Chapter 3: The First Morning
The first thing I felt was the sun, sharp and invasive, cutting across my closed eyelids. Then the weight. A heavy, tender fullness on my chest that shifted with a faint, internal slosh as I tried to roll onto my side. My back protested—a new, shorter spine aligning differently. The sheets were a slick prison of silk, snagging on the calluses that were no longer on my hands.
I opened my eyes. A vaulted ceiling, exposed beams. Not my water-stained apartment ceiling. Memory returned, a cold flood. Sabrina’s bed. Sabrina’s body.
I sat up. The movement was all wrong. My center was higher, my balance precarious. The weight on my chest pulled forward, and I looked down. The tight black tank top Sabrina—I—had slept in did nothing to contain the reality. The fabric strained over two pronounced mounds, the outlines of the silver barbells visible against the cotton. A deep, hollow ache pulsed inside them, a foreign soreness. When I swung my legs over the side of the bed, the whole mass jiggled, a soft, unsettling quiver that travelled down my ribs.
My feet touched the floor. They were so small. The arches were higher, the toes neatly aligned. I stood, and the world was five feet tall. The ceiling loomed. The bed was a plateau. I took a step and my hips automatically rolled, a sway I couldn’t suppress. It sent a secondary, answering wobble through the cheeks of my ass. The black thong I wore was a mere string, digging into the cleft with an intimacy that felt like a violation. Every step was a reminder of the divide, of the new, alien geography between my legs.
The smell of coffee hit me as I padded out of the bedroom, a bitter, promising thread in the lavender air. The apartment was massive, all open plan and cold modernity. And there, at the kitchen island, was a mountain of a man bent over a laptop.
Chloe.
Seeing her was a fresh shock every time. The sheer bulk of Michael’s shoulders under a gray tank top, the triceps defined even at rest. The short, brown hair, the shadow of a beard I now knew was always present. She was hunched, trying to fold her new largeness into a smaller space, her giant fingers stabbing at the keyboard with frustrated, clumsy taps.
She heard my approach and looked up. Her eyes, Michael’s pale blue eyes, were ringed with exhaustion and a fear so profound it made my new, smaller heart clench.
“You’re up,” she said. Her voice was a low rumble. She cleared her throat, trying to soften it. It didn’t work.
“I didn’t know how to make it stop,” I said. My voice. High, melodic. It felt like a helium traitor in my throat. I walked toward the island, each step a lesson in equilibrium. The cool marble floor under my bare, tiny feet. The brush of the tank top’s hem against my hip bones. The constant, gentle sway and jiggle of my chest with every movement. I was a collection of loosely connected, sensitive parts.
“I found the coffee,” Chloe said, nodding to a sleek machine. “It’s… it’s ready.” She gestured to a second mug, black. “I didn’t know how you took it. Sabrina probably takes it with unicorn blood or something.”
A weak laugh escaped me. It sounded like a bell. I pulled myself onto a bar stool, my lack of height requiring a small hop. The edge of the seat pressed against the back of my thighs. I wrapped my hands—slender, tattooed, black-nailed—around the warm mug. The heat felt good. Real.
I took a sip. The taste was different. Sharper, more acidic. My new taste buds seemed to amplify the bitterness, rejecting the familiar comfort. I swallowed, the motion drawing attention to the slender column of my throat.
“What are you doing?” I asked, nodding at the laptop.
Chloe ran a massive hand over her face, the sound of palm against beard-stubble loud in the quiet kitchen. “Trying to understand the cage,” she said, her voice dull. “His life. Michael’s life. It’s… Justin, it’s not just rich. It’s pathological.” She turned the screen toward me. “Offshore holdings. A shell company that owns the shell company that owns this building. A portfolio that looks less like investing and more like someone hiding pieces of a puzzle.” She tapped a key, bringing up an itinerary. “And this. A car booked to Stowe. A ski lodge he owns.”
A trip. Today. The momentum of a life we hadn’t chosen was already dragging us forward.
“We can’t go,” I said, the panic bright and metallic in my mouth.
“What’s the alternative?” Chloe snapped, then instantly looked contrite. “Sorry. I’m… I’m not good at this.” She gestured helplessly at her own torso. “Everything is too loud. Too much. The… the physicality of it.” She shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “If we don’t go, people will ask questions. Michael’s people. Sabrina’s friends. The note said to keep him happy. What happens if we make him—make me—suddenly vanish?”
The logic was a cold, tight chain. We were actors who’d been thrown on stage in the middle of the second act, with no script, expected to perform for an audience that knew the lines by heart.
I looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows. The Adirondack pines stood sharp and distant. A world away from my cramped apartment, from Chloe’s quiet bookstore. A world Sabrina had bought and paid for.
“We have to get dressed,” I said finally. The words tasted like surrender.
Chloe just nodded, closing the laptop with a definitive click.
The walk to Sabrina’s closet was a journey through a stranger’s psyche. Racks of clothes, color-coded, fabrics ranging from delicate lace to severe leather. I stood before it, overwhelmed. My old body would have worn jeans and a flannel. This body… the shoulders were too narrow, the hips too wide. Nothing of mine would fit, even if I had it.
I reached for a simple pair of black leggings. Pulling them on was an ordeal. The fabric was astonishingly thin, stretching over the wide curve of my hips, clinging to every inch of my thighs and calves like a second skin. I had to contort, wobbling on one small foot, to get them past my ankles. Once on, they compressed, holding everything in a firm, alien embrace. The thong remained, a pointless, digging string beneath.
A bra was next. I found a drawer full of them, intricate contraptions of lace and wire. I selected the plainest black one I could see. Figuring out the clasp behind my back with fingers that didn’t feel like my own was a lesson in humiliation. I got it on backwards twice before managing to hook it. Slipping the straps over my shoulders, I then had to perform the most bizarre maneuver: leaning forward and manually gathering the soft, heavy weight of my breasts, lifting and settling them into the cups. The contact was intense, a full-palmed intimacy that made my face burn. The wire dug under my ribs. The padding and lift pushed them up and together, creating a pronounced cleavage that the tank top only emphasized.
I stared at the reflection in the full-length mirror. A petite, punkish girl stared back, her body a map of ink and artificial curves, poured into clothing that revealed more than it concealed. I felt weaker. Shorter. Every movement was softer, contained by the elastic and lace. I was a prisoner in a beautifully crafted suit of flesh.
When I emerged, Chloe was in the hallway, struggling with a pair of men’s jeans. She’d gotten the sweatpants off. Seeing her, really seeing the male body in just boxers and a tank top, was a fresh jolt. The sheer power of the legs, the dense hair on them. The way the boxers tented obscenely at the front, a massive, undefined bulge straining against the cotton. She saw my glance and flushed, a red stain creeping up her neck under the beard.
“I can’t,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears she wouldn’t shed. “It’s just… there. All the time. It bumps against my leg when I walk. The weight of it…”
She turned away, fumbling with the jeans. I went to help, wordlessly holding the waistband open so she could step in. It was an absurd, intimate ballet. She hauled them up over tree-trunk thighs, and the struggle with the button and zipper was a battle against an anatomy she loathed. She got them fastened, but the bulge remained, a prominent, unsettling outline.
We stood there in the silent, expensive hallway, two ghosts in stolen meat, dressed for a day in a life that wasn’t ours.
“The car arrives at four,” Chloe said, not meeting my eyes. “We have to pack her things. His things. We have to… be them.”
I nodded, the motion making my pink hair brush my tattooed jawline. The resolve formed, cold and hard in my gut, a last piece of Justin Zygurski clinging to the helm of this shipwreck. “Then we pack,” I said, my feminine voice quiet but steady. “We go. We figure out the next hour. And then the hour after that.”
We moved toward the bedroom to face Sabrina’s suitcases. The momentum was cruel, but it was all we had. We were being swept downstream, and all we could do was try to keep our heads above the dark, perfumed water.