Teach Me How to Fly

I take off my T-shirt, throw it into the laundry basket and look in the mirror. I tense my stomach and watch the light trace every muscle with tiny lines of shadow.

I like the way I look. Sportive. Confident. Capable. It’s obvious that I take care of my body and it pleases my sense of aesthetic. The muscles, anyway. I really don’t care much for the face.

I already put on a good bit of muscle throughout summer break and I’ve still got two weeks left to go. They’re bound to notice, right? At PE, in the locker room….

I grin at the mirror, then stop because it’s weird. My grin is weird. With a huff, I take out my toothbrush and put toothpaste on it. The sun is already up outside. I can’t see the sea from this side of the house, but I can see the beautiful, blue sky and I can hear the wind and the screeching of the seagulls through the cracked window. It’s gonna be a great day. I could go to the beach with Henry, now that I have to watch my ankle. It still hurts when I put weight on it. It’ll be fine. It’s barely been ten hours since the fall, I just need to give it some time.

It’s surely going to get warm enough to swim. A little boring, yes, but it’s exercise and I don’t need my ankle for that.

Making sure to keep my weight on my right leg, I brush my teeth and take a quick shower. Then, I dry myself off and make my way downstairs. Mum’s sitting in the living room, working on her laptop, Dad’s already gone. I don’t have any siblings.

“Good morning Wells!” Mum calls when she hears me trudge past her. Then, immediately after, “Why are you walking like that? Did you hurt yourself last night?”

I get along well enough with my parents. Except when it’s about parkour. I wouldn’t say Mum hates it, but she definitely dislikes the danger I’m putting myself in. She wouldn’t understand, she was never much of an adventurer. She did decide to move here of all places, after all. She went to school, got good grades, went to university for marketing, met Dad, started working as a freelancer, they moved here, married and got me. How utterly boring.

I stop and walk back to lean against the doorway. “It’s nothing,” I assure her with a confident smile, still putting more weight on my right ankle.

She raises an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”

“I fell,” I say with a demonstrative sigh. “I landed a little wrong and now my ankle hurts a little. It’s not even sprained or something, just hurts a little.”

She shakes her head. “I told you should be more careful!” she says, looking worried. “I’ll take you to the doctor to get it checked out after breakfast.” She means well by it, of course. I know that. Doesn’t mean it can’t annoy me, though.

“Mum, it’s nothing!” I try to tell her off, but her expression turns stern and I know there’s no way I can win this battle.

“Don’t be an idiot, Wells. I won’t let you make this even worse than it is already. I will not have you walking on crutches for the rest of your life if there’s any way I can avoid it.” She gives me a look. “Go on, eat. The earlier we’re done with this, the earlier I can stop worrying and you can go do whatever reckless stuff you were planning on doing today.”

As I’ve said before. She wouldn’t understand. Maybe she will if I show her that it’s nothing serious and then tell her just how dangerous that fall was. She needs to understand that I actually know what I’m doing.

So I eat. I take the cereal bowl with prepared fruit from the fridge, fill it up with yoghurt and cereal and eat. The fact that it was Mum who prepared my breakfast for me even though it’s summer break lightens my mood at least a little.

As I’m eating, I receive a text from Henry.

H. Boi: You should totally go see a doctor about your ankle, btw

I don’t remember the exact story of why I saved him as that in my contacts. It’s been like that for several years. He’s saved me as Wellsh Ninja, which I totally hate, but he refuses to change it.

Me: Dw, Mum’s already forcing me to go. You won’t have to.

H. Boi: She better (laughing emoji)

H. Boi: Because I know damn well you wouldn’t go on your own.

Right. Because I’m reckless or something.

He writes something more, but I put my phone on silent and turn it off. Not in the mood for a lecture.

When I’m done, I put away the bowl and spoon and turn on the dishwasher. Then I go tell Mum and put on my shoes and we leave.

We arrive at the doctor’s when it’s barely past noon. The parking lot is mostly empty and the only people in the waiting room are elderly and children. The woman sitting behind the front desk takes my insurance card, asks what the problem seems to be, then tells me to go wait in the waiting room until the doctor’s ready.

It’s weird, sitting in the waiting room with Mum. I’m 16, I really don’t need to be accompanied to the doctor’s. But here she is anyway.

So instead of idly scrolling on my phone the way I would usually, I very actively busy myself staring at the medical posters around the room.

Early signs of S-14:

Mood imbalances

Decreased libido

Decreased appetite

Dizziness spells

Decreased body strength

Important! Not all of these have to be present for S-14 to be active in the body.

If there is reasonable suspicion of an infection, please see a doctor and take the tests.

Helpline: +** ** **** ****

I look away and at the depiction of the male and female body without skin. S-14, or the ‘virus’ as everybody normal calls it, has been around for nine years now and we still know next to nothing about it. We know what the cells look like. By now, they’re present in just about every breathing human being. But we don’t know what makes them decide to reproduce and change their host’s gender.

Changing their host’s gender. What a weird thing to do. How does a virus evolve to have that effect?

Well, to a lot of people around the globe, the answer is clear. It doesn’t. It was designed with that intent. How or why, that’s a different story entirely. The opinions differ. Sometimes, it’s the government, trying to scare us into silence with targeted attacks, sometimes it’s woke leftists trying to rob every country of its patriotism.

If only.

Far as I and anybody with a remotely scientific approach to their studies can tell, the virus triggers randomly. Not that I care. I just saw it on the news. It’s kinda hard to look past these details nowadays when the world is so eager to keep you up to date.

And then you’ve got to be fast. Fourteen days, that’s how long it takes the virus to completely change your body. Your skin, your muscles, even your bones change. That’s the part that gives scientists the biggest headache. Making bones grow back, making humans shorter was absolutely impossible before and it is even now. Unless you count the virus as a reliable method.

The medical assistant comes through the door and tells me that the doctor is ready to see me. I get up quickly, hoping that Mum will just stay behind, but she gets up too. Seems to be personal to her, the way I injure myself.

I don’t dare make a scene, though. Because that’s the only thing that would make it worse. Behaving like an actual child. So I follow the medical assistant into a clean room and sit on the narrow sickbed. Mum takes the chair in the corner. We don’t talk and I actively ignore her.

Then the doctor comes in. He’s a man of about Mum’s age. His hair is short and greying, but he seems to take good care of it. He asks me a few questions, feels my ankle with his cold fingers, tells me to move my foot. Then he says that we’re going to make an x-ray, just in case, even though it’s probably fine.

I let it happen. The medical assistant picks us up a minute later and leads me into another room where I have to stretch my left leg and hold very still for uncomfortably long. Then she shows us the picture of my ankle bones on a screen and tells us that they’re fine. I should take it easy for a few days, not take any hard impact for a week or two, then the pain should go away.

I can’t say I didn’t expect that outcome, but it still sucks that I’ll have to take a break from parkour. Oh well, not like there were any big achievements left for me to chase after.

“See, Mum?” I say as we’re about to leave the room. “And that was me taking a barely controlled two-metre fall. That’s pretty much the worst that could happen to me around here. You really don’t need to worry.”

Her expression goes soft for a moment and she nods. Then she halts.

“Why exactly did you fall?”

I wave it off. “I had a sudden dizziness spell as I was balancing… somewhere. Must’ve been dehydrated. I’ll pay mo-”

I stop when I notice the shift in her expression. Worry. Fear?

What did I say? Was it the balancing part? I already left out that it was on a metal gate.

“You didn’t eat dinner yesterday, did you?” she asks and her gaze flickers to the medical assistant.

I look too. She’s watching us attentively, her brow furrowed.

And then it dawns on me and I laugh.

“Mum, I don’t have the virus. Just yesterday, I did the most difficult jump I’ve ever done! I didn’t eat much because that’s a dumb thing to do before exercising.”

Although it is strange that I didn’t finish breakfast today, either. If I don’t want to lose muscle, I’ll have to pay very close attention to that going forward.

I’m not returning to my old self. I’m so much better now.

“Stuff like that can just happen, you know?”

“You should do a test,” Mum says. “We’re already here. Just in case. And if it’s nothing, then it’s nothing and we go home and never talk about this ever again. Okay?”

“What the fuck, Mum? I’m not gonna turn into a girl!”

There is a cure for the virus, of course. After all, there’s a lot of money to be made from rich patients when there’s no way to protect yourself from this virus. It affects everybody, they say.

There’s two methods I know of. First, you wait until the virus is done and then go through a traditional transition back to your old body. The methods have gotten a lot better, but the waiting list for the surgeries is said to be disgustingly long. So everybody that can afford it takes medication to slow down the effects of the virus. That way, it takes ages for the full transformation to happen and you can get a spot for the even more expensive surgery that somehow – and please, don’t ask me how – removes the virus from your body completely and lets you go back to your old self just the way you were before. But even those procedures take ages to get.

For just a second, my stomach goes light as doubt creeps in.

Then I shake my head decisively.

I don’t know anybody that was affected by the virus. Not that I know, anyway. The rate is supposed to be one in a hundred. The virus plays virtually no role in my current life and that’s not going to change now.

It can’t.

“Please, Wells,” Mum says, her eyes urging me. “If you don’t want the virus to take effect, you need to act soon. There’s no delaying it. Unless, of course, if you want it. That would be totally fine, obviously, but-”

“No, Mum!” I snap. “I don’t want to turn into a girl, okay?” I wipe my hands on my shorts. They’re a little sweaty. “Alright, let’s do the test then. Just so you’ll stop nagging.”

She flinches at my words but doesn’t say anything. I’m not usually this rude toward her.

Mum turns to the woman standing with us in the room and she jumps a little, like she hadn’t realised she’d been listening in on our conversation and that she was supposed to act like she couldn’t hear us.

She gives a short nod. “Right. Follow me, please.”

She leads us to one of the normal appointment rooms and leaves us once again.

This time around, the silence between Mum and I is tense, not just awkward.

At the edge of my consciousness, I’m somewhat aware that I’m being childish right now. If I really have the virus, ignoring it won’t make it any better. But at the same time, it feels like she’s betraying me by even suggesting the possibility.

I can’t have the virus. I’d literally lose everything I worked so hard to achieve these last years. Strength, reputation, maybe even my friends. What do I know what people’s reactions would be like in a place like this, where being ordinary is the encouraged norm.

The nurse returns with a small device, then she begins rummaging in one of the drawers and soon produces a needle along with a thin hose.

My stomach grows a little queasy. I haven’t been stuck with a needle in several years.

With a glance at my face, the nurse tells me to lie back on the sickbed, then she disinfects the inside of my elbow.

I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to look and hold my breath or breathe regularly and look away. So I just freeze and watch as the needle comes closer and closer and… disappears into my skin. I barely feel it.

The nurse gives me a sympathetic smile when she hears me breathe out with relief. I smile back for a moment, then I remember what we’re doing right now and I stop. With surprising speed, my blood races through the tube and to the device.

And then it arrives, the device beeps and the nurse pulls out the needle, telling me to hold a medical pad against the puncture to stop the bleeding.

I watch her as she watches the small screen. My heart is racing. I feel a little sick. I want to ask her what the result is but at the same time I don’t dare make so much as a sound.

I’m frozen.

And then the nurse pulls a face and meets my eyes and says, “The test came out positive.”