✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

Act II: 36. The First Change

After she got into her own room, Tess spread out her outfit on the bed. It was a one-piece thing, and it took her a little time to work out how to put it on. It seemed like an ugly skort, but with buttons around the bottom that would have been more useful when she was actually a baby. But it was longer than she thought, and she figured out that the straps at the top were supposed to be fastened over her shoulders. Her arms had been bare in the picture, but it was getting cold now so she thought it would be better to put this on over a shirt.

It took some time to get everything fastened, and then she called up the front camera on her phone so she could get a look at herself. It was tight, especially around her legs, and she had to pull the straps at the top quite hard to get them to fasten, but she was surprised how well the heavy material stretched. She might not be able to do any kind of running like that, but it only pinched a little. Ffrances had been right after all. But now she had to show off her outfit, and find out if she'd gotten any smaller yet.

"Oh, wow!" Ffrances had been waiting on the landing, and seemed to be enthusiastic. "You can tell you've grown. But it works, I think."

"I look like a baby," Tess gave a theatrical pout. She didn't feel any different, but if she was anything like Gabby she knew that she might not even notice what was different. Then she glanced up the stairs and saw that Gabby was there too, looking like she was feeling the same mixture of embarrassment and excitement.

Gabby had a more appropriate costume for her age; a band T-shirt and jeans, both of them almost worn through. Tess vaguely remembered her looking like that years ago; she'd been the exciting older girl, who knew things and always had the best ideas for games to play. Torn jeans and a faded band tee were her style, along with a streak of some impossibly-bright colour in her hair. The dye wasn't the same now, but the clothes looked just like Tess remembered them. It was still different, because Tess had seen so many different fashions over the years, and had friends with all kinds of opinions on what kind of clothes should be fashionable, and how worn something had to be before it was fashionable again. But she was pretty sure that in her cousin's case, she'd dressed that way because she liked it rather than any attempt to conform with trends.

"All dressed up?" Ffrances asked, and the girls both showed a little excitement in their answers. When she asked "Feeling young and cute?" she got the same response. Tess was just a little surprised to find that it was true. She was feeling young. The remaining years of high school seeming to stretch on forever, but what really surprised her was the realisation that she didn't care if people thought she was just a kid. She was here to play, after all, not trying to impress anyone.

"How old do you feel, Tess?"

Tess gave that one a lot of thought. She was pretty sure she was fourteen, but would she have noticed if she was really a year or two older? It felt like her real age, but she didn't know how well she could trust her memories right now. She might have felt that she was a little more excited than she should have been, or that she wasn't thinking things through as much as she normally would, but there was nothing she could put her finger on that had changed.

"I'm fourteen?" she guessed. "We didn't start changing yet, did we?"

"No," Gabby answered, and Tess immediately had to stifle a giggle when she saw Gabby leaning against the bannister, one hand on her hips and thrusting her chest forward as if she were afraid the boys wouldn't notice it. It was very different from her normal posture, so something had changed in Gabby's head even if she didn't notice it. Tess couldn't say what her cousin's body language had been like a decade before, but she did remember her looking cool with a hand on her hip, so maybe it was an old style she was going back to.

"It'll change soon enough," Gabby said, and Tess tried even harder not to laugh. She didn't want to spoil the surprise before Gabby had even noticed. She looked up at Ffrances, wondering if she was almost ready to start the main event. But it was Gabby who carried on talking: "Tess, you're only thirteen now. That means you're all giggly, and you still get excited about cartoon shows and all those teddy bears you've got in your room."

Tess nodded, and smiled. Something felt different, even if she couldn't put her finger on it. Her first instinct was to protest that she had a collection of ferrets, not teddies. But that was still a little childish, and she had enough wits about her not to mention it. She thought she was blushing, but had Gabby really just changed her? She could remember that she'd felt more serious a couple of minutes ago. Gabby had told her she was thirteen, and she knew that was true. But at the same time, she could remember how serious she was going to be when she got to fourteen, and how many worries she would have.

That must be her real age, she decided. But she didn't want to be fourteen right now, she was having more fun like this. She could put it out of her mind for a while, and be glad that all that scary stuff was more than a year away.

"How old are you?" Ffrances asked, looking down at Tess with a satisfied smile on her face. Tess imagined she must be giving pretty much the same smile, quietly happy at the first hints that this was going well. She was pretty sure that it was working exactly as they planned.

"Thirteen," she answered, and gave up on trying to work out what was the right answer. She should just play along, say the one that felt right until she couldn't tell the difference anymore. And feeling that just a number wasn't enough of an answer, she let the words tumble out of her mouth, gushing with excitement about a new feeling that she was eager to explore. Not about being younger, just about not knowing things, and having everything change so much. That was going to be amazing.

"And you, Gabby?" Ffrances asked. "How old are you?" This was going to be the big question, because nobody had told Gabby to be younger yet.

"I'm nearly thirteen!" Her voice had a little excited squeak bolted onto the sentence, and she followed it up with a pout that a freshly-minted teenager might think made her look a little more grown up. Tess had been the one people were looking down on for most of her memory, but she'd still seen people who did things like that, so desperate to be taken seriously. "But there's only a few months in it now. As soon as I tell her to be littler again, I'll be the big one and then she's got to do what I say!"

Tess couldn't hold back the laughter any longer when she said that. Gabby was seriously seeing Tess as the older one, and she didn't even see that there was anything different. It was amazing, and she was sure she would have no end of fun being able to tease Gabby now. After all the tension, and all the discussion, this was really happening. She was getting exactly what she wanted. It was going to be incredible, she was sure, and the more she thought about all the things they could do this afternoon, the less she even wanted to stop the uncontrollable laughter bubbling forth.

Author's Note: This is where I got up to writing during NaNoWriMo in December. Everybody who supports me on Patreon has had access to chapters 1-35 while I was writing; but from this point on early access will be only for the $5 tier and above.

This is a big milestone in the story. In the three-act structure (beginning/middle/end), I think that this day marks the end of the beginning; so we're about a third of the way into the story.

I'd really be interested to know if anyone is reading only one of these books; or if you're reading all the chapters in the order I release them; or trying to follow my guideline of reading this version of each day before catching up on the same day in My Cousin's Keeper. (This part, chapters 36-43 and 36-39, might be the first scene where I think it would be more interesting to read Gabby's version first)