Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 6 ... getting tired, will post chapter 7-16 tomorrow.

2017-02-19T02:27:10Z

chapter 6 ... getting tired, will post chapter 7-16 tomorrow.

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[[You Could Go Home Again|Table of contents]]

----

Rob or Sarah would probably know some useful things, I figured, but
I wasn't sure I could bring myself to talk about it with them. And I
wasn't sure I ought to do it in any case -- Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler
raised me to think it was wrong. But if it was the only way I could
avoid jumping in bed with some guy... maybe it would be okay.

I held out for another week. The last morning of the semester, I walked
into the bathroom and met a guy coming out of the shower wearing a towel
and nothing else. When I got into the shower, I found I was already
wet before I turned on the water, and tentatively put a finger where
nothing but Dr. Mathers' speculum had been before. It was pleasant,
and definitely helped "relieve the pressure" as Terry had put it, but
it wasn't as spectacular as I'd heard it could be. A few days later,
after looking up stuff on the Internet and not finding much Raleigh
rabbit-specific stuff, I worked up the nerve to ask Rob or Sarah about
it; I climbed the stairs to their floor, rested a minute on the landing,
then walked down the hall to their room and knocked.

I heard low voices from inside, a bump like someone had run into some
furniture, and a slightly louder exclamation that I couldn't quite
make out but sounded like a curse, then laughter from someone else.
Then Rob opened the door just a crack; she was wearing a bathrobe.

"Hi, we're kind of busy." From somewhere behind her I heard Rico's voice,
and Sarah's, speaking in low tones.

"Oh," I said, my ears twitching. "I'll come back later."

But I didn't. Not for quite a while.

-----

The following day, I boarded the train to Atlanta on the first stage of
my trip home. Or was it home anymore? I was pretty sure I'd want to
settle in Raleigh after I graduated, and I might get an apartment there
even before I graduated, in the last two or even three years of school.
But Nebraska was where all my surviving family lived; it was where my
parents were buried. I'd wait until I got there, I decided, and see if
it still felt like home.

Amy and I took the shuttle to the train together and found seats next
to each other. There were just a handful of Raleigh rabbits in our car,
including the boy and girl who'd been on the train with me on the way to
Raleigh in the fall, who hadn't wanted to talk with me then. I'd seen
them around campus a couple of times but hadn't shared any classes with
them or learned their names. They were friendlier this time, introducing
themselves as Tracy and Yolanda; apparently they lived in Lithonia, near
Atlanta, and had been the only Raleigh rabbits in their high school,
except for their own younger siblings.

"Man," I said, "my own high school experience would have been totally
different if there'd been even one other Raleigh rabbit in my school.
Or even in the next town over, going to a rival school."

"Where do you live?" Tracy asked, and I told them.

"Oh, wow! Is the rest of your family telepaths?" Yolanda asked excitedly.

"Uh, no. My aunt and uncle and my grandparents are Lincoln bison.
I guess you're thinking about the North Platte dreamers?"

"Yeah, I think so. I just remembered that one of the only telepathic
neospecies in North America live in Nebraska or Kansas somewhere."

"Both, I think; their change-region sprawls across the state line and
into a little corner of Colorado, but most of it's in Nebraska."

"Do you know a lot of them?"

"No, none. Hebron's fifty miles east of the change-region border,
but there's nothing to see in that change-region except cornfields,
and we've got all the cornfields we want around Hebron. If we want a
little excitement we go east, to Lincoln or Omaha, and if we want a lot
of excitement we have to leave Nebraska entirely."

"Huh. Wouldn't it be exciting to hang out with telepaths? They must
be interesting people."

"Probably to each other, I guess. I worked in a convenience store
last summer, and we had two or three North Platte dreamer families come
through at one time or another, but my job didn't exactly have a lot of
scope for extended conversation with the customers."

"Too bad," Yolanda said. "I want to be an anthropologist -- I'm planning
to go to grad school at Duke after I finish at NC State -- and I want to
do my thesis on one of the telepathic neospecies. Probably the North
Platte dreamers, since they're a lot less studied than the Brooklyn or
Huntsville telepaths. Or the Kelowna nomads, from western Canada."

Meanwhile Amy and Tracy had been talking about other stuff -- from
the little I overheard, Tracy said there were several Athens magnolias
in their high school back home, and he was friends with one of them.
Yolanda volunteered the fact that her younger sister Oliver was also
Tracy's girlfriend, but they hadn't slept together since Tracy turned
eighteen. "Oliver's going to turn eighteen during the Christmas break,
so we've got a big surprise planned for her birthday," she confided in
a low voice.

"TMI!" I replied, and changed the subject.

-----

I traveled alone from Atlanta to New Orleans and New Orleans to Lincoln;
there weren't any Raleigh rabbits in the car, or anybody of any neospecies
I knew well, until we got to Topeka and some Lincoln bison got on.
When we got to Lincoln, I got down from the train and looked around; I
didn't see Aunt Ellen and Uncle Tyler, so I dialed Aunt Ellen's cellphone
and told her where I was.

"We're almost there," she said. "Give us a few minutes."

I got a porter to help me with my suitcases and met Aunt Ellen and Uncle
Tyler at the circular driveway. I realized I was now a little taller
than Aunt Ellen, and almost as tall as Uncle Tyler. (Lincoln bison are
generally shorter and stockier than Raleigh rabbits.)

"Why'd you bring so much stuff?" Uncle Tyler asked as he hefted the
suitcases into the trunk.

"I'm afraid I'll outgrow a lot of these clothes by the time I go back
to school, and I want to get some use out of them while I still can."
And one of the suitcases was mostly Christmas presents.

"Makes sense."

He and Aunt Ellen didn't make any comment on my being female, or wearing a
skirt, for the first few miles of the way to Hebron. They asked me how
my trip went, and what my grades for the semester were, and so forth, and
told me some of the news and gossip around Hebron while I'd been gone.
Then we fell silent for a few minutes, until Aunt Ellen said: "Pull
over, honey. I just thought of something we might need to go back to
Lincoln for... Joel, do you have any nice dresses to wear to church?"

"Um, no, ma'am. I'm still growing so fast, I didn't want to buy anything
too expensive until I quit growing. I've generally worn one of my nicer
skirts and tops to chapel, or that Sunday when I went to church with
Radhika's family."

"The boy's got sense," Uncle Tyler said, and then hastily: "Girl. Sorry."

"It's okay if you call me a boy and 'he'," I said. "Or girl and 'she',
either way. I'm wearing skirts for now but I think I'll go back to
pants when I stop growing and can buy stuff that will fit me long-term."

"That does make sense," Aunt Ellen said, "but let's take a look around
and see if we can find a nice dress that doesn't cost too much."

"All right," Uncle Tyler said, and told the car to drive to a mall on
the west side of Lincoln. "I hear and obey."

Aunt Ellen swatted him gently.

-----

A few hours later, when we were on the road to Hebron again, I called
my friend Carl to see if he was home from school yet.

"Yeah, I got home last night. And Ron was supposed to get home sometime
today, but I haven't talked to him since yesterday. You want to get
together?"

"Yeah, sure. Maybe tomorrow after church; I'm too wiped out from
traveling to meet up tonight."

Carl was going to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Ron was at the
University of Missouri-St. Louis. I was closer friends with Carl than
Ron, but had been pretty close to both of them throughout middle school
and high school. These last few months, though... I'd exchanged emails or
social media messages with them several times near the beginning of the
semester, but the more I developed as a girl and the more friends I made
at NC State, the less reason I found to talk with them; I didn't feel
comfortable talking to them about the messy details of female puberty.
I didn't want to lose touch entirely, though, so I was hoping to meet
up with them several times during the break.

-----

The next morning after my shower, I tried an experiment. I took a package
of Ace bandages I'd bought at a drugstore near the train station in New
Orleans and bound my breasts, then put on my loosest shirt. I'd outgrown
all the shirts and blouses I bought in September and October and the ones
I'd bought loose just after Thanksgiving were starting to get a little
snug, but I hadn't bought any the previous evening, thinking I could get
another week or twp of wear out of the ones I had. The bandages couldn't
hide my breasts completely, not without a looser shirt, though they did
look less conspicuous. In the end I decided it was too uncomfortable
to be worth it, with no other Raleigh rabbits around, and I switched to
the pair of bras I'd bought in Lincoln the evening before. They weren't
designed for Raleigh rabbits, so I had to do some cutting and gluing on
the shoulder straps of the bra for my lower breasts. I was also afraid
that Aunt Ellen would be upset if I didn't wear the dress she'd bought
for me, so I put it on though I didn't quite feel comfortable wearing
it, or letting her spend her money on it -- it was only a little loose,
and I'd probably outgrow it within a month.

I'd gotten up early to allow time for all that, so we were still in time
for Sunday school. Ron walked in to the Sunday school classroom just
a few minutes after me. He's an Omaha sheepdog, several inches taller
than me or our friend Carl, and heavier-set than the average sheepdog.

"Joel?" he asked, as though there might be another Raleigh rabbit in town.

"This is me," I said, and made a strong effort to maintain eye contact,
though I wanted to look away.

"You look... huh. You're pretty different from that photo you sent me."

Back when I'd told Ron and Carl by email that I was starting to develop
as a girl -- no messy details, just the basic fact -- Ron had asked
me for an updated photo for his phone contacts, and I'd had Amy take
one of me. That was probably before I started wearing a bra, though.
The ones I'd bought yesterday evening in Lincoln were B cups.

"Yeah, the doctor says I'm growing a lot faster than normal. Normal for a
thirteen to fifteen year old, that is; she's not sure what's normal for
someone who didn't start puberty until they're eighteen. She's never
seen anybody like me before."

"Huh. I mean, you told me, and you even sent that photo, but... seeing
you with, um, and in a dress..."

"It's still me," I said with a sigh. "And the dress is because of Aunt
Ellen; she wanted to buy me at least one nice dress for church, and I
let her... I usually wear more casual stuff."

He nodded. "Jeans and T-shirts, I guess?"

"I wish," and I explained about how I was growing too fast to wear jeans.

"Man, that sucks."

Mrs. McLeod, the Sunday school teacher, called us to order then, and we
didn't talk any more until after class. Then Ron said, as we walked from
the classroom to the sanctuary, "Carl texted me about getting together
this afternoon at Mary's Cafe. You coming?"

"Yeah, we talked last night. I'd like to go home and change into
something more comfortable first, though."

"Yeah, I imagine so. How's life at NC State?"

I told him a little of what had been going on with me, mainly classes
and clubs, and a little about the friends I'd made there. "How are you
liking MU?"

His face lit up. "It's a great school. Really diverse; Missouri's
got more neospecies than most states with a similar population --
twenty-two change-regions and only a bit more than six million people.
And all of them are represented at Mizzou, plus a lot of people like me
from other states." (Nebraska has only six, and that's if you count
two change-regions that lie mostly in South Dakota and Wyoming, plus
the little sliver of the Mississippi-Missouri change region along the
banks of the Missouri.)

"Are there a lot of Omaha sheepdogs? Have you met any girls?"

"Yes and yes," he said briefly. He'd never had as many dates in high
school as Carl, and only one steady girlfriend, who lasted all of six
months before breaking up with him several weeks before prom. Of course
the local dating pool for Omaha sheepdogs was pretty small. After an
awkward silence, he said: "I've been on three dates. Two of them with
the same girl, even. I hope she'll want to go out again when I get back."

"That's awesome. What's her name?"

"Lindsey."

"Do you have a photo of her?"

"...No. Um, what about you...? Have you been on any dates yet?"

"No... I'm definitely attracted to guys, I've figured that out by now,
but I don't think I'm ready to date yet. Probably not until my body's
finished changing, or almost finished."

"Ah, I see. You're not quite all there yet?"

"No, all the parts are in place, I'm just not full-grown." I debated
mentioning that I'd started my second period on the train from Atlanta
to New Orleans, but decided that would probably squick him out.

The organist started playing the entrance hymn about then, and we shut
up until after the service. Afterward, he said he'd pick me up in half
an hour, after I had a chance to change clothes. I went home with Aunt
Ellen and Uncle Tyler and changed into a more comfortable skirt and loose
T-shirt, and my tennis shoes. (Aunt Ellen had also insisted on buying
a pair of dressy shoes -- and I'd insisted on flats instead of heels,
after I warned her repeatedly that they would probably only last me a
few weeks. We'd gotten them one size too big, and I'd worn two layers
of socks with them.)

"Have fun and don't stay out too late," Uncle Tyler said when Ron pulled
up in front, and Aunt Ellen added: "Call us if you're going to be out
past ten."

"Sure," I said, and went out to meet Ron and Carl.

"Wow," was all Carl was coherent enough to say at first.

"You should have seen him earlier, dressed up for church," Ron said,
and then, to the car's console: "Destination: Mary's Cafe. Go."
It started moving.

"Man, I mean you told me you were turning into a girl, but it didn't
really connect until I saw you just now," Carl babbled on.

"Stare all you want and get it over with," I said with a slight smile
and a decided twitch of the ears. "Where's Julia? Is she going to join
us at the cafe?"

"She'll be around later on. Her little sister's birthday is Tuesday,
and they're having the party today, but she said she'd be free by two
or three." Carl's girlfriend Julia had gone to UNL with him; they'd
been together since junior year.

We got a table at Mary's Cafe, one of the very few restaurants in town,
and ordered drinks and appetizers. I had a very un-girlish appetite
with my freakishly rapid puberty, and I devoured a bowl of chicken
tortilla soup, a large order of French fries, a club sandwich and some
jalopeño poppers. This excited comment from Carl and Ron, to which I
replied simply, "I'm a growing girl."

"Are you all girl, then?" Ron asked. "Inside, I mean -- in your head?
Earlier you said you weren't comfortable wearing a dress, you did just
it to please your aunt."

"I don't know. I haven't changed inside as much as I've changed outside,
I'm pretty sure of that, but I have changed some... how much I don't
know."

Once we'd blunted the edge of our appetites and slowed down eating, we
talked about other things, our experiences of school, new people we'd
met there, new movies and vid serials we'd seen, new books we'd read.
I wasn't the only one who hadn't found time to play any new games what
with being busy with school and meeting new people. (Except Fluxx
and Blokus; I guess those count as games. But most of my new friends
weren't gamers, except George, and he played only the audio games that
were coming out of the new Nashville game studios. I'd tried to play
one of them with him; Raleigh rabbits have better hearing than most
neospecies, but I don't have a Nashville bat's instinctive ability to
interpret echoes into information about my surroundings.)

Julia came by later on, after we'd finished off our entrees and were
snacking on a second round of appetizers. Ron got up and came around
to my side of the table (we were in a booth by the window), while Julia
sat down beside Carl and they nuzzled. Julia is a Lincoln bison, a
couple of inches shorter than Carl, with black hair and beard. She was
wearing red polish on her horns, which contrasted nicely with her hair,
and a little red ribbon in her beard.

It was a little after that that I noticed something odd. When Carl
and Ron had been sitting across from me, they'd naturally both been
looking at me. Carl had been pretty frankly staring at me, on the drive
over there and when we first sat down, but he got over being gobsmacked
eventually and starting looking at other things and people; looking out
the window, glancing at the people at other tables and the waitress
bustling from one table to another. But Ron kept looking mostly at
me -- which seemed natural enough while he was sitting across from me,
but started to seem odd when he was sitting right next to me.

I thought it was probably my imagination, or if not, he was just still
having trouble getting used to how much I'd changed. *I* was having
trouble, and I'd had more than three months to gradually get used to it;
here I was dumping it on him all at once.

Julia was surprised to see how I'd changed, too, and asked me a few
questions about how it felt to be growing up as a girl, and so fast.
Her questions and my answers were pretty vague at first, but after my
second Cherry Coke and her first Diet Coke, we made the obligatory group
trip to the restroom, and she asked me some more pointed questions.
I had some for her, too.

"How are you and Carl doing?" I asked. "It looks like you're still
pretty tight."

"Yeah," she said happily. "I was a little worried when we went off to
college, but we're definitely still together. He's got a wandering eye,
but as long as that's the only part of him that wanders I'm okay with it."

"You were gone a long time," Carl remarked when we returned to the booth.

"We were talking about you," I said truthfully. Julia glared at me,
which suggested I shouldn't have been so honest.

After Julia had eaten, we all went over to Ron's house to watch a couple
of movies and play some games on his big screen. The first movie was
a parallel world adventure from Sundberg Studio, an Omaha-based studio
that had made several of our favorite movies growing up. The cast was
mostly Omaha sheepdogs with several Lincoln bison, a Mississippi mudcat,
and two North Platte dreamers -- it represented their telepathy with
italics subtitles. The second movie was one of the increasingly rare
Hollywood movies that got exposure nationwide; it had come out back in
September but I'd been too busy studying to go see it. (Nearly all the
pre-Divergence classics we still watch were produced if not filmed in
Hollywood, but nowadays, who wants to watch a steady diet of stories
about Hollywood capybaras and other southern California neospecies?
Their casting is more diverse than it was right after the Divergence,
and they've got more money to spend on special effects than most of the
local studios that have sprung up around the country, but they still
have a higher bar to clear to get people of other neospecies to watch
their movies.) This one was a tragedy based on a true story, about a
professor from Pakistan who was visiting Western Kentucky University
on Valentine's Day. He formed family bonds with the other people of
his new species, but the State Department kept trying to deport him and
finally succeeded. He pined away and starved almost to death before a
big petition campaign got the government to let him back in to the U.S.,
but by then he was too sick to travel, and died soon afterward.

We ate supper with Ron's parents, and then Julia took Carl home, and
Ron took me home.

-----

[[You Could Go Home Again/Part07|Part 7]]

You Could Go Home Again/Part06 - Revision history

Trismegistus Shandy: chapter 6 ... getting tired, will post chapter 7-16 tomorrow.