused, but he didn't laugh out loud and give me away. "We made alternate reality games. I sold the company for a little over a million dollars not long before I started school." "Wow!" said Bill, Larry's girlfriend. "But with that kind of money and smarts, why are you going to school here?" "I'm just messing with you," I said, and I explained why I really looked the way I did. From Bill and Larry's expressions I wasn't sure if they thought it was any more plausible than my first story. A few minutes later I went to the ladies' room. When I sat down and pulled down my panties, I saw a few drops of blood on the pad. I was numb with shock and sat there staring at the blood for I don't know how long after I'd finished peeing. At some point I wondered if I should change it for a fresh pad, but it didn't look like much blood yet and I figured it could stand to absorb some more. Finally I wiped and pulled the panties back up. Madison came in while I was washing my hands, and looked at me in the mirror. "What's wrong?" How could she tell? "Nothing -- I, um, I just started my period." She was silent a moment. "Oh. And -- it's your first one, right?" I nodded. She rummaged in her purse. "Do you need to borrow a pad or tampon...?" I shook my head. "No, I've been wearing one -- a pad, I mean -- ever since Dr. Mathers said it could start any time. But it's still kind of a shock." "I know," she said. "I guess more so for you, because you're older than most girls are when they have their first period." "I thought I was getting used to the idea of being a girl, but... I guess I wasn't as used to it as I thought." "Hmm. You said yo