“You are going to be so beautiful tomorrow!”

“I know, Mom.” Kelly had heard this a million times before.

“I’m just so proud of you!”

“It’s just another day.”

“Oh, you’ll understand someday.” Kelly’s mom reached over and slowly poured some honey into Kelly’s teacup.

Kelly sighed, already exhausted with being Sixteen, even though her birthday wasn’t until tomorrow.

“I know, I shouldn’t say that. But in this case, it’s true! You know, it didn’t make sense to me until I was in my thirties!”

“I just don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Honey.” Kelly’s mom reached across the table again to clasp Kelly’s hand, her eyes beginning to glisten. “You’re turning Sixteen. You know what that means. The whole world is going to open up to you, take you in. You’ll see, sweetie—tomorrow, you’ll be beautiful!”

“Aren’t I beautiful now?”

“Oh, of course you are—you’re gorgeous! I’m talking about grown-up beauty.”

Kelly sighed. “I know… I just don’t see what difference one day makes.”

Kelly’s mom looked at her daughter with joy in her eyes, took in a deep breath, and let out a sigh of sheer joy and pride.

“It makes all the difference. Now, can you go get dressed for the ceremony?”

Later that night, after the ceremony, Kelly was looking in the mirror. She pushed at her cheeks, gently pulling them taut like she’d seen older women do. She didn’t look different. She didn’t feel any different. So what was the big deal? Why was the ceremony so important?

It had been a simple yet elegant Sweet Sixteen ceremony. Dressed all in the all-white standard-issue nightgown, Kelly had been led, blindfolded, from the local town hall and down the street to the church, her mom and dad on either side behind her. Leading her was the town’s notary public, who also worked in Town Hall. He was a tall, successful man, who could on most nights be found in the town’s local bar, drinking lightly and charming all the ladies. Kelly knew this because her friend, Becky, who had turned Sixteen last year, had slept with him, and had told all. According to her, the notary public was “gallant, demure, and totally preppy”—and thus highly desirable.

Kelly just wanted to get this over with, though. Her parents left her at the church door; Paul—the tall notary—pulled open the big church door and led her inside.

“Now, please take off your shoes.”

She knew this was coming, but suddenly she felt naked, exposed.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes. It’s part of the ceremony.”

“Ok.” For some reason, taking off her shoes made Kelly feel very vulnerable.

“And your socks.”

Kelly felt even more vulnerable as her feet touched the old, threadbare church carpet, so worn that the few remaining felt strands poked her feet like needles.

He led her, his hand on her shoulder, down the aisle to the altar, where he helped her sit down at a folding table that had been set up.

“I need you to fill out a form,” Paul said, and he slowly slid a piece of paper across the table, letting Kelly hear the quiet rasp of the paper.

Kelly looked ahead, automatically straining to see through the blindfold. “Um, how? Can I take this off?”

“No, keep it on. All I need for you to do is sign your name.”

“Oh, ok. What’s the form say?”

“It’s just an acknowledgement that you are now Sixteen years of age, and that you participated in this ceremony. You can read it after we finish.”

“That’s all it says?” Kelly was no rube—this was all sounding really weird, and she knew that it was a bad idea to sign something without reading it first.

“I know it’s weird,” said Paul, “And you should never sign something without reading it first! As a notary, I know that better than anyone. But this is the one exception. It’s the law.”

“Really? I didn’t know that. Why?”

“The ceremony doesn’t work without it. It’s hard to explain. It will make sense later, when you’re a little bit older.”

“That’s what everyone keeps saying.”

Paul laughed, kindly. “Well. It’s true.”

Kelly thought for a moment. If it turned out to be a trick, she could always just tear it up in a few minutes, when she read it. Or, she could tell the truth, and tell her parents she was tricked into signing something she never read. Is a contract even enforceable if you signed it without reading it? Kelly would have to ask Pillzy—the family bot, whom Kelly had named when she was three (and the name stuck).

“OK,” she said, after deciding that it seemed OK to trust Paul (he was a notary, after all). “Got a pen?”

“Of course.” Paul placed a pen in her hand, and gently guided it in her grip to the right place on the page. “Go ahead and sign.”

Kelly signed her name, doing her best to put the little heart over the i in Lyria in the right place.

“Alright, great,” said Paul perfunctorily, picking up the paper. “I’ll make a copy of this for you. Congratulations, you are Sixteen!”

What? Even though she was sitting, Kelly stopped short, putting an arm out to one side to steady herself.

“…What? Is that it?” she said.

“Yep. Not much of a ceremony, is it?”

“No…”

“Oh, one more thing. I need to read this disclosure to you.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, you can take your blindfold off now. Ok, here it is:”

“Congratulations and Happy Birthday! You are now Sixteen. You are now legally capable of giving consent for sex, and legally responsible for registering for the national draft within 30 days, or you may face severe legal penalties.” Here, Paul paused, and Kelly—her blindfold now removed—could see him hesitate, reticent, before he continued.

“Tomorrow, you are going to be so beautiful. Ok, that was the disclosure.”

After the ceremony, Paul drove her the short mile home—you weren’t supposed to see your parents or anyone else the night of your Sweet Sixteen, after your ceremony. Indeed, the S-16 form she had signed basically just repeated what Paul had read in the disclosure.

And so Kelly was looking in the mirror, poking her cheeks, not feeling any different at all. Sweet Sixteen? Bah! It didn’t do anything! I’m just glad it’s finally over.

She went to bed, and the last thing she thought of before she fell asleep was Pillzy. Can a robot sign a contract? she thought, before oblivion took her.

The next morning, Kelly still didn’t feel any different, and when she looked in the mirror, it was the same old face she remembered from yesterday. She went down to breakfast.

Her mom was waiting in the kitchen, coffee in hand. As Kelly rounded the corner, she saw her mom’s eyes go wide, and she absently set down her coffee as she gasped.

“Oh my god. Honey,” she whispered reverently. Her eyes began to brim.

“What? What is it, Mom?”

“Oh, my little baby. You. Are so. Beautiful.” She was still half-whispering, the words spilling out wistfully despite herself.

“Ok, Mom. It’s just a birthday. There wasn’t even a ceremony, he just had me sign something.”

But her mom wasn’t really listening; she was still overcome. “My little baby’s all grown up,” she said, and then again, “My little baby’s all grown up,” as if rolling the words around on her tongue, feeling how the words sounded.

“I thought it was stupid.” Kelly was so over this.

“Oh, so did I, Kelly. Sixteen! You’re Sixteen, Kelly! And you’re so beautiful. I am so proud of you.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

It was on the bus that morning that it happened. When she turned to walk down the aisle, she saw nearly half the heads on the bus turn toward her. All the boys, except for Elliot and Yeet (who always sat together, whispering conspiratorially), the Twins, and the anime kids in the back.

They boys were all smiling at her. Big, warm smiles—some of them sheepish, some of them more brazen. So, this was what it felt like. To be a woman: Mortifying.

Holding her breath without realizing it, she walked tensely down the aisle, the boys all smiling and making looks at her. The girls seemed not to notice, and were talking or on their phones. The boys were perfectly silent, and Kelly was suddenly reminded of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which she re-watched every year with her dad on their annual Daddy-Daughter Kino Day—their special tradition, and her and Dad’s special name for Father’s Day.

Just as Kelly was passing the fire escape seat every yellow school bus had, she heard a whistling, like a wolf from an old cartoon: FWEE-woo, it sounded like.

Her head shot around. Who did that? Who did that? She looked at the boys’ faces, her absolute social mortification reaching its zenith. They all looked the same. She couldn’t tell who whistled.

She turned back and slinked sideways into the next empty seat she saw, and then she slid down the seat, onto the floor, and through the floor to the center of the Earth, where she died first of embarrassment before succumbing to the extreme heat.

So, I guess I AM different! thought Kelly. The ceremony really does do something? Maybe that’s why they had me wear that blindfold.

Before she had a chance to wonder how the hell signing a form could change her appearance, or why she couldn’t see the changes herself, Zeb Reynolds slid in next to her on her seat, ducking across the aisle to do so (so the bus driver wouldn’t yell). Zeb was the coolest boy in school, and he and Kelly weren’t friends.

“Hey, Kelly. Howdy.” Zeb usually looked cool, from a distance, but right now it seemed like he didn’t know what to say. But then his eyes glinted, and he said, in a coy, soft-spoken drawl, “Don’t you think these bus seats always look so climb-uppable?”

“What?”

“Like you could climb up them.”

“Ummm…”

“Here. I wanted to give you this.” And he reached out, and pushed something small into her hand. “HappybirthdayokI’llseeyoulater,” he mumbled, his face glowing red, as he slid so quickly back into the aisle that he almost fell to the floor instead of shooting into the diagonal seat he had been aiming for. Glancing rakishly back at Kelly, he laughed at his near-pratfall. “Hyuh-hah!”

She opened her hand. It was a ring—flat and metal, with a large diamond that was probably really glass.

That’s how it was the rest of the day, in every class—and at lunch it was even worse. It seemed every boy’s eyes in the entire school were on her, and every twenty minutes or so, another boy would slink guiltily up to her and wish her Happy Birthday, or offer her some trinket or compliment. “You’re so beautiful,” several of them said. She just wanted to eat her Blue Peebles.

Kelly couldn’t help but enjoy all this attention, even though it made her feel just as mortified as the first time. She was confused, and a little bit scared, but she liked it. By the end of the day, she had collected a real charm bracelet with three charms (a poodle, a lemon, and a tiny metal casting of a hopscotch court), a small figurine of the Enchantress from Writing Left (which everyone was watching these days), an obsidian arrowhead, and a second ring which, as far as Kelly could tell, was identical to the one Zeb gave her. She had also been given three gift cards to the espresso shop across the street from the school, a rare penny from 1947, and an offer to wash her car (she didn’t have a car). She received three invitations to coffee (from the three boys who had given her coffee), two invitations to parties, and one invitation to watch the next episode of Writing Left together.

Again, though, the thought ran through her head: Why was everybody treating me so differently? Do I really look different? Am I beautiful now? She decided to go ask Elliot and Yeet, who everybody knew were really together.

“Oh, you’re Sixteen now? Happy birthday!” said Elliot, who was 17. Yeet—who was also 17—fixed Kelly with a steady gaze, then raised his eyebrows archly. “Sweet.”

“Yeah. Do I look different? Am I beautiful now? Everybody keeps saying I am.”

“Different?” it was Elliot.

“Yeah, do I look the same as yesterday?”

“Yeah… did you get a haircut?”

“Uh. No.” And she told them about the ceremony.

“That’s really weird, Kelly,” said Elliot, and Yeet nodded, too. “I didn’t have to wear a blindfold or the gown. They said it was just a guideline. Maybe they only do that for girls.”

“My parents were there. When I was blindfolded.”

“Yeah. That’s really weird.”

“Why do we have this ceremony, anyway?”

“I don’t know… something about informed consent?”

Now it was Yeet who spoke up. “Rituals are important.” (Yeet fancied himself something of an urban shaman.) “In ancient times, tribes would have like, initiation rituals, and coming-of-age rituals, so you’d know when you were an adult. They would even like cut you and stuff, like hazing. But usually that’s the men who do that to each other. Not so much women, because they menstruated.”

“Men…struated?” Kelly echoed.

“They haven’t told you yet?”

“Told me what?”

“They’re going to give you Access.”

“Access?”

“They’re going to give you the blockers.”

“What are you talking about!?” Kelly was really scared now.

“Don’t worry, it’s good. I’m surprised you don’t know this.” Yeet loved explaining things. “It used to be, when they were about 12 or 13, girls would start to bleed out of their private parts.”

“WHAT.”

“Yeah, every month on a schedule.”

“WHAT.”

It’s for having babies.“

“Oh!”

“But then all these microplastics built up in the environment. You know, the Trash Wars.”

“Yeah.”

“And eventually the microplastics became so concentrated in our environment, that women stopped menstruating naturally. They couldn’t have babies anymore, not without hormone replacement therapy.”

“You mean like Rawr is on?” Rawr was the one and only trans student at their small school, which made him a minor celebrity—much like Yeet, one of the three black students.

“Yeah, but like EVERY woman’s on Access. They just don’t talk about it.”

“Why not? That’s crazy! So we’re all polluted?!”

Elliot, who had been wanting to say something, finally jumped in: “It’s not the pollution, it’s the Peebles. I heard they put hormones in the Peebles. That’s why they call it ‘blockers’. It’s blocking the hormones they’re already giving us.”

“Blue Peebles? But what if I don’t eat my Peebles?”

“Have you ever seen anyone not eat all their Peebles?”

“No…” Now that Elliot mentioned it, Kelly really couldn’t remember a time she had ever seen one of her friends not eat the Blue Peebles they served every day with the school lunch. “No,” she said again, quietly. “They’re like candy.”

“Yeah. They must put something in them to make them taste that good.”

“Yeah…” Kelly was reeling. They’ve been drugging me? “But… why…” she stammered, “Why is it like this?”

“I don’t know,” said Elliot.

“Probably because of overpopulation,” supplied Yeet. “Resource scarcity. They have to keep the population down so we don’t have another Trash War.”

“That makes sense, I guess…” Kelly thought for a moment. “So, why are you telling me all this?”

“Oh! Well, you’re Sixteen now,” replied Elliot, “So it’s technically OK.”

“Besides,” said Yeet, “We don’t care about our Access.”

Kelly walked home—it was a very small town—and on the way, she saw her friend, Todd. They had just hung out yesterday—they wrote, filmed, and edited a feature-length film with Pillzy, who served as the camera, writers’ room, and co-director all-in-one, and who filled-in the scenes they didn’t film based on the performances they gave in the ones they did, so they could watch it right away. (The film was called The Deepest Well, and it was about a girl who throws coins into a well until, much to her surprise, her wish is granted, and the coins come to life as a rakish and dashing young bot—played by Todd—who takes her on silly adventures for the rest of the movie.)

But now, as Todd spotted her, Kelly saw his eyes grow wide as saucers. His jaw dropped open. He gasped a little. She thought she saw him wobble on his feet.

“Kelly!” he called, jogging over to her. “You look beautiful! You’re Sixteen, wow! Actually, I totally forgot it was today—but don’t worry, I got you a present! It’s at home.”

“You can tell?” said Kelly, “How?”

“Are you kidding? How could I not notice!”

“Notice what?”

“Notice you! Notice everything. Notice your hair.”

“What’s different about my hair.”

“It’s so beautiful! Ravishing.” Todd didn’t normally talk like this—say words like “ravishing”.

“Isn’t it the same as yesterday?”

“Well… yes. But you’re different. And I can see that.”

“Well, thanks.”

He insisted on walking her the remaining two blocks home, and they parted ways.

“Becky, did you know they’ve been drugging us at school?”

Becky looked sharply at Kelly.

“Who told you that?”

“Yeet ’n Elliot.” They were sitting at the espresso shop, the following afternoon, spending one of the gift certificates Kelly had received (she had received two more that day).

Becky rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Those fags!” she said, shaking her head indulgently.

“Becky! Is it not true?”

“No, yeah—It’s true.”

“Really? Why didn’t you tell me? How long have you known!?”

“I found out about it on my Sweet Sixteen.”

“Oh.” This was all starting to make a little sense. “How did you find out?”

“Paul told me. He disagrees with it.”

“With what?”

“Access. The system.”

“Why didn’t you tell me the school was drugging me?!”

“It’s illegal. Well, not exactly illegal. It’s heavily frowned-upon—and they would have taken away my Access.”

“Access to what?”

“The blockers.”

“The blockers. So you can have a baby?”

“Something like that. Maybe you should talk with your Mom about this.”

Kelly plbbted. “Oh, you know her. I can’t talk to her about anything. She just keeps saying ‘You’re sooOOOOOOooooOO byOOO!-tee-FAAAAaaaaaallll” and crying.

Becky looked at Kelly, then, and her face softened with earnesty. “That… sounds rough.”

“What do you mean?”

“The day I turned Sixteen, my Mom took me to see the Doctor. And he explained everything. That’s when I got these.” And she turned her chest, showing off her C-cups.

Kelly was so jealous. Her mother always told her she was beautiful just as she was, and to always love her body.

“You’re so lucky. What did the Doctor tell you?”

“He didn’t just ‘tell’ me.” Becky took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, resigned to her fate as initiatrix. “Here, let me explain…”

One shipping day later, back in her bedroom—where she still had New Lisa Frank everything from her New Lisa Frank phase in middle school—Kelly eagerly tore the strip on the security envelope she had received. It was that pink envelope she had always seen around—on her dad’s desk occasionally, in Todd’s mom’s sock drawer (she kept her antique coin collection there, which they had needed for The Deepest Well)—in Becky’s purse. She’d always wondered what it was, but nobody would ever say a word about it, and when her dad or Todd’s mom saw her looking at one of the pink envelopes, she noticed that it soon disappeared without a word.

But now, she had a pink Access pouch of her very own. Now that she knew what it was, she was giddy with anticipation. Her hands practically vibrated with excitement, as she reached into the slit, grabbed what she found there—and withdrew…—!

It was small, pink, and egg-shaped. She ran her thumb over the smooth plastic—she found a small indentation.

“It has a thumbprint reader,” Becky had said, “So you can’t overdose.”

It was already keyed to her thumb. A cool blue light, the universal symbol for “Login Successful”, turned on, indicating to her that the device was ready. She looked for the place where a pill would come out, but she couldn’t find one.

“How does this work. One, please. Access? Access, activate.”

It must have understood her, because then a little door opened at the egg’s tip, and a tiny white pill fell out.

There it was. A blocker. Access.

Her Access.

Eagerly, she knocked back the pill with the water she had prepared. She took pills every day for school; this was nothing new. But this pill, she actually wanted to take.

She wasn’t sure what to expect. She waited for a few minutes, playing with her phone, and messing around with the egg, even though it had turned itself off, and would be inert for the next twenty-four hours.

And then she felt it. It was like a warmth. A sort of rising, floating feeling. She felt soft. Her lower abdomen felt different, almost as if it were filling with warm water. She felt warm, full, and spacious.

She remembered something she had read in a book once. It was a book about different worlds, and in one of the worlds, there was a very special house. This house had all kinds of doors that led to different special rooms—and this house was also bigger on the inside than the outside. In the story, a science teacher is teaching about how home automation systems work, and she is demonstrating how all of the doors on the entire house can be opened mechanically with just one button press.

That was how Kelly was feeling right now. It was as if the Access had pushed a hidden button within her, and suddenly all her doors were thrown wide-open! She felt like that house on the hill in the story, when it gained sentience and decided to throw a noisy gala, doors and windows flung open to the night, music and laughter tinkling outwards and wafting into the small town below. The House welcomed everybody; it had invited everyone in the town to the gala, in the story. And that was how Kelly felt right now: Just like that smarthouse felt: Excited. Eager. Welcoming.

Soft.

Beautiful.

For some reason, Kelly’s thoughts were drawn to the most special door in the very special house in the book. This door led to a long hallway that kept going and going, a seemingly endless hallway, where (from outside the door) you couldn’t see a hallway at all. When the smarthouse didn’t like you (and, it was a very good judge of character), it would lure you into this door, and you would never be seen again—the house ate people. Kind of the opposite of The Deepest Well, she mused.

Now, her bosom heaving, Kelly felt more clear-headed than she ever had before. She knew exactly what she had to do.

She picked up her phone.

I am sooooo beautiful.

She dialed:

“Call Paul.”