Joy was still holding the medallion when her best friend Jake, also looking for a good place to hide, entered the closet. Jake was a boy that lived down the street and was also 6 years old. He would always point out that he was older than Joy even though it was only by three days. They had been nearly inseparable friends since the day they met in preschool.
"Get out. This is my hiding place." Joy said trying to push Jake out of the closet.
"Hey, stop. Kristen is already looking for us. If you make too much noise she is going to find us." Jake protested.
They both held very still when they heard the bedroom door open. Neither of them daring to even breathe, least it draw Kristen's attention. They saw the closet door open and could see Kristen's legs shoes as she peered into the closet, but she didn't seem to see them hiding behind all of the hanging clothes. She closed the closet door and they could hear her walking away before closing the bedroom door.
"That was close." Joy said breathing a sigh of relief.
"Yeah it was." Jake agreed. "Hey, what have you got there?" He said reaching for the medallion that Joy had forgotten that she was holding. When he grasped it, both children felt a shock and let go of the medallion at the same time.
"Ow. What was that?" Jake asked sticking his stung finger into his mouth.
"I don't know. It didn't do that while I was the only one holding it. Maybe it reacted to your boy cooties." Joy said sticking her tongue out at Jake.
"Yeah right. Everybody knows that it is girls that have cooties." Jake responded. Each claiming that the other was a source of 'cooties' was one of the children's favorite ways to tease each other and they both started giggling.
Their laughter was cut short when the closet door opened again and Kristen loudly declared that she had found them. Joy and Jake pushed their way through Joy's parent's clothing and made their way to Joy's bedroom to wait for Kristen to find Tommy and Gina, the other two children that were hiding somewhere in the house.
They had only been in Joy's room for a couple of minutes but something seemed off to her. It felt like her clothes were a little too tight. Her mom had said that they would need to go shopping for clothes again soon because she outgrowing everything, so she didn't really think that hard about it.
Jake, who was far less patient waiting for Kristen to find the others, eventually declared, in a voice that sounded slightly higher than normal, "I need to take a piss." He'd recently learned that word from his older brother and used it proudly whenever possible much to the annoyance of not only his parents by most of his friends as well.
Joy was one of those friends that was annoyed by his frequent use of the word. Not because she thought that there was anything wrong with it, but because she knew that her parents would never let her get away with saying it. "Gee, thanks for sharing." she said sarcastically. As she watched him walk out she thought that there was something strange about him. He looked a little shorter and his hair was touching his shoulders even though she was sure it had been cut fairly short not that long ago.
She sat waiting for Jake's return or to be joined by one or more of the other children when she heard a girl's scream come from the bathroom across the hall. Strangely, she didn't recognize the voice as having come from one of her friends.
She rushed across the hall and found the door unlocked. She entered and saw Jake standing in front of the toilet with his pants and underwear down around his ankles. "What's wrong?" She asked trying not to look at her overly exposed friend.
"Look!" Jake said gesturing for her to look at his crotch. "It's gone!"
Joy looked where Jake had indicated but she didn't see anything out of the ordinary. "What is gone?" she asked.
"My weiner is gone." Jake screamed.
That's when Joy remembered that boys' and girls' bodies are different and one of the biggest differences was between the legs. Boys were supposed to have something hanging between their legs but Jake clearly didn't. Joy hadn't realized that anything was wrong at first because his groin looked like a perfectly normal girl's groin and that was what she was used to seeing.
