The Other Side of Me – Part Two
by Limbo’s Mistress

Thankfully for my fragile sanity, Jackson didn’t do something awkward like put his arm around me to try to comfort me while I slowly pieced my mind back to a more cohesive state. Even though, I could tell he was in a fight-to-the-death battle to do just that.

Not that I could blame really him. I mean, I currently inhabited the body of what I assumed to be his girlfriend. Which in itself was a whole another set of what-the-hells. Don’t get me wrong, Jackson was my best friend and a really good guy, despite his little mad scientist idiosyncrasies. And we were as close as any two, completely heterosexual, guys could be.

I just couldn’t fathom why someone like Charlene thought he might be boyfriend material.

After about fifteen minutes or so of introspection later, I reached up and slapped my face lightly a few times, then climbed to my feet.

Jackson had stopped hovering over me several minutes earlier and had moved to lying on the on the floor, next to the podium. One of the side panels of the unit was removed, allowing my friend access to the inner workings of the device. The voltage meter he held in his hands was carefully and methodically moved from circuit board to circuit board, testing each in a logical progression.

Each time he found a dead connection, he swore softly and used a white paint marker to put a little “X” on the corner of the silicon wafer. It sounded like there were a lot more of bad ones than he’d expected.

Sighing, I crossed over to stand next to him, although I could swear if felt more like I was wobbling rather than walking. Jesus, did these freaking hips have a mind of their own?

He paused what he was doing and turned his head, peering up at me.

“Hey, you okay now?”

“Okay?” I asked, trying to keep my oddly higher pitched voice on a neutral keel. “No. I am definitely not okay.” Then I gave him a small, terse smile. “However, I do think I am over my initial freak out about things.” I shook my head, grinning slightly despite the odd feeling of my bunched hair brushing against the base of my neck. “Guess I’ve been the unfortunate victim of enough of these mishaps of yours that I’m becoming de-sensitized.”

“It’s not unexpected,” he said. Then he arched a brow at me. “Did I hear you say earlier that my other dimension’s self once turned you into a baby?”

“Yeah.” I nodded as I pointed over at the Time Portal Generator. “Apparently, you had the polarity reversed the wrong way. I think. Rather than send me backward through fifteen years of time, you send fifteen years of time backward through me.” Now it was my turn to cast an inquisitive look. “You didn’t do the same thing to Charlene?”

“Not exactly.” An amused smirk appeared on his face. “For us, the incident was the other way around. I attempted to send her forward in time fifteen years. Instead, I sent fifteen years forward through her.”

“You didn’t!” I said in a loud and surprised voice as I tried to imagine being turned into a thirty-two year old adult.

“Afraid so,” he confessed, trying to appear contrite, but failing miserably. “She was extremely unhappy about it, too.”

“No shit. I can imagine not.”

He shrugged, pulling himself into a sitting position. “If it’s any consolation, when you hit thirty-two, you’re going to be one hot ass MILF.”

The grin of amusement fell off my face in an instant.

“I’ve got a new flash for you, Jackson. I’m not going to be a hot MILF when I’m thirty-two, because I’m not going to be in here!” I thumped my palm against my chest, wincing a bit as the blow hit soft and sensitive tissue instead of hard, defined muscle. “You’re going to fix that freaking machine, link back up with my home universe, and me and your squeeze are going to both get back to where we belong.” I leaned down and gave him my hardest glare. “Right?”

He nodded emphatically as his cheeks blossomed a brilliant shade of red.

“Of course, Charlie. I promise. I just sort of … got carried away.”

I nodded, standing back up. “Okay. I understand. Just remember that I’m not her. I want to be back in my own body as soon as possible.” Then I gave him a tiny smile. “As I’m sure she does.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if this same conversation, or one remarkably similar, was taking place back home. At least Charlene didn’t have the added worry of Jackson being distracted by any romantic complications.

“Charlie,” Jackson asked from beneath me. “Are the hydro-spanners up there?”

I grabbed the silver-tinged tool and handed it down at him.

“Thanks,” he said, taking the device from my hand. His fingers brushed lightly across the skin of my thumb for a moment before being pulled away quickly. “Sorry.”

I shrugged, sitting down next to him, and crossing my legs. It wasn’t until I was in position that it occurred to me how easy it’d been. While I wasn’t out of shape by any stretch of the imagination, due to all the running I did, my male legs were thick and muscled. Sitting cross-legged usually too a bit of work. However, Charlene’s limbs were lithe, taut, and very flexible.

Definitely not a cross-country runner.

“So,” I said, pointing between him and myself. “How did this happen?”

He gave me a confused glance. “How did you end up in her body?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, dumbass. I already know that bit. I meant, you and her. How did the two of you end up in a relationship?”

He stopped working and tapped his chin lightly with the hydro-spanners in thoughtful contemplation.

“Honestly? I really don’t have a clue. It just sort of … happened.” He ran his free hand through his messy blonde hair. “Charlie and I have been friends since we were ten. I used to get bullied by this guy who lived down the street named …”

“Danny Morris?” I interjected.

He paused, giving me a slightly surprised look. Then nodded with a little smirk.

“Guess some things are a constant across the multiverse.”

I could remember that day as if it were yesterday. I’d been walking home from school, having to push my bike, rather than ride it, because the chain had snapped halfway. About three blocks from my house, I saw Danny, with his idiot followers, Dave Anderson and Ricky Smith gathered in the side yard of Old Lady Wimple’s. They’d formed a half-circle around someone and were pushing and shoving whoever it was around.

It wasn’t until I got a couple of hundred feet away that I realized it was the goofy-looking kid who had moved in across the street from me a week earlier.

Now, as a general rule, I’d always avoided Danny when I could. He was two years older than me, with a nasty temper he didn’t attempt to contain. Getting pummeled by him was really low on my list of things I wanted to happen to me. However, I absolutely did not like bullies. Which meant there was no way I was going to be able to just walk on past without doing something to try and help.

I ditched my bike at the curb and crept across the freshly cut grass toward the four of them, approaching from an angle that would let me get closer without being seen. I stopped behind an overgrown snowball bush and observed the situation.

“I’m only going to say this once, you little freak. So you better listen well, “Danny snarled into the smaller kid’s face. “I run this neighborhood, understand? If you want to walk around it, you’re going to need to pay for the privilege.”

I shook my head. Once again, Danny Morris was trying to shake down someone for their money. For a few seconds, I just stood there and debated about the correct course of action. After about thirty seconds, I decided that simple was the easiest way to go. So I stepped around the corner, walked right up to behind Danny, drew back my foot, and kicked him square in the balls.

He let out a groan and went down like a house of cards, his flabby face a sickly pale green color, with his hands clutching at his family jewels. By the time he hit the ground and started moaning, the other two recovered from my surprise arrival and turned their attention, as well as their fists, to me.

I was lucky enough to dodge Ricky’s first punch, but his second one caught me across the jaw and sent me spinning around. That gave Dave the opportunity to follow up with a hard fist to my lower back. My knees buckled, and I went down not too far from the still-prone Danny. All I could do was close my eyes and prepare for the serious ass stomping I knew was on its way.

However, before Dave and Ricky could kick me into traction, I heard what sounded like the crackle of electricity. Sort of what you’d expect from a faulty wiring job. A second later, when I realized I wasn’t getting the crap kicked out of me, I dared to lift my head and look around.

Danny was still on the ground with his balls in his hands. He’d stopped groaning, though, and stared over my shoulder with eyes the size of half-dollars. After a few seconds of wonder, I looked behind me to see exactly what he was gawking at.

Dave and Ricky were standing close to where I’d last seen them, their hands balled into tight fists. Neither one of them moved or twitched, remaining as still as if carved from stone. At first, I thought they were simply scared, but the longer I looked, the more I realized that they were completely frozen in place.

My eyes moved over to the kid I’d been trying to help. He stood a few feet away from the immobile morons with some weird looking Terminator type gun in his hands. The lights running down the side of the silvery thing blinked in an alternating red-green pattern.

He glanced over to where I lay on the ground, and a huge smile formed on his face.

“Wow,” he said with barely contained glee. “This worked better than I expected.” He held up the weapon for emphasis. “Of course, I need to increase the power coupling to decrease the charging time. It shouldn’t have taken that long to be ready.”

Realizing that the kid wasn’t going to turn his ray-gun on me next, I climbed to my feet. The pain in my jaw was starting to abate, but the throbbing in my back was still doing the mamba. I rubbed at the spot where Dave had punched me as I studied to two, completely still, punks.

“Are they dead?”

“Dead?” he parroted. “Not at all. They’re just a millisecond out of temporal synch with us.”

“Do what?” I asked, stepping closer to examine my would-be attackers.

“I pushed them out of alignment with our time stream. Right now, they are moving so slowly that it doesn’t look like they’re moving at all.” He put the weapon back into a bag slung over his shoulder and pulled out something that looked like a souped-up TV remote. He waved it in front of the two boys then studied the tiny screen on the front of the device. “Approximately one seven thousandth it seems.”

I blinked a few times, then looked back at the kid. “Are you saying that they’re moving seven thousand times slower than we are?”

He nodded. “Correct. However, the temporal restraint field isn’t entirely stable. I fear it won’t last much longer.” He glanced from the pair down to Danny before looking to me. “Perhaps we should be elsewhere when the field collapses.”

“No shit,” I said, backing up slowly. “I just avoided getting my ass kicked. Sticking around for it to actually happen is beyond stupid.”

Together, the two of us grabbed my bike and beat feet back to my house. A few days later, Danny Morris approached me at school and begged me to keep Jackson away from him. Apparently he’d been aware enough to see, and smart enough to understand, what had happened to his buddies. He must have decided that the little nerd, and by extension, me, were targets no longer on his radar.

After that day, Jackson and I became best friends.

Arching a brow, I smirked at Jackson. “Charlene came across Danny, Dave, and Ricky harassing you and distracted them by kicking Danny in the balls, right?”

He looked at me for a second, then shook his head. “Not exactly. She walked up to us and started flirting with Danny. Then, when his guard was down, she punched him in the nose. That bought me enough time for the Temporal De-Synchronizer to be fully charged.”

I frowned slightly. “That’s a little different than the way it went down in my dimension. I guess because, despite the parallels, she’s different from me.”

“I guess,” Jackson said, climbing to his feet. He put the tool down on top of the podium and turned to face me.

Now that I wasn’t in the middle of a disorienting panic attack, I noticed that Charlene was shorter than me. Back home, I stood about an inch taller than my Jackson. However, I realized that I had to look up slightly to meet his eyes.

“After that day, you two became really close?”

He nodded. “Exceptionally. Your … her … parents weren’t really keen on it at first. Eventually, though, they got to know my parents and warmed up to me. Guess they saw how much she liked my company. We’ve always made time to hang out with each other, even when her popularity started to skyrocket, she never stopped being my friend.”

“Popularity?” I asked, feeling a chill run up my spine.

In middle and high school, I’d not really been a member of the popular crowd. Even though I was technically a “jock”, the guys who played football, lacrosse, and soccer didn’t really see track as a real sport. Something that might have pissed me off more if they hadn’t also included baseball in the non-sports category.

Jackson nodded. “You’ve looked in the mirror, haven’t you?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What does that mean?”

He laughed. “Your appearance, Charlie. Even if I didn’t have a biased opinion, I would say that you are beautiful.”

I blinked, nearly turning around to verify his statement in the reflective surface behind me. Instead, I merely clenched my jaw for a second until the urge passed. Then I shook my head.

“So, Charlene is liked because she’s pretty?”

He shrugged, then nodded. “You could say that. It also didn’t hurt that she was captain of the varsity cheer team either.”

My jaw dropped open. Apparently Fate couldn’t just rip me from my home and stick me in the body of female alternate reality version of myself. I also had to deal with the fact that this other me had been one of those flighty pom-pom bimbos who enjoyed snogging idiot football players and looking down their noses at anyone not in their precious inner circle.

“You’re joking, right?” I asked, shaking my head slightly from side to side. “Charlene isn’t really a high school cheerleader.”

He gave me a strange look. “No, she’s not.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“She’s a college cheerleader,” he said. “Scholarship and everything.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said, face-palming. “This is beyond a nightmare.”

He put his hand lightly on my shoulder, in a definitely more friendly, less romantic, manner. When I lowered my hand and looked at him, he flashed me that trademarked Jackson Donahue smile. The one that always accompanied his heartfelt promise that, this time, the solution was going to work.

“It’ll be okay, Charlie,” he said, patting me softly. “We’re currently between seasons, so the chances of you having to actually cheer before I can swap you back are miniscule.”

“How miniscule?”

He shrugged. “Less than twenty percent over three months.”

I face-palmed again. “I can’t pull this off, Jackson. I thought maybe, just perhaps, I could. You know, lay low for a while. Avoid anyone who wasn’t my family or you. Then no one would be the wiser.”

“I can help you,” he said. “I can, I don’t know, coach you or something.”

“Coach me?” I asked incredulously. “Coach me on how to be a girl?”

He shrugged. “Sure. I mean, I know Charlene extremely well.”

I held up one finger. “Do not go there, pal,” I said with a growl.

His face blanched and he yanked his hand off my shoulder in order to wave both of them defensively in front of him.

“No,” he exclaimed. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, we’ve been close for so long, I know almost everything about her life. Who she hangs out with, who she dislikes, what she does when she’s not hanging out here, stuff like that. I can provide that information and guidance to help you pretend to be her.”

I sighed, mulling over his offer. Not that I really had much of a choice on whether or not to accept his help. Either I agreed and did my best to learn how to be a girl I wasn’t, or I could go it alone and end up with everyone Charlene knew thinking she had gone insane.

Running away until such time as Jackson could send me back was a distant third choice. Mainly because I realized it would totally screw up Charlene’s life over here.

“I’m not completely sure it’s going to work,” I said as I bit down on my lower lip and chewed at it softly. Most of the gloss she’d put on before the Great Switcheroo had come off, but there was still the faintest taste of cherry remaining. “I’ve never been the world’s greatest actor.”

Jackson, however, didn’t immediately reply. Instead, he stared at me with a slightly inquisitive expression. Well, stared at my mouth, really.

“Charlie,” he asked, arching a brow. “Do you always do that? When you’re nervous?”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Bite your bottom lip and hold it in your teeth.”

My mouth sprang open automatically, releasing the captured bit of soft tissue I hadn’t really noticed was trapped between my teeth.

“No,” I said as I reached up to rub my fingertip lightly across the slightly tender surface of my lower lip. “At least, I don’t think I do.”

“Charlene does,” he said, in a matter of fact tone.

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “Most likely? It’s merely residual muscle memory. Your mind … soul … or whatever it was that passed between the dimensional gap is in charge of your body. At least from a conscious standpoint.”

“A conscious standpoint?” I said, not liking where this was going. “What about subconsciously?”

“Subconsciously? I think it’s Charlene.”

“Wait! Are you saying she’s still in here?” I tapped one finger against my temple.

“No. Well, not exactly. Think of it as more like, uh, echoes of Charlene.”

“Echoes?”

He nodded, waving a single finger around in my direction. “Which, to be honest, would go a long way to explain a few observations I’ve made.”

“What observations?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest again as I tapped one sneakered foot impatiently.

“Well, for starters, there’s the lip biting. Plus, I’ve noticed that you walk like her.” He pointed at my arms. “And stand like her. Definitely like Charlene and not Charles.”

I immediately became aware of my body’s posture and instantly straightened up, lowering my arms. An unsettling feeling passed through me as I realized I hadn’t even noticed the differences he’d pointed out. I mean, yeah, I was aware that this body jiggled and shifted differently when I moved it, but I didn’t know that was what would be considered “normal” for Charlene.

“I’m not going to lie,” he said. “It will be extremely interesting, from a scientific standpoint, to see what else is automatic. I mean, with all our accumulated knowledge, we still don’t know what makes us who we are. Is it biological? Psychological? Nature? Or nurture? Perhaps a unique combination of the four.”

I rolled my eyes. Then immediately began to question if that was something I usually did. Or if it was yet another “Charlene trait”. The sooner I was back where I belonged, the better.

“If it’s all the same, why don’t you focus that big, old brain of your on fixing the window and swapping us back. Unless you’d rather not have your girlfriend back.” I smirked at him. “You might be my best friend in two dimensions, but I sure as hell am not sleeping with you.”

His face suddenly turned the color of a ripe tomato. “Oh! Uh … well, you see …”

I blinked, then laughed reaching out to shove his shoulder with one hand. Something I knew for a fact that was completely a Charles move. “Are you telling me that you two haven’t had sex yet? How long have you been dating?”

He shrugged. “About a year.”

“A year?” I laughed again, though I flinched a little at the giggly sound of it. Then I pointed at my Lycra-encased chest. “Please tell me that the little prudish princess had let you touch these.”

The redness in his face turned from tomato to fire engine in shade. “Uh, yeah,” he said with a little stammer, looking down at his shoes. “We’ve fooled around a bit. We just haven’t, uh, gone all the way.”

“Interesting,” I said, leaning back against one of the workbenches. “Call me morbidly curious, but I really want to know what, exactly, you two have done. One, because my Jackson nearly pisses himself when he tries talking to a girl he likes. Last year, there was this smoking hot chick at the Tri-County Inventor’s Emporium who kept flirting with him. I mean, he was sweating bullets while she was practically ready to drag him off to a dark corner and …” I began to undulate my hips in a parody of a sexual act.

“Please stop,” he said, averting his eyes. “It’s hard to remember who’s in your head when you do that.”

I ceased immediately and planted my hands on my hips. “Sorry,” I said. “Too much fun with that memory.”

He waved his hand, still looking away. “What was two?”

“What was two what?” he asked. “You said ‘one’, then gave an example. Ergo, there must be two or more. Otherwise, why number them?”

I let out that giggle-chuckle again. “Right. Well, two is because I want to rub it in my Jackson’s face when I get home. I keep telling him that he could snag a hot girl if he simply tried, but he thinks I’m full of crap.”

“I see,” he said, with a tiny note of resignation. “Well, I guess Charlene wouldn’t be too upset if I revealed the details of our romantic sessions.”

“She won’t know, dude,” I said, dragging my finger across my chest in an X-fashion. “I promise.”

He sighed, then opened his mouth. Care to fill me in on what you two have done? One, because I’m morbidly curious as to what this body has experienced. Two, because you’re blushing so bad I can’t stop teasing you about it.”

He opened his mouth, but the sudden eruption of classic music blasting from somewhere behind him caused anything he was going to tell me to be put on pause. He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at me as he pointed to a small black purse sitting on the table closest to the door.

“That’s Charlie’s phone,” he said, a note of worry leeching into his voice.

I blinked a few times, looking between him and the purse. Then I slowly walked over to the ominous-looking bag. I pulled it open slowly, as if half-expecting some mythical monster to leap out and attach itself to my face. Peering inside, I saw the ringing smartphone sitting at the top of the pile of stuff inside.

I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. “It’s my dad,” I said. “Err, I mean, her dad.” I held the phone like it was a live grenade that might explode any second. “What do I do?”

“Answer it,” he said, giving me a shrug. “I mean, it’s not like you don’t sound like her. If he asks you any questions you don’t know the answer to, bluff.”

“Bluff? Gee, thanks a lot, Jack” I said with a snarky tone. “You are some kind of genius.”

Steeling myself, I swiped my thumb across the screen and took a deep breath before putting the device next to my ear and speaking.

“Hello … Dad?”

“Charlie?” my father said in a voice that was completely like my father’s. “Listen, Honey. I have to work late tonight. Do you think you can heat up some leftovers for dinner for you and Katie? There should still be some pizza from the other night in the fridge.”

“Uh, I guess. Sure.”

“Great,” he said with obvious relief. “Thanks a bunch. I should be home no later than ten. Just make sure your sister finishes all her homework.”

Homework? I crinkled my brow in confusion. “Okay. Uh, I will.”

There was a momentary pause. “Are you okay, Charlie? You sound a little down.”

“No,” I replied, trying to inject a bit more enthusiasm into my voice. “I’m fine. Honest.”

“You’re sure?” He sounded slightly skeptical, which made my already racing heartbeat drift into overdrive.

“I’m positive.” I insisted. “Just having a bit of a discussion with Jackson.”

“Oh? Well, tell him I said hello, and I’ll see you when I get home. Love you, kiddo.”

“Love you too,” I parroted. Wow, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said that to my own dad. Seventh grade perhaps? I hung up the phone, then looked at Jackson.

“See?” he said, pointing at the device in my hand with a grin. “None the wiser. Now, I’m not going to try to convince you that all of your interactions will be that smooth. But I think between the two of us, we can pull it off.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “Not everything is exactly the same as it is on the other side.”

“Well, that’s to be expected. Mostly because, as a girl, Charlene probably made certain choices in situations that you probably never had to face. And vice-versa.”

“I guess that phone call is a prime example.”

“What do you mean?” Jackson asked, looking confused. “Sounded like a normal conversation between Charlie and her dad to me.”

“It wasn’t so much the call itself,” I explained. “More the purpose behind it. Apparently my dad is working late, so I’m supposed to heat up leftovers for me and Katie to have for dinner.”

His perplexed expression deepened. “Not following. You do know how to cook, right? Or at least use a microwave? I mean, you do have microwaves in your world, don’t you?”

I rolled my eyes again and showed him my middle finger. Pink manicured nail and all.

“Yes, dumbass, we have microwaves where I’m from. What’s got me at a bit of a loss about is why he expected me to do that. I mean, it’s not like I live at home anymore.”

“Maybe not. But Charlene does,” he said.

“She does?” I shook my head, sighing. “Okay, that kind of surprises me. I mean, I couldn’t wait to move out of my parents’ house and onto campus. Even though they repeatedly complained about how it didn’t make any sense to pay extra for me to live in a dorm that was only ten miles down the road. Guess I just expected my feminine self to be as independent as I was.”

Jackson didn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, he just stared at me with an expression that I knew all too well. It was same one he’d worn right after I’d stepped out of a chamber designed to give me superpowers, but had saddled me with a giant, bright pink beehive hairdo instead. It had been there on his face when I’d allowed him to inject me with nanobots that were supposed to allow me to control machinery with my mind. The side effect was that they’d turned my skin silver and my eyes into a pair of glowing green orbs.

It was the look he wore when he had bad news to deliver.

“What?” I asked, stepping closer. “What is it?”

“You said ‘they’ complained about you moving out.”

I nodded. “Yes. ‘They’. As in my mom and dad.”

He swallowed. “Charlie, uh, your mom is …”

I crossed the space between us in the blink of an eye. Phone clutched in one hand, I grabbed the front of his NASA shirt in the other and gave him a little shake. Which was kind of comical from an outside viewpoint, since I was now so much smaller than weaker than him.

“My mom is what, Jackson?”

He slowly met my eyes. “She’s, uh, dead, Charlie. She died a little over two years ago.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

I opened the front door of the duplicate of the house I’d grown up in and stepped inside to pause in the parquet floored foyer. The shadows of the late evening cast most of the interior before me in semi-darkness, and the eerie quietness of the place sent a shiver up my spine.

“Katie?” I called out as I closed the door behind me. The way it thunked into the frame nearly made me yelp.

Calm down, Chuck, I told myself. Stop acting like such a … girl. Well, shit.

I crossed into the living room, noticing the pink and purple backpack tossed unceremoniously on the sofa near the steps. Craning my neck, I peered up the twisting staircase to see the faint illumination coming from the room at the end of the hall. Katie’s room, to be precise.

I climbed the steps and headed in the direction of the barely-there glimmer. At the top of the steps, faint music drifted along with the light from a small gap in my sister’s doorway. As I neared, I recognized the beat as belonging to some kitschy pop song that was currently getting far too much airplay in my own dimension. Accompanying the bubblegum-sounding vocals was a steady bass beat that I soon recognized as being feet slamming against a thick carpeted floor.

“Katie?” I asked again as I pushed open the door.

The intensity of both the light and the music increased tenfold, and I stared in shocked wonder as my sixteen-year-old sister bounced up and down in a gyrating dance that seemed to be the stylings of a cocaine-fueled striptease mixed with the crowd-pleasing motions of a professional cheerleader.

However, it wasn’t what my sister was doing that caused me to stand in the doorway to her bedroom, gaping like a complete idiot. It was what she was wearing.

Or rather, what she wasn’t wearing. Like, you know, clothing.

I couldn’t get my mind to wrap around the realization that my kid sister, the most lovable pain in my ass there could be, was dancing around her bedroom in only a flimsy-looking pair of blue lace panties with a matching bra.

She continued to bop around, bouncing, and shimmying in a patently lewd manner for another fifteen or twenty seconds before her rotation brought her around to face me.

Her eyes widened to comical proportions as her mouth dropped open and released a shriek worthy of any horror movie victim.

I responded by nearly leaping completely back across the dimensional gap and utter my own ear-piercing wail.

Katie immediately hopped over to the phone on the dresser and pressed the stop button, killing the warbling pop singer in mid croon. She whirled back around, putting one hand over her heart as her breathing came in deep, rapid gasps.

“What the hell, Charlie?” she breathed, apparently trying to get her pulse down out of low earth orbit. “I didn’t think you’d be home for another hour.”

I leaned against the doorframe, my own hand clutching at my chest. I hadn’t expected to see come in and see her prancing around in her underwear. And I really hadn’t expected her to scream like a banshee.

“I … Dad called …” I spoke between my own halting gasps.

She nodded. “Working late again.” Then she dropped her hand and planted her hands on her hips as she rolled her eyes. “Let me guess, he wanted you to rush right home and make sure I was okay. And that I ate some dinner that wasn’t just a cup of yogurt?”

I shrugged as my eyes swept away from my barely-clothed sibling to the wall on the opposite side of the room. A blonde, teenaged boy in a leather jacket cast a smoldering look of desire from the print tacked to the wall. The script beneath identified him as Mike Salinger. Whoever that was.

“He suggested I heat up the leftover pizza.”

“Ugh!” She groaned, stomping around the bed toward me. “I don’t need a babysitter! I’m sixteen, dammit. I should be provided the courtesy of being treated like an adult.”

I shrugged again. “All I know is what Dad said.”

“What the hell crawled up your butt?” She snapped, stopping right in front of me. I continued to look anywhere but at her.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just doing what Dad said to do.”

She snorted in a completely derisive tone. “Well, that’d be a first.”

Her words brought my gaze around. Unfortunately, what my eyes landed on first was a larger-than-expected expanse of creamy cleavage pushed higher by a bra that was obviously a tad on the small size.

I quickly turned my gaze away again. “Would you mind putting on some clothes?”

“What? Why?” Out of the corner of my periphery, I saw Katie rush over to the half-open door and plant herself behind it. “Is Jackson here, too?”

“No, he’s at his house,” I grumbled.

“Then why are you being such a granny about me putting on clothes?”

I reached up and pinched the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes. As I did, I began to mentally kick myself over and over. Back home, Katie would never have been so callous with her nudity. At first, I thought maybe it was a cultural thing native to this universe that wasn’t shared in my dimension. Then I realized it was something far more eye-opening.

Katie didn’t care that she was mostly naked because we were both girls. Hell, I’m sure Charlene and her sister had seen each other completely disrobed thousands of times. Nothing the least bit taboo or beyond the pale about two teenage sisters hanging out in their underwear. Probably happens a million times a day.

Act natural, Charlie. Just do your best not to ogle your little sister’s bigger than you knew boobs.

I brought my eyes back around to Katie, though I kept them focused squarely on hers.

“I’m not being a granny, you brat. I just think maybe dancing around the house in your panties is a bit much. I don’t want to have to see that while I’m eating.”

She rolled her eyes again. “I wasn’t dancing around the house, Charlene. I was dancing around my bedroom. Big difference.”

“Fine,” I said. “Anyway, I’m going to heat up the pizza. Eat if you want. Doesn’t matter to me.”

Turning around, I marched out of her room, pulling the door closed forcefully behind me. It slammed with an echo that reverberated down the hall. However, I distinctly heard my sister call me an “overbearing bitch” through the heavy wood.

Sighing, I walked back downstairs and through the living room toward the kitchen. Just as I was about to pass through the curved archway, my gaze fell onto the fireplace and the row of framed photos arranged on the wooden mantle above it.

Almost on instinct, I was drawn off course toward them.

I stared, mouth slightly open at the images. Nearly all of them were identical to ones my parents had on their own mantle. With the exception of the family consisting of two girls, that is. However, it was the last two photos that really got my attention.

One of them was from Charlene’s senior prom. She had worn a light blue gown with a deeply plunging neckline and a daringly risqué slit up the side. The boy standing next to her, his blonde hair uncharacteristically combed, looked like he was about to pass out from nervousness. As much as I would never admit it aloud, it added a level of attractiveness to Jackson that, as his guy friend, I never would have considered.

The second photo, though, only caused a shard of ice to pierce my heart. This one was taken at Charlene’s high school graduation. She stood there, smiling in her dark red cap and gown. Her dad was on her left, beaming at the camera. Katie was on her right, looking like she was bored out of her skull.

My parents had a similar picture from my own graduation. Same cap, same gown. Only where Katie stood in this one, there was a smiling, extremely proud-looking woman with silky auburn hair that hung down to frame her pretty face.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to Charlene. As if she could hear me across the dimensional gap. “I can’t imagine how hard it was on you to lose her.” I swallowed, fighting tears that threatened to form. “Or how tough it was to believe that it was your fault she died.”

When Jackson had dropped the bomb on me that Charlene’s mother had passed, I nearly knocked him to the floor demanding to know the details. For a few moments, he refused. He kept repeating that the incident had nearly broken Charlene and he didn’t want me distracted by the knowledge.

“No one is going to ask you about it,” he insisted. “Those that know already know and those that don’t aren’t going to matter. No reason to reopen old wounds.”

“Tell me, Jackson,” I said, balling a fist. I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to hit him or not. My mind was still trying to process everything.

He stared at me for another twenty seconds or so, then sighed with a nod.

“Fine.” He pointed at the sofa as he walked in that direction.

I followed and we both sat down at opposite ends of the furniture.

“Charlie had cheer tryouts,” he said in a flat tone. “She was supposed to pick Katie up from middle school afterward and take her home. However, she got so excited about making the squad that she wanted to go to the Shake Shack with the other girls and celebrate. So she called her mom and asked if she could pick up Katie instead.”

I nodded, feeling a knot form in my stomach. I suddenly wondered if I really wanted to hear this tale through to the end. Mainly because I knew what the end result had been, but also because the tone of Jackson’s voice was one I’d never heard him use before. Like a sad reverence.

“Her mom normally took Highway 68 home from work.” Jackson continued. “To get Katie, though, she had to take I-40. At rush hour.” He swallowed loudly. “A tractor-trailer driver who had been driving about ten hours longer than he was legally allowed changed lanes without looking. His rig slammed into the side of the car and sent it skidding down a fifty foot embankment.”

“Oh … oh no.” I covered my mouth with my hands as the churning in my stomach began to increase.

Jackson frowned. “The M.E.’s report said she died instantly.”

I bit down on the thick part of my palm, willing myself not to vomit. Even though, technically, it wasn’t my mother to whom this had happened, the fact that it sort of was, made me incredibly nauseous.

Jackson sighed. “For weeks, Charlie wouldn’t eat. Couldn’t sleep. Every time, she would show up at my door, eyes bloodshot from tears and fatigue, she would make her way to this sofa and curl up on it. Staring at the ceiling for hours on end.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I mean, other than sit on the floor next to her and make sure she knew she wasn’t alone. For a long time, I thought about trying to help. You know, scientifically.”

“How?”

“The human brain is like a computer in a lot of ways. Data is stored, waiting to be recalled when needed. Or even when not needed. I started working on a device that I thought might help lessen the impact of the guilt she was feeling.”

“Erase her memories of her mother?” I asked, horrified beyond belief.

“No! Nothing like that.” I thought maybe I could use the logic of the system to help her see that it was just a tragic accident. That it wasn’t her fault.”

“Did it work?”

He shook his head. “Her dad ended up making her go talk to a licensed psychiatrist before I could get the prototype completed. After about five months or so, she started to recover. When I saw she was getting better without my machinations, I put the device on the shelf and promptly moved on to something else.”

“She still carries that guilt, though,” I said, looking at him. “Right?”

He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. Which is why she didn’t move on campus. I think, on some level, she’s scared to not be close to her dad and sister.”

“Understandable,” I said, feeling a little bit more connected to the girl whose body I currently inhabited.

I sighed, then turned away from the fireplace to go into the kitchen. Flipping on the overhead lights, I found the leftover pizza, pepperoni with pineapple, in a large plastic container at the back of the fridge. I put the container on the table before reaching back in for a couple of cans of soda. As soon as I stood up, I felt a wave of disorientation roll through me. For a heartbeat, I was plunged into total darkness. As if the power had just gone out. A millisecond later, everything returned to normal.

I turned back around, letting the door of the fridge close behind me and realized my mother was standing on the opposite side of the island. She stared at me as if she were utterly confused about who I was or why I was in the room.

“Mom?” I asked, feeling my voice, my male voice, crack slightly.

“Charlie, what in the world is wrong with you this evening?” she asked, shaking her head.

I began to ask her if I was dreaming when I became aware of the fact that I was no longer holding a chilled metal can in each hand. In fact, my hands were currently empty. Glancing down, I saw that it wasn’t just the sodas that was missing. All traces of nail polish were gone from my larger, more masculine fingers. There were strands of dark hair poking out from the sleeve of my black nylon track jacket. Reaching up, I felt along the back of my head, discovering that the ponytail I had grown accustomed to unnervingly quickly was absent.

I was a guy again.

“Mom!” I said, blinking wildly. “I’m back!”

Another wave rolled across me, causing my temples to throb and my eyes to water completely out of focus. I shook my head rapidly, fighting against the dull ache. When I looked back up, vision once again clear, I found I was alone in the kitchen.

“Mom?” I asked weakly, turning my head back and forth in what I knew was a vain attempt to locate her.

The cans tumbled out of my grip and landed on the floor as my legs gave out and I dropped down with them.