All things change, they say. 'Seasons come, seasons go' and all that garbage—and as far as the twins in the tall, decrepit mansion on top of the hill at the end of a nameless road were concerned, hormones were the driving force of all of their changes. They originally weren't very certain of what to expect of themselves once all of their fellow eighth-graders began growing hair on their faces, and tiny bumps started to poke from the chests of all the girls in the locker room, but they didn't have to wait long to find out.

It started with Edgar—or more so, his height. That spring he certainly sprang. His footie pajamas began to get very tight around his shoulders and feet, and it wasn't until he and Ellen stood side by side in her greenhouse did it become obvious why.

He was now a good three and a half inches taller than her.

This of course complicated some things. It was hard to mend his footies to fit his growing body, but the two managed to sew a handful of his spares into (a meager few) larger ones. Then there was the issue of squeezing in an out of tight places easily. Breaking and Entering became more difficult, seeing as Edgar would always bump his knees or head when crawling in or out of nooks and crannies, and would hiss a quick curse under his breath each time.

His body was apparently not done growing, to complicate things further. He continued to grow through the year, but Ellen seemed to stay at a constant height level with him. It was only that fall when the collar of her pajamas pulled irritatingly at her neck did she realize she too had been growing rapidly all this time, and had just failed to notice. The twins decided that night, with much sorrow, that they had out-grown their biggest pairs of faded striped footie pajamas, and would either have to sew the remaining few into a single set of even larger ones, or convert them into an array of shirts.

They decided on the shirts, after first stealing some pants from the lost and found at the civic center, of course. The pair also managed to unearth some very worn in shoes from the Gadget Graveyard (and maybe the cemetery, but let's not speak of that)—almost as easy to maneuver in as footie pajamas!

Amidst it all, Ellen had pointed out her brother's now darkened, thickening lip hair with much torment. All of his sister's teasing forced Edgar to sit in the bathroom late one night and very, very carefully shave his feeble mustache. Unfortunately, his hand was not as steady as he had hoped, and he sat through an entire day of Ellen bursting into a fits of laughter at the tiny pieces of toilet paper stuck to the multiple cuts on his upper lip.

Bathing came next.

The twins fought the good fight against it, dedicated to their 'once-a-month-bath-unless-under-special-circumstances' policy, but the chemical reactions constantly at work inside them were conjuring up a storm the duo had never had to deal with in their youth.

Now, when you're a child, being dirty is easily ignored. There are no oils that cover your skin after a few days, and there are no places that become incredibly itchy and uncomfortable with just the slightest bit of humidity. The twins did their best to ignore the latter, but the one morning that they got up, looked at one another, and then screamed to the high heavens, oh that, that was the last straw.

Acne.

Ellen was completely mortified of the red and white dots that speckled over her usually unblemished pale face, and Edgar was not fairing much better. One day of absolute ridicule from Stephanie Knightleigh was enough for Ellen to make sure the purple pain-in-her-rear never got the opportunity again. She and her brother (reluctantly) began to shower on a bi-weekly basis, and took to scrubbing their faces every night with water and a crusty old washcloth. Edgar thought the towel's texture did wonders for exfoliation. Despite their more frequent bathing, the twins hair remained as unkempt and dull as ever.

Then the absolutely unbearable happened—Ellen began growing body hair.

Ellen violently refused this change. She began to shave it away with near hysterical obsession, luckily with much more grace than Edgar had in his first attempts with a razor. After a few weeks of infuriating shaving, she conceded she could not fight her body's insistent follicles with a razor alone and demanded Edgar help her with a botanical serum for removing hair. Luckily, Spring Break began that Friday, and they worked ceaselessly on a recipe to cure Ellen's hair woes. By the third day, they had found a formula that didn't burn skin away, like its predecessors did to the unfortunate animal hides they tested it on, and Ellen happily began using it. She also took great joy in knowing Stephanie still had to shave, and would snicker alongside her brother when she saw her nemesis's knee with a spot of razor burn on it.

Late sophomore year, Edgar began to try and convince her to let him use the balmy serum for his own hair-removal needs, but Ellen refused, saying it was much too tiresome to gather the ingredients to make enough for his uses as well. That was until he showed her his leg covered in dark, curly hairs and she lurched away from him, pushing the vile into his hands. Edgar happily (and snidely) accepted it as she flailed her arms at him in disgust.

It was around this period in their lives that the worst of all other changes—at least from Ellen's point of view—occurred; menstruation. It didn't start with bleeding, no. The twin's pathetic diet hardly gave Ellen's body the nutrients to complete a proper menstrual cycle. But boy did it try!

At first Ellen assumed she was dying, stricken down with painful abdominal cramps one week. Edgar too feared for his sister's health, unaccustomed to seeing her doubled over and expressing physical anguish in such a way. He did his best to pacify his bedridden sister, and to determine the cause of her illness.

And then, just as quickly as the pain had arrived, it was gone. The twins happily chalked it up to food poisoning, and went about life as usual, until a few weeks later the pain returned full force. Ellen was hardly able to move, now suffering from the added symptoms of nausea and bizarre cravings, and Edgar was once again beside himself. His mind nearly driven mad studying health books for days on end, he began to think of the wildest things that could be causing his sister's horrendous ailment.

"You're pregnant, aren't you!?" He would cry at her, pointing frantically. "Admit it!"

He was lucky to dodge whatever object Ellen had the strength to hurl at him each time.

Finally, by chance, as Edgar tried to lumber his probably-dying sister through the school hallways, an answer unfolded in a conversation near them.

"Have you tried She-sprin?" A female student's voice whispered to another. "My cramps were killing me before I found it."

Edgar butted into the conversation with a wild look in his eyes and a "Did you say murderous cramps!?"

The girls shrieked and gave him dual slaps to the face. For what he couldn't understand, until a trip to the pharmacy in search for this 'She-sprin' gave him the answer he and his sister so longed for. The bottle read;

She-sprin; relief for painful menstrual cramps.

The pair was absolutely aghast. Despite having to sit through sexual education in freshman year, the idea that Ellen was having her period of all things had never crossed their minds. She had never 'gotten it', so to speak, in middle school like the other girls had, and the twins had long since forgotten that it was supposed to happen at all! And maybe too, Ellen had hoped it wouldn't, but now she was horribly cross with it. What kind of a half-baked period can't even manage a little blood? Pathetic!

Ellen refused to be subjected to her reproductive organs' wrath a second longer. Ellen demanded Edgar whip her up another concoction to 'turn off' her hardly functioning uterus, before it decided to just finish the job and murder her. She marched him down to his lab for the second time that spring, and laid lifeless in a tattered recliner while he happily got to work. This was a much simpler task for him than a hair removal lotion, seeing as some reliable formulas for regulating female hormones already existed, and all he had to do was make some changes to appease his sister's demands.

A few weeks passed, and the twins waited for Ellen's vicious cramps to return, but none came.

And then another few weeks passed.

And then a few months.

Ellen was absolutely delighted with the results, and even went as far as to praise her brother for the medication. Edgar's ego was weak to compliments, which made him horribly obnoxious, and he would remind her after any snide comment she made about his potion-work thereafter that he was the one to cure her 'lady troubles'—which would earn him a very unladylike bludgeon to the head.

Once again, Ellen took joy in knowing Stephanie had to struggle through something she did not—and with a taste of what those horrid cramps felt like, Stephanie's week of gory Hell once a month seemed all the sweeter. She would giggle snide comments to Edgar when the signs became painfully obvious that it was 'that time of the month', and would insist on pranking Stephanie extra hard on those weeks, which her brother happily agreed to.

But of course, this was not the last of changes to come.


AN: Wow, came back years later (2016) and updated this sucker, since I have a bit more knowledge than I did in… 2012? My lord! Anyway, who knows if a Part 2 will ever come.. but I've been feeling E&E recently, and thought this could use some sprucing up! :)