The situation:

I’d woken up and somehow turned into a girl, but like I’d always been one. Or I’d woken up in some universe where I’d been born a girl. Or I was dreaming I was a girl. Some part of me was still hanging onto that has a possibility.

Instead of… me, this girl, Emily, was living in my place, and as far as I could tell, she always had been. It was like everything in the world was the same, except I’d been born a girl. My family, my friends, they all knew her. No sign of my life as a boy, and no clues as to why this was happening in the first place.

Where did that leave me now?

The day was cloudy but decently warm, the wind noticeably gentler than I remembered it being this time Friday morning. I followed the sidewalk in the path I’d walked hundreds of times in silence, barely paying attention to my surroundings.

I tried to think back to yesterday. I’d woken up around noon, gone for a light run, and then come back home and lazed around for the afternoon. I’d had a chat with Brie for a while, over the phone, and then I’d done homework for the rest of the night before getting ready for bed.

It had been a perfectly normal Sunday, as far as I could remember. I couldn’t think of anything particularly unusual happening.

What leads did I have, then? What the hell could one do to get suddenly get retroactively transformed into a girl, or whatever had happened? It was something out of a movie.

“Hey, do you still have your notes for pre-calc chapter 18?”

“…huh?” I said, abruptly shaken from my rumination. I’d almost forgotten Gabe was with me. “I mean—um, sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. What were you saying?”

He gave me a weird look for the millionth time this morning. At least I must have been really selling the ‘horrifically sleep-deprived high school student’ thing. “Your notes for chapter 18, for pre-calc?” he repeated.

“What? Oh.” Gabe was taking a lot of the same classes I had, and it wasn’t uncommon for him to ask to look at my materials from previous years. I’d done the same with our older brother Lucas. “You want to borrow them?”

“If you still have them.”

“Yeah, probably,” I said. “What’s that one about again?”

“Trig and stuff. Like all the sine and cosine identities and all.”

“Yeah, I should have them somewhere,” I said. “I’ll find them for you.”

“Cool, thanks.”

“Why, trying to cheat off me again?” I managed to tease.

“Shut up, I’m not you,” Gabe retorted. “I just wanted to see your notes.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll find them for you,” I said, giving him a light punch on the arm. “And how dare you insinuate that I cheated on my assignments.”

“Well, you had all Lucas’s stuff to look at, so…”

“Yeah, as if Lucas did any work in high school worth copying.”

Gabe laughed. “Well, Mom and Dad would like to disagree with you. You know he got a 4.0 GPA?” he said, putting on a poor imitation of our dad. Lucas had always been the golden boy of our family, extroverted and proactive with buckets of confidence and motivation. He’d been the goddamn president of student government. I didn’t know how he did it.

“Yeah, and did you know he’s going to Stanford?” I said in the same voice. “Frickin Lucas, being good at everything. Making us look bad.”

“Well, your notes are more organized than his, at least.”

“Right? You’re lucky you have my stuff to look at instead of just his.”

“Yeah, don’t flatter yourself, Emily,” Gabe replied, giving me pause. Oh. Yeah. I’d just fallen into the rhythm of our typical sibling banter and had almost forgotten the absurdity of the situation I was in. The reminder that he really did think of me as his sister… it was so disorienting.

Fuck. What am I doing?

The rest of our walk passed in silence. We arrived twenty before eight. It was the same familiar building I’d seen hundreds of times in the past few years. Eckhart High School.

“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered to myself.

Gabe didn’t seem to notice and continued forwards, pushing the doors open and stepping in. I followed behind him as if on autopilot, a growing anxiety rising within me.

“Alright, I’m gonna stop by my locker real quick. See you later,” Gabe said with a slight wave, before turning to go.

“See ya,” I said, responding in like with a halfhearted wave as he left. I was alone.

I’d checked Emily’s schedule before leaving, and it looked to be the same as I knew it to be. History, bio, and calculus in the morning, followed by lunch, then Chinese, art and English, all with the same teachers I had. I just had to go to class, same as always; hope nobody notices that I have no idea what I’m doing; and then in seven hours I’d be done for the day and I could go home.

I looked down at myself. I’d put on a t-shirt and jeans, along with the most concealing hoodie I could find in the closet to try and cover up, but it didn’t distract from the reality of what my—what Emily’s body was like. As I moved, I could feel the fit of the jeans and the t-shirt, the way they stretched or hugged me in places they hadn’t before. It was distracting as hell, and I was sure it’d be even more obvious when I was around everyone else.

…maybe I ought to skip after all. I couldn’t face everyone like this. I just… couldn’t.

There was a public library not too far from here. I could spend the school day there, get lunch at a restaurant, and then get back before the end of class to go home with Gabe. It’d be a pain if and when my parents found out, but I’d deal with that when I got there.

“I have cash on me, right?” I muttered, trying to remember where I’d put my wallet in the absence of real pockets on these jeans while I turned and headed back for the door. Hopefully nobody I knew had seen me already. Fuck, I probably looked conspicuous as hell. I had to get out of here fast. I wasn’t paying attention, then, when I walked straight into another person.

“Ah, I—I’m sorry,” I said, backing off with a bit of a stumble. I glanced down, regaining my bearings, and then realized who I’d bumped into.

“Oh, Emily! Hi!”

“Brie,” I replied in an instant, before I even registered my—Emily’s name. “H—good morning.”

I stood back and let her come in, a shy smile creeping onto my face as I took her in. She was wearing the same hairpin she’d been wearing since the beginning of high school, was the first thing I noticed. It was a plain design, but light blue, and she’d talked about how it was a little splash of color during the gray winter. I’d always thought it was really cute.

Brie was my girlfriend, of almost two years. We’d met each other as freshmen, when we ended up getting paired together for a project in our fall semester physics class, and we’d hit it off almost immediately. Brie was smart and charming and pretty and nice, and by the end of the year, I knew I was in love with her. By July, I’d worked up the confidence to tell her how I felt, and we’d been together ever since.

But if I was Emily, then…

“Were you going somewhere?” Brie asked.

“Um, I—” I paused. “I, uh, forgot something at home and thought I might be able to run there and get it, but it’s probably too late already,” I lied.

“Oh, what’d you forget?” she said

“Uh, my water bottle,” I said quickly. That wasn’t a lie. I’d left the house in a panic, and my water bottle had been the last thing on my mind. “It’s not a big deal, I’ll manage.”

Brie nodded. “Oh, okay. But be sure to drink plenty of water, okay?” she said in a mock lecturing tone, beginning to move in the direction of the commons. I reflexively followed her lead, walking alongside her. “We can’t have you getting dehydrated.”

I smiled softly. “Yeah, yeah. I will.”

We continued down the hallway together. “So, I stayed true to my word and got to bed by like one… thirty AM last night,” Brie said. I took a second before I remembered what she was talking about. I’d gone to sleep before her last night, and had texted her telling her not to sleep too late herself. Emily had as well, it seemed.

“That’s still only like five and a half hours of sleep,” I said.

“That’s like, a lot!”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“Oh yeah, and how many hours of sleep did you get, huh?”

“Like six and a half.”

“Okay, that’s one more hour than I did. You don’t get to act all high and mighty for one whole hour more,” Brie said, bopping me lightly on the shoulder.

“I’m not acting high and mighty; I’m just saying you should sleep more.”

“Ryan sleeps like three hours a night and I don’t see you getting on him to sleep more.”

“Well, yeah, but you’re…” I trailed off. You’re my girlfriend, I was going to say. “…more important.”

Brie laughed. “I’m sure Ryan will be flattered to know that you called him unimportant.”

“I didn’t say that!” I said, getting flustered. “I just… you’re… you know.”

“Know what?” Brie said with a devious smile. Then, without warning, I felt her take hold of my hand, gripping it tightly in hers.

My eyes widened, my heart practically skipping a beat. “Brie—?”

“Yeah?” she said, still smiling.

“U-um, I… nothing,” I said. She squeezed my hand, in that familiar way that made me feel like my heart was in my fingertips.

Oh. Oh. We’re… okay. Okay. Yeah. We are.

That… made sense, I supposed. If Emily really just was me but a girl. I couldn’t really imagine ever liking guys myself. I didn’t know Brie was into girls, though. Was the Brie I knew into girls? She’d never mentioned it to me. Was she bi or something?

I was barely conscious of it as Brie led us down the hallway, weaving through the crowd towards the commons. I tried to keep my head down. Fuck, I was really blushing, wasn’t I. Her hand was just so warm. Why was I blushing so much?

“Hey guys,” I heard Brie say. I looked up. We’d arrived at our usual spot, a shaded corner with some benches right next to where the school put up the student art projects. Seated there was our usual group—Adrian, Natalie, and Ryan.

“Heyy,” Adrian was the first to greet us. Adrian… I’d met him a few years ago, and we’d bonded over a lot of games of Civ 5. He’d always been better at it than me, and was pretty competitive too, except he never showed it. I remembered just picturing him staring at his computer, smiling calmly as he kicked my ass.

“Morning, ladies,” Natalie said, not looking up from her phone. She was lying down on one of the benches, her legs stretched out so she was taking up the entire thing. I wasn’t sure how I’d met Natalie, if it was through someone else or not. We didn’t have a whole lot in common. But at some point she’d taken a liking to one of us, and she’d part of our circle ever since.

I didn’t remember how I met Ryan either, but that was more because of time than anything. I’d known Ryan for ten years or something like that, and though our interests had diverged as we’d gotten older, I still considered him one of my best friends. He gave us a quick “hey” and a casual salute.

“What’s going on?” Brie asked.

“Not a lot,” Adrian said. “Ryan was telling us about the Quiz Bowl thing on Saturday.”

“Oh yeah, that happened! How’d it go?” Brie asked.

“We did pretty well; varsity tied for fourth,” Ryan said. “Out of like twenty. Though it’s just this invitational thing, and the season’s pretty much over anyway, so it doesn’t mean anything really. But it was pretty smooth. There was this one pope question in our last match versus Pine Grove that I’m so salty we didn’t get though; we like, definitely learned it in Euro and I’m so mad I didn’t get it.”

“Nerds,” Natalie remarked from her bench.

“You were literally there, Natalie,” Ryan said. “You’re literally on the team.”

“Yeah, and I got that question fuckin right. Courtesy of my genuine Catholic heritage, ya know.”

“I thought you don’t even go to church, Natalie,” Adrian said, glancing down at her.

“Hell no, I don’t. But just because I’m a filthy heretic doesn’t mean I don’t know my goddamn pope trivia,” Natalie said, eyes still on her phone. “Anyway, JV got ninth.”

“Oh, nice!” Brie said.

“You should’ve been there, Emily. There was like, a shit-ton of questions you would’ve totally gotten,” Ryan said to me.

“What? Oh.” Between inexplicably turning into a girl and Brie’s hand in mine, my thoughts had been in a million different places at once and I had not at all been paying attention to what they’d been talking about. Quiz Bowl. Right. “Sorry, I was… busy, Saturday.”

“Uh huh, I’m sure you were,” Natalie said, shooting me and Brie a wink, then craning her head back to look at Adrian and extending her hand for a high-five. “Hoes before bros, am I right, Adrian?”

“I don’t know if that really garners a high five,” Adrian said.

“Come on, man, don’t leave me hanging.”

“I’m right here, Nat,” Brie said.

“I mean it in the lovingest way I can, Brianna,” Natalie said with an exaggerated innocent smile. “How was you two’s date, hmm?”

“It was absolutely lovely, Natalie, how nice of you to ask.” Brie said, ostentatiously wrapping her arms around mine and clinging close to me. My heart leapt in my chest at her touch. Oh. Um. Okay. “Wasn’t it, Emily?”

“Yeah, it was… really nice,” I said. I remembered going on a date with Brie last Saturday, as me. We’d basically just gone to lunch and then wandered around window-shopping for a while talking. It seemed like Emily had done the same thing, then? Another thing she’d replaced me in.

Okay. So… our friends knew we were dating. Were we out to everyone? I couldn’t imagine having it in me to come out. Did Gabe know? Did my parents?

Brie squeezed my arm tighter. Fuck, I couldn’t process this all at once.

“Ugh, romance. Sorry I asked, you goddamn lovebirds,” Natalie scoffed sarcastically before returning her attention to her phone. Brie relaxed her grip on my arm, but remained holding it. She’d done this with me before, but I just… wasn’t me right now. It felt so weird.

“Well, you’ve got one more year left to try it out, Emily. It’s a lot of fun,” Ryan said, ignoring the entire exchange with Natalie. Ryan wasn’t really the type of person to punctuate sentences with eyebrow waggles, but if he were he’d definitely be doing it now.

“Uh, I’ll think about it,” I said awkwardly. Ryan had been half-jokingly egging me on to join it the entire time we were in high school. I knew that. That was normal. This was normal.

“You won’t regret it…” he said. “Right, Natalie?”

“Eh, it’s alright,” Natalie replied. “Linnea brings snacks to practice; worth showing up for that at least.”

“Linnea’s graduating next year.”

“Ah shit, man, she is. Then idk. Do it if you want,” she said to me, earning a glare from Ryan.

“But next year we’ll already be having sooo much fuuun with college apps,” Adrian said, his voice dripping with irony.

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Brie groaned, leaning on me as she did. “I want to like, not think about college stuff for as long as I humanly can.”

“You can run, but it’ll find you…”

The conversation then moved on to the topic of college applications, and I was struck by just how normal it was. I didn’t know what I was expecting. But ignoring the fact that I apparently had just gotten zapped into her body or something, she really was just… a regular seventeen-year-old girl.

A thought came into my head, that I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not just in the sense that this wasn’t my life, but… I was intruding on hers. These weren’t my friends, my girlfriend, my body. They were hers. Fuck, what was I doing?

I needed—to get back to normal, somehow, as soon as I could. Before I could mess things up too bad for her.

History, bio, calc, lunch, Chinese, art, lit. I just had to get through six and a half hours of school and then I could go home and try to figure out what was going on.

Some minutes passed and our talk came to an end as the warning bell rang out through the commons, and everyone began to disperse. Brie and I stepped forwards to give space to some others passing through the hallway entrance beside us, and I watched as the other three began gathering their things and preparing to depart themselves.

“Alright, have fun, nerds.”

“See you guys later.”

“Yyyup, seeya.”

“See you!” Brie said.

“Bye all,” I managed to say. As they each headed off in their own directions, Brie turned to me, moving me aside from the incoming crowd and drawing close to me. Oh, o-okay. Okay.

“Well, I’ll see you later, Emmy,” Brie said, turning to look me in the eyes. “Be sure to drink your water, kay?”

“Yeah, I know, I will,” I said. “Be sure to stay awake.” She gave me a pout, and I couldn’t help but smile at the way her face scrunched up when she did.

“Hey, come here, you,” she whispered. And before I knew what was happening, she pulled my face down to meet hers and gave me a kiss.

What felt like minutes later, she released me and stepped back, leaving me practically gasping for air. “I—ah—you—Brie?” I spluttered.

“Yeah?”

“Holy shit. Oh my god. What just happened,” was what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t say that to her. “Just. Um. I… love you,” I mumbled.

Brie smiled sweetly and gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “Love you too, Emmy.”

We stood there just staring into each other’s eyes for a few moments, my hand in hers. I could feel my cheeks and ears growing warm, and I hoped it wasn’t too obvious I was blushing. Fuck, what… what just happened? She kissed me. Kissed Emily. I just…

“Alright, well, I’m off, then,” Brie said finally. “See you in English?”

“Um, yeah. See you then,” I said. She smiled again and let go of my hand, which fell to my side as I watched her depart in the direction of her first-period math class. Shakily, I tried to gather my thoughts and began my own walk to class.

My legs carried me down the hallway and up the stairs to my history classroom, my mind a haze of thoughts and feelings I could barely process. I let my backpack slip down to the floor as I took a seat, collapsing into the hard plastic chair with a thump.

“What the hell just happened,” I whispered, my face still hot.