Nick was the perfect picture of an awkward, self-conscious and depressed teenage boy. Harmony was the perfect picture of a feminine, composed and self-confident teenage girl. So Nick was as mystified as could be about Harmony's invitation to her home, but he didn't think that it would have been a good idea to decline.

    With his head lowered and a mumbled, stuttered greeting, that was how he met her at her doorstep. She seemed to be fine with that as she invited him into her home, being both a gracious host and acting as if he were as composed and involved in conversation as she was.

    He was anything but, of course; he was so stiff and nervous that he eventually tipped his cup too high and his drink had spilled onto his shirt from the corners of his mouth. He panicked and stood up, muttering about apologies and how he had to go, but she told him that it was okay and firmly insisted that he sit back down. To him, he really didn't have any choice other than to listen to her, so he did.

    Being that he rarely looked anyone in the face, it was no surprise that he kept his gaze far away from her's; it was ironic because it was more due to the fact that he was attracted to her beauty and his low self-worth dictated that he didn't have the right to see it. However, if he had been looking, he would have seen that her face had a resolute expression on it, as if she had just finished an internal debate and had made a decision.

    With a tone that brooked no argument, she told him to use her bathroom in order to take a bath. She reasoned that he needed to relax while she got his shirt clean. He found the idea to be strange, and I had tried to muster up something along the line of a decline, but she had interrupted him and began to gently but firmly direct him to her bathroom.

    Perplexed and anxious couldn't quite define how he felt by the time that the closing of the bathroom door had afforded him privacy. He was in her bathroom, seeing her things, and it was all supposed to lead up to him becoming naked in her home... with her in said home, of course. This line of thought brought about inaction, so he was soon startled into activity when he had heard her say how she hadn't heard any water running. So he got right to the preparations needed for taking a bath, his heart thumping in his chest like his life was on the line, and he managed to remember to slip his shirt through the space beneath the door, so it could be washed.

    Once he was lying in the oddly-shaped tub, all of his worries and troubles seemed to ebb away. His thoughts drifted to nothing in particular while his mind was relaxed, which in turn made it possible for his body to relax. He lost track of time while his eyes were closed but, after what seemed like forever, he had to open them to investigate the strange sensations that he had noticed.

    The first thing that he saw was his glistening, smooth, shapely legs. When he lifted one of his legs, on the end was a dainty, attractive foot. He then looked over at one of his arms, which was now like his legs, only this limb was adorned by small, graceful hands and delicate fingers. Below his nose, he noticed his new hair, which was long, lustrous and had an unearthly beauty to it. A little further down and he could make out the basic shape of his torso within the water, though he could see the shape of that part of his body clearer in his mind by the feel of the water that caressed it.

    He found it strange that he wasn't freaking out, and yet it was stranger still to feel more strange about feeling strange about that. It was then that he realized the new appreciation that he had for his changed body, and how pleasant that it was to have it. He felt a rise of confidence, as if he knew how to better operate his new body than the one that he had used for fifteen years. He found that his self-worth had reached new, never-before-experienced heights, and his attachment to his new body grew by leaps and bounds.

    With a sigh of relief, he returned his attention to just lying back and relaxing, feeling at peace with himself for the first time in a long time. He had dragged himself down into his own pit of unhappiness because of things that he couldn't change, or things that he thought that he couldn't change: such as his appearance, which even his peers had shown their dislike for by making fun of it; then there was his clumsiness due to a growth spurt and having Osgood-Schlatter disease accompanying it, which made a lot of normal physical activities for a teen too painful to do for long, and that took away a lot of practice for working on his poise; he had always been shy, so he hadn't made very many friends that could lift him up when he was in need of it; all that he really had going for him was his scholastic achievements, but that, tied in with his appearance and behavior, had only made him a victim of scorn and jealousy.

    But now he was different, for he was now relieved of the problems that he himself couldn't handle; in fact, many of them he had made into problems himself and, if not that, then he had been a root cause for their perpetuation. He knew better now, with his new frame of mind, and it was pleasant to take comfort in his enlightenment. He wasn't too keen about being a girl, but finding something wrong with his new body was what had been a part of his problems in the first place; so, being that he felt good in his new body, as well as relaxed to the point of caring very little about things in general, he reasoned that he could put in the effort to like it and respect it.

    When Harmony announced that his shirt was clean, he expressed his gratitude in such a way to as to say much more than just in regard to his shirt. She seemed to understand and, as if a smile rode upon her voice, she told him that she would get him a more fitting shirt instead, among other things. He smiled and blushed in response: on one hand, he was happy and it felt like the beginning of something wonderful was starting; on the other hand, he was still a boy at heart and he was both embarrassed and thrilled at the thought that he'd not only get to touch her clothes, but he'd actually end up wearing them, too.