Chapter 4

Of course they didn't tell their parents they were going to teach each other how to masturbate. Who would? I mean it was a weird situation, but it wasn't that weird.

Hmmm. I'm just sitting here looking at that last sentence.

I guess it was as weird as something could ever get.

But they didn't tell their parents, which was pivotal, because if they had, I'm quite sure different decisions would have been made, which would have affected the future of the twins in very different ways.

Again, I'm babbling. I'll just cut to the chase again.

On the way home, Fran turned sideways in her seat and looked back at her children.

"You're going to have to spend as much time together as possible. You need to teach each other how to be each other before you go out in public."

"We already are each other," said Craig.

"But you don't act like each other," argued Fran.

"How can I teach him to be me?" complained Carly.

"I don't know," admitted Fran. "But you have to. And he has to get you ready for when you run into Josh, and Tim and Brandon and all his other friends. And Craig, you know most of her friends, but not well enough to sit and engage in girl talk with them."

It was quiet in the back of the van as both teens tried to imagine what it was going to be like mixing with a whole new set of friends. Actually, they weren't "new" exactly, but it seemed like it, because, suddenly, the type of relationship was different than it had been. Carly thought about one of the boys her mother had named, Josh Green. He and Craig played tennis together, more or less regularly. He'd been over to the house half a dozen times, but not for long, because when Craig was ready, they went to the courts to play. He was cute. More than once she'd wished he'd ask her out. But that actually made her shy, so she never tried to talk to him while he was there. They smiled at each other in school, but that was it. Now, suddenly, she was going to be able to spend as much time with Josh as she wanted.

Except that she had no idea how to play tennis. And she had no idea what kind of things they had talked about ... what kind of things she should know about him.

"There's no way we're going to be able to pull this off," she said. "We've spent years developing friendships, and neither of us will ever be able to catch up on everything we should know. Maybe we should just move away and start all over."

"Be systematic about it," said Jack, looking in the rear view mirror. "You have three weeks left before school starts. We'll tell your friends that you both came down with something contagious, and that you have to be quarantined for weeks. Then the two of you will have all day to talk about each and every friend, and what each is like and all that kind of thing."

"We'd have to be joined at the hip to cover that much ground," complained Craig.

"Okay," said Jack. "Fine. You have to be joined at the hip. You're twins. You can pull this off. I'll move your bed into your sister's room. Each day you choose a couple of friends to educate each other about. Then, every night before you go to sleep, you can test each other on yesterday's friends, and drill each other on the ones you talked about before that. You have plenty of time to teach each other what you need to know if you apply yourselves. Any inconsistencies or slips can be blamed on this unknown disease or something."

"You can't move his bed into my room," said Carly. "There's no room. If his bed was in there we'd have to crawl over them to get anywhere at all."

"I'll get a cot then," said Jack, undeterred.

"Dad, I have a queen bed," said Carly. "We can just sleep on that. We're only talking a couple of weeks. And we used to sleep in the same bed."

"Not since you were ten," said Fran. "Things have changed since then."

"Yeah," said Carly, dryly. "I used to think about penises once in a while. Now I have one."

Now it was quiet in the front seat for a while.

"She has a point," said Jack.

It was quiet a while longer.

"He has a point," said Fran, softly. "We're going to have to get used to this too. We can't slip up either."

Which is why, the first night they were back home, the twins ended up standing beside Carly's bed, contemplating getting into it with their new bodies. Both were thinking about what they'd already done, and what they'd already offered to do for each other.

And it had nothing to do with learning about their friends.

"This is weird," said Craig. He felt like that was his new motto. He was in what was now his room, except he had always known it as his sister's room. Her things were on the walls. Her brush was on the vanity. A pair of her panties was lying on the floor beside his feet.

Except this was now all his. Those panties were his.

Suddenly, he was crying. The emotions he was feeling seemed entirely new. They felt entirely new. He was grieving. He had, in a very real sense, lost someone. It wasn't to death, but it might as well have been. In another sense, it was like breaking up with someone you loved, and then seeing that person all the time. He was going to have to interact with that person on a daily basis and he wanted back what used to be, but he knew that could never be, and he grieved because of it.

"Hey," said his own voice, softer than usual, more caring than usual. She stepped toward him and took him in her arms. His arms. Except now they were being controlled by his sister. They weren't his any more. The ones he had control of went around his body automatically. His new hands didn't quite reach around her back, but her arms surrounded him. He suddenly felt safe, which was crazy, because it was his arms that were wrapped around him, and his arms that were making him feel safe.

But it was the body he was in that felt those arms, and melted against his old body, clinging to it while his new body sobbed. He felt frustration and embarrassment. He never cried like this. Girls cried like this.

"It's going to be okay," his deep voice assured him.

A strange thing happened. He still heard his voice, even if it sounded odd ... not quite right ... but he also heard Carly talking to him. It just felt like Carly, because it had been said in the same way Carly would have said it if they had never been switched.

"Easy for you to say," he mumbled into his own chest. "You're a guy now."

"I know," she said. "But I'm going to try to overcome that deficit."

He pushed his upper torso back and looked up. For some reason his attention was briefly drawn to the muscles under his hands, and how firm they felt. He'd felt his muscles before this, but it wasn't quite the same. Using her fingers made it feel different somehow. He stopped thinking about that and went back to the point he wanted to make.

"Deficit? It's not a deficit. You have it easy. Being a guy is easy."

"You think so?"

"Of course! It's being a girl that's impossible. I mean I've never watched you, but I know it takes you hours to get ready in the morning. All I do is get up, comb my hair, brush my teeth, put something on and I'm ready to go."

"It takes me fifteen minutes," said Carly. She frowned. "I'll teach you how to do it in fifteen minutes."

"It's still easier being a guy."

"I don't think so. I think it's incredibly complicated being a guy."

"Why?"

"Well, for one thing, your penis is acting up again."

"What?"

"I have a boner, Craig."

"Right now?"

She ground his body against him and his body felt what was undeniably something big and firm. It was rubbing right at the point where, he knew, his sister had removed all the hair between her legs before he inherited her body. He felt that place deep in his new belly begin to hum, and the nipples on his new breasts seemed to somehow try to fold in on themselves. He pushed completely away from her.

"What the fuck?" His wonder was a product of both reactions, hers and his.

"Exactly," she said. "Why does your body get a boner when it hugs ... me?"

"I don't know," said Craig, softly. He was distracted by his nipples, which demanded to be squeezed. Except he wasn't going to do that in front of her. Himself. Whatever. He wondered, briefly, if this was going to drive him insane.

"Have you ever felt ... that way ... about me before?" she asked.

"Now hold on," he said, holding up a hand that was still too slim and too soft. "You're the one in my body right now. It's your brain working things. Maybe this is all about how you feel about yourself or something."

"I've never wanted to masturbate after looking at myself in the mirror," said Carly.

"Crap, Carly!" he groaned. "You can't say things like that!"

"Why not? This is what's happening. You heard Mom and Dad. We have to learn how to be who we are now. You don't have to deal with having this boner, but I do. And it would help if I could figure out why it's there."

"I told you. They just happen sometimes."

"This isn't the first time this has happened," she said. "That this body got a boner because of you, I mean."

"What are you talking about?"

"When we were hiking? That first day? I was behind you. I watched you walking. I got to see myself from a completely different perspective. For maybe the first time in my life I didn't pick my image apart. I was happy that my body looked like it looked. And then my new body got a boner. I told you about it ... remember?"

Craig blinked. He remembered that vividly.

"That was because of me?"

"Obviously. It was you I was watching. Remember? You asked me what I had been thinking about. Well, what I had been thinking about was that my body looked good. And now I hug you because you're crying like one of my girlfriends, and suddenly I'm all stiff in my pants again. So have you been perving out on me before this?"

"Of course not!" said Craig. "I mean sure, I've wished I could get a peek at you in the shower or whatever, but that's just because I've never gotten to see a naked girl. I'd like to see any girl naked. It's not like I lust after you or anything. Jeez, Carly, give me a break, here."

"I'd be happy to give you a break, but my body seems to want to give you a boner instead!"

Craig sat down on the edge of what was now his bed. It had a pink comforter on it. The thought of being surrounded by girl things for the rest of his life was suddenly depressing.

"It doesn't matter anyway," he said, softly.

"What?"

"I said it doesn't matter. I am you now. So if some deep dark part of my mind thought you were hot, then all that means now is that I think I'm hot. And that body really does get erections for no reason at all. There's no point in worrying about it. Are we going to talk about our friends or not?"

"We are," she said. "And don't worry. I'm not all that freaked out. Remember I said I liked what I saw on that hiking trail. Maybe getting a hardon is just this body's way of expressing approval."

"I never quite thought of it that way," said Craig. "Usually, whenever that happened to me, I was paying more attention to hiding it than anything else."

"Interesting," said Carly, who sat down beside him. She giggled.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"I was just thinking about all those guys at school, imagining all of them to be stiff, and trying to hide it. I'll never talk to another guy again without wondering if he's trying to hide a boner."

"Well don't ask them," said Craig. "You do and they're going to think you're gay."

Carly looked down at her body. She'd already grown used to the power in this body, the feeling of invincibility. In this body she could still approach her girlfriends ... still be friends with them, even if it was on a slightly different, weirder level. She glanced over at her old body. It really was going to be tough for Craig. If he used the same attitude with his friends as he had in the past, they'd think she was flirting with them. Knowing some of them, they'd try to put the move on him. And that would freak him out to the max.

"Maybe you're right," she said, softly.

"Which part?" he asked.

"About it being harder to be a girl than a guy."

"I know I'm right," he sighed.

"But I'll help you," she said.

"I hope so."

"I will. I'll help you any way I can. We're in this together."

"Thanks."

She stood up and started taking off her clothes.

"We may as well go to bed. We have a lot of ground to cover, and I'd rather do it lying down than standing up."

"What about... ?" Craig looked meaningfully at her zipper.

"I thought you said you'd teach me how to make it get soft."

He blinked. Then he thought about that. He touched his cock all the time. It was no big deal. And just because he had different hands, that didn't change anything. Not really. It would be weird doing that and not being able to feel anything, but if she wasn't distracted by the boner, she'd be able to concentrate more on helping him keep his head above water in the ocean of estrogen he was going to have to live in from now on.

"Sure," he said. "No problem."

It was surprisingly odd, seeing his body become naked in front of him. He remembered her saying she'd checked her former body out on the trail and liked it. He'd been able to understand that because he'd always thought she was pretty cute. Not that he could admit that during that particular conversation. So now he looked at his own body as she bared it. He was mildly surprised to find that he thought he was pretty cute too. He'd never been satisfied with the condition of his muscles, always wishing they were bigger. But now that he could look at the whole package, he realized everything was in proportion. There was some definition on his arms and legs, and his abs looked better than he'd ever thought before.

Then he looked at his penis. Unlike most boys, he'd never stood in front of a mirror with an erection. It wasn't because he'd never thought about it. He just didn't have a full length mirror. There was one in his parents' bedroom, but he wasn't about to go in there and examine himself naked in it. So this was the first time he was able to look at his body in toto ... at his maleness as a complete package.

He approved. That ball of heat in his belly approved.

His nipples approved.

"You're staring," she said. Her hands came to cover the nipples on her chest. It was such a natural thing for a girl to do that he laughed.

"What?" She frowned, but didn't move her hands.

"You're covering the wrong part," he said.

She looked down. Slowly, she moved her hands to cover her new genitals.

"This feels weird," she said.

"Well, you look normal." He smiled. "For a guy, anyway."

"Gee, thanks."

"Can I ask you a question?"

She looked up. "While I'm naked?"

"It's appropriate," he said.

"Okay."

"Right now, I feel all funny right here." He pointed at his abdomen. "And my nipples feel itchy and I have this urge to squeeze them. It's kind of like feeling horny, except it's really different. So is this how girls feel when they like what they see ... or have you secretly been perving out for me?"

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