one day little j woke up and she wasn’t so little anymore

“I am the master, I am the king. You lie at my feet! You undulate when you hear my name!!” Zeke Freedman roared as he gesticulated wildly with his Nintendo joystick. Zeke had been Dan’s best and only friend since kindergarten. Back then, they had been the smallest boys in the class and were more proficient in reading than wrestling, and so they had bonded in their classroom’s library corner. Zeke was still a kindergartner in a lot of ways. After doing the reading for their sophomore Africa and the Middle East class last night, he had become obsessed with the word undulate and was now trying to use it in almost every sentence.

“And I’ll urinate on your feet, dickweed,” Dan shot back as his lanky dreadlocked player onscreen made a perfect jump shot.

“Oh, man,” Zeke whined, hauling his gigantic gray wide-wale corduroys up over his woman-hips. In the past five years Zeke had grown from the second-smallest boy in the class to the largest. His shoulders were massive and sloping, his hips resembled those of a woman pregnant with her third set of triplets, his waist was undefined, his chin was doughy—even his dark, curly hair was big. It wasn’t that he ate too much or didn’t exercise, he was just “genetically awkward,” as Dan liked to remind him, in a playful, best-friend sort of way. “Next game my cheerleaders are gonna undulate so loud, you’re gonna get so distracted you won’t know where my shit is coming from!” Zeke proclaimed, fervently tapping the buttons on his joystick to restart the game.

Down the hall in her room, Jenny plugged her ears with her fingers. It was bad enough that she was the only girl in the house—did she have to spend another lonely Friday night at home listening to boys talk about urinating on each other? She slammed the door and unbuttoned her shirt, dropping it on the floor where she stood. She unfastened her cream-colored satin Maidenform 32A bra, which had been cutting into her all day, leaving angry red welts on the tops of her shoulders. She threw it into her trash can and pulled open her underwear drawer, carefully removing Serena’s powder blue jog bra. “34B,” the tag beckoned to her excitingly. Sewn onto the bra’s outer hem with tiny, perfectly formed white thread x’s was a small rectangular white label with the name SERENA VAN DER WOODSEN printed on it in looping red script. Without a mother or a maid to sew name tags into their clothes, Jenny and Dan had lost a lot of clothes over the years.

Hence the need to steal other people’s things?

Jenny slung her underdeveloped arms through the armholes and pulled the bra on over her head. Last time she’d tried it on it had just sort of fallen loosely down over her rib cage, the way things do when they’re ten sizes too big. This time, the bra got stuck above her new boobs. She yanked it down, amazed to find that she filled it almost completely.

“Dan!” she shouted, throwing open her door. Without thinking about what she was doing, she sprinted down the hall, her new boobs bouncing softly against their cottony encasement. “It fits!” She slid into the study in her sock feet, wearing only the powder blue jog bra and the pair of red-heart Nick & Nora pajama bottoms her Dad had given her last year for Valentine’s Day.

“Yowza!” Zeke exclaimed, his big, curly dark hair looking bigger than ever. And then he undulated. Or at least tried to.

“What the fuck, Jen?” Dan shook his head at her, annoyed. She knew Zeke was there. What was she trying to prove?

Jenny’s cheeks turned pink, but she stood her ground. “I just wanted to tell you that you-know-who’s you-know-what almost fits me. See?” She pointed to her nicely swollen chest.

How discreet.

Then she spotted Dan’s beaten-up cell phone on the worn brown leather sofa and lunged for it.

“Hey,” he cried, attempting to rescue it. Zeke undulated again, and Dan realized he’d lost the game.

Jenny crouched protectively on the linty Oriental rug as she began to punch the phone’s buttons. “I’m just calling Vanessa to tell her—”

“No!” Dan shrieked, diving floorward to tackle her. He and Zeke were supposed to be hanging out, and Zeke didn’t even know Vanessa existed. Dan didn’t want to have to explain his and Vanessa’s relationship, because he honestly didn’t quite know how to explain it. Jenny rolled onto her back, still holding the phone, and kicked him roughly away. Dan flew across the room like one of those disposable bad guys in a James Bond movie.

Even a tiny girl’s legs can be surprisingly powerful. It’s all that ballet we’re forced to take in elementary school.

“Hey Vanessa, it’s Jenny.” She spoke quickly into the phone. “You know, Dan’s sister?” Obviously Vanessa didn’t say much because Jenny immediately blurted out her news. “Guess what? They grew! So I totally won’t take the pills anymore. I’m stopping today. I mean, I’m already at the size I wanted so I guess it’s time to stop. Anyway, I just thought you should know. Oh, and Dan wants to talk to you,” she added, tossing the phone to her disgruntled brother.

He glared menacingly at his little sister and put the phone to his ear. “Hi,” he greeted her in a tiny voice. His face was flushed and his hands were all sweaty. He swallowed nervously. “How are you?” She didn’t say anything. “Hello?”

Zeke stopped mid-undulation. “Who’s Vanessa?” he asked loudly. “Dan’s got a girlfriend! Dan’s got a girlfriend! Who is she? One of Jenny’s classmates?”

“Hello?” Dan repeated, his face hot.

“Shush!” Jenny scolded Zeke. She kicked him in the foot. “Please?”

“Hello?” Dan asked for the third time. Vanessa must have hung up on him. Or maybe she was never there in the first place. Jenny could be sneaky like that.

“Dan’s got a girlfriend!” Zeke cried and undulated again. “Oh, and by the way, you lost another game.”

Dan sat on the leather sofa, glaring at life in general.

Now who’s feeling genetically awkward?