Chapter 1

Harden, Utah 2010

Moving to Harden Utah was just about the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. The whole thing, I mean. We moved a lot anyway, since my dad worked for the government, so I was kinda used to that by the time I was thirteen, but still, taken all in all, it was pretty weird.

The first day of school is always the worst.

At least the kids were nice, most of them, not like when we moved to that place in Texas when I was eleven. I'd gotten beat up my first day there. At the school in Harden most of the other kids smiled and said hi to me, which was pretty much a relief. It was all one school too, which was a lot different than most places where they more or less separated elementary and middle school and high school, you know. This place it was all just one big school, kindergarten to twelfth grade, and I was in the seventh grade.

"Hey new girl," someone said and I'd just sat down in my first class which wasn't a class at all, but something they called homeroom.

"Hi." I turned to look, of course, and it was a boy and a lot older than me, like seventeen probably or maybe even eighteen.

"What's your name?" he asked and he was pretty cute.

Well, he was seriously cute. Kind of big, like a football player kinda, with brown eyes and kind of short brown hair. A handsome face, smiling too, and that made him look really nice.

"Jennifer Pinchbeck? Where are you dear?" the teacher interrupted us before I could answer. She was rather old with tortoise shell glasses and a bad perm like you can only get in a small town beauty parlor.

"Uh, here." I lifted my arm, but not too high.

"Jennifer?" the boy whispered with a smile and I think I blushed, just because everyone was looking at me. I never really liked that feeling very much.

"There you are. Come on up here and introduce yourself," the teacher said and I swallowed hard, but I'd been to a lot of new schools and this had happened to me before.

There were about two dozen kids there, older and younger than me, and homeroom was just for attendance and announcements and stuff like that before school really started. They looked at me, some of them, some of them didn't care, you know. Kids are kids mostly.

I'd worn a new dress anyway, a nice baby blue one with small white daisies on it and a white sash around my thin waist, and my mom had done up my hair. She was always excited about my first day at a new school, because she knew it was sort of hard and felt a little bad about it, I think. She'd wanted to come with me, but I pleaded with her not to. That would have been really bad, as any thirteen year old can tell you.

So I had my longish blonde hair in ringlets, pinned up so they hung down behind my head almost from ear to ear, and it was cute. I liked it and so did my mom. She'd taken a picture of me. She took a lot of pictures of me and all the time too. My mom was weird that way. She liked to tell me I was beautiful, but I didn't know for sure. Maybe I was, but mostly I just felt like ... me, you know? And besides, nobody can be beautiful at thirteen anyway, just pretty, so that's what I really was.

"Hi." I licked my lips and kind of rocked on my heels, in my new black Betsy's which all the girls had worn down in Atlanta, but not here I guess.

"Go ahead, dear. Introduce yourself," the teacher said with a smile.

"I'm Jennifer, uh, Jenny or Jen, I guess. Most everybody calls me Jen."

"Hi Jen," half the class said on a cue from the teacher and I always hated that part the most.

"Um, hi, and well, we just moved here from Georgia." I let that sink in, but only because I wasn't sure what else to say. "I have a pet ferret, his name is Slinky and um, I like to read and hang out and stuff," I shrugged. "My favorite TV show is House."

"Good." The teacher was still smiling. "Tell us about your parents. What does your father do?"

"Uh, my dad?" I rubbed behind my left ear for a second. "My dad is a doctor and um, he..." I shrugged. "I'm not really sure what he does. He's my dad." I giggled at myself and some kids laughed. "My mom is from Holland. She used to be Dutch, but now she's American and everything. She's a doctor too, like my dad."

"Do they work at the hospital?" some girl asked.

"Uh, I don't think so," I shook my head, but then I changed my mind. "Maybe my dad does, but my mom works at home mostly."

"Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. You can sit down now," the teacher said to me and I was glad that was over.

"You don't even know where your dad works?" some other girl asked and there was some laughing and I felt my face turn a little red.

"Be nice," the teacher warned everyone and I just hoped I wasn't going to trip as I went back to my desk.

I was actually having a pretty good time at school. The kids were all nice and except for a few little things, nobody teased me or gave me a hard time. I just smiled a lot, you know, and said hello and just tried to get used to all the new faces. Luckily my class, the seventh graders, was a pretty small one. There were only twenty of us altogether, and so it was really easy to get to know everyone.

During lunchtime everybody just went outside to eat mostly, since it was warm and sunny and everything. I didn't really know the routine, of course, so it was nice when a girl named Amy sort of asked me to sit with her off by a big oak tree. Everybody spread out and most of the kids liked to play after they ate; kickball or skipping rope, stuff like that. The older kids sat with their friends and just hung-out. It was a school and they're all about the same, just the scenery is different.

"I like your hair, how'd you do that?" Amy asked me and she was quickly becoming my best friend.

"My mom did it," I smiled, sort of playing with my golden ringlets. "You don't think it makes me look like a little girl or anything?"

"No, uh-uh," she shook her head. "It's nice. I wish I had hair like yours."

"Really?" I made a little face. "Your hair is nice. I like it."

"Yeah, I guess," Amy shrugged. She had long brown hair, straight and pulled back into a ponytail. It was pretty average hair and she was a pretty average girl, I suppose. Except she had real boobs already.

I just had little puffy tits, mostly big pink nipples really, on top of firm little cones that stuck out from my chest like bullets. Amy had nice round ones that gave her a nice shape. My mom said I'd get nice boobs when I was fourteen. I'd just have to be patient and by the time I was sixteen, she said, I'd have the nicest boobs of any girl in school. I'd laughed at that though, like how could she know? But my mom knew a lot of stuff, so part of me did believe her and she was giving me shots too, for my boobs and other things, so I just hoped she was right.

"At least you got some boobs," I giggled and it was okay cause we were pretty much by ourselves anyway.

"Huh?" She laughed and stuck out her tongue. "Yeah, a little bit. They just sorta started growing last summer."

"Mine are growing, but they're slow," I said, looking down. "My penis is pretty big now though."

"What?" Amy's eyes got wide as she stared at me.

"Huh?" I looked at her.

"What did you say?"

"Oh, uh, my penis is big," I shrugged.

"You're weird," she laughed.

"What? Why?" I laughed too, but I didn't understand.

"You don't have a penis." Amy thought I was joking.

"Yeah I do," I nodded. "I have twenty-five chromosomes too."

"Twenty-five what?" She really didn't know what I was talking about, and I really knew only as much as my parents had tried to explain.

"I have more chromosomes than regular people or something," I shrugged. "That's like the stuff in your body that tells you how to grow."

"Oh yeah?" Amy looked like she might almost believe me. "So how many do other people have?"

"Twenty-three. I think." I hoped I wasn't screwing it up. "They come in pairs, like the animals on Noah's ark."