“Please don’t be mad at him. He’s embarrassed about changing into a girl and is afraid of how people will react. If you freak out, it will make him feel justified in keeping my existence secret, and I’m just as real as he is. Both of us remember being the original Jamie, but both of us have changed.”

Night and Day

part 4 of 12

by Trismegistus Shandy

This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. Thanks to Morpheus, epain, and Karen Lockhart for reading and commenting on earlier drafts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

When I came to that evening, Jasmine was spinning on the merry-go-round with a little boy who lived in one of the apartments on the back side of the building. I couldn’t remember his name. His mom was sitting on the bench nearby, and the moment I came to, she gasped and jumped up.

“What happened?” she asked. I gave the merry-go-round another push and said:

“It’s this thing that happens to me, ever since I transformed a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh — like those poor kids on the news...”

“Yeah.”

“So you turn into a girl sometimes? Or — is that how you are normally, and you sometimes turn into a boy?”

“I’m a boy in the daytime and a girl at night,” I said, giving the merry-go-round a push and then gesturing at where the sun had just disappeared. I didn’t explain about how we were two different people; it seemed like her mind was boggled enough with only part of the truth.

When it got a little darker the woman told her little boy they had to go home, and I started pulling a little on the merry-go-round to slow it down so he could get off.

“Spin me again?” Jasmine said hopefully, but I shook my head.

“It’s about time for supper.”

As we walked around the building to our apartment, I asked Jasmine: “Did you go with Mom and the boy-Jamie to the hospital today?” She nodded and said:

“It was kind of scary, but the people were nice. They said they weren’t going to do anything to me, just to Jamie, and they wouldn’t hurt him.”

We walked in; Mom had supper almost ready. When we sat down to eat I asked her how the visit to the research doctors had gone.

“Pretty well,” she said. “They couldn’t tell us much about why you two switch back and forth the way you do. But they said your brain scan was consistent with a rare kind of multiple personality disorder — I don’t know why that emergency room doctor couldn’t figure it out.”

“Probably he was just looking for brain injuries. Maybe only a psychologist can tell that from looking at a scan.”

“Probably. Anyway, they wanted — um, Jamie, to try to change into you. I don’t know if he was really trying hard or not, but he didn’t. So then Dr. Darrington said she wanted us to come in some day next week a little before sunset, and let them scan you while you change.”

It wouldn’t be fun for Jamie, being indoors lying under a scanner when he wanted to be outside watching the sun set, but another hundred dollars was nothing to sneeze at.

After reading Jasmine a couple of bedtime stories, I went over to Bobby’s apartment only to find he was still busy with homework. “But I’m almost done, and then I can hang with you for an hour or two before bed.” He didn’t have to go to bed as early on Friday nights.

So I sat in their living room, and made small talk with Bobby’s mom and stepdad during a commercial break in the show they were watching. “So how are you adjusting to being a girl at night?” his mom asked, and before I could gather my thoughts to answer, his stepdad said: “I bet you’re glad when morning comes and you turn back into a boy.”

“Not really,” I said, “since I don’t remember anything that happens to me when I’m a boy, and the boy version of me doesn’t remember what happens to the girl me.”

“What?”

“Bobby didn’t tell you? Yeah, this doctor said I have a split personality. Only I transform physically when my other personality gets control.”

Then Bobby came out of his bedroom and said he was done with homework, and I followed him back in there. We hung out for a while and talked, and played a couple of games, until his mom poked her head in and told us it was time for Bobby to go to bed and me to go home.

When I got back, Mom and Jared were just about to go to bed. I got the tablet from Jared before he went into our bedroom and closed the door, and checked my email.

Daytime Jamie had this to say:

“If you tell our friends about us having multiple personalities and transforming back and forth, they’re going to freak out, and maybe they won’t going to want to be friends with me anymore — much less you. I understand you’re jealous that I can see our friends and you can’t, but don’t try to destroy something just because you can’t have it.

“As for Jasmine, she was being bratty and not minding me when I was watching her yesterday afternoon. I wanted to take her inside and tell Mom, but I couldn’t make myself go inside when it was almost sunset. So I told her she was old enough to learn how to pump her legs and swing by herself. What did she tell you about me?”

I was so mad I could hardly think straight. I started writing an angry reply, but fortunately I thought better of it before I sent it, and deleted it unsent. I got up and went out for a walk, deciding to think for a while before I replied.

I walked up toward the 24-hour convenience store, like before. But when I got there, there were police cars with lights flashing in the lot. The place had just been robbed, probably, or was being robbed right now. I was curious, but I made myself turn around and go back. The police were probably too busy to bother with me, but if they weren’t, they’d be interested in what a girl my age was doing out so late... they might pick me up and take me home, and I’d never hear the end of it.

But I still hadn’t been able to collect my thoughts to say something calm and calming to Jamie, so I kept walking past our apartment complex and maybe half a mile or a mile in the other direction. I was thinking about Jamie’s vile email and not paying attention to my surroundings; I didn’t realize somebody was following me until one guy stepped past me and then right in front of me.

“Where are you going this time of night, little girl?”

“Leave me alone,” I said. I should have been terrified, but I was furious. How dare he? I glanced around and realized there was another guy standing behind me. There was too much traffic to get away by crossing the street, but I dodged to my right, into the parking lot in front of a pawn shop. Both guys came after me, I could tell from the sound of their footsteps. I headed left, as if to go around back of the pawn shop, but then doubled back toward the sidewalk.

The guy on the left grabbed at my arm. Just then the colors of everything went all wonky; there were little dark red spots on the pavement here and there, and the guys chasing me were a brighter red, but the streetlights and the sign above the pawn shop went pale blue. The guys yelled and the one holding me loosened his grip; I slipped free. The other one said: “What happened?” I didn’t stay to figure it out, I just ran onto the sidewalk and back up the street toward my apartment. The colors of everything stayed weird for a couple of minutes, then switched back to normal when I was still several minutes away from the apartment building. I glanced back from time to time, but the guys weren’t following me.

I got home without further incident, and locked the door behind me with relief. I had to think about that. And I felt sweaty from running. I went and took a shower, wondering why the colors had gone strange and what it had looked or felt like to the guys chasing me. Did I make them see weird colors too? I realized I’d just discovered another superpower. Did Jamie have the same power, or a different one, or was he limited to just turning into me at sunset? After a while I was able to stop worrying about it and relax, enjoying the hot water... and other things. Showering in the middle of the night, I didn’t have to worry about using up all the hot water and dooming Mom or Jared to a cold shower. — But I did have to worry about the water bill, I realized. I reluctantly turned off the water.

Once I dried off and got dressed (all except my hair; I couldn’t get that completely dry with just a towel, and I didn’t want to run the hair dryer in the middle of the night and wake people up), I went back to the tablet and wrote a reply to Jamie.

“I trust our friends to have our backs a lot more than you do, apparently. Maybe some kids at school are making fun of you for turning into me, but is Aidan? Or Tony? Or Ali? I’ll bet you none of them are. In fact, let’s make it a bet: tell any one of them about me, after getting them to promise to keep a secret, and if I’m right and they’re cool with it, you agree to tell all the others, if not everybody at school. Deal?

“I’m NOT jealous of you. Kind of pissed at how you’re telling people I don’t exist, but you know what: I like living at night. I wish I could have more contact with other people, but I like having the apartment to myself after everyone goes to bed. And I wouldn’t trade places with you;”

I paused, thinking about whether I wanted to tell him what I’d just discovered. No, that would be too embarrassing, and it might get my account flagged by the Kidmail admins. After a few moments I just said vaguely:

“being a girl is better than being a boy.”

I didn’t tell him about my new superpower either, because I’d have to tell him about sneaking out of the apartment and running into those guys, and I didn’t trust him not to tell Mom. Not the way he’d been acting lately.

Then I checked my social media accounts, and found a private message from Aidan.

“I did what you suggested: I asked Jamie if I could come over, and he said it might not suit, he’d have to ask his mom. His mom never objected to my coming over before. What about Saturday afternoon and evening, I asked. No, he said, he had family stuff going on, and Sunday he had to babysit his little sister because his mom had to work. Early Sunday afternoon might work but I’d have to go home by six. I might go over Sunday and see if I can worm anything out of his big brother or little sister about what happens at sunset.”

I laughed. I’d have to prime Jasmine to tell Aidan about me when he came over. I replied:

“When you come over, try to stay past sunset so you can see him change into me. Jared might help Jamie keep me a secret but I’m sure Jasmine’s on my side.

“If you have to leave by six, go hang out in the convenience store a couple of blocks west, and come back just before sunset to the playground behind our apartment building. Jamie’s going to be there watching the sun set. If he gets mad at you, or runs inside when he sees you, you’ll know he’s trying to hide his transformation into me. But yesterday he had a reason to go inside early and couldn’t, he had to stay and watch the sun set. So maybe he’ll stay and change right in front of you.

“Please don’t be mad at him. He’s embarrassed about changing into a girl and is afraid of how people will react. If you freak out, it will make him feel justified in keeping my existence secret, and I’m just as real as he is. Both of us remember being the original Jamie, but both of us have changed.”

I did half of our weekend homework, and left the rest for Jamie to do during the day Saturday and Sunday. After I finished that, I read some more about mythology for a while. Then I followed up a link from Andromeda, the girl Perseus rescued from the kraken in Clash of the Titans (really it wasn’t a kraken in the myth, just a random sea monster; krakens aren’t Greek) to the Andromeda galaxy, and then to a bunch of astronomy articles. A lot of it was over my head, but by being careful about what links I followed I managed to find some that I could understand. It almost made me wish I lived out in the country where you could see stars at night. Being an astronomer would be an ideal job for somebody like me, but I’d have to live somewhere you could see stars, that was also somewhere Jamie could do his daytime job. (An astronomer could probably earn enough to support two people, but no way was I letting him freeload on my salary.)

Who was I kidding? Even if I worked twice as hard, he’d probably end up with a better education, because he’d have live interaction with the teachers and other students and I wouldn’t. He’d probably be the one complaining about supporting me. And I remembered hearing somewhere that women got paid less than men.

After a while I got tired of reading about how stars form, and thought about something Mom had told us a while ago. She’d forbidden us to install games on the tablet; we were supposed to use only the game system for games. Of course you couldn’t get new games for it anymore, while there were a lot of new, free games for the tablet, but she said she wanted to be able to tell at a glance if we were doing homework or playing. But she couldn’t reasonably object to it now, when we didn’t have a working game system. I installed a couple of games, and played for a while; then, not wanting to get Jamie or Jared in trouble over it, I uninstalled them again just before I went out and watched the sun rise.

I was sitting, my face pressed against the window looking at the purple western sky. I looked around; I was near the back of a bus. The woman across the aisle from me was staring at me in shock; I was wearing Jamie’s normal boy clothes, not the loose clothes we normally tried to wear at sunrise and sunset, and I had a note in my hand:

“You’re on the #14 bus, on the way home. Sorry I didn’t get home earlier.”

Nothing about where he’d been or why, though. I looked out the window and soon saw stuff I recognized. I was home fifteen minutes later.

Mom scolded me when I walked in. “You said you’d be back by sunset — oh.”

“Yeah, it was Jamie who said he’d be back by sunset. He was on his way, anyway; I changed back on the bus.”

“Maybe the bus was late,” Mom said.

“Hey, um, Diana,” Jared said when he and Jasmine came in from the playground a couple of minutes later, “it’s your turn to watch Jasmine, from now until bedtime. And remember — no, wait. I’ll remind the daytime Jamie myself; he owes me one.”

“Yeah, it’s not my fault I was back so late. I didn’t even know we were going somewhere. Where did he go, anyway?”

“To visit a friend,” Mom said. “Elijah something — hmm — Timson, that was it.”

“Must be somebody he just met this week,” I said; “I don’t remember him.” I went and changed into more comfortable girl-clothes, and then we ate supper.

Jared went to his room after supper, leaving me to watch Jasmine while Mom watched a movie. I went to Jasmine’s room with her and we played with her toys and some of my old ones I’d handed down to her (an eclectic mix of fashion dolls, princesses, toy soldiers, dinosaurs and robots, all of which had already been old when Jason, Jared, me or Jasmine had received them). After about ten minutes, Mom called out: “Ja- — Diana, Bobby’s here.”

“Just a minute,” I said to Jasmine, and went to the living room.

“Hi,” he said. “I went to the playground at sunset but you weren’t there, and I came by and your mom said you weren’t home yet.”

“Yeah, it was a surprise to me when I woke up on the bus. Who’s Elijah Timson? A new kid that daytime Jamie just made friends with?”

“He’s a grade ahead of us,” Bobby said. “He’s Rachel Timson’s older brother. He didn’t tell me that was where he was going, just that he would be gone a few hours but would be back before sunset.”

Light went on in my head. Mom wouldn’t let Jamie or me date until we were fourteen. Jamie had somehow gotten to know Rachel’s brother and wrangled an invitation to their house so he could see her today.

So I had some ammunition against him. But I didn’t waste it by telling Mom right away. I said to Bobby, “I’ve got to watch Jasmine until her bedtime, but you could hang with us if you like. Or you could come over again after she goes to bed.”

Bobby sat on the side of Jasmine’s bed while Jasmine and I played on the floor. “Where were we?” I asked Jasmine. “Oh, yeah. ‘Release the kraken!’ — RARR!” The kraken was a plastic plesiosaur that Jared had given me when he got too old for it, and I’d given Jasmine a couple of years ago.

“Help!” Jasmine said, holding up one of her princess dolls to represent Andromeda. “The evil king tied me to this rock.” Then she took picked up of the toy soldiers: “Percy will save you!” We banged our soldier and dinosaur together for a while and then I tossed the plesiosaur halfway across the room, making a dying sound effect.

Bobby was bemused. “You’ve got her playing Perseus and Andromeda?”

“You’ve got to start them young,” I said.

“What do you think about Jamie going over to see Rachel?” he asked. “Do you think he was really hanging out with Elijah or was that just a cover story?”

“I don’t know. I was never friends with Elijah before. Maybe he just got Rachel to get Elijah to cover for him if our mom talked to their mom?”

“Could be.”

“Who’s Rachel?” Jasmine asked, changing Andromeda’s dress for her wedding with “Percy.”

“A girl who goes to our school,” I said hastily. “It doesn’t matter.” And I drew a finger across my lips, looking at Bobby; he nodded.

When mom poked her head in and said it was nearly bedtime, Jasmine demanded a story. “Bobby knows a lot more stories than me,” I said. “If he doesn’t mind?”

So Bobby told her about Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. He left out the part where Theseus abandoned Ariadne later on. Jasmine still wasn’t feeling sleepy and wanted another story, so I read her “Green Eggs and Ham,” and then we turned off her light and left her alone.

Mom was still watching her movie in the living room, and Jared was in our room; there wasn’t anywhere else to go. “Is it okay if I go over to Bobby’s apartment for a while?” I asked. “Jasmine’s in bed with the lights out.”

“All right,” she said. “Be careful walking back.”

So we went over to Bobby’s apartment and to his bedroom, and speculated more about Jamie, Rachel and Elijah for a while. Then he said: “So since when did you read about Perseus and Andromeda?”

“I’ve been reading a lot about mythology, and watching a couple of mythological movies, the last few nights. And a little bit about astronomy. I’m not sure if I want to be an astronomer, but it seems like the best job you can do at night... everything else I can think of is pretty low on the totem pole: night clerk, night watchman (I don’t think they’d let a girl do that), waitress or cook at a 24-hour restaurant...”

“Night court judge,” he supplied. “Night shift emergency room doctor.”

“Cool. But I guess I don’t have any more chance of going to law school or medical school than basic college.”

“Some of them have classes after dark,” he said. “Or online classes.”

“Paying for them is the problem.”

“Yeah.” His family was better off than mine, but not by much; either of us would need a major scholarship to go to college. He had a lot better chance of it with his grades than me or Jamie had.

Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. Smashwords pays its authors better than Amazon.