gayannabeth

  Brief nudity at the end

  [colpse]

  The next day, I met up with Harry for lunch. As I sat down next to him, burger and fries on my tray, he did a double take.

  “Whoa, dude, you look like a chick.”

  I blinked. “Um, no… I looked in the mirror yesterday. I definitely still look like a guy. A cute guy, but still a guy.” I had no idea why, but that kind of felt bad to say.

  “‘A cute guy,’” Harry mocked. “What are you, gay or something?”

  “No, I like girls,” I replied automatically.

  “Ok, so, um… Bi. Bisexual, then.”

  I shook my head. “No. I am definitely not into guys. I am a one hundred percent heterosexual man.”

  I heard a snort from behind me. I turned to catch a snickering Hazel walking by, carrying a tray with chips, pizza, and a canned Pepsi — which was weird, since I was pretty sure the cafeteria only had bottled Pepsi. I wasn’t sure what she was ughing at, but it probably wasn’t important. I turned back to face Harry, who was looking over my shoulder at Hazel.

  “Anyway,” I said, dragging Harry’s attention back to me. “Olivia thinks the water fountain estrogen thing is nuts.”

  “No, it’s brilliant!” Harry protested. “See, how else are you meant to get estrogen into as many unsuspecting young men as possible?”

  “I can think of a lot of different ways,” I said. “This burger.” I held up my burger before taking a giant bite of it. “Oh no! I’m gonna turn into a cute girl with massive mommy milkers!!”

  Harry eyed his own burger with apprehension. “You don’t think-”

  “No, Harry, I don’t think the burgers give you tits.”

  He gingerly lifted up his own burger before taking a bite.

  “Actually, Olivia says that injections would work best,” I said, hoping Harry would get to the exact conclusion I wanted him to.

  He did.

  His eyes widened. “You mean…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “Vaccines? There’s estrogen in vaccines?”

  I shrugged. “And in heroin. You inject heroin, right?”

  “Um, I think so. But there doesn’t seem much point mixing estrogen in with heroin. Not everyone does heroin. Everyone gets flu shots.”

  “Not everyone,” I retorted.

  “Oh, yeah, the crazies who think they cause autism,” Harry said.

  “Exactly.”

  After finishing my lunch, as I was heading out of the cafeteria, I was intercepted by Hazel, a concerned look in her blue eyes. “Look, I get it, he’s a bit obtuse.”

  “What?” I said. “Who?”

  “Your friend,” Hazel said. “Listen, if you ever need any support, you can always reach out to me or Liv. You know Liv, right?”

  I nodded. “Um, you mean Olivia?”

  “Yeah, you partnered with her. She’ll have your back, hun.”

  With that weird interaction out of the way, Hazel proceeded to jog up the stairs off to wherever the fuck she was going next.

  “Hey, you alright?”

  I groaned, turning to look next to me. “Wha?” I said to Olivia.

  She sighed. “You were nodding off, dude. You get any sleep st night?”

  I groaned. Truthfully, I hadn’t. I’d been up te pying that addicting game again. The gamepy loop was just so satisfying that I wanted more. As a consequence, I didn’t get to bed until three in the morning.

  “Some,” I said. “Not enough.”

  Olivia pursed her lips. “Have you tried sleep meds?”

  “What?” I said. “Um, I don’t exactly have problems falling asleep, I just… there’s this new game, and it’s really addicting, so-”

  Olivia cut me off. “I get it. I’ve been that way before. Maybe, uh, try saving it for nights where you don’t have morning csses the next day?”

  I groaned. “I knowwwww. I was only pnning on pying for an hour, but the time passed by so fast, and suddenly it was three, and I was thinking ‘oh shit.’”

  The next day, during lunch, I met up with Harry again, and… his arms were covered in bandaids.

  “Dude, what the fuck did you do to yourself?”

  Harry’s eyes widened. “Shit, I forgot my hoodie.”

  “Harry?!”

  “I, uh, remembered I needed to get my flu shot and covid booster done yesterday.”

  “That is wayyy more than two vaccines, dude,” I said.

  “I, um, also did shots for, uh… well, everything I could think of.”

  I blinked. Idly, a joking comment I’d made the day before popped to the forefront of my mind. “Dude… did you do this because you want to be a girl?”

  His eyes widened. “What? No! I just… want to make sure. That there’s no estrogen in the vaccines. You know, in the interest of public safety!”

  I heard someone trip and a tray ctter to the ground behind me. I turned around and, lo and behold, Hazel had just dropped her tray of food on the ground. She turned to us and gave Harry a bewildered look.

  “What?” Harry said.

  Hazel shook her head. “Uh, nothing. Don’t worry. Just tripped on my shoece.”

  I gnced down to discover that, no, there was no way that she had tripped on her shoece. I decided not to comment on that as she turned to head over to her table to sit with her colourful-haired friends. I noticed that Olivia was there as well, smiling and ughing to something another of the girls there had said. I caught her eye, and she gave me a small smile. I hesitantly smiled back.

  “She won’t be into you, dude,” Harry said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Those girls over there,” Harry said, pointing at the table with Hazel and Olivia. “They’re all a bunch of lesbos. Won’t be into a guy like you, even if you do kinda look like a chick now.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about them like that, dude,” I said quietly. “Nah, Olivia’s just my assignment partner in one of my csses. The, uh, purple haired one.”

  Harry, in a deadpan voice, replied, “there are three girls with purple hair over there.”

  He was right. Besides Olivia, there was a girl with heavy goth makeup and short spiky purple hair, and a shy looking girl, also with purple hair.

  “She’s the tomboy looking one,” I crified. “With purple hair.”

  “Ok,” Harry said. “Dude, serious question time.”

  “Um, ok,” I said. “What’s the question?” I turned back to face him.

  He had a worried look in his eyes. “Is it, um, obvious that I… uh…” He hesitated, his face flushing red. In a whisper so quiet I could barely hear it. “Can you tell that I have boobs?”

  I blinked. “Dude, you serious?”

  He scowled. “Just answer the question! Yes or no?”

  “Um, no,” I said, gncing down at his chest to confirm that his chest looked same as it always did in his baggy t-shirt.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. ‘Cause, I was looking in the mirror this morning, and-”

  “You’re fucking with me, right?” I asked.

  “I am not!” He said in a whiny tone. “They’re not big, but I have boobs, man!”

  “I guarantee you, it wasn’t all those vaccines.”

  He groaned. “You can’t prove that!”

  “You also can’t prove it was any of them. Maybe it’s the burgers.”

  Harry opened his mouth to reply, then stopped. A confused, contempting look came over his face. “Maybe it is…” He looked down at his burger. “Only one way to find out!” He picked up his already half-eaten burger, and took a big bite, while I watched in confusion.

  “What are you doing, dude?”

  “If I can prove that the burgers are giving people tits, then I can put an end to this woke plot!”

  I decided not to argue with him.

  I had to make sure. I’d been noticing things, too, like Harry. A part of me was worried about bringing them up to him — after all, he didn’t need more ammo to fuel his crazy conspiracies.

  After taking a shower, I wiped off the fog from my bathroom mirror. I would rather not be looking at myself, but I had to confirm. I stepped back from the mirror. There was my stupid face again, looking… wait, what?

  That- That can’t be right.

  Can it?

  How in the hell was my hair this long???

  Sure, it wasn’t much, but I knew for a fact that I didn’t have chin length hair the day before. It looked… really good.

  And my face! It was… cute. I only sort of recalled what I’d looked like in the mirror on Monday, but this was… more. More cute. I was sure of it. My stubble had not returned even once, which was completely baffling.

  Ok, the big one to confirm. I looked down at my chest, and…

  My eyes widened. I reached up to cup my chest gently, just to confirm. I let out a small gasp. Oh, that was sensitive.

  I had confirmed it. They were small, positively itty bitty… titties.

  But I definitely had, of all things, tiny little boobs.

  It was impossible.

  gayannabeth