Vera

Friday couldn’t come soon enough. I had thought about working with the ability some during the week, but I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to possess. Doing it to my dad just seemed weird and I honestly did not want to get in his head. What if I was immediately assaulted with memories of him and my mom having sex? I couldn’t take that chance.

I did briefly pop into our neighbor, Ms. Witmer, but she was just watching Jeopardy and the thoughts I gleaned from my quick look only served to make me sad. She had been alone so long. I ended up stopping by with my cat under the pretense of giving her cat some socialization. Pudge always liked going over to her place anyway, Ms. Witmer would usually give her pepperoni and a little bowl of milk. I don’t know what I thought would happen when I got super powers, but being guilted into visiting my elderly neighbor was not really on my radar.

Since I couldn’t cast a proper shadow while under the diffuse lights of the school fluorescents, I had planned to spend my free period on Friday sitting under the window in the library. I would’ve been screwed if the day had been overcast but when I snuggled into the seat under the window with my History textbook, the sun shone full enough to bring the shadow into being. Now, this power had me sitting in a literal ray of sunshine; also not something I could have anticipated doing a couple weeks ago.

When my shadow-self materialized, I directed her to Rosalind’s classroom and saw her there in a miserable little pile of boy-shaped hoodie and cargo pants. I had devised with her the night before that I would send her a message on my phone so that hers would vibrate in her pocket seconds before I possessed her. In this way, she could place her body such that when she took over again, she wouldn’t fall out of her chair or anything.

I sent the message, waited about five seconds and went in. I’d been Rosalind once before so the male-ish body didn’t throw me that much, but it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to stay any longer than it took to get the job done. Just as I was looking at the rather dainty hands Rosalind was sporting, the student in front of me reached an arm back with a handful of papers. The test papers, right. That’s why I was there. I took one off of the stack and continued to pass them back, nearly hitting the girl behind me in the face. I hadn’t realized that Rosalind’s arm was that long.

“Sorry” I apologized and she gave me an odd look before taking the papers. I only then realized that I must have triggered Rosalind’s ability and spoken with my own voice. It was a good thing then that any further changes required a measure of manual manipulation. It would have been an awkward thing indeed to suddenly be my Vera-self in Rosalind. So I had to refrain from speaking while I was in Rosalind for the time-being.

That wasn’t a problem though. I hunkered down and tore through the test before the period was half over. It was weird being in there for the better part of an hour though. I could tell that Rosalind had made some changes to her body today; enough to be a little more comfortable while still mostly passing as a boy. The smaller hands, the comfy seating, and the absent penis were all in effect.

I tried not to pry into her mind but it was hard not to with so much right there open to see. A better friend would’ve just left then and there but I was curious to know how I was perceived to her. If it had been something concrete like a lever I had to pull or a button to push, I could have resisted. But it only took a thought to sense the romantic undercurrent to her every feeling about me. I thought about the girl I had seen on the river path the other day and felt a confusing influx of emotions. There was reproach at myself for once again reading way too much of her thoughts while in Rosalind’s mind when I shouldn’t have and a giddy delight when I thought about the gorgeous girl that I had walked with along the river path the other day.

It was with some surprise then that while I was thinking about her and remembering the soft contours of her face that I began to feel something wholly unusual. It suddenly felt like my body was shifting, muscles tightening in some places, relaxing in others; fat redistributing. Shit, Rosalind had said she changed into her female form with a thought.

I quickly threw up the hoodie and ran out of the classroom clutching at my stomach for effect. I ran for the toilets and sat down in a stall with the door locked. Then I pulled the shadow out of Rosalind and started frantically typing on my phone in the library. “Rosalind showed up. Had to leave. Sorry.” was all I could get out and was vague enough that I didn’t think the message would ever draw suspicion.

Rosalind

When I was last in control of my own body, I had just planted myself into my seat in Chemistry to sleepwalk my way to an easy A. Now, I was sitting on a toilet at school and very much my female self. I cursed Vera and looked at my buzzing phone and saw her message. Why didn’t I foresee that? There was no reason that she wouldn’t be able to use the abilities of someone she was possessing.

I checked the time on my phone and saw that I was still supposed to be in chem class. I rearranged my body into its vaguely Teddy-shape and headed out of the bathroom having no idea what awaited me. I found that Vera had run into the ladies’ room so that was another strike for her. Thankfully, both it and the hall were empty now, though if anyone had seen her go in there, who could say?

“Mr. Cole, it is customary that one asks to be excused before leaving class in the middle of a test.” My teacher said when I opened the door and tried to sneak back in.

“Sorry, I had diarrhea.” Why didn’t I just say an upset stomach? While everyone was laughing at me, I returned to my seat and was pleased to find no test sheet there. Hopefully, that meant Vera finished before the fiasco. I tried not to be too obvious about feverishly scanning the classroom for people who may have seen too much on Vera’s departure from the room. And it may have been the paranoia, but there definitely seemed to be a couple students looking in my direction who I had never even interacted with before.

At lunch, I stormed off the gazebo and saw Vera there looking abashed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how your thing would work while I was in there.” She said with her hands up defensively.

“Did anyone see or say anything?” I asked. More than I was angry, this was what had been occupying my brain for the last half hour.

“I don’t think so. As soon as I started to… I just left.” I could see that she wanted to say more but we were all trying very hard not to say things like ‘magic’ and ‘shapeshifting’ while on school grounds.

“I heard you almost pooped yourself in class today.” came the voice of Javier as he approached our spot. Word sure gets around fast.

I ran my hand down my face dramatically and told him “Yeah, I’ll talk to you about that later.”

He looked worried “Are you okay?”

“I think so. Vera and I were just working on an experiment and it went a little wild.”

“I think it was a success though. I finished the thing and learned something new. So not a total loss.” Vera said

I turned to her then. “The test, it was finished when all that happened?”

“Yeah, no problem. Easy.”

“That’s something then.”

Javier’s eyes moved between us, and it didn’t take him long to figure out the nature of the experiment we had performed. “What the fuck, Teddy? Mr. Let’s-Be-Cautious all the time.” He walked back and forth in front the gazebo now visibly annoyed. “For a grade on a test, really? That’s all it took? Awesome.”

“Can we talk about this later, please?” I begged. He finally sat down to eat his lunch but there was tension in the air now; something pretty rare in our years of friendship. Why I had I even done that? It was irresponsible. I had to hope that the magic hadn’t gone to my head. It could be easy to start seeing important things as trivial.

On the drive home that day, Javi continued to lecture me. I gave him the details of the experiment, so at least he would know what Vera’s ability could do. But I felt like shit and as much as I wanted to go home and whine to my parents about it, that was no longer really an option. I might be able to couch the problem in enough near-lies and half-truths to be intelligible, but I couldn’t risk them seeing any holes in the story.

When I got home, I just wanted to relax in my true form so I went straight to my room and changed both in clothes and body. And as soon as I had done that, Mama Liz was at the door calling out my deadname. I frantically scrambled to change forms again. Removing the clothes also would take too much time, so I grabbed my bathrobe and tossed that around me.

“What?” I answered the door in exasperation. Mama Liz was looking well and truly annoyed with my disregard of niceties.

“I was going to ask you about your test today, and tell you that dinner is nearly ready. But if you’re going to be so snippy, you can…” And she trailed off, her face looking puzzled and pointing downward and my eyes followed and took in the pink and white thigh-highs coming out from beneath my robe.

“What are you wearing?” Mama Liz asked in the calm, chilly voice I knew all too well.

The only thing to do was play it off. I laughed or tried to. “Oh, Javi gave me those as a joke. They’re surprisingly warm though. Anyway, I was about to hop in the shower.” I figured that would explain the robe. Certainly, I was old enough now that she wouldn’t ask me to disrobe to see just what else I was covering up.

I must have caught her so off-guard that she just let me pass and go into the bathroom with no more than a “Don’t be long. Dinner’s nearly done.” Once in the bathroom, I decided to make good on what I told her and hopped into the shower. I was at once furious that I couldn’t get a moment’s peace to relax in my own skin and worried that dinner was going to turn into an interrogation.

I was not wrong on that point. By the time I was showered and walking downstairs with all the right parts in all the right clothes, dinner had been set and it was obvious that the moms had been talking as both watched me take my seat with concerned looks darting between them. I did my best to ignore them and dug into the stir-fry Mama Cathy had made.

My attempt to make everything seem normal by stuffing my face and complementing the chef did not forestall the inevitable. “Teddy, we’ve been noticing some things lately that we wanted to talk about with you.”

I just put another bite of stir-fry in my mouth and waited for them to continue. If they really wanted to have it out this bad, I wasn’t going to help them along. “You know, its normal for young people to be curious about the opposite sex. Sometimes that curiosity can lead emulation too and maybe that’s our fault to some degree since you never really had a father-figure to serve as a role-model.”

I’d almost wish that they just got mad at me rather than this nonsense faux-psychoanalysis. I tried not to roll my eyes while she continued. “But gender lines are immutable, you know that right, sweetie? A pair of pink socks don’t make a man anything but silly-looking. And that thing with your voice the other day, I don’t know what you were playing at but it just sounded idiotic. I know that it may seem like we’re making a big deal out of nothing, but that’s always how it starts. You are our son and you will always be our son. And no one, including you can change that.”

When I came down for dinner, I was feeling a bit embarrassed and was ready to make peace. This little speech though had really set me off. I could feel my skin heating and my muscles tensing as my body was putting itself into fight or flight. And I really wanted to fight. “What the hell are you talking about? If anyone’s being ridiculous right now, it’s you. Who cares about stupid socks? Do you have any idea how ignorant you sound?”

Mama Liz intervened now that things were getting serious. “You do not talk to your mother like that, young man.” And she hit that last word hard. “Go to your room and take those prissy socks and whatever other inappropriate clothing you have and leave them in a bag outside your door. We’re going to burn them.”

“My clothing is inappropriate? That’s rich, when was the last time you shopped in the women’s section Liz?” I dropped my fork into my bowl with a clatter, then got up and stormed off to my room. I collected the offending garments and shoved them in a plastic bag. I had to get the other stuff out of here. They may not do it now, but I had no doubt a full search of my room was incoming. I put everything else between the mattress and box springs for now. I’d take it all to Vera’s this weekend for her to hold onto for me.

Because my moms are apparently huge assholes, I got to watch them burning my thigh-highs in a metal trash can right outside my bedroom window. And here I’d been so worried that they’d find out about the super powers.