Janey & Dave

by Kristy Leigh

Prologue

 

1.

On a perfect spring morning at the very beginning of May, a boy named Dave Henson was sauntering down Lancaster Parade, a lanky red-haired lad trailing a bright red yo-yo from his right hand. School had been out for just over a week and the sidewalks were wavering with soft white heat. It was a wonderful time to be twelve years old with the entire summer spread out before you. Ridgewick was a sleepy little burg famed for its clement seasons, the kind of place you read about in Ray Bradbury stories. Lawn mowers droned in some remote distance, dragon flies zithered across moist, green lawns.

Crossing the intersection at Memorial Drive, Dave slung the yo-yo into a perfect overhand spin, letting it hover half an inch over the asphalt. The days were getting warmer; you could almost feel the afternoons leaning into summer. In a few weeks, the roads would be bubbling with hot black tar. He continued on towards Memorial Park, leading the yo-yo and keeping to the shade. A fresh spring mistral flickered down the avenue, rustling the overhanging branches.

"Hi Dave."

The voice came from somewhere overhead; high, clear and rather sweet. Dave glanced up and saw Janey Watson sitting on a low-hanging bough, feet swinging idly back and forth. Jamie wasn't exactly a friend, but they were on pretty good terms. Dave was on pretty good terms with everybody. Janey lived up on the Crest, so they often crossed paths on the way home from school.

"Hey, Janey," Dave replied, snapping the yo-yo up to his palm, "whatcha doing up there?"

"Just climbing," Janey answered with a shrug, "you can see all the way to Chamberlain if you climb high enough."

"Yeah?" Dave asked, eyebrows raised in vague disbelief. Chamberlain was a collection of distant skyscrapers on the eastern horizon, regarded with semi-mythical awe by the local kids. Dave sincerely doubted you could see much of anything from Janey's vantage point, but he was tempted to climb up for a look, all the same. A glimpse of Chamberlain's gleaming towers would be tantamount to seeing God or something. Unfortunately, he'd grown a little wary of the whole Tarzan thing since he took that fall last year. He'd spent the whole summer in plaster up to his hips, and he didn't much care for a repeat performance.

Anyway, the view was pretty good from where he was standing. Janey's dress was breathtakingly short, barely reaching down to the thigh. Slim coltish legs descended towards the sidewalk, smooth and tanned and rather shapely for a kid of twelve. A light spring breeze was whispering through the leaves, lifting Janey's abbreviated hemline. Dave found himself craning his neck to see what lay beneath. Which was rather odd, considering that Janey wasn't really a girl.

Janey Watson was a tranzie.

2.

There were a lot of tranzies around Ridgewick these days. Seemed like every second kid you met was one - although you probably wouldn't have known, not unless you'd lived here all your life as Dave had. Half the time, you hardly noticed they were even there. Dave knew most of the tranzies out at Ridgewick Elementary, he'd been through the system with them. There were eight in the sixth grade alone – something like ninety in the school, all up. A pretty sizable number, considering the school's population was barely four hundred.

Tranzies were transgendered children – kids who were neither male nor female. They were also known as transfems or T-girls, depending on which part of town you came from. They seemed to have a lot of different names, actually. Chamberlain Central News referred to them as 'The Transsexual Generation' (the one the came after the Pepsi Generation, evidently). The Ridgewick Advertiser had labeled them 'The Third Sex,' while the North American Journal of Genetic Research described the phenomenon as Toxically Induced Sexual Morphosis; TISM for short.

On the other hand, some of the local epithets were dubious to say the least. Old man Nevin at the Beef 'n' Burger called them 'fruits'. Coach Phillips out at the high school dismissed them as 'queer-boys' (and later claimed he was the victim of a 'fag conspiracy' when he lost his job). Reverend Daniels from the League of Christian Decency denounced them as 'an abomination in the eyes of God.'

Of course, the kids around Dave's neighborhood – none of whom ate at the Beef 'n' Burger – had eventually settled for 'tranzies,' a child's diminutive which seemed less threatening and somehow more familiar. No one quite remembered who had coined the phrase, but it had passed into the vernacular back in the third grade, and was now the generally accepted term on the east side of town.

Dave had once asked his mother how a boy became a tranzie. Looking Back, David realized that his Mum had been expecting this particular question for quite some time, as she had a long and rather complicated answer prepared. Most parents discuss the birds and the bees with their children; in Ridgewick, they talk about something else entirely.

Apparently, it all had something to do with a chemical refinery over in Blaxland. The place used to make insecticides and defoliants (whatever that was), and there'd been this big chemical leakage about fifteen years ago, several years before Dave was born. The EPA had shut the refinery down, hoping to limit the damage to the surrounding environment, but by that time, the damage was already done. The seepage had reached the water table, and had been absorbed into the food chain.

A whole bunch of weird stuff started to happen over the next couple of years. Babies were born with webbed feet, some with mashed-up faces and crazy, twisted bodies. Others had gills and tails and the damp, moist skins of amphibians. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone. All of these died very young (which Mom thought was something of a blessing) and people hoped that was the end of it.

But then the first tranzies came along.

According to the medical journals, there were two distinct forms of Toxically Induced Sexual Morphism (Dave's mother had read a lot of articles on the topic for some reason). The first were 'intersexuals' – anatomical hermaphrodites with a foot in both camps – although they more often passed as female. These were comparatively rare, despite being the first to appear after the Blaxland disaster.

The second (and more common) form of TISM was known as transfemininity.

Transfems were biological transsexuals; young boys who morphed into little girls over a period of years. Exactly how this happened, no one was entirely sure, but Dave's mother had told him it was a little like going through puberty – except that you changed from one sex to another (this particular revelation had provided Dave with more than a few sleepless summer nights). Transfems tended to be frail and delicate from birth, with girlish features and slender proportions. Most began to 'turn' around the age of seven, taking at least three years to complete the process. From there, they continued through a more conventional puberty – though none were capable of menstruating or bearing children.

Janey Watson was a typical transfem.

He was, in fact, the quintessential tranzie: small, petite, and indistinguishable from a real girl. It wasn't just his appearance, either: it was his behavior, his voice, his overall personality. He walked and talked and acted like a girl. Always had, even back in the first grade, when he wore Osh-Kosh overalls and Doc Martins For Boys. Dave himself wouldn't have known the difference, if they hadn't started out in the same class six years before. He found it easier to think of Janey Watson as a girl nowadays. Truth be told, he found it practically impossible to think of Janey Watson as anything else.

Especially since she'd begun wearing a training bra.

 

3.

"Are you OK?" Janey asked, noticing the way he was tilting his head around.

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine," Dave replied, hastily adjusting his vision and wishing he had something clever to say. Unfortunately, spellbinding one-liners had never been one of his strong points.

"You look like you've got a crick in your neck," she observed, leaning back on the branch and raising her legs in a see-sawing motion. Her dress crept up several inches, exposing a generous amount of Janey-flesh. Dave struggled to keep his gaze off her smooth thighs.

"No, nothing like that," he said, casually reeling his yo-yo up and down, "I just got the sun in my eyes." A complete lie of course; it was eleven in the morning and the sun was behind him, but Janey didn't seem to mind. She was too busy watching the yo-yo.

"Hey, that's cool" she said, straightening up, "can you do any tricks?"

"I can do Round the World," Dave answered, grateful for an opportunity to show off his virtuoso talents. Backing up several paces, he spun the yo-yo in a long, looping figure-eight around his shoulders. The whirling red disks streaked past half a dozen times before returning to his open palm.

"Wow!" Janey exclaimed, genuinely impressed, "what else can you do?"

"Well …" Dave began, then launched into a demonstration of his considerable repertoire, his face glowing with secret pleasure. The whole routine lasted nearly two minutes while he wove through the various configurations. He finished up with a very passable Triple-Lindy, then glanced up into the branches, silently hoping for a standing ovation. He wasn't disappointed; Janey was leaning forward on the crook-limb, staring down at him as if he was some kind of Houdini.

Better still, her skirt had inched all the way to the top of her thighs.

"That's really good, Dave!" she applauded, shifting her bottom to a more comfortable position, "I got a yo-yo at home, but I can't do anything like that."

Dave opened his mouth to wave off her praise – hey, no big deal, I'm just a born genius, you know how it is – but the words never made it past the back of his throat. In adjusting her center of balance, Janey had splayed open her thighs. Dave could see clear up to her silky white gusset. He stood goggle-eyed for several seconds, his mind dissolving into a mass of babbing whitenoise. Like most boys of twelve, he could be reduced to a blithering idiot by the slightest flash of panty.

"It's not that difficult," he answered, finally recovering his voice, "all you need's a bit of practice." It was true enough; all you needed was a quick wrist and eighteen hours a day.

He risked another upward glance and was slightly disappointed to discover he couldn't see up her dress any more. She'd moved further down the branch, in towards the middle, and her skirt had slid down with her. Halfway to the knees, hiding just about everything. Well, he supposed it served him right for trying to sneak at peak at a girl's underpants. Except she wasn't exactly a girl, was she? He looked off down the road, wondering what he'd been thinking.

"Maybe you can teach me," Janey said, looking down at him from the middle of the bough, her pretty face ring by a curly blond halo.

"Well, sure," Dave replied with a good-natured shrug. Why not? She wasn't bad company now he was getting to know her a little. Might even be fun to hang out with; they had a lot of friends in common, come to think of it. Strangely, he couldn't help wishing she'd show him a little more of her panties – just out of curiosity, mind you. He was interested to know what they looked like; if they were any different to what a real girl wore under her skirt (unknown to Dave, practically every one of his friends wondered the same thing, though none of them would have dared admit to it).

Less than one second later, Dave's unspoken query was answered – quite abruptly – and to his most profound amazement.

"Good!" Janey laughed, tipping backwards over the branch. Hooking her knees over the bough, she suddenly swung upside down, with her long golden hair sweeping towards the ground. Her bright red sundress flopped inside out, revealing her shiny white panties to Dave's astonished gaze. His pupils widened in automatic reaction. For a moment, he honestly thought his heart was going to stall in mid-beat. It was as if she'd been reading his mind.

"So where you going now?" she asked, oscillating back and forth above the sidewalk.

"Memorial Park," Dave answered after an indescribably long pause. His eyes skittered over Janey's underwear recording every stitch, fold and wrinkle. They were plain nylon briefs, the kind that came up to the belly button, but he was utterly mesmerized by the spectacle. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a girl's panties, but he couldn't recall ever being this close before. They sort of glittered in the morning sunlight, rippling like liquid silver.

"Can I come too?"

"Okay," Dave answered without a moment's hesitation. At this point, he would have agreed to a frontal lobotomy if she'd suggested it with her skirt over her head. He stood in a slack-jawed fugue, watching the dress creep gradually south. It had no real waistline; nothing to hold it onto her body. Her panties had a tiny red trim around the legs, and there were seams running down the sides. He had no idea that girls' undies were so … pretty. The material was sheer, slick, and almost translucent. If he ran his fingertips over them, they'd probably feel as smooth as glass. There wasn't so much as a hint of her natural sex; not a bump, not a bulge, not a single –

"Hey, watch this," Janey said, apropos of nothing.

Startled out of his panty-watching reveries, Dave jumped as if caught with his fingers in Old Granny Fester's apple pie. He could feel his cheeks burning with a sort of warm, fluid heat, and it wasn't just embarrassment. He was embarrassed, no sense in denying that, but he was also excited too. As excited as the day he'd played spin the bottle with Rhonda and Sherry, the Makepeace twins. No, the hell with that – he was more excited than he'd ever felt in his life. What was going on here?

"Step back a little," Janey chirped from beneath the inside lining, "give me some room."

Realizing what she was planning to do, Dave backed up a few feet, realizing that the curtain was about to come down. Well, he supposed couldn't expect her to just sit there hanging upside-down all day (tempting thought the thought was). Nothing lasts forever, as his Mom was fond of saying. And anyway, maybe he could get her to do it again sometime. Like maybe in ten minutes, down on Jungle Gym at Memorial Park.

Arching her back, Janey swung forward with her arms outstretched like a gymnast. The branch dipped as she gained momentum. Dave's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates: her dress was flipping inside out; peeling back almost as far as her shoulders. For one heart-stopping instant, literally everything she had was on display: her flimsy little panties, her pale, alabaster tummy, her sheer white training bra. The frock whipped out over her head, held on by no more than a prayer. Dave thought it was going to fly straight off her body. Janey paused at the height of her arc –

then dropped off the branch in a perfect two-point dismount.

Face beaming with pure girlish mischief, she landed lightly on the grass beside the footpath, the frock still rucked up around her throat. David's heart was pounding like a trip hammer. He'd never seen a girl this undressed before. It was as if she was standing in the street wearing nothing but her bra and panties. He noticed for the first time that she was wearing frilly white socks and shiny black shoes – the ones with the thin black straps around the ankles.

"AWE-some," he said, totally flabbergasted by the girl's gymnastic prowess (to say nothing of the impromptu lingerie parade).

"I'm on the gym team at school," she replied with a radiant smile, then began working the dress down her torso. She did it without a speck of self-consciousness, oblivious of his wandering stare. When he thought of it, she'd been totally unaware of his attention from the very start. It wasn't that she was showing off or immodest or anything – it just never occurred to her that she was doing anything unusual. She was probably like this with all of her friends. Even now, she was chattering away in her warbling canary's voice, her large blue eyes glittering with innocent pleasure. Dave found that he was starting to like her.

Having returned the frock to its normal position, Janey straightened her hair with unconscious precision. She really was very pretty, now that he had a chance to study her face. Dave wondered why he'd never noticed that before; he'd known her for six years, three of them as a girl. Maybe it was because he'd never bothered to look twice 'til now. Funny, that.

"Who're you meeting at the park?" she asked with that same endearing naivety. She had dimples at the corners of her mouth.

"Aww, just some of the kids from Six-B," he replied, enjoying the way the breeze inflating her dress like a balloon. Cued by some obscure telepathic ability known only to children, they started walking down the avenue. Vast, lazy clouds drifted by overhead, dwarfed by a perfect blue sky. Dave spun his yo-yo on the end of its leash, hardly aware of what he was doing.

"What're you-all planning to do down there?" she enquired, turning those neon-blue eyes in his direction.

"Play tag over in the playground," he answered, eyes wandering down to her legs, hoping her skirt would inflate around her waist again, "tag, then maybe a game of rounders, if Georgie Stevens brings his bat and ball."

"Any girls down there?"

"Yeah, Katie Prescott and some of her friends." Katie Prescott was Six-B's resident tomboy and perennial terror of Memorial Park. Like most of his buddies, Dave was somewhat in awe of Katie's devastating right hook and tended to walk on eggshells around her. It suddenly occurred to Dave how different Janey was to Hurricane Kate and her friends: sweeter, warmer. More … gentle, if that was the right word.

"You guys ever play kiss-chase?" Janey asked, a faint smile flitting over her rosebud lips.

"Well …" Dave stammered, wondering how he was going to answer that particular question. He stared down the green corridor, recalling the way her pants had clung to her pert, round bottom. The whole encounter was etched into his memory, from his first upward glance to that breath-taking final dismount. Every word, every sound, every detail; right down to the scent of the grass and the murmur of the wind through the leaves.

He looked over at his pretty blond friend, suddenly aware that his life had changed. Everything had altered in some silent, understated way only a boy his age would have noticed. He couldn't have put it into words, couldn't have explained it to anyone - not even to his mother, who seemed to understand everything. If he'd been a little older – or perhaps a little younger – he might have felt the hand of fate on his shoulder, pushing him towards an as yet unseen future. But being precisely twelve years old, he felt nothing on his shoulder except the clear May sunlight. He was simply a boy enjoying the last summer of his childhood, and the world was beginning to turn just a little faster.

The morning wheeled on towards a perfect spring day.

  

  

  

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