My Awkward Phase

My acne worsened at first, and then suddenly disappeared. My hair became smooth and manageable. After a couple of months, my nipples broadened, my body hair thinned, my muscles atrophied, and my skin became luminous and soft. My emotions swung between giddy joy and gloomy melancholy, punctuated by frequent outbursts of tears.
By the time I started my senior year, I had entered awkward phase of transition, when the effects of hormones become discernible, but not definitive. The skinny wimp who had left for prep school three years earlier had returned an androgyne. My altered appearance made me the target of incessant bullying, at lunch, in the halls, and worst of all, in the locker room.
Solving for X
Marta and Thad Jones, Uni’s star football linebacker, stared cluelessly at the equation I’d written on the blackboard. Thad shook his head.
“Only X’s I need to know are in football plays.”
“The world is full of X’s; algebra solves these unknowns.”
Marta cradled her face in her palms and smiled.
“Maybe they’re supposed to stay unknown.”
Was it New Age piffle, or sly innuendo about my chromosomal X’ and Y’s? I blushed and turned to the board.
“Thad, in football, what makes a good play?”
“Isolate a stronger or faster player against a weaker or slower one.”
“Exactly the same in math.”
I divided, subtracted, and multiplied the equation’s numbers by their inverses until the X was by itself, and the remaining factors were on the other side.
“Now it’s simple, X=5/Y. So, if Y is 10, X is-“
Martha shot up her hand first.
“Two.”
“Thad, what do you think?”
“I’ll go with that.”
“Close, but try this.”
I erased the Y, replaced it with 10.
“5 divided by 10 is-“
They answered “half” simultaneously, I fist bumped Thad and shook Marta’s hand, soft and delicate, it fit perfectly with mine. She blew me a kiss; I imagined her breath sweeping away the Y’s from my genome like the one I’d erased from the blackboard and replacing them with her bountiful X’s. I blushed again, turned to the blackboard.