The game ran over by about twenty minutes, but once all was said and done, our team beat the other guys 23 to 3. It was such a complete change from last week that I almost wondered if the guys had been replaced by a different team while we weren’t looking. You’d never think our team would be able to do that with a slight buzz.

After we changed out of our uniforms, we waited for the guys in the hallway outside the locker room. I realized then that all of us were dating football players. I’d never noticed that before, but we were. It was weird, in a way, but cheerleaders dating jocks was kind of a stereotype. Not that I saw the guys as jocks, or at least not the way the trope usually goes. Unlike on TV, none of the guys were dickhead bullies or that kind of thing.

I wondered if I should write an asshole bully into the comic. He could just start off as a minor character and become more important later on. Hopefully Grant wouldn’t mind, but I’d ask him first. Maybe he’d have some ideas for that sort of thing.

When the team finally came out of the locker room, joking and laughing about something or another, Grant’s eyes lit up right as he saw me. “Hey, Ashe,” he said as he put his arms around me, “you and the rest of the squad were great before the game.”

I blushed. “Thanks. You guys kicked ass out there today.”

He smirked. “Anything to see you out there in that little skirt.”

I rolled my eyes. “Hey, now, you get to see me in a little skirt whenever you damn well want.”

Chrissie, clutching Larry’s arm like she was holding on for dear life, just whistled. “You two should really get a room.”

Larry added, “And please, keep it down when you do.”

I coughed out a sound that either meant I was laughing or scoffing, or some mixture of the two. “Like we’d ever do that with you across the hall.”

“Whatever. You wanna pick the party back up where we left off before this whole thing?”

I shook my head. “Nah, I just wanna go home and spend some time on the couch with my boyfriend.”

“Only if there’s room on that couch for doubles,” Chrissie said.

“Uh, no,” Larry responded, “I have a couch in my bedroom, we can use that.”

Grant asked, “Why don’t you have a couch in your room?”

“Uh, where would I put it?” I asked. “I’m pretty sure my vanity and my wardrobe take up more room than his couch.”

“Didn’t you used to have a couch in your room?”

Now that he mentioned it, I kinda did remember having one, but I couldn’t remember how long ago that was. It had to be before I started going through puberty and decided I needed to stop being such a tomboy. That was a long damn time ago. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did, when we were kids,” Larry answered. “Damn, man, how’d you remember that?”

Grant shrugged. “I dunno. I thought it wasn’t that long ago, though.”

Why did I think he was right about that?

Later…

By the time Grant and I landed on the couch, I was pretty sure we had tripped over a ton of junk that was still left over in the floor after the party. In fact, the couch itself was kind of a sticky mess that we were gonna have trouble cleaning up before Dad came home, but we'd have all day on Sunday to deal with it, so I didn't really see any big problems arising.

The sticky couch did not, however, stop Grant and I from practically jumping on it and making out like we'd never done before. That wasn't really even an unfair assessment, either, we never had done this sort of thing with each other before. I'd made out with Bobby Keenan before, which he’d considered the best day of his life if his locker room talk was to be believed. Of course, he hadn’t exactly been the best boyfriend I’d ever had. He liked to bite down on my tongue and suck on it, which was… Just all kinds of weird.

But Grant wasn’t like that. He was gentle, he was firm, he was warm and he was making sure this was as much for me as it was for him. His hands never moved from my waist until I moved them to my ass, which he finally took as an invitation to fondle and squeeze as much as possible, but he wasn’t rough with me at all.

It really took me a lot to not just pull my shorts off and let him have his way with me. I couldn’t be that ready for sex, was I? Maybe Larry’s stupid little comments were starting to get to me. No, I was just outrageously horny and not thinking straight, that was all. I could get over that quickly enough, hopefully. Besides, I didn’t think either of us had a condom and I was not ready to become a teen mom.

Although, maybe Grant would be a great teen dad.

I put the thoughts out of my head and got back to thinking about Grant’s warm, delicious lips. He tasted so sweet, so lovely. I couldn’t believe just how different this was from any other boy I’d kissed. Maybe Chrissie was right and my life was turning into a romance novel. That would make exactly no sense, but here I was currently loving the shit out of my boyfriend and wanted nothing more than to stay with him forever.

I couldn’t ignore the irony, really. Grant and I were making a webcomic about a couple of friends who eventually grow to love one another and all the wacky antics that led to that, and that was really what was happening with him and me. To really parallel everything, I would have had to be a guy before all the kissing started, but it was such a minor thing that it didn’t matter. Of course, the idea of that seemed kinda funny.

After the kissing subsided, the two of us just sat there on the couch, the TV on but nothing really interesting was on at the time. Some reruns of The Big Bang Theory on TBS was about all we watched. Funny, but the only thing I was concerned about was sitting there in Grant’s arms, comfortable in his embrace.

At some point, I must've fallen asleep, because I woke up somewhere around midnight with Grant snoring and still holding onto me. He looked so adorable there. I carefully slipped out from under his arms and sighed. I didn't want to just leave him there, but I had to pee something awful.

Making my way to the downstairs bathroom, I tried to be as quiet as possible. Last I'd known, Larry and Chrissie hadn't gotten in, but there was a chance they had while I was asleep. Hopefully, neither one of them was passed out in the bathroom. Luckily, the bathroom was completely devoid of life when I opened the door and turned on the light.

When I caught sight of myself in the mirror, something seemed… Wrong. It was me, as I'd always been. Golden blonde hair, tanned skin, bright blue eyes, the whole shebang, but something just didn't feel right. What was it? I didn't have any zits or anything, so it's not like my face looked gross. What the hell was I seeing that wasn't there?

Well, now that I realized it, my shirt was gone again. I must've taken it off while Grant and I were snogging on the couch. This was either going to be too common or a running gag and I couldn't tell which. In the comic, I meant. Brenda being based on me meant I could use the weird crap I did as fodder for comic gags.

I dropped my shorts and underwear, let it flow, and then wiped away the excess. I wondered if Grant had woken up while I was in the bathroom. Maybe he was ready for kissing.

By the time I got out into the living room again, I felt a weird headache coming on. I’d never really been prone to migraines, but I was definitely feeling one now. I’d had another cup of that spiked punch after we got back from the game, so maybe that’s all it was, like the beginning of a hangover. I’d only had one hangover before, after the guys and I had a particularly bad game.

Wait, what? That wasn’t right. The guys… And I… But…

I stopped and looked at my reflection in the hall mirror. That…. That wasn’t me. That was Laurie, right? But, no, it kinda still looked like me. We weren’t identical twins, but we had certain similarities, but the girl I saw in the mirror wearing short shorts and a bra looked like some weird combination of me and Laurie.

What the hell was going on? I ran upstairs into my bedroom and slammed the door shut. Something was strongly wrong. It was still my bedroom, at least for the most part, but everything was feminine. Vanity, wardrobe, desk, bed, even my couch was replaced by a simple chair that had the word PRINCESS written on it. This just… No. This was not right in any way.

I rooted around in the purse on my dresser and pulled out my phone. It was still the same, but there was a big pink heart sticker on the back. I checked my text messages, my emails, my contacts. So much was the same, but so much was different that I almost started hyperventilating.

And I saw texts with Grant that clearly showed we were dating.

That didn’t scare me as much as everything else did, somehow. Grant was my best friend, and if I were to suddenly turn gay, he’d probably be the kind of guy I’d want to be with. Strong arms, tender, caring, focused on satisfying the needs of others before his own. Not to mention he was gorgeous and I knew from the locker room that he…

No, no, no, NO! I had to get that out of my head. Was that a me thought or a… Different me thought? What the hell was happening with my brain? What the hell was happening in general?!

There had to be some sort of explanation. Some reason why I was suddenly some amalgam of myself and my sister. Had the same thing happened to Laurie? Was she a guy version of herself? That might explain why one of my contacts was some guy I’d never met named Larry. I had some vague memory of him as the guy Chrissie was dating.

I walked over to the wardrobe and grabbed a shirt. It was a pink spaghetti strap tank top that looked perfect with my shorts, but I honestly needed to shut that thought of my head because that seemed like a girl thought. I had to go somewhere, do something, but I had no idea what that would be. It was midnight on a Saturday (technically Sunday) and the odds were good nobody would believe me if I said I was turned into my twin sister.

Just after leaving my room, things started to get weirder. It was already somewhat dark in the hallway, seeing as the only light was a small lamp at the end by Dad’s room, but everything started to lose saturation, turning solid black and white. It almost reminded me of Grant’s art for the comic before I added the color.

All except for me, that is. I still looked exactly as I did before. Still full color, still a girl. Things were just going out of control, really.

The door to Laurie.. Er… Larry’s? Oh, the hell with it, the door to my twin’s bedroom opened and a guy who looked vaguely like I remembered myself to look but also somewhat like a male version of Laurie stepped out, buttoning up his shirt.

“Ash?” he asked.

“Laurie?”

The both of us asked each other in unison, “What the fuck is going on?!”

As if in answer to our question, the floor began to glow, then turned from carpet into… Bricks? The bricks took on a yellow shade, then extended outward, down the stairs and straight to the front door.

“Seriously?” Laurie asked, “The yellow brick road?”

“We are in Kansas,” I said. He gave me a look of pure annoyance. "What?"

He sighed. "I guess we follow it. Can't be any weirder than waking up as a guy cuddling with one of my best friends." He nudged me with his elbow. "How'd you wake up?"

"Cuddling with Grant, then suddenly confused about everything."

He nodded. "Basically the same."

I cocked an eyebrow. "You weren't… You didn't have sex with Chrissie, did you?"

He turned red. "That is… None of your damn business and completely unimportant to this weird shit going on, so let's just follow the yellow brick road and find out what's waiting for us in Oz."

Later…

The yellow brick road led out the house and down the street, for a few miles directly to the school. I felt both odd and normal as we walked, never once feeling like I was in a body that wasn’t really mine. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d been… Whoever I was for I don’t know how long, or if it was because of whatever the hell was happening, but it was definitely disorienting.

As we finally got to school, my head started to hurt again. I remembered both scoring a touchdown to win a game and standing on the sidelines cheering the guys on while we waited for our turn to go back out on the field and do our thing. I remembered hanging out in the locker room with Grant as we worked out the details of our comic and waiting for him to hurry up so that we could go out for a bite to eat while we discussed some of the characters we each had made up. My head was split between these memories as Ash “The Flash” Johnson, star quarterback, and “Flashy” Ashley Johnson, the fashion-crazed girl-next-door with the kissing reputation. It was like I’d lived two separate lives at the same time, both of them trying to force their way outside.

I glanced at Laurie and saw that he was rubbing his forehead, most likely under the exact same pressure as he tried to make sense of his lives as Laurie Johnson, the school’s hot geek girl, and Larry Johnson, the football player everybody wanted to be like. Hell, me remembering simultaneously being both his younger sister (by seven minutes) and her older brother (by seven minutes) was exhausting all on its own. I remembered picking on her for dressing trashy the first time and getting angry with him for making fun of my outfit that day at the same time and it was nearly driving me insane.

All around us, everything was black and white, just like back at home, but as we walked I saw that there was more. We didn't have a whole lot of people on the road at midnight, but what two we passed were stopped mid-drive, completely oblivious to the two teenagers passing their cars or the yellow brick road we were following. It was like their world had just totally frozen.

The front doors to the school were unlocked, naturally, and the yellow path continued on inside. I felt my heartbeat racing, most likely in fear of what was about to happen. Everything about this was weird, freaky, and just plain wrong. I wanted so very much to go home, go back to bed and hopefully wake up never remembering the life of the body I didn't wake up as. I didn't care if I was Ash the boy or Ashe the girl, either one was fine with me because both seemed like good lives. The only problem would be if I woke up as one and Laurie woke up as the other, but hopefully we could reconcile that.

The path led through the building, up to the second floor on the east wing. I found myself scratching my head when we arrived at the art room. The lights were all on, the room had all its color, hell, it almost looked like a class was in session, which was just plain… Well, weird.

For the longest time, Laurie and I just stood there, not wanting to go inside. Finally, I took a deep breath and then walked inside the classroom. The new art teacher, Mrs. Morfran, was sitting behind her desk, apparently grading papers.

I looked around at the room and almost gagged. All around the room, paintings of my life -- my lives -- were hung up on the walls. Paintings of Laurie's lives were also there, which clearly weirded him out as much as my paintings did for me. This whole thing was just plain creepy.

"The Johnson twins," Mrs. Morfran said as we came closer to her desk, "I was wondering when you'd arrive. My changes must have finally taken root if you're able to come here now."