The Most Magical Place on Earth

The day before our trip to Disneyland, I woke up with blood in my underwear. I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. I’d known this was coming, sooner or later, the same way it was always looming for prepubescent girls, but I’ll admit, the timing wasn’t stellar. Still, I wasn’t surprised. Life had always had a way of taking good things away from me. Why should I have hoped to be a child at the most magical place on earth, if even only for a day? I shook my mother awake in the darkness of Grandma’s guest bedroom. “I started my period,” I stated bluntly.

“Oh honey,” Mom moved to cup my face, to give sympathy, but I pulled out of her touch and tucked twitching hands behind my back.

“It’s not a big deal. I just need…stuff.”

Mom sighed, resigned, and threw off her blankets. She shouldn’t be surprised this was how I’d chosen to handle the situation. First blood or not, I’d been an adult for years. It didn’t matter that I was only twelve. I’d stopped being a child the first time I’d offered myself up for a beating to spare my little brother. Dad didn’t particularly care who he hit, so long as he hit someone. I’d been six then and already well on my way to understanding some things about the world I really shouldn’t have. With the first smack of Dad’s beating stick on my back, the last dregs of innocence had left my small body. I should probably feel something about that, too, but I didn’t. It’s just the way things were.

My mother shuffled past, beckoning me to follow her into the bathroom across the hall. She held up a bulky panty liner, “Here. This is all Grams has. We’ll stop and get you something better on the way. Let me show you how to use it.”

I nodded, and let her show me, though I already knew. My best friend had gotten her period six months ago. Sara wasn’t one to leave out any detail and had shared the ins and outs of bleeding and tampons and pads with brutal efficiency to anyone who would listen in our little friend group. Yes, I already knew, but I let Mom show me. It was more important for her to feel needed than it was for me to be comfortable. And so, I shuffled out of the bathroom and packed up my bag, adding a fistful of the low-quality incontinence liners to my purse.

We drove for twelve hours that day. I shifted uncomfortably in the back seat of my grandparent’s minivan, but I wouldn’t dare complain. They were footing the bill for this trip to Disney. God knew my mom, who was in the throes of raising six kids solo, couldn’t afford it. Mom bought me tampons at a truck stop. Every hotel we’d be staying at during our week-long trip would have a pool, and I loved to swim. Mom tried to convince me that I wouldn’t even bleed much, but I knew she was wrong. My body had been hovering on the precipice of this thing for too long. I was more developed than any of the other girls I knew, with heavy breasts and curving hips and standing at 5’8” already. Men had been screaming vulgar things out the windows of their trucks at me for two years as I made my trek to school in the mornings. I couldn’t really blame them for mistaking me for a woman or something close to one. I looked like it. I relished the vile words the men spewed out their windows at me. I knew I shouldn’t, but my father had told me I was an ugly thing for so long, it was nice to know that someone, anyone, thought differently. I pondered all of these things during the twelve-hour drive, and arrived at the conclusion that while the whole period thing was miserable, it wasn’t a bad thing. It was just another step toward becoming the adult I so desperately wanted to be. When I was an adult, I could be free. I wanted so badly to be free. I wanted so badly to be wanted.

By the time we arrived at the theme park the next night, I was an old hat at the whole tampons and pads thing. I had fully leaned into the idea that no matter what anyone tried to tell me, I was a woman now. I’d demand the respect of one. And I did. Grams and Mom were the first to notice the shift. They just met my gaze with a knowing glint and subtle nods. I’d not be treated like a child anymore. Mercifully, they didn’t try to. They stopped giving me orders and started deferring to me for opinions and on the fourth evening of the trip, Grandma handed me a tattered copy of her favorite romance novel and informed me, “You’re old enough to read this now.”

During our breaks from the sticky, sweaty excitement of the park, I devoured the book. It confirmed some things that’d been pondered over pillows at many a slumber party. The book gave vital information on how to fully wield the power that’d been bequeathed upon me in the form of generous hips and cat eyes. On the last night of the trip, my bleeding had stopped and I clutched a towel around my breasts and left the hotel room with a mumbled, “I’m going to the pool.”

Surprisingly, no one challenged me. They let me slip from the room, twelve years old, clad in nothing but an orange bikini and a towel.

I smiled with wicked delight as I made my way to the pool yard. I’d been watching, these days past, hoping for an opportunity to test my hypothesis, but in order to do that, I needed to get away from my family… and they’d just… let me leave. My heart pounded as I exited the building. The thick, warm night air of a Los Angeles summer blasted me, and I gulped down lungfuls and told myself to be brave. I stepped into the poolyard and let my towel drop. It pooled around my feet, and when I looked up, six pairs of eyes were running up and down the length of me. I met a pair of glittering blue and grinned. I let a little bit of that heat I’d been kindling flare in my eyes, too, “Can I join you?” I purred in a voice foreign to my ears. The minor league baseball player across from me smiled lazily and trailed his fingers through the steaming water next to him.

“Sure,” he said, taking another sweeping look down to my toes and then slowly back up before he met my eyes again. Something stirred in his gaze and I bit my lip before climbing into the hot tub beside him.

I’d been watching the baseball team for a few days. They had rooms down the hall from ours. I’d overheard them talking about their spur-of-the-moment decision to stay a few nights and explore the theme park before continuing on their way. All of them were young, in their early twenties, and all of them were outrageously good-looking in the way only aspiring male athletes can be. They were all also, mercifully, on good behavior. I took for granted the danger I was putting myself in, not having learned the other truths about the way men might behave when confronted with an almost-naked young woman. And that’s what they thought I was: a young woman. My body, my face, the way I held myself told them. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t bother to correct them. I spent hours in the pool that night, riding on their shoulders, swimming beside them, running my hands all over them, their hands all over me. I reveled in it. I laughed and they echoed, and when the one with striking blue eyes invited me up to his room, I thought for a long minute about going, but this man was a gentleman and he saw the hesitation in my eyes and tipped his head.

“I get it,” he said, “you’ve got other attachments.”

I smirked and nodded, allowing him to believe whatever conclusion he’d come to.

“Either way, this was,” he smiled, “...fun. Thanks.”

I twined my fingers in his and looked up under my lashes, “Sorry.”

He ran a tentative hand down my cheek. “There’s nothing to apologize for. Let me know if you change your mind. You can find me in room 402.”

I nodded again and gave him the sultry smile I’d spent an hour cultivating in the mirror earlier. He grinned and turned away, exiting the pool yard with his friends elbowing and gently ribbing along the way.

When they were gone, I sank back into the hot tub and laughed. Though they didn’t know it, those men had just given me the keys to the kingdom. My hypothesis was confirmed. There was power in this woman’s body. I’d just had no less than ten men dancing for me like puppets on strings. I palmed my round breast and grinned at the sky. Yes, there was power in this body, power in the truth I now beheld. And I would use it from that moment forward to get everything I ever wanted.

When we left the most magical place on Earth the next day, my metamorphosis was complete. I was a woman, and the world wasn’t ready for the terrors I was poised to unleash upon it.