Chapter 2

The reality of the situation still hadn't sunk in as they started back to the campsite, walking side by side.

"I can't believe this is happening," said Craig. "This can't be real."

"It is real," she said, tersely. "The question is, what are we going to do about it?"

"What can we do about it?" he asked, helplessly.

"I don't know," she said, miserably.

"What are we going to tell Mom and Dad?" he asked.

She thought. It was going to be impossible to keep this a secret from their parents. She didn't want to tell them, because she already knew what their response would be. They wouldn't believe it. But if they explained their theory of what had happened, then at least they could say they'd been truthful, should anything get out of control. She couldn't think of what that would be, but the future was completely up in the air at this point.

"We have to tell them," she said.

"Like they'll believe us?"

"I know they won't, but we still have to tell them."

"Okay, why?"

"Because when you have your first period, and freak out, they need to have a basis to understand why you're freaking out," she said.

He stopped.

"Fuck!" His jaw dropped, but then he recovered a little. "That's going to happen to me?"

"Unless you get pregnant," she said. It was a joke, but he didn't think it was funny at all.

"No fucking way. I'm not going out with guys. You're not going to date until this gets fixed."

"Yes I am," she said, sweetly.

"Not while I have control of your body," he growled.

"I'm not talking about my body," she said. "I'm talking about yours." She smiled. It was weird, but she thought she might enjoy some aspects of being "a guy." She could do what she wanted, go where she wanted. She didn't have to worry any more about guys hassling her, or worse. She felt powerful. She raised her brother's arms and flexed them. She watched the muscles bunch and felt the power in his body.

She thought, "I could get used to this."

That thought was followed instantly by astonishment that she could feel good in a male body. It was insane.

"You're not going to make me look like a faggot," he said.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," she said. "I have no idea what's going to happen to us. That's why I think it might be a good idea if Mom and Dad know what happened, even if they don't believe it at first."

"I think you're crazy."

"I think you'd better be more cooperative, or I'm going to go up to Jerry Lindstrom and plant a big, wet kiss on his lips," she said, calmly.

"Fuck!" he said, explosively.

"And I told you to stop cursing with my mouth!" she snapped.

She saw her image slump, and her sad face look up at her.

"Do we really have to do this?" he asked.

"I think so," she said. "What other option do we have?"

"They won't be able to fix this," he moaned.

"No, but at least they'll understand what we're going through." She sighed. "Eventually."

When they got back, their parents were actively engaged in preparing breakfast. Today that consisted of scrambled eggs and sausage, with salsa on the side. Bananas had been laid out, and yogurt as well, as another option. Their mother looked up as they approached.

"Better now?"

"Yeah," they said, together.

They looked at each other. That simple response reminded them that they were still twins. They often said the same thing at the same time. Secretly, both were pleased by that. They had always been close, which nobody thought was unusual. The competition they had engaged in lately had more to do with adolescence and peer pressure than any real desire to lessen the bond they had always felt.

And now, the simple act of answering together somehow made things better. They would get through this, somehow, and they'd do it together.

Their dad stirred the eggs and moved the cast iron skillet containing them off to one side, away from the active flames. He stood up.

"Have a seat. We're waiting."

His meaning was obvious. They weren't waiting for breakfast to be finished cooking. They were waiting for an explanation.

Craig looked at his sister. The fact that he was deferring to her wasn't strange, in the sense that he usually deferred to her when they had done something they were in trouble for. She was better on her feet at creative bullshitting. But it bothered him, somehow, maybe because he was in a girl's body, that he didn't step forward to take charge. He watched her ... his sister ... in his body ... preparing to do what she always did.

Except, for their parents, it wasn't going to be what they were used to.

"You're not going to believe what we tell you," said Carly.

"Why don't you let us decide what we believe and don't believe," said their dad.

"I'm just warning you that the story will seem fantastic, and unbelievable," she said. "You're going to think we're pulling a prank, or telling a tall tale, or maybe even outright lying, but everything we're about to tell you is true."

Her mother moaned, "Oh, Jack, they really are on drugs!"

"Be quiet, Fran. I want to hear this," said Jack.

It struck Craig, inside his now female body, that his mother did exactly what she was told to by their father. She didn't look happy about it, but she followed his orders. It was the first time in his young life that he actually saw the dominance of a man over a woman in such a subjective way. He suddenly felt helpless. It was an unusual and somewhat terrifying feeling, and when the tears began to spill out of his eyes, he was suddenly glad he was in a female body. It was the first time in his life that he felt like crying was normal, and that nobody would make fun of him for doing it.

He thought, "I don't want to stay this way, but maybe it has its compensations."

"We don't know everything," said Carly. "And we understand even less, but we were sitting here last night, roasting marshmallows."

"I found the bag, still half filled, ground into the dirt," Jack commented.

"I don't know about that," said Carly. "We were sitting here, and suddenly there was this light all around us, like a beam, except it was like a hundred cars with their headlights on high." She took a breath, but nobody interrupted her. "And then we woke up and it was morning. We couldn't remember anything. We don't actually know if we slept in our chairs ... or not."

"That's ridiculous. If you woke up in your chairs, where else could you have slept?"

"There's more," said Carly.

Their parents just stared at them.

"I'm not really Craig," she said.

"Of course you're Craig," said Jack.

"What I mean is that the person you're talking to right now, is Carly. Somehow, my mind got transferred into Craig's body. And his got put into my body." She pointed at her body.

It was silent. Their parents kept staring at them. It went on so long that she had to fill the silence.

"That's really all we know. We don't know how it happened, or where we were when it happened. We think maybe aliens abducted us, and they caused it. I know that sounds crazy, but that's all we can think of to explain all this."

Jack looked at Fran. He opened his mouth and started to speak. Then he closed it, and remained mute. Fran looked at him, and her face showed only confusion. At length, he opened his mouth again, and finally spoke.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe they are on drugs."

The pan of eggs sat over ashes, its contents uneaten, and grown dry and cool as time had passed.

The interrogation had been unrelenting for a full hour. The kids had sat, helplessly, unable to answer questions.

"Was it acid?" asked Jack, at one point. "Did you take LSD?"

"No," they groaned, again together. Now Craig spoke up, in his sister's voice.

"We're not bullshitting you, Dad. I've never taken drugs in my life, and I'd bet my life that Carly hasn't either."

Jack blinked. Both of them had been talking about each other like that, referring to the other as if it were the person who should be making the noises coming out of their mouths. It was eerie, because they never screwed up. It was like they had practiced this bizarre prank for ages. He clung to the idea that this was all some kind of joke. Except that no crack had shown in their defenses for an entire hour. His stomach growled, and he glanced at the eggs. They were ruined. They'd chew like rubber now. And the sausage had had time for bacteria to grow on it that nobody should eat. He unconsciously used a coping mechanism by reaching for the pan and dumping the contents into the coals of the fire. It would be a cold breakfast for them all, this morning.

Fran suddenly spoke, addressing the person who looked like her son.

"If you're actually Carly in there, tell me where we went that day after I bought you your first bra." She looked over at the form of her daughter. "And don't you utter one word." She looked back at Craig's body.

"You mean to Zales?" asked Carly.

Her mother looked tense. "Why did we go there?"

"You said it was to celebrate me becoming a woman."

Fran blinked, and leaned forward.

"What did you want that I wouldn't buy for you?"

"I wanted to get my ears pierced, but you said I had to wait until I was fifteen."

Fran leaned back, so hard that the lawn chair rocked back, lifting the front legs off the ground an inch.

"Good Lord, Jack, they may be telling the truth!"

"Come on, Fran," he said. "It's not possible."

"I never told you about that trip to Zales. I never told anybody about it. It was something I wanted to be one of those little things between a mother and daughter."

"You got her a charm bracelet," said Jack. "I remember that."

"Yes, but I didn't tell you where we went ... or that other part."

Jack looked at the image of his daughter.

"She told him about it. You know how they are. They tell each other everything. They act the same. They say things at the same time. They're twins, Fran!"

"Ask him something only your son would know," said Fran, gesturing to their daughter's body. Her usage of the pronoun "him" was observed by all present. It was profound, in the minds of the two teens, and gave them their first spark of hope that someone might actually believe them.

"Okay," said Jack, aggressively. Then he went silent.

A full minute later Fran spoke again. "Jack?"

"I'm thinking," he growled. "It has to be something only Craig would know."

"Ask me about one of our hunting trips," said Carly's body. Carly had never been hunting. She didn't like guns. It was something her brother had teased her about.

Finally, Jack spoke.

"How many times have I taken a shot at a deer and missed?"

"Over all three hunting trips we've been on?" asked Carly's body.

"Yes, all of them." Jack folded his arms across his chest.

Carly's body ticked them off on her fingers.

"Four," said Craig, with Carly's voice.

"Four?" Fran goggled. "You missed the target four times? Where did those bullets go, Jack? You told me you always hit what you aim at."

Jack looked uncomfortable, but ignored her. He looked at his daughter.

"How many times have you missed?"

"Once," said Craig. "Unless you include that first time, when you said I had buck fever and couldn't shoot. You said I'd missed the perfect chance. Does that one count?"

"Jack, you never told me any of this," complained Fran. "I let you take him out there because I knew it was important to you, but you assured me that nobody could get hurt except the deer. If you two are just shooting willy nilly, those bullets could end up anywhere, Jack."

"Nobody got hurt!" snapped Jack. "We were in the middle of the woods, for Christ's sake. It's no big deal."

"If it's no big deal, then why didn't you tell me?" argued Fran.

"Because no man wants to admit that he missed," he finally said.

"So you lied to me because you wanted to look all macho." Fran looked disgusted.

"I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you everything," he complained.

Fran looked at her son's body.

"Did he tell you that he couldn't shoot a deer, or that he missed when he tried to?"

Carly shook her brother's head.

"We never really talked about the hunting trips. I mean he said it was fun, and that cleaning the deer is messy. I think he just told me that part to creep me out. He said they ate the heart raw, because the Indians claim that will make you more of a man, or something."

"That wasn't really true," said Carly's body. "We never really ate anything raw. You were right. I was just messing with you."

"Son of a bitch!" barked Jack, who was suddenly ghost pale. "It's fucking true!"

That fact affected the adults so much that Fran didn't even scold him for using language like that in front of the children.

It is one thing to accept a premise as fact, on a cerebral or academic level. It is another entirely to accept it on an emotional one. This phenomenon leads to situations in which you know something is true, but have a hard time believing it anyway. If you need more detail, or are a researcher, I'll hook you up with the Austin family. Well, I'll tell them what you want. Don't be surprised if they aren't interested in trying to prove things to you that took them months to adjust to themselves.

During that first day, there was very little "adjusting" and a lot of questions. Pretty much everybody asked questions. Both teens and adults had questions, but of a different variety. The kids were asking questions from a viewpoint of, "What do we do now?" For the adults, there wasn't anything to do, except try to understand how this had happened. And that diversity of viewpoints was, quite possibly, what led to the eventual resolution of the whole mess.

What was that, you ask? Well, you will learn of that in due time. To be fair - and by "fair" I mean to put you on the same shale-covered mountainside that the kids were on, where every step might cause you to slip and fall off the mountain - you are going to have to take the same journey they took. Thank your lucky stars it isn't literally the same journey. But don't get all miffed and stop reading because you're too impatient to know how things turned out. As I said earlier, this could happen to you, and it would be handy if you knew what to do about it.

The adults ran out of questions first. Unfortunately, the plethora of questions - from both viewpoints - did not generate many answers. To distill it all down to the common denominator, we'll just say it was basically like this:

"What are we going to do?" asked the kids.

"The only thing you can do is go on with your lives until we can figure out whether or not this situation can be resolved somehow."

"I can't live life as Carly," groaned Craig. "She's a girl!"

"There's nothing wrong with being a woman," sniffed Fran. "You're a beautiful young woman, now. You should be proud of your femininity."

"I am not a young woman!" barked Craig. "Being stuck in my sister's body does not make me female!"

"Well you're going to have to learn how to act like one," said Jack. "Because if you don't, people are going to think there's something wrong with you."

"There is something wrong with me!" wailed Craig.

"What I meant," said Jack, calmly, "is that if you can't act like your sister, you're going to end up in the loony bin, and there won't be anything your mother or I can do about it. Not right away."

This gave Craig pause.

It was clear that Carly wasn't excited about impersonating a male either, when she said, "And that means I have to act like Craig?" His voice, powered by her mind, sounded sad about that, but both Fran and Jack had already begun adapting to the situation, and their reaction to the bizarre visual things going on around them had already lessened.

"Yes," said Fran. "At least for now. Don't worry. Your father will think of some way to fix all this, and then you can have your body back."

"Me?" croaked Jack. "I have no idea how to fix this!"

"You'll figure it out," said Fran, with complete confidence.

"Really?" That was Carly, making Craig's voice sound like an alto.

"No pressure there," said Jack. Sarcasm dripped in his voice.

"What if he can't?" asked Craig, who had tensed Carly's entire body. "What if this is ... permanent?"

"Then you'll just have to do the best you can," said Fran.

"What does that mean, Mom?" asked Craig.

"What it means is that, if it's permanent - and it could be some temporary result of the al-" She stopped. Everybody knew she'd almost said "aliens" and everybody knew why she'd stopped. "It could be a temporary result of whatever happened to you," she finished. "But we won't know which it is until some time passes. So until then, the two of you need to teach each other how to act, so that nobody outside this family finds out that this happened. It's hard enough for your father and me to believe this. Nobody outside our family ever would. And I do not want my children confined in some institution."

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