How To Interact With Girls? - Chapter 3

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Now that we were standing side by side on the driveway, Zach was able to see the things that had and hadn't changed about his friend's physicality. Zach was six feet tall while Liam had always been one inch taller on a good day.

Now Leah stood about two inches shorter than him. Besides her shoulders, arms, and chest, her figure didn't seem any different.

Her jeans however had continued to tighten and change consistency. They looked to be made out of some kind of stretchy denim material, skin-tight around her legs. The space her pants allotted for her manhood had decreased painfully.

The bulge of it was clearly outlined on her crotch as the fly of her pants was shortening to mimic the cut and style of women's jeans.

Zach felt claustrophobic just looking at it. He also noticed that the waist of jeans had been raised so that they buttoned higher on the waist, right underneath the belly button as opposed to further down by the hips. Luckily enough for her, Leah's shoes hadn't seemed to change at all, they were the same old Nike's she'd always worn as Liam, just maybe a little smaller.

Zach watched Leah go up for another effortless layup, "You want to play 1v1?"

"Definitely!" she said. Her eyes were bright with excitement; sweat glinting off of her brow.

"Ladies first," Zach said, tossing the ball over to her.

"Um actually," she said, catching the ball roughly.

"Do you have a women's size ball?"

She held up her small manicured hand for me to see.

"Oh right. Yeah, I think I have one somewhere," Zach said, running to get it for her.  The game started fairly smoothly. Leah was able to get a few shots off, and her technical skills were as good as ever, which meant she was still able to get around him. Zach still had a comfortable lead, but she was putting up a pretty good fight. However, Zach noticed something changed around the halfway point of the match. Leah had slowed down considerably.

She dribbled the ball in place just shy of the three-point line, eyeing Zach up and down. Her breathing was labored, and the bun Zach's mom had styled was a tangled sweaty mess that hung loosely around her face. She started forward, eyeing the hoop and lining up the shot. Her form was beautiful with her shooting arm completely perpendicular to the ground. She hopped up, and let the ball fly.

Zach's hand came down swiftly from above, soundly stuffing her and taking the ball before it even got over his head.  She groaned and fell to the ground, "Ugh! What is going on? I feel like I'm getting worse!"

She winced and tugged at the waistband of her pants, and these freaking pants and panties I've got are squeezing the living heck out of my crotch."

She took a peek down at her nether regions and looked away with a minor tinge of disgust.  Zach himself wouldn't dare ask what Leah thought of her genitals currently, but he couldn't help but be curious about her psyche.

That was the main thing linking her to her original gender and the main thing that was preventing him from really looking at her like an actual girl.

"I feel exhausted. How are you covering so much area, Zach? Have you always been that good at defense?"

Zach shrugged, "I'm just playing normally. As you just pointed out though, your body is literally going through some type of metamorphosis, and you're not exactly turning into Captain America."

He stooped to offer her a hand.  She took it gratefully, standing uneasily on her feet.

"Good point. Aren't guys supposed to go easy on girls or something?"

"None of the girls on the girl's basketball team would want me to take it easy on them," Zach said, looking down at her. It was at that moment that he finally realized what the key difference was, "You got shorter."

"Huh? Holy crap you're right!"

Leah exclaimed, noticing for the first time as well.  When they had started, Leah's new body was only about two inches shorter than Zach's. Now she had to be four inches shorter than him at the very least, putting her at around five feet and six inches in height. That was a far cry from Liam's original six feet and one inch.

"You seem really big all of a sudden," she said, placing her back to Zach's and marking the difference off with her hand.

"That's why I couldn't get around you. My body is literally shrinking."

"Seems like it. Technically you could still be a basketball girl. You're about average height for the girl's team."

"Yeah I guess, but I think I'm done playing for the day. I've kind of got other things going on," she gestured down to her developing body. She lifted the bottom of her crop top up to wipe the sweat off of her face, only to realize that she was giving Zach an exclusive peep show of her blue bra and modest breasts. She immediately dropped her shirt, her face flushed.

"Don't look when I do something like that!"

"You didn't really give me much of a choice," Zach said defensively.

"Well, the least you could do is shut your eyes or something."

"I'm a guy. If someone flashes boobs in front of my face, I'm going to look. It's a part of our biology."

"Okay rule number one of talking to girls, never directly admit to her face how much you want to stare at her boobs."

Zach chuckled, "Is that your official rule number one for me?"

"Undoubtedly. If you don't have that kind of sense, then we have to start at the very bottom of the barrel," Leah stated sternly.

"Only girls can talk about boobs freely since we are the ones that have to carry them around all the time."

"Didn't you just get yours?"

Leah frowned, not saying anything in response.

"Okay okay," Zach eased, realizing he hit a sore spot.

"Duly noted, but wouldn't that have to apply to when girls talk about man parts?"

"That's different."

"How?"

"It just is. Show some respect would ya?" she said before adding in a mumbling tone, "Plus that wouldn't even apply to me right now anyway."

She brushed her hand apprehensively over the bulge in her pants but pulled away from it immediately as if it was going to bite her.

"C'mon. Let's go inside and grab a bite to eat. I'm starving."

Zach's mom was flipping casually through a magazine when they walked in, "You two look like a pair of ragamuffins," she commented, looking up from her reading. She adjusted her glasses on her nose. She didn't actually need them, but she liked how they looked. She focused her gaze on Leah, "Oh honey. Your pretty hair, it's all tangled."

"Oh yeah," Leah said, rocking awkwardly on her feet with her hands clasped behind her back.

"Sorry about that Ms. Lindsay. I know you did a lot of work to um, pamper me. Zach and I just went out to play some basketball."

"Oh that's quite alright," Lindsay said, standing from her chair.

"It's nothing that I won't be able to fix. Did you two have fun?"

"Yep," Zach answered tersely, heading straight for the kitchen.  Leah and Ms. Lindsay shared an empathetic look as if to say, "Boys" before they each followed him into the kitchen.

"You two are so sweaty. Is it that hot outside?"

"It's not too bad, but it's definitely not autumn just yet," Zach said, getting down two bowls from the cabinet, and sliding one of them over to Leah.

"It's just bad when you run your butt off to no avail. I had a pretty severe handicap out there," Leah said with a huff.

"That's what a loser would say," Zach chided.

"That's not very nice Zach. Leah is going through a lot right now. You should be more respectful to her."

Lindsay scolded. Leah stuck out her tongue at Zach teasingly to add to his mother's stern words.

"So tell me. What kind of handicaps are you referring to?"

Ms. Lindsay sat down on a stool at the snack bar and rested her chin on her folded hands leisurely. Leah took a mental note of the way she crossed her legs so elegantly when she sat.

"Well for starters I was shrinking while we played, so now Zach is way taller than me."

"You'll find that is a very common feeling for women in the world. Most men are taller, so your confidence as a woman shouldn't be reliant on who the biggest is, because most of the time, you aren't. It's something you would need to learn to navigate," Lindsay lectured.

"Yeah, I noticed," Leah said, casting an envious glance over at Zach.

"But also, it's just my body. It feels so weird. It's like it's doing things just to spite me," she said, again looking down at the bulge at her crotch.

"That's only natural. If it were a simple and clean process, you wouldn't be getting the full benefit from the opportunity you've been given. However, I have a feeling things will start to feel better soon, especially after you wash up and get on a new pair of clothes that aren't stinky and sweaty," Lindsay said with a quiet chuckle.  Leah blushed, motioning down to her crop top and jeggings that had just about wrapped up their steady changes.

"These are kinda the only clothes I have."

Lindsay flippantly waved off the comment, "I'm sure that's nothing that can't be remedied. You two go ahead and eat. Just let me know when you're done and I'll take care of things."

"The soup's good Mom," Zach said casually as he sat down and began chowing down on his lunch.

"I'm glad you like it, sweetie. It's healthy too, especially for growing boys and girls such as yourselves," she said with a quiet wink toward Leah. She stood from her seat and began making her way out of the room, "Oh Leah sweetie, what's your favorite color?" she asked.  Leah thought for a moment while ladling a serving of soup into her bowl.

"Blue," she said with a nod.

"Wonderful," the mother said, striding out of the room.

"Why'd she ask that?"

Leah asked, sitting down next to Zach at the snack bar.

"No idea," Zach said with a shrug. He looked up with a wry grin, "You sure it isn't pink?"

"Shut up," she said with an embarrassed smile, slurping down a spoonful of soup. It really was good, the perfect thing after strenuous activity. It was a hearty comfort food that soothed the body and soul. She felt the soup run down to her stomach where a soft pulse started to emanate throughout the rest of her body. Her abdomen got tight for just a moment before going back to normal. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably and looked down at herself, but there was no difference as far as she could tell.

"You good?"

Zach asked, yanking her out of her self-observation.

"That's a bit of a loaded question isn't it?"

"No, I was just-"  She cut him off, "I know. I'm fine."

Zach nodded, unsure if he should say anything else, but decided to anyway.

"I just wanted to know what you thought of basketball besides the whole shrinking thing. Did you decide if you're the basketball type?"

"Oh right. Yeah. I had fun out there for sure. It probably would have just been more fun if I was playing against other girls for obvious reasons."

"Yeah. You've always loved winning," Zach said with a smirk.

"Guilty as charged," she said, fluttering her eyelids innocently.  Things like that gesture were the types of things that Zach was most intrigued by while interacting with Leah. Besides the major developments that Liam's body was going through, it was the subtle things that stood out having known his friend for so long.

Nothing had changed about his friend's face yet that Zach could tell, but the small changes in her expressions and mannerisms made that face seem eerily foreign. The way she quirked her eyebrows, the way her nose wrinkled, and the way she moved her eyes all had slight alterations to them that made the overall vibe of her face seem different even though it wasn't. Heck, even her default resting face seemed different somehow.

She just seemed way more expressive than she had been as a normal guy. From her gestures to the inflection of her speech, it was all becoming uniquely girlish in an uncanny way. It was like she had been given knowledge about new expressions she never knew she could do and was just now putting them into practice. Were girls really that different from boys in that many tiny ways?

How many other minuscule differences were there that you could barely catch with the naked eye? It was actually incredible to think about.

"You realize you're just staring straight at me right?"

Leah said dryly, eyebrow fully quirked.

"Oh sorry," Zach apologized, diverting his gaze down to his bowl.

"Do you do that often around girls?"

"Do what?"

"Space out," Leah gurgled, slurping down the last of her soup.

"You've always done it, but is that how you are around girls all the time?"

"I don't know," Zach admitted.

"It just always feels like there's something to think about or question in my life, and that just gets heightened around girls for some reason. Maybe it's because of my mom, I don't know."

Leah didn't respond immediately, looking at the doorway to the kitchen tentatively.

"Um. I've actually been meaning to ask you."

"About what?"

"Well, I'm still really confused about what the heck is going on. I mean we've established that I'm a girl, or at least that I feel like a girl and am in the process of turning into one too, but what caused that? Please just be honest with me Zach because I'm dying to know how this is happening right now. Do you know how this is happening to me?"

Zach gulped nervously. He had never once been put into this kind of situation before. His mom had made him promise at an early age that he had to keep what she could do a secret. He had never told a living soul in his life, but there hadn't been a moment like this where someone had been left aware enough of the magic his mother used on them, "Um" he hesitated, guilt welling up.

Leah leaned in closer, taking one last glance over at the door to the kitchen before she whispered, "Is your mom doing this somehow?"

Zach could feel the hairs on his neck stand on end.

"Uh. Well. The thing is."

"Okay! I've got a surprise." Ms. Lindsay sang cheerily as she glided back into the kitchen with another one of her suspiciously well-timed entrances.

"Put your bowls in the sink and follow me upstairs. You'll love it."

Leah gave Zach a disappointed look as they followed his mother quietly up the stairs. He tried his best to avoid eye contact with her glare. What was his mom thinking? If she was going to mess with his life today to teach him some kind of a lesson about girls, why couldn't she at least have just changed Liam's memories and turned him into a full-on girl that he could talk to for a few minutes and then be done with it?

Instead, she had practically seduced Liam into becoming a girl and actually left him conscious enough of the changes to get suspicious. How was he not supposed to tell his friend at this point? Was this a test?

What could he possibly say?

'No. Obviously, this is all happening because you pretended to be a girl for a few seconds, so you just started turning into one.'

That sounded ridiculous, but he guessed it didn't sound any more believable than his mom being able to use crazy magic and deciding to turn him into a chick for some reason. The only difference between the believability of those two answers is that Leah already suspected the correct one. He knew his mom could fix this easily by just messing a little bit more with Leah's mind, but she wasn't.

Why? Why was she making this process so slow and difficult? It hurt him to continue to keep secrets like this from his friends.

"Alright. Here we are," Lindsay announced as they arrived at the closed door to Zach's bedroom.

"My room? What's so special about my room?"

Zach questioned.  His mother smirked.

"That's the trick of it. It's actually not your room anymore."

She swung the door open extravagantly. What had once been Zach's plainly boyish bedroom the two friends had been hanging out in a few hours ago was now something completely new.  The walls were painted over with a mild baby blue color.

Twinkling string lights were strung along the edges of the room where the walls met the ceiling, lighting the room with an ambient glow and assisting the bright sunlight that filtered through the sheer white curtains draped on either side of the window. A small chandelier now hung from the center of the ceiling with small bits of glass that were shaped like jewels adorning its curved arms and shimmering in the rays of sunlight.  What used to be Zach's desk was now a white vanity with a large mirror.

Two plushy chairs sat on either side of it, and on either side of the chairs stood tripod mannequins that each portrayed a woman's torso. Each mannequin was modeling a unique dress. One was a short black dress, and the other an elegant aqua-blue sequined ball gown.

The bed was now a plushy white affair, decorated with blue and black pillows in the shape of flowers. The walls were decorated with different pieces of art. One wall had a large black-and-white landscape image of the Eiffel Tower and the Paris cityscape that surrounded it. Another wall displayed two artistic photos side by side of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn each blowing a bubble of pink and blue bubblegum respectively.

The only thing that remained of Zach's old room was the small basketball hoop hanging above the door, but even that had been changed. The square on the backboard was now in the shape of a blue heart and the hoop itself was now lit up with a neon pink color. The entire room is now oozed with an unmistakable feminine chic aesthetic.

Zach's breath completely left him as his gaze drifted from one unfamiliar thing to the next. He almost couldn't push himself to walk through the threshold. He felt like he was trespassing into the mystical sanctuary of the fairer sex, but this was his room, or at least it had been.  Leah's mouth was agape with wonder. The only thing that had escaped her lips since the opening of the door was a small squeak of surprise.

"What happened to my room?!"

Zach exclaimed.  His mother chuckled.

"As I said. It isn't your room anymore. For the time being at least."  "Then who's is it?!"

"It's Leah's of course."  "Mine?!"

Leah peeped.

"But I, I don't even live here."

"Of course, you don't sweetie. It's only temporary, but you are going to be staying the night with us and I wanted you to have a comfortable and private place to sleep."

"I'm staying the night?"

"Yes. I called your parents and told them that you and Zach would be having a sleepover tonight. I thought that would be fun for both of you to have one last little bash before you're too entrenched in school studies. Is that alright?"

"No that sounds fun but..." Leah barely managed to stutter, still trying to take in all the information.

"Mom," Zach cut in sternly.

"You know better than anyone that Leah is going through, stuff."

"I am," Lindsay nodded.

"Which is another reason why this is a good idea. Her parents aren't privy to her recent developments, so while she is going through them, she has her own private place to stay here for the night. Plus you two can continue your conversations."

Leah shied back, only just now thinking of her parents for the first time since becoming Leah.

"I guess you're right. I couldn't go home like this. They would be expecting a son, not a daughter."  "Precisely," Ms. Lindsay said with a nod.

"Mom, but still. What about my room? Where will I sleep tonight?" Zach asked.

"On the couch, or you could presumably make a cot for yourself. Everyone must make sacrifices at some point in any relationship, and Leah here is making her fair share of sacrifices already," she said, gesturing to the changing boy's feminizing form.  Leah looked around the girlified room, still stunned.

"But how did."

"Never mind the trifling details. We came up here for you both to wash off and get a change of clothes, so that is exactly what you'll do. Go on into the bathroom and take a quick shower. Let me know when you're done, and I'll help you get ready." She shooed Leah off into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

Lindsay dusted off her hands, visibly pleased with her work. Zach crossed his arms defiantly. He now finally had his mother alone for the first time since this whole mess started. Their eyes met. His mother didn't say anything, apparently inviting him to say the first word.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.  Lindsay waited for the sound of the shower before she began speaking.

"Oh, my dear. Is it not plainly obvious what I'm doing?"

"Besides turning Liam into a girl. We were just hanging out and you had to come and make it awkward. Did you cause this to begin with? Did you put the idea in his head to pretend to be Leah?"

"And what if I did?" she asked, moving to take a seat at the foot of the bed.

"Why are you doing it like this? If you wanted him to be a girl to teach us a lesson, why not just get it over with? Why are you changing him so slowly?

Why did you let him remember he was a boy; let him realize he's - she's changing?"

The questions tumbled out of his mouth in a panicked torrent.

"A mother does what a mother does for many reasons. If you can't at least figure out one of those reasons, then you still have a good bit of learning to do," his mother lectured, adjusting her glasses.

"What do you mean? You realize she already suspects something right? How am I not supposed to tell her about magic when she can literally see herself magically becoming more and more female every second that goes by?

How else can that be explained?"

Zach implored.

"That very much sounds like your problem. You made a promise to me that you would tell nobody of magic. You have upheld that ideal for the past 4,999 days of your life since the day you made your promise. I'm very proud of you for that. However, I would advise you to not falter in your promise to me now.

A man should never go back on his word. Promises are binding, and secrets are powerful," his mother said matter-of-factly.

"Are you threatening me, mom?"

Zach asked cautiously.  His mother laughed sweetly.

"Heavens no! I'm your mother Zach. I love you. I'm merely cautioning you to stay true to your word."  "It's really hard to tell when you're being loving and when you're being sociopathic," he said dryly.  His mother looked genuinely offended.

"Sociopathic? Are you talking about what I did with Mattie because her life turned out far?"

"That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about Mom!"

Zach exclaimed, feeling his temper flare much to his own surprise.

"You're unpredictable! You have way too much power with your magic and no accountability. Whenever I want to do something normal, you always change something or someone to fit whatever you desire, or whatever lesson you want to teach me instead of just being a normal mom and teaching me a normal way!"

His mother stared at him blankly.

"A mother does what a mother does for many reasons," she repeated sharply.

"I have never claimed that I was perfect Zach, but I have my own reasons for doing things the way I do them. Now is no exception."

Zach was conflicted with how he felt, with how he's always felt about his mother. On one hand, she was a wildcard of a parental figure.

She could do whatever she wanted and however, she wanted with nearly no repercussions, often through drastic means.