Playground

It’s freaking Saturday, so guess where I am?

If you answered, “loitering at the mall with my two best friends because our deadbeat, Midwestern town has zero other forms of entertainment,” congratulations.

You’re right, and you win… a salad.

That’s what I’m eating right now, while my buddies, Mark and Greg, mow down on foot-long hot dogs. They sit on my left and across from me at a food-court table, cramming tube meat into their mouths like this is some X-rated comedy, and I get to watch because… hell if I know.

I’m just the short one.

Ethan.

I’ve always been on the periphery of this group, despite the fact that we’re a trio. Mark and Greg go way back, before they started playing football together or enlisted me in their world domination plans back in fourth grade, when we spontaneously decided to dig a hole to China behind the Bennington hardware store.

Never mind that the hole only lasted three excruciating days before we discovered the local stray cat’s graveyard.

There are limits to testing the mettle of nine-year-olds.

Overall, our trio has always been a democracy. No one gets left out of a scheme.

But I’m the only one who doesn’t get laid on the regular.

Maybe my confidence is lacking because my body ain’t packing. When Mark and Greg matured along with every other teen male in town, I blossomed in more untraditional ways.

Hips with a curve, long lashes, supple lips, a butt to rival J-Lo.

I also have a pair of perky B-cups tucked into my chest, which prompts the occasional, “Yo, Ethan, you packin’ socks?”

I shrug it off. No one rubs their balls on my head for going against the herd.

Most of the time, anyway.

After following Mark and Greg out of a women’s clothing store on the weekend—taking a shortcut to Hot Diggity Dogs—we take our loot to a corner of the mall and chill.

Because that’s the kind of guys we are. As is our entire town.

Mark is one of the best receivers on the Bennington Bulls, so he’s built like a tank. Mark could get anyone in the school to puff his steroid-riddled sausage and he pals around with Greg and me.

Greg and I aren’t terrible people, we just ain’t Mark. Correction, I’m not.

Greg is taller than me, and he’s got a nice chest, on top of which he occasionally works out, but he’s no Mark.

I’m not gay, but Mark has a set of abs and a chest that stops people in their tracks. Not to mention their monster cocks. I’ve seen it in the showers after gym, and I might have snuck a peek, but that was only for research.

I am short, thin, and feminine. No one has ever said anything to me about it, but I know for a fact that my hips are rounder than most—aanyone,nd my chest is on the heavier side.

I never told anyone and I’ve always done a pretty good job of covering it up.

 

We meander out of the mall, then take a load off on a bench in front of a female clothing store.

“There’s absolutely nothing to do anymore. We’ve done it all,” sighs Mark.

“We need to get out of this town before we lose our minds,” I agree.

We sit there for a few minutes with looks of apathy.

“Hey, look at her,” says Greg, pointing at a poster of a beautiful model in one of the stores. “She looks like Ethan!”

“Shut the hell up,” I say, mildly offended, as the model is pretty hot.

“Yeah, you’re kind of right!” exclaims Mark. “Ethan has girly hips just like her.”

Maybe they weren’t as unnoticeable as I’d thought.

“They got the same hair too!” Greg was starting to believe his theory.

My hair was longer than most boys, blonde and curly like a girl’s, but that was naturally what happened.

“Hey, that’s the outfit in the window. Mark, you thinking what I’m thi—”

“No!” I interrupt Greg before he can say something stupid. “I see where you’re going and no dice.”

I never entertained the idea of dressing up as a girl. It never struck me as interesting. I had bizarre sexual dreams about guys with steaming cocks, but that was normal, wasn’t it?

“Yes, Greg, I’m on your page,” Mark says,