Sixteen the Hard Way -1- Jonny (Patreon)

"This is not happening to me," Jon told himself again, staring at his reflection in the full-length bathroom mirror. "I am not growing tits!" He didn’t say it out loud though because someone might hear.

They certainly looked like tits. Small, pointy, with nipples about the size of a Hershey's Kiss sitting on an miniature cupcake. Two of them, one each side. He poked one. "Ouch," he said.

His younger sister Donna tapped at the door. "Hurry up!" she said urgently but only loud enough for Jon to hear. "I swear, you take longer in the bathroom than anyone."

“Shut up,” he said. “Go away,” he added when Donna rattled the door knob.

“I’ve got to get ready, too!” Donna complained.

Her brother ignored her. His hands shook as he tried to wrap an elastic bandage around his chest. It didn’t cooperate, he couldn’t get it tight enough to stay in place as he brought the second layer around. Frustrated he left off the attempt and struggled with an urge to start crying. He had to do something, he couldn’t go to school with nipples showing through his shirt.

“Mom!” In the hallway his sister appealed to a higher authority. “Jon is going to make me late for school, hogging the bathroom!”

“You can use mine,” their mother called, probably from the kitchen.

“But my stuff is in there!” Donna protested.

And it was, some of her pink babydoll t-shirts hung from the shower rail. Jon seized one of them, maybe it would fit tight enough that under one of his own t-shirts and a regular shirt….

Only fifteen months younger than her brother, Donna was not actually smaller as the growth spurt Jon had been waiting for had yet to arrive, so the shirt was not as tight as he had hoped. Still, with two more layers, it did a lot to conceal the unwanted growths on his chest.

He glared at his reflection. Shaggy white-blond hair, slightly unfocussed blue-gray eyes (he didn’t have his glasses on), clear and fair complexion (he tended to burn instead of tanning), tip-tilted nose and a wide mouth with full lips gave him less of a masculine face than he would have preferred.

“What am I going to do?” he wondered. School had started up again at the beginning of the week, his sophomore year in high school and how would he ever get through gym class once they started insisting students change clothes in the locker room?

He would just get killed if he had to do that. Or die of embarrassment. He imagined his face bursting into flames that would cook his brain and put him out of his misery.

Donna screeched outside the door again and this time he flinched. After one last look in the mirror, he reached out and opened it, brushing past her with only a mumbled, “Sorry.”

“Grr!” said Donna.

*

Miserably, Jon waited for the bus to take him to school. It was Monday of the second week of the new school year. This was the day that everyone would be required to dress out for P.E. meaning to change into the gym uniform at the beginning of class, take a shower at the end and change back to street clothes.

Jon couldn’t do that. People would find out that he had tits. They would laugh at a boy who had tits. Jon wanted to cry but he couldn’t do that. A girl would cry, could cry, but a boy wouldn’t, couldn’t. And Jon was a boy. A boy with tits.

Just as Donna arrived to wait with him for the bus, Jon bent over at the waist and threw up green bile, since he had had nothing for breakfast.

“Jon!” Donna exclaimed. “You’re sick?”

He shook his head. If he were sick, he’d have to go to the doctor and the doctor would find out that he had tits. He couldn’t let that happen.

“You are sick,” Donna decided. She grabbed his hand and tugged him back toward the house. “C’mon, we have to tell Mom.”

“Leave me alone,” Jon protested. “I’m not sick.”

“Throwing up is sick.” Donna pulled harder and Jon resisted. But he hadn’t remembered that his sister, though a year younger, was an inch taller and ten pounds heavier. When she made a third try at pulling him toward the house, she started with a strong yank that left him off balance. Then she kept pulling as he staggered along, trying to stay upright.

“Let go!” he yelped.

“Mom!” Donna called out. “Jonny is being a poophead! He’s sick and doesn’t want to tell you!”

“D-dammit!” Jon complained, nearly tripping over some toy left on the lawn by their younger sister, Linda. Donna left him no slack to recover gracefully but dragged him on toward the front door where their mother and little sister were just emerging.

“Jonny’s a poophead! A poopyhead, a poopy-poop!” Linda chanted. Linda was four, on her way to day school with her mother, who worked in county administration next door.

“Oh, great! She heard you call me that,” Jon accused. Linda repeated everything she heard, with amplifications and variations.

Donna grinned but hushed the smaller girl. “Yes, he is, but we don’t tell the whole neighborhood about it.”

Linda clamped a hand over her mouth but giggles escaped like bubbles from a bottle of pop.

Mom rolled her eyes. The joy of raising a toddler who’s more than ten years younger than your other kids. Linda was the result of an unplanned pregnancy, or as the irrepressible tyke put it herself, “I’m an accident that already happened.”

Everyone paused in the driveway while Mom checked Jon’s temperature with the back of her hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she observed. “Are you sure you’re sick?”

“I’m not sick,” Jon said again. “I just threw up a little and Mahomet is making a Mountain out of it.”

Mom snickered. “You’re mixing metaphors, maybe you are sick.”

Linda asked, “What’s a metty-four?”

“It’s like a suicide slushie,” Donna told the little girl. “All the flavors mixed together. And he is sick enough to almost get barf on my shoes.”

“Sewer-size slushie! Sewer-size slushie!” yelled Linda.

“There’s the bus,” Donna added, pointing at the end of the block where the big yellow vehicle had just turned off the circulating road around the subdivision.

Donna put Jon’s wrist into their mother’s grasp and headed for the bus. “See you later, sickie,” she called back.

Jon started after Donna but Mom tightened her grip. “Get in the car, Jon,” she ordered. “Your color is bad, I think you are sick.”

“I’m not sick!” Jon protested, but he began to comply. Doing what your parents told you to do was just the way the world worked, even if you didn’t want it to.

Mom settled Linda in the child seat in back, while Jon buckled into the passenger seat. When Mom closed the back door and before she opened the driver’s door, Linda joyfully chanted twice, “Jonny’s a poopyhead! Jonny’s a poopyhead.”

Rolling his eyes but otherwise ignoring her, Jon tried to summon more arguments for not seeing the doctor. But it was too late, he knew. He wasn’t crying when his mother got into the car, and she failed to notice the effort that cost him.

*

The humiliating examination over, and his shirt back on, Jon sat quietly on the end of the exam table while Dr. Silva explained things to Mom. The room gleamed with chrome and smelled of disinfectant, and Jon fidgeted without noticing he was doing so.

“It’s called gynecomastia and it is quite common in young boys who have just started puberty,” Dr. Silva told Jon’s mother, then turned to his patient. “When did you start noticing the swelling, Jonny?” he asked.

“I guess last summer sir. Just before school started. About this time last year? Uh….” He had to blush. “Some of the guys in gym class when school started, they noticed, and teased me about growing -uh- tits.”

Mom and the doctor both smiled at that, but it wasn’t at all amusing to Jon. He looked around for some sort of solace. Mom put a hand on his arm, and he hung his head in embarrassment because he wanted to clutch at her touch.

“They’re quite noticeable now,” the doctor mused.

Jon could only nod miserably.

“If you were a girl,” said Mom, “I think I’d be planning on buying you a bra.”

“Not funny,” he managed to say, and could not keep the resentment out of his voice. Mom’s eyebrows went up but she didn’t say more.

“You’re how old? Fifteen?” Dr. Silva checked the chart. “Yes. November birthday. Hmm.” He looked up. “In fact, Jon, your development is almost median for a girl your age. Tanner Stage III or early IV.”

Jon didn’t understand the jargon but it didn’t sound good. He heard the blood rushing through his ears, felt his pulse pounding in his throat and temples.

Suddenly, the doctor spoke in alarm. “Bend forward, rest your elbows on your knees, put your head down,” he ordered. “Breathe slow and deep.” He reached for the boy.

“Huh?” said Jon. His vision began to turn red at the edges.

“He’s hyperventilating,” he heard the nurse say.

“We’ve got you, Jonny,” the doctor said.

The nurse stepped in to help and the three adults helped him down off the examining table and into a chair as he got his breathing back to normal.

They talked past him for a bit, discussing blood draws, cheek swabs, and a possible ultrasound. “Feeling better?” the doctor asked when Jonny looked up.

He nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that.”

Dr. Silva smiled. “It’s okay, Jonny. I know this is stressful. How are you doing in gym class this year?””

“Uh, we haven’t had to dress out yet. We only had two days last week, but today we were supposed to bring gym clothes and get lockers assigned.”

Mom frowned. “I didn’t know about that.”

“I didn’t tell you,” Jonny admitted.

“Would you like a note to be excused from gym class?” Dr. Silva asked.

“I—you? Yes, please,” Jonny answered. Wait. Going to see the doctor was turning into a good thing?

Mom was still frowning. “I guess you would get teased even worse with…” she made a vague motion. “Things,” she finished.

Jonny nodded. They all looked at the very visible mounds in his shirt.

“I’d say you’re about a full A-cup,” said the nurse.

“Maybe a bit more than that. His sister is a year younger and already a B,” said Mom.

The nurse opened her mouth then closed it again, apparently thinking better of what she had started to say.

“Is there anything you can do to help me?” Jonny finally got up enough nerve to ask.

“Perhaps,” said the doctor. “We need to get results from the blood tests we ordered. Hmm,” he looked at his charts again. “You’re not shaving anywhere, are you?”

Jonny rubbed his chin. “I don’t have anything to shave, sir.”

“You don’t have any pubic or axillary hair, either. You haven’t been shaving those areas?”

Jonny knew what pubic meant but not the other word, but since he hadn’t been shaving anywhere, he answered simply, “No, sir.”

Dr. Silva seemed to think this might be a wrong answer. “No depilatories? Waxing?”

“Uh—no, sir. I just don’t have any hair there.”

“Gynecomastia with lack of body hair, I know I’ve read those indications in a book somewhere,” Silva mused. “I’ll do some research. We’ll get the lab results back, and the nurse will make you an appointment for later in the week.” He smiled at Jonny.

“Is there anything you can give me to make the -uh- swelling go down?” the boy asked.

Dr. Silva shook his head. “Not yet. We have to see the blood tests first.” He still smiled but Jonny did not feel reassured.

“Do they itch?” the nurse interjected. Mom and the doctor both looked interested in his answer.

“Yes,” he said. “Almost all the time.”

“No pain?” asked the doctor. “Aching or throbbing or sharp flashes?”

“Uh—only if I bump them or scratch too hard.”

Mom and the nurse nodded while Dr. Silva frowned, but Jonny wasn’t sure why.

*

Dressed again in the two t-shirts, one much too small, and his regular outer shirt, which kept the swellings on his chest from being so noticeable, Jonny felt like he was escaping the exam room while he followed his mother down the hall. Mom and he paused at the nurse’s desk on their way out of the clinic to make another appointment, this one for Thursday afternoon. “To be sure we have time to get the blood tests back,” said the nurse.

“Okay,” Mom agreed. “Four thirty Thursday then.” They moved through the waiting room, Jonny imagining that everyone sitting around reading ancient magazines or playing with Lincoln Logs was watching his chest, though he knew that was unlikely to be true.

At the car, Mom said, “It’s almost noon. I’ve missed half a day of work and you’ve missed half a day of school.” Without an appointment, they’d had to wait to be ‘squeezed in’ to see the doctor. “Why don’t we declare a holiday and just take the rest of the day off?”

Jonny was almost scandalized. This didn’t sound like his mother. “Okay by me,” he agreed as they buckled themselves into their seats. “First period after lunch is Gym anyway, and I’ve got a note to skip that. So I’ll only be missing two classes in the afternoon.”

“Okay,” Mom agreed. “Let’s get ourselves a nice lunch then.” She steered out of the parking lot, headed toward the downtown mall. “You got any other secrets you’ve been keeping from me?” she asked casually.

Jonny babbled a denial convincingly, and Mom laughed.