I ran back into the living room, paced around, ran back to the bathroom, stared at the mirror, closed my eyes and then opened them. Damn, she was still looking at me.
“Mom and Dad will be home any minute. Maybe at the same time. I can try to explain this to them at the same time.” I darted back to the living room and peeked through the blinds. “How am I going to explain this? I don’t even understand it myself.”
I sat back down on the couch.
“Did I wish for this sub-consciously? I never wanted to act upon it. Too much pain to go through. But here she is. Congratulations, Ty, it’s s girl.”
I grabbed my backpack and ran up to my room.
“What the Hell!”
My room was the same as it was ten hours earlier, except the colors were a little off. The posters on my wall had changed. I still had a few swimsuit models and an Avril Lavigne poster, but a few with well-built guys with chiseled chests. I walked over to my bed which now had a neon pink and green comforter on it.
I nodded in approval.
“The closet,” I whispered. “What’s behind door number one?”
I walked to the door and opened it up to reveal a lot of flannel shirts, short-cut blouses, some low-cut skirts, two long dresses, and few pairs of jeans.
“Olay, so, the wish follows and changes everyone’s perception of who we are. My parents are going to acknowledge me as looking like this…does that even fit?” I asked as I took out one of the blouses that looked like they wouldn’t cover up anything, a red cut-off.
I took the blouse out, took off the plain green T-shirt I was wearing and noticed I was wearing a sports bra. I tried to avoid thinking anything more about it as I changed into the blouse and then turned to the mirror. Normally, I hated looking at myself in the mirror, well, hate was a strong way to put it, but the reflection always seemed ugly, like a mask.
“You hate yourself as a dude and you don’t know how to feel now that you’re not,” I shook my head at my line of thinking. Maybe it was a sub-conscious wish. Maybe it was what those fairy tales were about—those “be true to the real you” stories.
“Is this the true me has it always been this way in my head?”
I ran out of my room, back downstairs, and to the den where there was family portrait of my Dad, Mom, Shelia, and I. The image looked the way it always did until I came right up to it: my hair was long, and my ears decked with dangling earrings.
The door lock clicked, and my parents walked in together holding multiple bags of groceries.
“Tai, how was school?”
“Eventful?”
“How’s that, pumpkin?? Dad replied. I almost scowled at being called “pumpkin”, but I kind of liked it, so I smiled back at him.
“Riley joined the football team.”
“I always thought he should have gone out for team. That kid’s a juggernaut.”
Mom nodded as she grabbed the bags from Dad’s hands. She had already unloaded the bags she carried in.
“Oh, and Tony got a new car, very nice, and very fast.”
“How fast?” Mom asked as she raised her eyebrow so high “The Rock” would have been impressed.
“Well, he can get a little bit past the speed limit, but nothing too fast.”
Mom and Dad looked at each other and then back to me.
“I’m going to assume Chris and Matt were also part of this eventful day?” Mom asked.
“Kind of. Chris got a Prom date.”
“Isn’t Prom not for another seven months?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you, his date?” Dad asked.
“Me, no, there’s too much history between us.”
“He’s the one who ate “Meow Mix” thinking it was cereal, dear,” Mom added.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that. So, let me guess, Matt asked you to Prom.”
“Matt? No, Matt’s just a friend. They’re all just my friends.”
My parents looked at each other and then at me with a confused look.
“What?” I asked as Mom walked to the fridge, took a magnet from a picture and handed said picture to me.
It was a Homecoming Dance picture. I didn’t go to homecoming. I was with the guys playing an all-nighter session of “Neo Spartans”. We had decimated a ton of space castles. I looked closer at the picture to see a long-haired version of me in a too form-fitting dress standing next to Matthew Williams. He looked pretty good, almost debonair in a way as he actually had put a comb through his hair. I thought his hand was a bit low on my back.
“I still think his hand was too low,” Mom said as she took a package of chicken breasts from the refrigerator. Dad walked out of the kitchen and the TV clicked on to a football game.
“Yes, I agree.”
“So, you’re no longer dating?”
“I’d love to hear you say you’re not, Taianna,” Dad called back from the living room.
“It’s complicated, Dad,” I replied as I put the picture back onto the refrigerator. “Just a bit.”
“Can you help me with the rice, Tai?”
“Yes, let me do one thing really quick, like five minutes.”
Mom rolled her eyes but nodded.
I ran out of the kitchen, upstairs and back to my room.

“Williamson residence,” a voice I knew as Matt’s grandmother, answered.
I held onto my phone and held back the desire to crush it into pieces.
“Hello, Mrs. Williamson, is Matt there, please?”
“Hello, Taianna. Yes, one moment I’ll get him. Matt!” She did not hold her hand over the phone as she yelled for him. I was about to do something similar.
“Yeah, grans?”
“For you, it’s Taianna.”
“Hello?”
“I suggest you take this call in your room,” I replied, flatly.
“What’s up, Tai?”
“Matthew Paul Williamson. I am about five seconds away from reaching across this phone and murdering you.”
“Okay, okay. Give me a minute.”
“You got twenty seconds.”
“Let me take this call in my room, grandma. I’ll let you know when to hang up.”
“Did he go and do something stupid again, Taianna?”
“That remains to be seen, Mrs. Williamson.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, dear,” she said as the line clicked, “He tries, bless his heart.”
“I got it, Grandma.”
“Oh, I think you will be gettin’ it, boy.”
“Grans! Hang up, please.”
The other line clicked off and I took a deep breath.
“What’s up, Tai?”
“What. The. Hell is going on! We did not go to Homecoming.”
“We did, from a certain point of view.”
“No, you are not going to Obi-Wan this on me. What is going on?”
“Your wish.”
“Why would said wish also mean I was to be your girlfriend?”
“Your wish…So I guess so, as strange as that sounds.”
“That’s more than just strange. You don’t see a problem in this?”
“I did at first, but everything came rushing into my mind and I felt okay about it. You’ve been my friend since fourth grade.”
“Fifth.”
“Yeah, like almost half our lives so far. Oh, your name is Taianna Anne.”
“Thank you,” I growled. I looked at the door and wondered when Mom would call me down.
“Think of it as looking at streams in the multiverse at the same time.”
“Which one is the correct one?”
“Which one do you want it to be?”
I turned to my reflection in the mirror and felt a tug of war in my head.
“I’ll talk with Katie in the morning. I got to help my mom with dinner. Also, don’t you ever put your hand on my ass again!”
There was a long delay before he replied. “Yeah, sorry about that.”
“I’ll figure out all of this in the morning.”
“Hey,” Matt whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Can you wear that red cut-off shirt. It looks sexy on you.”
I looked at my reflection again—I was wearing said article of clothing.
“Shut up, Matt.”
I abruptly hung up the phone, laid it back on my dresser, and pulled at the shirt.
“I’m going to burn this,” I said as I opened my door and ran down the hall.

Thirty minutes later I sat down to eat with my parents, and I had a hard time keeping hair out of my face.
“Why don’t you put your hair into a ponytail while you eat?” Dad asked.
“Sorry, just had one in all day and it pulled on my hair, you know?”
“Sheila is coming home this weekend,” Mom announced.
I nodded to the news because I wasn’t sure what our relationship was supposed to be. I had to think we were civil and not each other’s throats, unlike the past where there was hell to pay if I even looked in her general direction. I had a few days to think about how to approach her, but my initial thought was to let her make the first move.
“Tai, I want you to throw that top away. It is too revealing,” Mom stated between bites.
I was cozy in bed that night after finally understanding how it felt to wear silk pajamas. Never realized how comforting they were, and I needed all said comfort due to how I was going to explode at Matt in the morning. Were his powers limited or did he have ultimate cosmic power that dwarfed Tetsuo Shima’s Riley’s was okay, and Tony…well, he needed a car. Not sure about the ability to transform into something that would rival Gundam, but it came as a package. I never asked about the limit of Chris’ mind powers and that was when my brain dredged up the thought I had earlier in the day of tearing into his pants. I shuddered at that thought for a second and then it was gone from my mind.