Boy Chick -2- Puberty (Patreon)

I turned thirteen in February that year and puberty hit me hard.

Joanie was dating a boy named Ed Steel, a year older than her and a senior at the same school. A six-footer with short brown hair bleached blond on top in a style I found fascinating. I found everything about Ed fascinating. His muscles, his car, his clothes, his height, his voice, his laugh.

I had it bad.

And obviously, Ed could barely even see me.

In the last four months I had grown four inches, reaching the lofty height of maybe five-foot-three, only two inches shorter than Joanie who had quit growing two years before. Growing up. She had certainly filled out since then.

She out weighed me and my beanpole frame by nearly twenty pounds and all of it arranged to attract a boy like Ed. A man like Ed. For the first time in my life, I felt jealous of my sister for something more important than her being tall enough to reach the cookie jar.

Ed came to the house often to pick Joanie up for their dates. One Saturday, he came early and had to wait for her to finish getting pretty. He sat on the edge of the couch having refused Mom’s offer of ice tea. He stared around and spotted me looking at him from the door to my room.

*

“Hey,” he says.

I nod. “Hi.”

“You’re Carlie,” he says. I nod again. “I don’t see you around much. Are you shy?” He smiles at me and my toes curl.

I come out of the doorway and perch on the edge of the arm of the same couch he is sitting on. “Not really. It’s just, I stay out of the way cause you’re Joanie’s boyfriend.” And not mine.

Ed grins. “I think you’re shy. I like shy girls.”

I almost fall off the couch. He thinks I’m a girl. I fluff my hair. “Joanie’s not shy.”

He keeps grinning. “No, she isn’t. But I like girls who aren’t shy, too. I guess I just like girls.” He laughs and I giggle.

“How come I never see you dressed up?” he asks. “I bet if you got all dolled up, you’d be prettier than your sister.”

I smile at him and giggle again. He’s a charmer and I’m in love.

Ed laughs and leans toward me. “I think I might like tomboys most of all,” he says in a fake whisper.

I’m really into the playacting. I am Joanie’s little sister Carlie, the tomboy who cleans up pretty and wins the handsome boyfriend away like I saw in the movies and read in Joanie’s teen romance books. I want it to be true. I want Ed to kiss me.

I lean toward him and Mom calls me from the kitchen. “Carlie, come in here.”

I delay. “What is it, Mom?”

She insists. “Come here.”

I try a pout at Ed and he laughs. “You better go see what she wants.”

I trudge to the kitchen and glance back over my shoulder and Ed winks at me.

*

In the kitchen, Mom pointed at the kitchen table. “Sit there,” she ordered me. “Don’t you be flirting with Joanie’s dates.”

“Mom!” I protested.

She pointed at the big mirror in the dining room. “I can see everything that goes on in the living room from here. He doesn’t know you’re a boy, does he?”

“Uh, I guess not. But he thinks I’m pretty.” I giggled.

Mom sniffed but smiled. “He doesn’t know you’re only thirteen either but he could guess that. Men.” She shook her head. “So, you like boys?”

“Uh,” I said in a very small voice.

“It’s okay if you do. You’ve always been a little queer so I guess it’s no surprise.”

“Mom,” I whisper. I’d been called queer before but not by my mother.

She pulled me into a hug. “It’s okay, honey. It’s not the end of the world. Lots of boys like other boys, I think they prefer to be called gay instead of queer, these days.” She pushed me away for a moment then hugged me again. “Gay means happy, I just want you to be happy, honey.”

I hugged her back. At this time she was still an inch or so taller than me. “We can’t tell your father,” she whispered.

I nodded. A stab of fear touched my heart.

My dad was a Deputy Sheriff and ten years older than Mom who was by this time in her forties. Dad was a good man but his age and his job and where we lived had bent him a certain way. A way that would make having a gay son very much a problem to him. Especially since he had lately developed political ambition and intended to run for something when he retired from the Sheriff’s Office in another year.

I certainly didn’t want him to know about me.

I heard Joanie talking to Ed in the living room. Joanie called out a promise to be back by eleven and then they were gone.

Mom smiled at me. “Your father is in Sacramento at the Deputies Conference. Shall we see what we can do for you with the stuff you have hidden in your closet?”

I acted on that suggestion right away, embarrassed but proud of the treasures I had collected.

Mom was pretty critical of what I had in my closet. Since I was basically taking my sister’s cast offs, there was no style of my own and I didn’t do much choosing, just whatever I could get.

After looking over my stuff, Mom came up with two piles, one for me to keep and one to get rid of. “But I like the purple capris with the glitter at the cuffs,” I protested.

“Please,” Mom said. “You didn’t see your sister wearing them much before her ass got too big, did you? There’s a reason, they are tacky.”

“Besides,” she went on, “they look like something a gay boy would wear. We want to dress you up as a girl. Then we can go shopping for some of your own stuff.” 

She handed me a slinky dress in my favorite color, purple, and I stripped out of what I was wearing, quick as a snake. “Shopping? Really? Dressed as a girl?” I think I probably squealed. I pulled the dress over my head, it barely reached mid-thigh on me and I had flat stole it from Joanie because I never saw her wear it. It would be too short on her, the girl had some morals.

“Right,” said Mom, looking me over. “C’mon, let’s go raid your sister’s room because you have like, no accessories, honey.” She crossed the hall, an armada intent on raiding the coast.

Giggling, I followed her. I had never imagined this, Mom being my ringleader on such an adventure.