Chapter 1

“Our story begins with Kyla Selena Hamill. She’s a slim eighteen-year-old girl with long black hair and pale skin. Well, pale for her being of part Asian heritage. But compared to some of the other girls she had a slightly darker skin tone. In her young life, she had played the part of Snow White for her school’s drama club in her last year of high school. She got many compliments on how she was perfect for the role. It had been the first time the shy loner girl had ever gotten that kind of attention. She had never really felt as if she had fit in with the most other girls, so she didn’t feel like she deserved the attention. Kyla was thinner than most girls that she knew. But she was actually fine with that. Her chest was much smaller than most, that was a fact she wasn’t as okay with. That was a sensitive subject for her. It had been since it had become clear it was unlikely to change. Most of the other girls made fun of her for it. Her favorite feature about herself was her stunning blue eyes. Some would even call them exotic. They were a contrast to her darker Asian skin. As she made her way to her house she imagined all the ways her parents could react to her possibly wonderful news. Kyla wasn’t sure who she was more nervous to share the news with. Her mother or her step-father Carter. Kyla looks a lot like her mother especially since Kim aged so well some even said they could pass as sisters. There was one thing that made it easy to tell them apart though. And that would be the earlier mentioned bust sizes. Kim’s were huge compared to Kyla’s.”

“Mom! Dad! It finally came. I got the letter,” Kyla shouted out as she swung the living room door open, at that moment she didn’t really care if the entire neighborhood heard. She was excited.

By the time her mother had made her way into the living room, Kyla was bouncing up and down in anticipation.

“Easy there, honey. What’s all the excitement about?” asked Kim.

“Where is Dad? He’ll want to hear this,” Kyla had stopped physically bouncing but she couldn’t hide her excitement even though she tried.

The older woman’s face shifted just slightly but Kyla couldn’t see the disappointment in her mother’s eyes, “He was called into town. He should be back soon. I’m so sorry.”

Kyla shrugged and said, “That’s fine, I totally understand. He has a very important job at the college. Anyway, I got my acceptance letter today. I can’t wait for Carter to get back so I can finally open the letter.”

“That’s wonderful news. Which school did you apply to?” asked Kim.

Kyla was practically squealing before she calmed herself down enough to answer, “Okay, I know you said I needed to apply to a bunch of different schools. But I could only really apply to one. It’s your old school. The one where you met both of my Dads.”

“Oh. Well, don’t be too ... Um, did I hear you narrating from the mailbox to the door earlier? You really did make a wonderful Snow White. And you shouldn’t be that upset about your bust size. You could still grow.” Kim asked.

Kyla was embarrassed. She hadn’t realized she had been talking loud enough for anyone in the house to hear her. With a bit of blush, Kyla said, “Maybe I did narrate, just a little. Doctor Grammer said I needed to vocalize the good and the bad. Said it might help with things. Or something like that, I don’t know, I got distracted during his explanation. I think it’s too late for the possibility of me growing to be out there. I’ve seen pictures of you when you were my age. You weren’t too far off from where you are now. You only got bigger once you got pregnant with me.”

Kim reached out to her daughter and gave her a hug before saying, “Ever since that strange phenomenon that occurred around the world that caused many women to have huge boobs, and not have to suffer through back pain there have been a few cases that some of the women in a bloodline don’t get their growth spurt until their late teens or early twenties. Since it happened when I was a preteen there haven’t been many chances to see if the huge boob thing skips a generation or not. But it seems unlikely though.” She gave a half-hearted smile and changed the subject, “So, how badly are you wanting to open that letter.”

Kyla couldn’t stand the wait any longer, “Okay I need to open this. It arrived way late and the anticipation is killing me.”

The smile she had on her face quickly fell after she opened the letter and read just a little bit of it. But for her, that had been enough. She dropped the letter and ran to her room without saying a word. Kim picked up the letter and when she read through it her heart broke even more. She had suspected that this was going to happen when Kyla told her that she had only applied to this school. Her husband had talked to her late at night before, during, and after making love. The letter had informed Kyla that the school had appreciated her application but she was not accepted due to the fact that they had already reached the maximum number of female students. And that the next year they wouldn’t be accepting any new female students at all. They plan on letting the new and current female students finish their schooling with them and then the school would become an all-boys campus.

Kim was at her daughter’s door and wanted to comfort her but when Kyla didn’t answer when she knocked, Kim walked in and in a panic said, “Kyla put those scissors down. Don’t do anything drastic.”

“What? Drastic? What are you talking about? You know tending to my Bonsai tree helps to calm me,” Kyla said as she turned back to her little tree. Then she put down the scissors and turned around fully to look at her mother. “What did you think I was going to do with the scissors?”

The way Kyla had been sitting Kim had only seen the scissors and not the little Bonsai tree. But when Kyla moved she could see that too, so she let her body relax as she took one careful step closer to her daughter, “I’m not really sure. It just felt like the thing to say.” She sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed and asked, “Why did you really want to go to my old school? Was it because Carter works there or was it because you wanted to find that special someone there like I did?”

Kyla chuckled a little and said, “The thought about finding someone special there had crossed my mind once or twice a long time ago but no. I fell in love with all the stories that you and Dad told me of the school while I was growing up. For a long time, it felt like it was the place I needed to be. Like I belonged there. Now it turns out that I’ll unlikely ever get to go there. Guess I screwed up not applying to any other schools.”

“Don’t think of it that way. There is still time to apply to other schools. You are only halfway through your senior year after all. Besides I’ll let you in on a secret,” Kim looked around and got really close to Kyla and whispered, “I did the same thing that you did.”

Kyla sniffed a couple times and looked at her Mom, “Is something burning?”

Kim jumped up and as she ran down the hallway she yelled something about her chicken. Kyla wasn’t in the mood to eat when her mother called her for dinner. She used the excuse that she either wanted to work on the Bonsai tree or her homework. But the truth is that she was still disappointed that she hadn’t gotten into the school that she spent her entire life dreaming of getting into. No, it was worse than disappointment, her heart was broken.

When her Step-Dad Carter came into her room she pretended to be asleep. But that didn’t stop him from sitting next to her and placing a hand on her knee, “I know you’re awake. I’ve been in your life since you were three. I know you well enough to know when you’re pretending to be asleep. Do you want to talk about it? No?” One deep breath later, “Would it help if I told you that I may have a way to get you into the school?”

Kyla shifted her head slightly, “I’ve already seen my dream crushed once today so don’t say that unless you mean it.”

Carter held one hand over his heart and held the other one up, “I swear that breaking your heart is the last thing I’ll ever want to do to you. That being said the way to get you in is possible but very unconventional. You may not like it.”

Kyla’s face contorted into a disgusted look as she said, “I won’t need to sleep with any of the higher-ups in the school will I?”

“What? No, not at all. It’s just that I’ve been secretly working on something. It’s a project that was inspired by my sister.” Carter looked at his hand that was still on Kyla’s knee and sadly continued, “Cindy had never felt comfortable being a female. She had always dreamed of being a boy,” he shook his head and corrected himself, “She wanted to be a man. She didn’t see any way she could get the surgeries to make the transition and she felt she couldn’t talk to our parents about this ... And when she couldn’t handle being teased by the other kids about who she knew she was, she took her own life. When that happened I transferred schools to Utah to be closer to my parents and to help them out. She was only.” He cried a little then pulled himself together, “She was only fifteen years old.”

Carter had never told me this story. I didn’t even know he had a sister. This story had good results and bad. The good was that I was no longer thinking of how depressed I was that I didn’t get into my school of choice, the bad was that now I felt even worse because of how sad this story made him feel. And in a way, it was my fault for making him relive it.

I sat up and hugged him. I know he didn’t like apologies in situations like this so I said, “Is there anything I can do to thank you for trying to get me into my dream school?”

He smiled a way that made me feel like he was going to deliver some bad news and said, “You might want to wait to thank me until after I tell you my plans to get you into school.” He was looking for his words carefully for a minute. “You know what larping is right?”