1st chapter of one of my many unfinished novels.

This one obviously relates to what I'm doing with my life now. I started it about 12 or 13 years ago, I have several more chapters done in notebooks, but they aren't computer/editing ready yet, let alone 1st reading/blog entry ready.

Hopefully putting this up, now lights a fire under my butt to get those further chapters up here sooner than later. but for know here it is... over 3000 words, so be warned... long post.

What You Wish For

A Novel (long in progress) By Josie Boyce

Chapter 1

The first thing I noticed was the blood. There was a lot of blood that day; that first day that my dreams sort of came true. I opened my eyes as the sun was just starting to emerge through the quarter inch of ice on my window. My new red digital alarm clock blinked 7:49 AM as it squelched  out that old Jackson 5 song “1-2-3 A-B-C” from it's tin speakered "not quite picking up the crappy signal" signal. I seemed to have bit my tongue in my sleep and blood had drooled onto my pillowcase. There was a groove in the side of my tongue that I immediately started running along my teeth to see which were the culprits. 

As I mumbled the words to a song I loved at 4 years old over and over, I realized I had also seemed to have wet the bed. Wet dreams? But I hadn't had one of those in five years, since I was 12. I reached down under my rear end, absentmindedly feeling a bit bloated. I burped. Pizza. I hated it when moms ordered pizza: always anchovies, always. I brought my hand up from the sheets to my face. More blood. I pulled back the sheets and bound up onto my feet with a huge thump. My breasts crashed up and down hard onto my ribs under my nightgown. Breasts? Nightgown?  Blood? 

"But I'm a boy," 

I said aloud, in a decidedly girlish voice. 

My eyes shot back to the stain of blackly crimson fluid on the bed, then down to my chest, that protruded out in front of me under a flannel nightgown of the grandmotherly sort. I pulled it off over my head. Yup, breasts alright, and huge ones with great big dark nipples. Porn star breasts. Porn star breasts that didn't seem out of proportion on the body that they hung from. I was enormous. At least 275 pounds was my first thought. My second thought was 

"It's gone". I again said aloud in a voice that I now recognized as being close in pitch and timbre, to my mom's. 

I put my hand slowly into my baby blue\rubber ducky decorated cotton panties. Nope. No penis. No balls. More sticky semi liquid crusted onto these humongous hopelessly little girl underwear. I peeled them off, watching with fascination as they fell to my feet. My  belly hung down onto my pubic hair, as I patted it down just to be sure there was no maleness there. Then and only then did I push my fingers between the flabby thighs and touch the vagina that was now there, not bleeding for the moment at least.

 "Oh MY God" I almost shouted. 

That's when I heard Mom's distinct rattling knock at my door, bracelets and knuckles going tapitta-jangle- tappita-tappitta-jangle. 

" C'mon honey if you want a ride to school you better get that enormous butt in gear."

 Pins could've dropped but none did. I froze, huge naked and female, as I heard mom's clickclack walk down the stairs to the kitchen. How was I going to explain this. It's not like that time she caught me trying her lipstick when I was 13. I'm a girl now. 

For real! Maybe I'm dreaming. 

These thoughts raced after each other as I started to take in my surroundings: Pink walls, a white dresser that didn't have KISS ARMY stickers all over it, one of those thingies that go around the bottom of your bed, around MY bed, a pink lace one at that, baby blue sheets and pillowcases, a huge collection of teddy bears in the corner of the bed, and the topper, three huge posters of Duran Duran along side the wall next to the bed. It was true, 

"I really am a girl...and I have terrible taste in music", I said to myself. It's a dream come true, I thought, as I picked through the sparse bits of makeup on my dresser. I felt as though I were going to pass out, or faint. I corrected myself as a screech owl interrupted my reverie.

"Jesus Aitch Christ girl, you haven't even showered yet? What is it with you lately, are you on drugs? If so I wish you'd share them so I can take part in this lovely haze you're in, OMIGAWD look at your bed? You knew you were going to start today or tomorrow. Jesus get in the shower, I'll clean this up, go on now, NOW Elizabeth!". 

She shook her head side to side musically; her earrings and bracelets fell into a loose rhythm as she slapped my flabby ass towards my bathroom.

I wandered slowly into the shower, and stood stock still as I saw my naked form in the mirror for the first time. I started to cry. Tears streamed down my chubby face. I sobbed. 

I should have been happy, right? Every night for as long as I remembered I prayed and wished to wake in the morning - a girl. But here it was. It was real. I was a girl: a 6 foot three inches tall 275 pound fatso.  Not really an improvement over the 5 foot eleven inch 225 pound pimple ridden boy who stood in front of the same mirror the day before unable to cry. I wiped the tears and said out loud again with an affectation I obviously didn't need. "At least the zits are gone too."

"Stop talking to yourself and get in that shower Lizzie, You're going to miss your French Exam if we don't get a move on. I'm going to go warm up the car. Wear something warm, it's bitter out there." 

"French?" 

But I don't take French... shit. Merde. was my only thought...

 I only barely passed french the second time I took it last year. I turned on the taps and warmed the water to steaming hot then stepped into the shower. I scrubbed myself raw, almost trying to push the fat off my belly. I barely fit between the shower wall and the door, more comfortably at an angle. Satisfied with the new scents of my girly soaps and shampoo, I dried off leaving a river in my wake into my bedroom. 

There on my bare mattress: Moms had laid out some clothes for me. I was glad to not have to try and decide what feminine things I wanted to try first when I had to be in such a hurry. Right on top was of course a tampon. Lucky for me I thought, I've been sneaking looks at women's magazines all these years as well as sneaking peeks at women in men's magazines. I was reading "how-to do your make up" articles and taking Cosmo quizzes that my mom had finished with, and having strange androgynous fantasies about airbrushed playboy models. 

None of the research helped me a lick here. Luckily there was a box of the stringed things in the night table drawer. It only took me three tries. I had been stretching out my mom's clothes when she wasn't around, for years; so putting on the tights, and the size 26 jeans and the 52 double d bra only took five minutes to get awkwardly and ineptly snapped. The Impala horn started to honk, and honk. Moms was getting impatient. I threw on a white t-shirt with Simon LeBon grinning like an idiot, and a huge green pullover sweater with an even sillier looking ironed-on Boy George looking a little bit stoned if anything. I pulled my slightly thicker; but still mousy brown straight hair back into a ponytail.

Before racing down the stairs I wrote a little note on a little pad, embossed with 'Elizabeth Johnson' that I found on my dresser and wrote in a hand neater than anyone's that I'd ever read: ' I'll clean up the mess in the bathroom  after school, Moms. Sorry I'm so scattered today - Liz.' The Impala bleated its woeful cry from the driveway again. I ran down the stairs leaving thunder behind me, and grabbed the largest, and once again pinkest parka I could see from its peg, and scrambled out the door locking it behind me. 

"Goodbye Lester" I said sort of triumphantly as I realized I was so out of breath, that I could barely speak.

"Who's Lester?" Moms queried between puffs off one of  her ever present Craven A's  and handing me the ice scraper.

"Be a sweetie and finish the back for me, my hands are just frozen, pumpkin." 

She almost whispered.

I scraped the few bits of frost that hadn't been de-iced yet and jumped back in to the passenger side with a crash and a bang of the door. 

"Je-Sus pumpkin, you'll tip the car" she said without irony. 

I looked at her impassively. 

"Can I have  a cigarette?" I asked politely as I could. 

Daggers. 

"You don't smoke, since when do you smoke, you know how I've been trying to quit, I really don't want you to start, it's just so terrible, bad for you!” 

The car lighter popped open just then and she picked it up and lit another smoke with the glowing orange coil, and putting it back in as she backed out of the driveway without looking in any specific direction. As she confidently clicked into "D" as she liked to call it, we jolted forward, and sped in the direction of school. 

"So who's Lester?" she asked again, seemingly genuinely interested. 

"I dunno," I mumbled. "I don't know any Lester." 

“Oh.” 

Her eyes dropped, reading the gauges for a second, then back to me  

"I thought you said something about a Lester, as you got in the car, that's all." I caught her eyes, she seemed oddly sad. 

"I was just saying that I was sorry for being so out of it this morning, I was a bit freaked by such a big period, is all."

She smiled and brightened; 

"It just made me think of when you were born, if you were a boy we were going to name you Lester, or at least your dad wanted to, I always liked Roy, after him, but he wanted to name you after my dad, they got along famously you know. In the end of course we ended up calling you after my moms, I wish you'd known her, you're very much alike y'know." 

Hearing this, I was all flush, and almost in tears, I didn't know why. 

"She was pretty big too, like me, tall I mean, right Moms?" 

She pursed her lips and tried a meek smile as if I had got it all wrong. 

"Well yes that too, but what I mean is she just had this aloofness, this private side to her that was something the rest of us couldn't understand, but she was happy in that place, being alone, a lot of the time. I just see that in you too, the way you can sit with a book for hours, and french books at that. I wish sometimes that I could join you there, but it's not my place. We all have our private lives sweetie. I guess I'm blabbering on. I'm sorry."

She pulled into the school parking lot, right up to the front door. The snow had drifted high to the door, and it looked like no one was there, except for the fluorescent lights all being on. 

"I miss Dad too." 

I said as I quickly pecked moms on the cheek, something I couldn't remember ever doing before. 

I walked into the school with my heart beating really fast. It still all seemed like some bizarre dream. If I had always been Liz at home, I guessed I must always have been Liz at school too. I wished now that I had also wished to have the memories of being a girl to go with the whole being a girl thing. I never have been one of those people who thinks things all the way trough,though, so I guess it figured. If I had thought that my wishes really would come  true I would've been more specific, like wanting to look and sound like Debbie Harry, or Cindy Lauper, or  Cheryl Tiegs, Suzanne Somers even.

I walked down the echo-y empty halls seeing the odd person, no one that I normally hung out with, or really cared to. No one seemed to pay any attention to me either, except a couple of half smiled hello's from girls whose names escaped me, who I'd been in grade school with, but who were in business classes now whereas I was at least until today enrolled in the Academic program, with emphasis on math and science. Boy classes, I thought. I found what I hoped was still my locker and tried the since jr. high combo 36-24-36

It worked. I guess some fantasies held true. I briefly hoped I wasn't a lesbian, and then thought, no I better be, cause I don't want to go out with guys, my mind reeled. I really hadn't thought this whole thing through very carefully. 

“Merde.” I said out loud, "MERDE".

"P-pppracticing f-ffor the exam L-Liz." 

A stutter came from behind me. 

"Two-Tongue Ruthie”, I said with some satisfaction. 

Then I turned around and saw her frown and watery eyes huge behind her coke bottle glasses. "We had a pact, LEZZIE" she said loud and clear. "Y-y-you said you w-w-woul-dd-d nt call me that a-a-a-annyMMMMMMor…FUCK. Bitch." 

She turned on her heel. 

I grabbed her shoulder. "Look I'm sorry, it's just I'm having a really hard day, my period…" I hazarded as an excuse. 

"W-WWHHatt ev-ever." 

She tore away from me and headed down the hall to the girl's gym. 

I ran after her: "Look I'm really sorry I shouted at her back, I'm a big fat dyke OK, whatever, I'll buy ya some fries in the cafeteria later," 

I wasn't too sure why I was apologizing so much. Usually I never apologized to anyone. Sign of weakness, to be preyed upon, by your so called social betters. A good way to get pounded for being a faggot, that apologizing, especially if the  guys pounding you ask you to apologize and you actually capitulate. I had heard that girls weren't so different, despite what guys may think. But right then I didn't believe it. I really wanted to hear Ruthie say it was OK.

She did. Say it was Ok, she turned back to me and said " C-c-caffe-t-t-ter-ia's cl-cl-cl-closed.” 

Pleading. I got it. 

"Well, at the mall then, right after I flunk this French exam". 

Two-Tongue Ruthie looked genuinely startled: 

"You, Y-y-y-ou f-f-f-fail a f-f-f-french test. Never happen, never has, y-y-y-you hav-hav-hav nev-ev-er f-f-failed f-f-french. Math, s-s-s-ure. Francais, non tu parle francaise c'est magnifique, une petite fille." 

"You speak french magnificently, little girl" I echoed. "Hey I understand french." I shouted “Je parlez francaise avec accent parissenne, beaucoup, et toi aussi, mon amie."  “Oui,” she quebecoised, back at me,

“exactement, you are nuts" she added still riding the stutter-less wave. 

" Lets ace this sucker."

I followed her in to the Girl's gym, garnering a number of disapproving sneers from some of the more popular girls; at least I figured they all still looked like they would be the popular girls. I seemed to be the only person who wasn't who they were yesterday, at least in my recollection. From my newfound language skills though I surmised, I have a lot of catching up to do on who the hell I am. 

Megan Anderson not so subtly, not so much whispered "Lez" as I stuffed myself into the much too small desk provided for the exam, a desk from the junior high across the road, no one fit into these things, least of all me. 

"Lezzie, have you lost a few pounds, you look so svelte,”said she of the size 4 waist, trying hard to be sarcastic, and smart at the same time. 

"Yeah" I said, "and it looks like it migrated over to your ass, you might want to go into the can and hurl, before the test." 

Oh, this part is going to be easy, I thought. These popular girls are no match for all the years I'd spent becoming the class clown: the only way to avoid being pounded out all the time. I didn't feel like apologizing to her at all. Everyone around us, including her clique: The Starting Five, were laughing. Ruthie wasn't laughing though, she was giving me the same look I got, that time I got tricked into washing out the face of the toughest kid in grade 6's face when I had started at that school. I paid for that one.  I smiled back at all those laughing anyway. Take what you can get, I thought, maybe I'd have to learn how to fit in all over again. Merde.

The exam was almost too easy. I found myself thinking en francaise as soon as Mme. LeBlanc rang the bell. I finished before everyone else and double checked everything. I waited. I didn't want to be the first one finished. Either way it was too gorky a thing to do, whether you were a brain, or a dope. After a few minutes though I got bored waiting for everyone else, so I unglued myself from the little desk, which I noted had my initials, or at least my initials in this strange girl-world carved into it. Had I used this desk in Junior High? There was a crude heart shape, with the initials E.J. +  R.S. dug in and inked in long faded black marker. Maybe it was someone else. I couldn't remember it, but still. I had carved up some desks in my time, but in my memory they had been to the effect of L. J. all alone or with the eternal 'wuz here', sort of thing. I wandered up to the front, and handed Mme. Leblanc my paper. 

She smiled sweetly and spoke en francaise: " Bonne chance Elizabeth, et joyeux noel". 

"Merci, Mademoiselle,” I said and wandered from the halogen lit gym in to the fluorescent purgatory of the hallway.

That's when I realized I had to pee. Oi, I thought to myself here's my first real test, now, when the exam is over. I walked right into the boy's john near the cafeteria, and walked right out upon seeing the urinals, all so shiny and clean, that it could only be holiday time. Oops, glad it's exam time when this happened, I've got time to get these things right, I mused. A cramp shot through my insides and I thought I would pass out. I didn't, but the pain simply dulled to a constant ongoing swirl of hurt. I could feel the dark circles under my eyes. 

I went into the proper washroom, and found the seat to be precarious. I was used to being big on the seat but somehow being so huge on this low seat in this small stall made me feel larger than I had all day. It took what seemed like yet another eternity to get the tampon thing right. I'm going to invest in some of those pads I see on tv I thought, almost out loud as I flushed.

Two-tongue Ruthie came in while I was washing my hands and said 

"Frites Mon Amie, I would like my fries now, l-l-ets l-l-like, y-y-you know, -g-g-go to the m-m-ma-mall."