1.

I shut the front door behind me and was instantly greeted by Melanie’s face. I couldn’t quite make out the specific look she had, but I’m sure it would be one I’d eventually wear on my own, a week from now.

“How did you get them back in my dresser without me noticing?”

I shook my head. “I’m tired, sis, lemme go to sleep.”

“And I thought you weren’t going to get caught up in another one of Steve’s stupid schemes?”

“I said I’m tired.”

“Adam, what’s going on with you?”

I sighed, then I took a good long look at my sister. Melanie was a year and a half older than I was, which made her just about seventeen, but she’d been mistaken for older before. Not in a bad way, like drug abuse, but people just seemed to believe she held herself more like an adult and less like a teenager, which was in stark contrast to me, who nobody believed would ever really grow up because of how I acted. Her face looked like an exact teenage duplicate of our mom’s, with wide brown eyes, a small nose and full lips. The one thing she didn’t get from Mom was her hair color. Mom was a brunette, while Dad was pure red. Melanie got Dad’s red hair, while I got what seemed like a natural combination of the two that could be mistaken for either one depending on the light.

“Okay, why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

I shook my head again. “No reason. Hope you’re glad you’ve got your panties back.” I pushed past her and made for the stairs.

2.

I locked my bedroom door, picked up my tablet and flopped down onto my bed. I tapped on the internet icon and did a search for witches. I mostly got tabloid trash and incoherent forum babel, which didn’t help things. I’ve ignored tabloids forever, and the forum crap was just that - crap. Nobody was making any sense.

The door opened and Melanie stood in the doorway. “You clearly forgot I have a key to the bedroom doors.”

I groaned this time. “I’m really not in the mood, sis.”

“And I’m not in the mood for this junk. Dad put me in charge while he and Mom are second honeymooning, remember?”

I can’t for the life of me figure out why she felt the need to remind me of this every time I left the house, but I said, “So what?”

“You’re supposed to tell me when it is you’re leaving the house, remember?”

I set my tablet on my pillow and sat up. “I swear to God, if you say remember one more time, I’m gonna jump out the window. Why the hell are you pressing me, Melanie?”

“Because you’re acting weird, and for you, that’s saying something.”

“It’s not important.”

“Yeah, it kinda is. What’s going on?”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Fine. The woman that lives next door to Dean is a witch and she told me I’m gonna be a girl in a week.”

For about two seconds, it looked like Melanie was taking me seriously, then she doubled over and laughed about as loudly as a full theater at a Paul Blart movie. I wanted to push her out of my room, put boards on the door and enjoy what little time I had left as a guy doing guy stuff, like masturbating or watching basketball on TV.

Finally, she tired her best to stop laughing and asked, “So… really, what happened?”

I stood up and walked over to the window. “I’m not joking.”

“Yeah, you kinda have to be.”

“I’m not. Call Steve up, he’ll tell you.”

“No, he’ll tell me what you two cooked up.”

“How do you explain your underwear getting in your dresser drawer all by itself? She did it, the witch.” Why was I still calling her a witch? She clearly told me she was a sorceress.

“Or you climbed through my window and slipped it in while I was downstairs. Witches don’t exist, Adam, and there’s no way boys just spontaneously turn into girls.”

I sighed again. “I don’t actually know if it will be spontaneous. For all I know, I’ll start turning into a girl tomorrow.”

“You’re not turning into a girl!”

I was getting angry again. “Look, Melanie, she turned a frikkin’ table into a bowl of fruits! She made a doorknob feel like it was covered in fire! She was goddamn magic, I’m telling you!” I sat back down again and tried to calm myself. “I didn’t... “ My heart was pounding. “I didn’t want to believe it either, but the proof was right there. It seemed stupid to keep denying what I was seeing happen in front of me.”

She sat down beside me. “You do realize you sound like a maniac, right? Nobody can just turn somebody into a girl.”

I let out a laugh. “Yeah, I would have said the same thing if I hadn’t watched her do all the shit she did.”

Melanie sighed. “Okay, entertaining the idea that this is possible and that you’ll be my little sister in a week’s time, what are you going to do about it? You can’t tell the cops, they’ll think you’re crazy. And how do we even know we’ll remember this in a week? How do we know we’ll retain memories of you being a boy after you’re a girl?”

“I don’t know!” Why did I suddenly want to cry? Why did crying suddenly seem like a viable option for me right now? I needed Melanie out of my room, and fast. “Look, Mel… Just... Get out of my room, okay? It’s been a long day and I wanna go to sleep.”

She stood up and nodded. “Yeah, okay, but tomorrow, we talk about this, understand?”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow was Saturday, no school for three whole days (I can’t for the life of me remember why we had Monday off) and then we went back for final exams. Great. By next Friday, I may be shopping for a dress for the end-of-semester dance.

“Fine,” I said, “just get out.”

After she left, I moved my tablet from my pillow to somewhere else. Yeah, I wasn’t gonna find anything related to that stupid sorceress. Dammit. I turned my light off, laid down and felt myself drifting off to sleep almost instantly.

3.

“You know how this will end.”

What?

“You know how this will end. It’s only a matter of time before you accept it.”

Who are you and what are you talking about?

“You know what I’m talking about.”

What’s going on?!

“You know what I’m talking about. It’s only a matter of time before you accept it.”

A light came on. I held my hand up to shield my eyes from it, then took a step closer to whatever was causing it. Why was I moving closer to it? What the hell was going on?

“You know what you have to do.”

Who’s talking? Why did I hear this person? God, my arms were kind of cold. I rubbed at my arms to get warmer.

Wait a minute… I don’t own any sleeveless tops.

“You know what to do. It’s only a matter of time before you accept it.”

Great, now my legs were cold. I stopped for a second to tug at my skirt, but it was too short to actually provide me any warmth.

Wait… Skirt?

“You know how this will end.”

The bright light died down, and I finally saw its source: a mirror. I took a step closer to it and suddenly that chill that overtook my legs and arms decided to run up my spine. What the hell?

The girl in the mirror was wearing a light pink top with spaghetti straps and a simple white skirt. On her feet were a pair sandals with a two inch heel. Her face looked an awful lot like Melanie’s, just younger. In fact, Like Melanie but younger described this girl to a T, except for one simple feature. Her hair wasn’t Melanie’s pure red, but a mixture between red and brown that looked too much like...

“You know how this will end. It’s only a matter of time before you accept it.”

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, that wasn’t me! That girl in the mirror wasn’t me!

4.

I sat up and felt sweat breaking out on my neck. What the hell had I just dreamed? No, seriously, what? I couldn’t remember any of it, I just knew that it terrified me.

I rubbed at my forehead. I had a throbbing headache. Was it because of last night? Wait, was last night even real? Some sorceress casting a spell on me didn’t seem real, it seemed like a dream. Was that my dream?

I shook my head and got up from the bed. I walked downstairs to get my breakfast. There was a note on refrigerator. I removed the magnet and read it.

Had to go to the grocery store to grab some food, bro. We’ll have our talk later.

Talk? Oh, yeah… Last night. Crap… I guess all that stuff was real. So, what was my dream, then? Dammit… if that wasn’t my dream…

My headache kicked up again. Why did I have a headache? I’ve never woken up with a headache. Jesus, this is getting weird. I needed to understand this.

Time for an internet search!

I plopped my ass down in the desk chair and something felt weird. My ass felt… different. I stood up and then sat back down again, and everything felt normal again. Weird. What caused that? Was I actually changing physically over time? Great. If that was the case, then I might already be at least thirty-three percent girl by the time I went back to school on Tuesday.

Or it could just be that I’m freaked because I could be turning into a girl. Or I’m just nuts. Great, now that bitch has me considering possibilities to something crazy. Shit.

After two hours of meaningless Google searches, I came up with absolutely nothing. There didn’t seem to be anything, save for the occasional person who would have sounded like a nut a day before. They still seemed nuts to me now, even though I had a story that would make me sound equally nuts.

Would any of these take me seriously if I decided to take them seriously?