James sets out at a quick pace towards the Queer Narratives section. This takes him past the back quarter of the alphabet and he marvels at the stunning array of strange section titles. A sign marks out a section of richly polished oak bookshelves as "Tails" and another as "Tall Tales". James has to tilt his head back to look up as he realizes the ceiling is a great deal higher over those shelves than he expected. He shakes his head and keeps his eye on that Queer Narratives section as he makes his way past "Tiny", where he would have had to belly crawl between the shelves. He steps around a comfortable overstuffed chair in front of "Sadness" and hops over a small stream at "Snake". By the sign reading "Rain Forest", he stops to examine a potted plant before he finds his way in the aisle for "Queer Narratives".
Someone has decorated special here as well. The ceiling is higher to allow for several different pride flags, of all kinds. The books likewise come in many varieties, languages, and titles. There are slim volumes of manga crammed in with thick leather tomes of Sappho's poems. Among these books, James sees titles he makes out as "From Twink to Twunk: Exercise For Bottoms", "Calamity Jens Guide To Transition", "Bears, Bears, and Bears by Dorothy Osmund," and a slim volume that looks more like a journal than a proper book.
He tugged it out, a black and white composition book like he'd had in high school. Someone has coated the front in all kinds of bats, pentagrams, and other childish drawings, but nestled in the middle James makes out a title. "I Was a Teenage Hermaphrodite!!!". James blinks and looks around. Certainly, this has to be a joke? The notebook is light in his hand and as he starts to open it he feels an electric thrill as if he is digging into someones secret. The first page is a well done but heavy-lined drawing of a young woman dressed in gothic apparel. Or at least she would seem to be a young woman was she not lifting her dress to display a particularly large male member escaping her lacy underwear. Her expression is one of exasperated, "What are you going to do?" bemusement.
James snaps the book shut and glances around. It's weird, but he can't help but think it's also kind of cool. He takes it in hand and traces his steps back out to Avery's desk. Rain Forest, Snake, Sadness, Tiny, Tall Tales, Tails, the checkout desk. He smiles at Avery and drops the book on the table in front of them. The androgynous attendant looks from it to him and for a second he starts to blush but they smile wide. "Excellent choice." They tap on their keyboard and scan a bar code on the bottom right of the back cover then pause, glancing at James.
"Hey, I'm not supposed to do this but you clearly have great taste so..." They say, digging a scrap of paper out from the desk and jotting a phone number on it. "Call me if you want to discuss what you think about that one." They smile and James nods. "Sure, sure thing!" He takes the book and the phone number and turns to exit, glancing up at the "Reading Can Change Your Life" sign once more.
His parent's house is a short trip from the library, here away from the beach and boardwalk. For a while, he'd rented elsewhere, but without a really independent job, he figured he might as well stay in the basement. It is a fine terrace style one anyway, a private space he would have killed for as a teen. He is able to enter through his own door, lock it behind him and collapse on the old tattered sofa that his family has had for the past fifteen years. As long as he can remember, practically.
He turns on the little tv in the corner, a news broadcast about some cryptid sighted nearby, and with the lamp behind him on, starts to read. The anonymous author is an excellent illustrator, and her prose is shockingly good, if overwrought. She opens with that illustration and a long discussion of why she goes by "her" that somehow, effortlessly transitions into a deep discussion of modern politics, the medical system that has struggled to keep up with her, and her relationships. She has had, James realizes, many more than he has. The accompanying illustrations showcase a breadth of partners and activities that he has only imagined up to this moment.
The tv broadcast drones on about the fog rolling in, accompanied by strange lights, an impromptu festival, and James reads on, shifting uncomfortably as he does. The more lurid parts of the diary inspire a certain something in his loins, and he has to shift to feel comfortable even in his roomy jeans. He reads how the author resented her pale complexion and red hair for a while, but found solace as a goth, though she never dyed her hair, and let it grow tremendously long.
James brushes his own coppery locks back from his face as he reads on, hardly noticing the dark nail polish on his delicate fingers. The tv's soft drone now speaks of disappearances in town, of potential violence on the boardwalk. The author's words in the diary speakto James as she discussed feeling like she didn't fit in anywhere, and how she had set out to make her own path, as a sort of teen detective, putting her prodigious intelligence to use. James shifts, his tight black jeans creaking around his lithe hips as he finds himself more uncomfortable, harder than ever and feeling wetness spreading between his legs. Had he come?
Glancing down he sees the tent and that he apparently has and then some. He has changed, and he sits bolt upright, hair flying, as he realized he was now a perfect double for the author. His cock clearly much larger, clearly much shorter, his clothes only partially changed. No, she thinks, she is the author, Jezebel Starr, teen detective and hermaphrodite. She can fuzzily remember her old self, but also this new history, side by side. She has school tomorrow, or the book had made it so.
Her eyes find the tv and narrow as it discusses strange creatures and her fine intellect puts two and two together. "The Library," she says, her new voice sweet and lilting. She stands and staggers, feeling a wave of pleasure flowing through her. Of course. She'd written in her diary how sensitive she could be at times. But now she needs to think. She looks down over her new body, eighteen, five foot nothing, lightweight and powerfully hung. She tries to clear the fog in her mind and makes it up quickly. She knows what to do. She...