“Yeah, I can see why!” said Gemma. “That might cause some problems.”
It was the wildest thing—candy that could change your size or sex, or even turn you into a totally different animal! Edgar wouldn’t have believed a word of it if someone had told him of the Snoogies in a story. But he had seen and experienced them for himself. He wasn’t too eager to try a new color right now, mainly because it was a complete lottery as to what was going to happen. There were still a few they hadn’t touched yet, like red and orange. Edgar ignored those. Instead he picked out a pink one from the bag. He remembered yesterday’s events clearly. If Gemma had changed into a guy after eating one, then …
Right as Edgar popped the candy into his mouth, there was the sound of an engine, and tires on gravel. Both Gemma and Edgar turned to see an old beat-up truck rolling to a stop just in front of the barn, preceding a plume of dust that circled the vehicle and lingered for many more seconds. An elderly man stepped out of the driver’s seat, eyeing them both.
“What are y’all doing in my barn?”
“Nothing,” Gemma said, standing. “We were just resting. We thought no one—”
“Get, you hear?” he said, speaking and pointing as if they were two wild dogs. “Beat it, the both of you. You’re trespassing. Or don’t kids know the law these days?”
Edgar recognized him, though he didn’t say a word. Kipper sometimes appeared in town, with his haggard eyes and unkempt stringy beard, always wearing a set of overalls and looking like he had come straight off a farm. Edgar only knew him because his mother sometimes talked about him. He had no idea that the old man still came out to this barn. They’d been taking the shortcut through the woods for three straight months without being caught. Maybe he rarely did, and the two of them were just unlucky today. Either way, the man was right. Gemma and him were trespassing and breaking the law. They left the bag of Snoogies behind and went on into the woods.
Edgar collapsed not more than a few yards later. He turned to look behind him as the tingles surged through his body. Kipper had gone into the barn. He hoped the old man didn’t see the bag of candy or worse—try one.
Gemma stopped at his side. “What is it?”
“I took one,” he said weakly, as his scalp itched and every inch of his skin seemed to crawl. His voice already sounded higher. “Right when he came in.”
Her eyes widened a little. “Which?”
Edgar didn’t have to tell her. A few more seconds and the answer was clear. He swept the hair out of his eyes and looked down, spotting a pair of mounds pushing his shirt out. He swallowed hard, knowing those were only the beginning. The shirt was much looser around his waist, and the pants weren’t so roomy in the rear anymore. He didn’t want to think about what was in the front, just behind the zipper. It definitely didn’t feel the same as before.
“Oh my God,” Gemma whispered.
“Dad says it’s okay if you spend the night,” Gemma said, shutting the door behind her. “He won’t be home until much later.”
“You told him about me?” Edgar asked.
“I just said you were a friend. He doesn’t like boys staying the night, but girls are okay.” She cracked a smile.
Edgar couldn’t stop the events from playing over and over again in his head—the barn and the candies and Kipper rolling up and telling them to leave. He wanted to reach back, as if time were a pond that he could thrust his hand into, to tweak the past slightly and create a new series of ripples in which he had not eaten that final piece of candy. Alas, it wasn’t that simple.
The girl in the mirror was familiar and yet a total stranger. There were fragments of his former identity intertwined with her appearance, like the shape and color of her eyes, the tiny point at the leading edge of her scalp where the hairline met the forehead, the square shape of the end of her nose, and the lips which always defaulted into a frown when she wasn’t smiling.
And the clothes.
Gemma came up beside him, looking into the same mirror. She was taller than him now. “We’ll head back tomorrow morning and change you back as soon as possible. The Snoogies will still be there. We’ll find a pink one and you’ll be as good as new.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“They will be.”
She was confident. The candy would be where they had left it and he’d be himself again after finding one of those watermelon-flavored pieces. There wasn’t any possibility of it going wrong. Edgar hoped she was right. Kipper was just an old man and probably knew nothing about the Snoogies. Maybe he wouldn’t even see them. Hell, he was probably half-blind anyway. Edgar liked to think so—it made him feel better. He’d be gone and they’d sneak right in, maybe take the bag this time.
Gemma circled around until she was on the other side of him. “Why did you eat a pink piece anyway? Edgar, you have a secret you’d like to share with me?” She was grinning.
“No, honest! I was just curious … you know. I remembered you eating one and turning into a dude, and then back into a girl. I just wanted … I don’t know. I knew what the pink ones would do, and I wasn’t afraid to try one.”
She laughed. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I kinda wanted to try being a guy again. It was so weird! But I was too afraid to fully enjoy it.”
“And shorter than a ten-year-old,” Edgar added.
“Yeah, and that.”
Edgar was glad to have Gemma as a friend. Sometimes he wished their relationship was a little more, but he treasured her presence nonetheless. The thought of being stuck as a girl still ailed him, but she had to be right. He’d be back to normal tomorrow. One night as a chick wasn’t the worst thing in the world. At least he hadn’t eaten one of the green pieces before the old man drove up!
They watched a couple of movies that night. Edgar had seen both of them, but the entertainment allowed him to forget about being a girl for a few minutes at a time—before he’d inevitably look down or scratch an itch and realize his body was all wrong and didn’t match anything from his memory.
When the time came to go to bed, Gemma came to him with a set of pink pajamas in her arms, and a pair of black panties. That smile had returned.
“Hey, what are those for?” Edgar asked, suspecting the answer before it was said aloud.
“For you, silly!” she said. “It stays pretty warm in here overnight, and those boy clothes don’t fit you anymore.”
“But I don’t want to—”
“Nope. Strip down and put these on, missy. They’re a little girly, but they’ll be more comfortable.” She shoved them into his arms.
Edgar sighed. “All right, fine.”
Gemma went towards her desk and reached far back into the drawer. Edgar knew what she kept back there. A moment later the window was open and she had a cigarette stuck between her lips. “I won’t look,” she said as she blew out a puff of smoke into the night. “I promise.”
Edgar was suddenly nervous again, just like when he had left the barn seconds before he fell to his knees. Truthfully, being a girl wasn’t all that different than being a guy, if you ignored the weird swaying of the hips and the bouncing on the chest, and the hair getting into your eyes. He was still human. It wasn’t like he was a dog or anything.
But he had never looked at himself without clothes on. Gemma had never given him the opportunity, sure, but he wasn’t all that curious in the first place. He’d be back to normal tomorrow, so why bother?
With a knot forming in his stomach, Edgar glanced at Gemma. She was looking away and savoring the last two-thirds of the cigarette between her lips. So, he placed the pajamas on a nearby chair and pulled his shirt off. That sent his chest to jiggling again, but he couldn’t look. With his eyes closed, Edgar unbuttoned his pants next, slipped out of them, and then wiggled out of his underwear all while touching as little of his naked body as possible.
“Not bad,” he heard Gemma say.
Edgar cracked one eye open. “You promised you wouldn’t look.”
; “I’m not! But there’s a reflection. Don’t worry. I have the same stuff anyway.”
“That’s kinda what I’m worried about,” he said.
He had never been naked in Gemma’s bedroom before. In some ways, that fact still remained as truth, for his current body wasn’t really his. Suddenly, curiosity overcame him. For God’s sake Edgar, you’re a naked chick right now! No other guy on the planet had an opportunity like this. It was like an entirely different world, a perspective through new eyes. Edgar had to look down.
Yep, it was a chick’s body all right. He had known as much since leaving the barn, but now it was confirmed. And those two mounds pushing his shirt out? Those were definitely breasts. They weren’t on the large side, though anything there at all was still bigger than he was used to, even when he was younger and slightly overweight. The skin was as smooth as he’d ever seen on his body, and the nipples were enlarged and pink, sitting proudly atop the two hilltops of flesh. He cupped them gently. They were small enough so that his fingers went all the way around them, but still large enough to fill his palms. They were surprisingly heavy.
“Checking yourself out? You’ve gone quiet over there, Edgar,” Gemma said.
“I had to look once.” He felt his cheeks burning.
“Sure you did.”
But his chest wasn’t all that had changed. Edgar looked beyond his breasts, to the flat belly and below that, spotting his crotch where nothing at all protruded from it. He wasn’t ready to think about what was down there. His body swelled at the hips like any young woman’s, and his feet were positively tiny. He wiggled the toes just to make sure they were really his.
Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the panties and tugged them up his legs. They fit better than he expected—a little too well. But, he was a girl and panties were designed to be worn by girls. Gemma and him apparently had similar dimensions now. He slipped the silk pajama pants on and threw the sleeveless top over his head and onto his shoulders.
“Comfortable?” Gemma asked.
“Yeah, actually,” Edgar said. The material was astonishingly lightweight compared to his normal clothes.
Gemma finished the cigarette. “Off to bed then. We can sleep together as a couple of girls. That sound good?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The next morning they set out for the barn again. Gemma gave Edgar some more clothes from her wardrobe, including a pair of hip-hugging jeans and a fashionable green t-shirt. A bra was out of the question since Gemma was a little bigger up top, but he didn’t want one anyway. In thirty minutes or less he’d be back to normal.
“I hope the candy is still there,” Edgar said.
“Why? You don’t want to be a girl for any longer?” Gemma bumped his slender shoulder.
“It’s great, but … not really.”
It wasn’t even noon yet and the day was already hot. When the barn came into view, Edgar stopped and wiped the sweat off his brow. He sipped from a half-empty bottle of water as Gemma disappeared inside, squeezing her way beside the old tractor and looking at the place where they’d left the Snoogies. They hadn’t had a chance to properly hide the bag whenever Kipper appeared yesterday, so he desperately hoped that the old man hadn’t touched it.
And he continued to wait. Gemma should’ve found the Snoogies by now. It wouldn’t take this long. He bumped his knees anxiously together and looked down the dirt road leading away from the barn. Meanwhile, his fingers ran over the ponytail just behind his scalp. That idea had hit him just before leaving the house. He didn’t know how girls could stand the hair always falling into their eyes. It was annoying.
“Edgar?”
A twinge of panic shot through him. His feet were sweating inside their shoes. “Yeah?”
“It’s not here.”
“Gemma, don’t make a joke. Not right now.”
“I’m not joking!” She appeared from behind the tractor, almost tripping over farm equipment scattered on the ground. “It’s not in the hiding spot, and it’s not by any of the tires. Edgar, I don’t see it.”
Fuck, Edgar thought. It was his worst nightmare as of recent, being stuck as a girl. He thought he had shoved that fear far into the back of his mind, but now it came crawling out again. He jogged over to the barn and into the shade, stopping in front of the tractor. The worried expression on Gemma’s face told him she was completely serious.
“Are you sure? Have you checked—”
“Yes!” she replied. “I’m looking everywhere. I don’t see it.”
Edgar glanced around, feeling slightly dizzy. “What if he took them? What if Kipper took the candy?”
Gemma shrugged, raising her arms as if to say she didn’t have any clue. Her hands slapped against her hips. “Wherever they are, they aren’t here, Edgar. It’s a bright yellow bag. Unless he hid them somewhere else, or buried them. I don’t see them inside the barn.”
“Kipper has to know where they are,” Edgar muttered.
Just then, Edgar heard the sound of an engine roaring towards them, and tires on gravel. He looked up at Gemma. She had heard it too. There was no way to leave the barn and not be spotted. Whoever was coming would surely see them. Instead, they rushed towards the rear of the barn, squeezing behind the tractor. It was the only place to hide, behind the massive tires and large rear axle. They knelt down just as a car rolled into view and stopped.
“It’s not him,” Gemma whispered to him. “He drives an old truck.”
“He’s in the passenger seat,” Edgar said, staring through a small gap. “He’s with someone else.”
The old man got out with someone who was half his age—and better dressed. Kipper didn’t look to be all that happy.
“Listen here, you won’t be taking my barn!”
“Unless you provide up-to-date payments by tomorrow, there will be no choice,” said the younger man. “Foreclosure is a serious business, Mr. Kipper. You have been behind for ninety days. There is no more grace period. The house and barn will have to be sold, along with the land.”
“Please just give me another week or two! I’ll have the money. The season’s been tough … I can’t have this! You pretty boys in your cool offices don’t understand how tough farming is! It ain’t easy.”
“I’m sure it isn’t, Mr. Kipper.”
“Brenda … she passed away some time ago. It’s been hard for me alone. You can’t imagine it. I’ve been trying to manage, running things myself. I get no sleep. No time off. I break my back and you still want my damn money.”
“I can’t rewrite the laws just for you.”
Edgar and Gemma remained quiet as the two men argued at the edge of the shade. It was clear what was happening now. Old man Kipper hadn’t been paying his bills, and the bank was coming to collect and resell the property. Understandably he wasn’t too pleased about this. Edgar could see the life draining right out of him, his shoulders gradually slouching as the young man kept explaining his situation, telling him what was going to be sold. He was going to be totally broke and homeless by the sound of it. Edgar felt sorry for him.
The young man from the bank put his hand on Kipper’s shoulder as a friendly gesture, but the old man shrugged away. “They’ll come tomorrow,” he said impassively. Kipper’s story hadn’t affected him in the slightest. “The house and the barn both.”
“Mister, I got no other place to stay. That’s my home.”
“It was your home.”
They went back to the car and Edgar heard only fragments of the conversation. Then, they drove off down the dirt road. Edgar and Gemma stood and left the hiding spot.
“He’s got them,” she said.
“What? How can you tell?”
“I don’t know. I just can. Remember how I said the package was already open and someone had been eating them? I bet it’s him. It has to be. Besides us, he’s the only one that comes out here.”
“Shit,” Edgar murmured. “And they’re not here, which means he has them somewhere else. Why would he eat them?
”
Gemma shrugged. “Why did we? Do you know where he lives?”
“No idea. Somewhere close I bet.”
She looked down, musing about something. Edgar was anxious to get back to being a guy again, and this delay didn’t help subside his worries. Without the candy, that only meant he was going to stay as a girl for longer. It was the weekend, so they had time to figure things out. He could convince his mother to stay at Gemma’s place for another night. They could remain there without being seen. On Monday he’d definitely have to be a guy again.
“We’ll have to talk to him,” she said.
“What? Kipper? Are you sure about that? Remember the last time he caught—”
“I know. It’s the only way. We don’t know where he lives and you don’t want to stay as a girl forever, right?”
Edgar looked down at himself. “Not particularly.”
“I bet he’ll come back to the barn. We’ll wait until he does.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t a short wait. Noon arrived, and Mr. Kipper hadn’t returned yet. They poked around the barn some more hoping to find some clues—or the bag itself. Nothing was found. Edgar wanted to return to Gemma’s place, but she explained they couldn’t risk missing the old man in case he stopped by while they were gone. They’d have to wait it out, all day if it required that.
Edgar finished the last of the water and sat on the tractor’s front tire. He flapped his t-shirt back and forth to air things out, but most of his body was covered in sweat. It didn’t help that the inside of the barn felt like an oven, and that there was no wind whatsoever.
We should’ve taken them, he thought, looking down at his body, an all too girlish body that was beginning to feel almost normal to have. They had the candy, and they had left them behind when Kipper had drove up. None of this sneaking-around business would’ve been necessary. Back at Gemma’s place, they would’ve tasted all the flavors and figured out which remaining colors do what. It might’ve been fun.
Gemma came up to him. “How’s the girl life?”
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