More than Alice is meant to hear

I slowly follow after Jill. Once I round the corner from the kitchen I see Jill waiting at the bottom of the stairs for me. She smiles mischievously at me. “Hurry up slowpoke!” She then loudly stomps her way up the stairs. As I get closer though, she yells loudly. “Yep, you’re almost there, let’s go play!” She then gingerly creeps silently down the stairs, her finger to her lips as she quietly shushes me. What is she doing? She makes it back to the bottom of the stairs about the same time I get there, and gently turns me back around and starts pulling me back towards the kitchen while tiptoeing. I finally see what she’s doing we’re going to eavesdrop on Hannah and the doctor! I’m a good girl mostly, but I can’t help but feel a mischievous smile appear on my face to match Jill’s. I don’t try and tiptoe though, my feet are pretty quiet and that would increase the chance of me tripping over my own feet and crashing down. So I simply waddle a little slower behind Jill.

Jill stops just beside the kitchen door, and I hide behind her. If we get caught I’m blaming her, both because it was her idea and because Hannah can’t ground her. We listen intently but it seems almost like the kitchen is already empty. I’m about ready to give up when the doctor finally speaks up.

“Look, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but I can’t in good conscience recommend you keep going with this treatment.” The doctor sounds serious. Treatment?

“The other doctors said it was for the best. That she wouldn’t develop right anyways and it was better to just… not let her grow at all.” Hannah… her voice sounds broken compared to the happy tone she had just minutes ago.

“Yes well, the doctors you consulted were in the minority back then, and the science has only become clearer since then. They may have gotten away with recommending it in those days, but if someone did today it would be an easy malpractice case.”

“… will she be okay?”

“Tough to say. Artificially blocking her change that should have happened a year ago isn’t seen very often. It’s possible that her body will never actually change. She won’t be able to survive without food, so semen is at best a flavor for her. There is also a high likelihood that if she had gone through the change normally it might have revitalized her nervous system. A complete fix is probably being too optimistic, but she might have been able to stop wearing diapers and become better able to walk in a straight line. She’d never have been a professional dancer, but she might have been close to normal. I don’t think that’s possible now.”

“… so I ruined her future. She’s never going to be normal.”

“Well now, let’s not be too dramatic. Yes, in hindsight hormone blockers were a bad idea. But you only had the medical advice of one doctor and his fellow fringe thinkers. It was just bad luck you fell for their nonsense, and as I said back then there was at least some reason to think they might have been right. Honestly, I’m more concerned about Alice’s academic state. There’s nothing to be done about the rest other than stop giving her hormone blockers. Maybe her body will recover and she’ll just be a late bloomer, maybe she won’t. If she is she might still see a noticeable improvement in her nervous system, or maybe not. Frankly, we just need to sit back and accept what happens next. The advice your parenting consultants gave… that is a lot harder to undo.”

Jill looks terrified. Everything about her face is screaming that she made a big mistake in having me eavesdrop on this. She tries to gesture at me to turn around and go upstairs. I take a tentative step closer. I don’t really understand what they are talking about, but I understand enough. The shots Hannah has been having me take for years might be keeping me from walking and skipping and running. I want to scream at her, but I need to listen more.

“They said she wouldn’t be able to understand, so I should just… keep it from her.”

“Ma’am, child psychology is not my area of expertise, but I met with several experienced colleagues before coming here. That advice is so bad in this situation that you might be able to sue for malpractice. This isn’t a matter of science getting more answers with time, that was bad advice 40 years ago. Now she has no idea what sex is, no idea what many parts of her body are for. If she goes out into the world unsupervised it’s likely she won’t know enough to even comprehend what losing her virginity is while it’s happening. Unless you plan on keeping her inside forever, you do need to help educate her on how our society functions.”

I want to still be mad at Hannah, but now all I have is more questions. Sex? Virginity? He’s right that I don’t know what those are, but there are lots of things I don’t know. No one knows everything. Why are these such a big deal?

“Are you sure it’s not for the best she doesn’t know? If she doesn’t change after the hormone blockers leave her system, maybe she’d be better off…”

“Ma’am, even if she spends the rest of her life eating regular food with no biological need for sex, she will still exist in this world. You can’t take care of her forever. She needs to at least know the basics even if she never experiences it. You can introduce her to the world carefully and under your own supervision, or wait till chance causes it to break in uninvited and under whatever circumstances happen to occur. She’s 19, she’s not going to become more able to understand the world with time. I can give you contact information for professional psychologists, but they’ll all tell you the same thing. The time to fix this was years ago, but the longer you wait the harder it will be.”

I lean closer to the door, listening for every scrap of information. Stop talking vaguely! Jill is trying to silently pull me back to the stairs. But while I may be clumsy she’s not exactly a big strong girl herself. Combined with not wanting to risk me falling and there is little she can do to make me move.

“Did they really suggest no internet or phones?” More vague statements. What’s the internet? And we have a phone so obviously she didn’t take advice.

“Not exactly. They just said not to let her find out by any means, and to block information access. Nowadays…”

“Yes, I see. Pretty much impossible to keep something like that secret if she can just look it up in her phone.” These comments are more infuriating, because I feel like I understand them but they just make no sense. Look it up on a phone? Does he mean a phone book?

I finally lean over just a smidge too far. Jill does her best to balance me but all she can do is slow my fall. With a light thud I land in the kitchen doorway. I look up cautiously, hoping against all logic they somehow didn’t notice… no such luck. “Alice, go to your room!” Hannah’s sad voice is gone, replaced with her tone of absolute authority. I should yell at her for keeping things from me, but my heart trembles at her angry face and I scramble backwards and follow Jill up the stairs for real.

Safe in my room, Jill giggles madly. “Oh god I’m so sorry. I don’t mean to laugh but…” she breaks into another fit of laughter. “… oh, I’ve wanted to tell you for so long! I’ve thought of saying something for so long. The whole idea always sounded ridiculous! But, I respected Hannah’s decision. And now! I let the truth out on accident! I thought they’d talk about your diaper needs, not explain the whole thing!” She giggles more, but slowly gets her face under her control.

I frown at her for being so giddy at my expense. Is she even really my friend, or has she just been hanging around to laugh at me behind my back. My eyes begin to tear up at the thought and I can’t help but sniffle.

Jill stops all her laughter. “Whoa, I’m sorry girl. I didn’t mean anything by it. You know I love you! I was laughing at her trying to keep you in the dark, not you being in the dark.” She hugs me while I cry. I still don’t even know what it is they’ve been keeping from me, but I know it’s enough that it hurts. A lot. Even though I should still be mad at her, she did say she’s sorry so I lean in to her hug and cry more.

Several minutes go by, and I manage to calm down. Rubbing my back, Jill asks me something that will forever mark the end of my innocence. “Want to see a cell phone?”

I sniffle again and rub my nose. Cell phones. She talked about those before. I look her in the eye and nod. I apparently have a lot to learn, so starting out with something simple like a new type of phone should be a nice way to ease into it. So I nod and smile at her, happy to have her as a friend.

She pulls out a tiny rectangle, and smiles mischievously at me as she causes its front to light up like a TV. She taps her fingers rapidly on the screen, and a few moments later points the screen at me. At the top is a name… Porn hub? I thought she was going to show me how to make calls… what’s porn?