The Swim Team Ch. 03

Her back to her, Gabrielle took a hand mirror on her dresser, took her sweatpants off, as stiff and shrunken as a nipple in the cold wind, and, in socks and tanktop, she contorted about on the edge of the bed to get a look at herself.

It looked pretty normal apart from the botched shaving job and the scratching marks still visible from last night.

Far away from this, Sophia was focusing very hard. She monologued: "Did you know you can find like the gnarliest pictures on Wikipedia when you look up sex stuff? It's literally porn."

"Preposterous."

"Flabbergasting."

To demonstrate her claim, she held out the tablet to her, at arm's length, without looking.

Fullscreened photograph of a spread vagina, red arrows pointing to the hymen.

Gabrielle looked, grunted. She went back to herself and parted her labia, observed the details of her femininity, her inner lips, their color, their shape. She spent some time locating her urethra. And then eventually dared to open her vaginal hole.

"I can never tell where's my hymen," she said.

"Oh yeah?"

"Do you still have yours?"

"Of course!"

Sophia had replied so fast... It made Gabrielle ask:

"How come you're still a virgin?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"You realize if it wasn't for that surprise rash, I'd probably have lost mine before you? With Dylan."

"Did he call you?"

"Yea."

"Did Lily call?"

"No. She comes back from her hippie witch stuff later tonight."

"Jesus Christ."

"I know."

From the corner of her eye, Gabrielle checked that Sophia was still nose-deep into the glow of the tablet. Discreetly, she wetted her middle finger and then pushed it all the way inside herself.

Emmerson had said her walls would have started fusing together by now.

Gabrielle felt around. It didn't seem so.

Everything was normal.

As she pulled it out, a string of fluid she knew quite well clung to her fingertip. Still as sneakily she sucked it off and wiped her hand on the sheets, refusing to ask herself why the hell she was wet.

"How deep are vaginas supposed to be?" she asked.

Sophia chortled. "I don't know!" She sat up. "Vagenes be deep. They're so deep. It's dicks that are shallow. Ours are deep like a French film."

"Louis Garrel!"

"Timothey Chamalet!"

"He's French?"

"He is in my heart."

They swooned.

Seeing that Gabrielle wasn't getting dressed, Sophia went back to Wikipedia, wandering from hyperlink to hyperlink. Out of nowhere, she gave a proud speech about the clitoris, how it serves no purpose except providing pleasure—a complete evolutionary nonsense—and how this fact could imply so much about the female condition.

Gabrielle hesitated, she struggled with herself, let a few seconds pass before she reintroduced the subject:

"Sof, can I ask you a question?"

The big sis rolled her eyes, answered an ironic "No."

"What size is your clitoris?"

"You think I measured it?"

"M-mine... I always thought mine was... It looks big I dunno..."

"You mean it's growing, like that creep said?"

"No. I mean it looks big."

"Compared to what? Compared to who?"

This last question indirectly referenced the very effective parental lock on the household internet. The number of clitorises Gabrielle had seen should in all likelihood be low.

"I don't know. But I thought maybe it runs in the family so I was just asking..."

"Ok I get it, you want me to have a look."

"What—No!"

"Yes, you want me to look."

"N—"

"Gab, the other option is that you wanted to see mine. And it won't happen. So..."

The two sisters looked at each other for the first time in twenty minutes.

Gabrielle blushed.

Sophia sighed. And blushed. And trudged down the bed to go kneel in front of her sister.

They stared at one another again. Only gravity on their faces now.

Gabrielle folded back her legs, her feet up on the mattress.

No one had ever seen her like this. Except Dr. Reyes, her gynecologist, whom she would see on Tuesday.

Sophia was so close she could feel her breath.

"Pretty normal from here."

No one asked her, not even herself, yet Gabrielle pulled back her hood with her fingers to completely expose the clitoris. Sophia's eyes doubled in size. The movement had lacked any hesitation, any restraint, making the little nub of pink flesh jut out obscenely.

It throbbed a few times.

But she remained calm. It indeed was slightly above the norm but still not enough to be qualified as big.

"No, sorry, still not that big," she confirmed.

"What do you say big would be?"

"I don't know, a hazelnut." Sophia couldn't stop staring at it. "A-are you um...erect right now?"

"What do you mean?"

"A ladyboner. You know clits get erect too, right?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. So is it as big as yours?"

"Oh my God, stop asking me about my junk!"

"Is it true female athletes have big ones because of all the hormones?"

"The swim team says nope to dope," Sophia recited.

Gabrielle closed back her legs and sat straight, making her mons disappear between her thighs.

And for the third time they looked at each other silently. And warmth went back and forth. And timid smiles.

"Do you think I'll be a mutant tomorrow?"

"You will finally get a lock on your door, that's for sure."

"You might be the last person who saw my lady parts."

"Take a picture."

Gabrielle froze before she could even laugh.

It was...perhaps... ... a good idea.

Her eyes locked on her phone on the desk.

Sophia saw what was going on. She heard her sister's breathing accelerate. So she told her as softly as she could:

"If you take this picture... she wins."

Gabrielle shrugged. "And I'll delete it tomorrow."

Their faces got somber. Their gazes could not meet anymore. Especially Sophia's, whose eyes became avoidant.

"I'll leave you alone," she mumbled as she stood up.

Gabrielle did the same. "No no it's alright I don't mind—" Only she was still naked from the waist down and as she tried to catch up with Sophia already walking out of there, her nudity made everything worse.

"Sophia."

Her sister turned around, hand on the doorknob, looking away. "What?"

"Thank you."

Outside the bedroom, a voice escaped the heavy silence and the angry phone calls. Dinner was ready.

Their afternoon finally crashing down, the long walk from the bedroom to the living-room table reminded the girls how exhausted they were. They looked at each other one last time, with an invisible smile, and sat to microwaved leftovers. Gabrielle was scared. Sophia switched back to this inscrutable person they were used to. All ate without appetite. It was 7pm, the sun had set.

*****

First came an evil laugh of pins and needles across Gabrielle's crotch, making it clear the doctor had been telling the truth and they were wrong. Understanding this felt like a more concrete terror to her mind than any upheaval in her body. Not only was she wrong, but science was also powerless; no one could do anything for the mutant girls; in fact it was too late before she even learned about her condition. Too late to be normal. Too late to take that selfie. Too late to look like her sister. Too late to be a woman.

What was the name again? Rebus?

There, came a pulsating heat, stacking up with the itch and which disregarded Gabrielle's realizations to quickly impose its own turmoil. Unexpectedly, it didn't bring only distress but also recollection of some sweetness inside her, shapeless fragments impossible to tell if from a dream or a nightmare.

A nightmare, Gabrielle decided. One where everybody at the dinner table was staring at her.

A spark of pleasure cracked inside her clitoris and she clenched her teeth over a mouthful of greasy pasta.

Mom, dad, Sophia didn't notice. Gabrielle did everything to keep it that way. She held back tears, scratching, words, and went back to bed right after desert to break into silent sobs.

Weakly enough not to hurt herself but hard enough to let out her anger, her fear—her disappointment—she punched herself in the pubic bone and the inside of her thighs. That's the only time she lost control. She scratched through her pants till her fingernails hurt. Then she just lay there. Inert. Groaning.

The house went dark.

Camille knocked to ask if everything was all right. She didn't see the trails of tears because they were wiped too well. She sat on the bed close to her daughter. She ran a comforting hand through her hair.

"You didn't call that boy? He must be worried."

Their voices were slow whispers.

"I didn't do anything with him, mom, you know?"

"I didn't ask."

Such a contrast compared with the sharpness of the itching. Gabrielle could feel every fiber, every fold of her anatomy, blaringly raw, dry skin, wet skin, crevices, clitoral hood, clitoral root, the part of her left inner labia that was more pronounced than the right, the invisible line where they both met and fused with her clitoris, her empty bladder, the stubs, the ingrown hairs, the thing was even starting to graze her anus, it was making her feel her internal organs, like she knew the heaviness stuck inside her was her ovaries. All pushing her to cry, to call for help, to resort to despair.

But there was this hand in her hair. And this voice that had always put strength in her.

And sometimes stubbornness is strength. Resilience.

"You know..." Camille pondered her words. "You know when your father and I chose your name... You were our second child so we were a little less... a little more sound. So we considered going for something other than the sacred route."

"You almost called me Britney?"

"No. We thought of Julia. After the Beatles song."

Gabrielle promised herself to check it out on Spotify.

"I like it. So what made you settle for Gabrielle in the end?"

"If I wanted to sound cliché I'd say to be an adult you have to leave some things behind. But the truth is that...raising children is terrifying. It just is. So..."

"I'm sure there's a Saint Julia out there."

"Probably."

"The Beatles is so old, though. Like not your generation. Why didn't you pick something from the nineties? What was it back then? Like Corn something."

Camille chortled. "Korn..." And shook her head. "Korn...?" And giggled.

"Why did you tell me this?"

"I guess my point was that we were eighteen too. Once."

Gabrielle kissed the hand that was now on her cheek.

"Is it a nice song?"

"The nicest. Happy birthday, my angel." She kissed her daughter goodnight.

And left.

Gabrielle had now a few things to think about instead of scratching her cooch.

Moments later, Sophia found her under the covers. Not on her phone. Cowering.

"You're not sleeping?"

"Sof, I just learned we have secret Hebrew names. Mine is Princess Leia, yours is Yu-Gi-Oh."

Sophia didn't react, she sat on the floor at her bedside. Together again, alone, they didn't have to say it to know.

And the night began.

Gabrielle doubled over like she had been stabbed.

"You alright?"

"Leave me alone, please..."

"Does it hurt?" Sophia insisted.

"It feels weird." Gabrielle was crying now, trying not to with all her remaining strength. The sweetness was a wave of inexpressible shame in her flesh.

Sophia recognized this confusion in her eyes. It was not pain. She couldn't help but look awkward as she did it, but she took Emmerson's prescription bottle out of her breast pocket.

"You stole them?"

"She gave it to you."

"What if it's crystal meth?"

"I googled the words on the sticker. None of them showed up and I'm sure if I tried to sell it on the street I'd get a visit from the CIA."

"I'm not takin' these."

Gabrielle buried her face into her pillow. Sweetness, stinging and prickling became undistinguishable in a manner as clear as the shot of a starting pistol.

It was intolerable.

Sophia leaned over. "It still hurts?"

"Yes. No." Tears and hiccups drowned the rest.

Suddenly she gasped, had to tear her shorts down her contracting legs, had to suppress and veil exactly what was happening, while her vagina was having an orgasm. Its last one.

The panic was too close and too contagious, Sophia had to try her suspicion: "Is it like...it feels good?"

Gabrielle only cried harder as a confirmation.

Her sister took one capsule from the bottle. "If it feels good, maybe it means you're not in danger?"

"It's horrible, I want it to stop."

She tried to scratch herself, to claw her vulva apart rather, but Sophia grabbed both her wrists and lay down against her. Gabrielle eventually swallowed the capsule presented patiently in front of her eyes. Then they had to wait.

Gabrielle twitched a few more times, she cried and cried into Sophia's neck, until the drug finally took her into a bad sleep, artificial and dreamless, the kind you only get from sleeping pills.

Mr. and Mrs. Sommers had resorted to the same chemical trick.

Sophia had nothing.

*****

"Wake up," a voice whispered.

5:57am was glowing red in the darkness. The only thing Gabrielle could understand yet.

The voice again: "You peed the bed."

"I'm cold," she said, uncovering a huge wet spot on the mattress, on her night clothes, everywhere.

The voice switched the lights on. Sophia's comforting silhouette. "Go take some dry ones. I'll change your bed, you'll be back to sleep in no time."

Gabrielle sleepwalked to her dresser and took off her shorts. Something inside her drowsy brain compelled her to stop, but instinctively she also knew her sister would not look at her changing clothes. She said, "It's not pee," in a daze, "it's all sticky."

"Just wipe it off. Does it burn or anything?"

"No, I'm—" Gabrielle looked down between her legs.

She didn't scream.

She took the hand mirror on the dresser and saw her clitoris, four inches long, protruding from the cleft of her veiny labia, or what was left of them. Engorged. Fusing. All in an alarming bruise-purple. The sweetness was still down there, somewhere.

Still she didn't scream, mind as numb as her body. She said:

"I think I'm not going to school today."

*****

She had never been homesick before, as far as she could remember. Like in that old Bruce Willis movie.

She stayed in bed all day and Mrs. Sommers volunteered to watch over her, instead roaming the house, pallid, mute. They parted ways almost immediately after Greg and Sophia both left for work—these two so in shock they needed the escape—Camille vanished just like her forced smile when Gabrielle went for her morning pee and at the bathroom door they realized at the same time she was about to urinate with her clitoris.

Only to reappear a few hours later with lunch on a tray. Eye contact had stopped.

All afternoon, when she was not dozing off, Gabrielle looked at herself. She didn't touch anything, scared she might hurt herself. Didn't touch her phone either, afraid of the five hundred texts from Lily. Her new life unfolded before her into all the possible paths it could take, every way in which it could go wrong. Her friends at school. The laughing. The bullying?

During another trip to the bathroom, she overheard her mom speaking to Dr. Emmerson on the phone.

On the way back, she heard her weeping.

Around 5pm, Gabrielle's testicles dropped. Her scrotum, now undeniable, recognizable, hanging loose against her buttocks, suddenly filled up with a fleshy noise.

Immediately after the two little plums had popped out of her, she felt cramps inside what used to be her vagina. The penis-to-be twitched.

And still she refused to scream, to cry, to have anyone near her. She pulled her shorts down and at first didn't understand what was happening: she was covered in this thick murky jelly, like a layer of protection, and the angle was all wrong. The bloated bud was erect, pointing up to her navel, throbbing. And warm and buzzing inside was the sweetness, half-known, half-learned. The pleasure of a penis.

How something so ugly can feel so good? she was thinking. Less than two days ago, she was convinced her clitoris was too big and it gave her a complex. And now this monstrous nub felt like stretching after an hour of sitting. Times one hundred.

She understood now... Mom screaming at Sof and her, 'Men no good, no touch no play,' so many times like a joke, but it's not ironic when it's all the time. Dad explaining that men can't help themselves because 'everything is bigger in Texas' and back then it didn't make sense.

The girl sneered and then looked at her shame some more.

*****

Time for another dinner. Gabrielle had to put on real clothes. She was still hard. She shoved towels into her sweatpants until it looked like she was wearing a diaper.

Her Streisand effect was met with evasive eyes and trembling voices.

Sophia was beet red.

Mom was ghost white.

Dad forced himself to blurt out, "It's okay, you know, it was like that for me too when I was a b—" and was regretting it long before Sophia intervened:

"Dad, ew!" she said, biting back an F-bomb.

"Are you sure you feel better now, sweetheart?" her mom asked, checking her forehead temperature.

Gabrielle was feeling good, no fever, no fatigue, too good actually, from the friction against the terrycloth. Every movement was a crash of white noise asking for freedom or asking for more. She imagined the dinner table empty, the house, the whole world without witnesses. Maybe there all this wouldn't be such an ordeal. It would not matter if her face was twisted with guilt, pleasure or confusion, because no one would be here to tell the difference. And if pleasure was to win in the end, so be it. So make it. Make it unseen, and pure.

There was homemade lasagna for an army. Camille, all afternoon, instead of going insane. And the timing was perfect because Gabrielle ate like an anime character. Minus the smile.

"Do you want me to stay again tonight?" Sophia asked her.

"No."

Half an hour later, doors shut and lights off, Gabrielle was staring at the silhouette of the prescription bottle on her night stand.

To give a reason why she had not taken a capsule yet although the prickling had already started would imply she had formulated one consciously. Maybe she wanted to push back the moment she would fall asleep to wake up as someone else. Maybe.

Nervousness is always a good driving force for not doing things. Maybe.

I can still take one if I don't feel too good, she was thinking.

She relieved her erect clitoris from her stuffed pants, and then her erect nipples from her shirt and bra and it was nude that she snuggled down in her bed and waited for...she wasn't quite sure what.

Sophia told me I wasn't in danger.

It was the same as panic attacks. She heard it on TV once. You had to let it pass through you. As harrowing as it sounded.

I must not fear.

I am not in danger.

(I don't need protection)

Still, Gabrielle was as nervous as when she got her ears pierced at Macy's when she was ten. She had to wait for five long minutes at the counter before the lady came with her piercing gun. Her mom didn't do much to give her courage, too busy signing papers. Gun on her earlobe, the old cow said she would count to three and pulled the trigger at two, "cause it hurts less this way."

The night stung Gabrielle just as viciously. Her clitoris clenched like a cramp from root to tip. The girl jumped on the mattress, a loud gasp filled her lungs with burning air that wanted to get out as a scream of orgasmic madness. Because the disproportionate influx of pressured blood came accompanied with a harsh pleasure penetrating her rod of crimson flesh by force. And staying there. Not quite painful, not quite an orgasm but a test signal way too loud and distorted, blasting in a gigantic feedback. Gabrielle managed to roll over with a low grunt and only then she whimpered into her pillow, crying her eyes out at the same time. Her whole body stayed arched, unable to detach itself from those five inches distended beyond human limits. Gabrielle resisted the pleasure, as if it made sense. She got on to all fours to spare her sensitive shaft any contact with a surface. Face down, ass up. Her clit ballooned outward, stiffer and stiffer, oozing fluids as thick as custard from its every pore.