Chapter 1

The other day someone posted a question to an Internet forum about siblings who got caught fooling around. It kind of touched a nerve. That was us. My sister and I “fooled around” when I was a senior in high school, and we got caught by our mom. What happened was – well, a lot happened. The question brought a whole flood of memories back. I started to write a one-off comment on that post, but I found the words just pouring out of me onto the screen, and I soon felt compelled to stop and write it all down in a story. So this is it: the story of the year I became a man, my sister became a woman, and we became not just siblings, but lovers, and what happened afterwards.

My sister and I were very close in age: less than a year apart – I guess our mom had gotten pregnant almost immediately after having her; it happens. Her birthday was in January and mine was in December – of the same year. People who didn’t know our family well always got that confused; they tended to think that Chrissy was the younger sibling, especially as we grew up. There were a few reasons for that. For one thing, she’s a lot shorter than me and had, I guess, more babyish features for a long time. Not that I ever looked particularly mature either; both of us had been kind of chubby and awkward throughout our entire childhood. But another confusing factor was that my sister was a grade behind me in school.

We had started school in the same class; I had vague memories of not being allowed to sit next to her in first grade, which we both thought was very unfair, although the teacher was presumably right to separate us; else we likely would have spent all our time in our own little world. We had always been extraordinarily close; at the playground, and even at school during recess, we tended to play together even to the exclusion of other children. In our earliest years, though I of course didn’t remember it, I had naturally trailed my sister somewhat in development, learning to walk and talk after her, and she had been protective and solicitous of her “little brother.” At least that was the impression I got from toddler snapshots in the old family photo album, in every one of which, it seemed, either she was leading me around with a determined look on her face, or else I was looking adoringly up at her. Or both.

By the time we started school, though, I had caught up with her in development and we interacted more as equals. It wouldn’t have been inaccurate to describe us as each other’s best friends; we were together whenever possible, and yearned for each other’s company when it wasn’t. The definitive turning point, though, occurred when Chrissy contracted meningitis in middle of second grade. It was bad enough that she had been hospitalized, I believe in a medical coma, for a significant period, and while I didn’t understand the seriousness of this at that young age, it was clear to me that everything had changed after she returned home to recuperate. She was quiet, weak, and sleepy, and I would rush back from school and spend the whole afternoon by her bed, trying to keep her engaged. She stayed at home the rest of the year, and while she was mostly back to being herself by fall, after my parents consulted with teachers, they decided to have Chrissy repeat second grade.

After her illness, she always lagged a little in school. There was nothing at all wrong with her intellect, just perhaps a little with her motivation; she would devour books at home but daydream in class. In the meantime I, while by no stretch of the imagination a brilliant student, managed to figure out what was expected at me at school and, though I rarely spoke in class unless called upon, always did the work and then some, garnering consistent praise from my teachers. At the end of fourth grade, our parents informed me that, on one particular teacher’s recommendation, I would be attending a private school starting September. Chrissy would continue in the public school system, which fortunately in our district was very good. Naturally, I was not pleased at this development (though even had I stayed in the town system, Chrissy and I would have been totally separated for a year, unable even to meet at recess as we always did, since middle school was a separate building on the campus of the high school, not attached to the elementary school). I was not one to argue much, however, and accepted my fate meekly.

Private school turned out to be a good choice for me, as it happened. While socially I was no less of a loner than I had been before, making virtually no friends among my classmates, the small classes allowed teachers to recognize my talents and weaknesses and direct extra attention where needed. I flourished academically, never being singled out as the “smart kid” by my peers (that would have required noticing me, which no one did), but always performing near the top of the class. As for physical education, I hated, or perhaps it would be better to say feared team sports, none of which ever made any sense to me; collections of utterly arbitrary rules that, if you didn’t follow them correctly, would apparently render your physical exertion, no matter how earnest, null and void, giving everyone a reason to laugh at you. While a gym teacher took particular interest in me, trying to teach me to play basketball – I hit puberty early and was the tallest kid in the class for a while – it didn’t take. I would participate desultorily in mandatory activities during gym, but otherwise didn’t get too much exercise. As a result, even as I shot up, I was always a bit pudgy and uncoordinated. This obviously didn’t help my popularity, though once again, I was merely ignored rather than despised by my classmates.

Chrissy didn’t fare much better. She had occasional play dates with friends, but these tapered off as she got older. Since neither of us had any kind of social life at school, it was inevitable that we continued to rely on one another, forming a kind of dyad that tended to shut out the outside world – even, to an extent, our parents. Mom and Dad were loving, and they provided well for us, giving us every advantage they could, but they had busy, active, complicated lives of their own. They were jazz musicians – my father a guitarist and my mother a singer. They spent a great deal of time out and about, at gigs or socializing with a large circle of musical and artistic friends. I was not terribly clear when I was young about what specifically it was they were doing on any given weeknight, but Chrissy and I were frequently left alone with a babysitter, and real family meals and outings were mostly confined to the weekends. Our babysitters rarely had any trouble with us; Chrissy and I would typically just stay in our rooms all evening playing games we made up, talking, or just quietly reading in each other’s company.