Turning Around free porn video

Turning Round Originally I had been the most beautiful girl in school. Long legs that I flashed around on top of, wearing short skirts and heels - a perfect complexion set off by thick blond hair that tumbled down to settle on my shoulders. All the guys went wild when I moved to town, Max especially; but this isn't a story about Max - not directly; or about guys. It's a girl story - a two girl story. One girl's name is Tina. The other's is Lucy. I won't tell you which one I am right now. On Monday morning I was standing near the corner of the playground amongst a few of my friends and we were laughing at Tina. Tina was the most unpopular girl in school. She was overweight and bad at her schoolwork. She had to wear glasses. It was her fault though, I always figured. If ever any of my friends started to wimp, saying we should leave her alone, I told them. There was nothing wrong with Tina that wasn't her own fault. I told them that she could be popular if she wanted to be. I knew I was right too. We called her names as she loped in toward the main building. "Turnip! Hey turnip!" We were killing ourselves laughing. "Let's go and finish her off," I said, glancing back at my friends as I started to follow her. They shuffled around. "Nah." "Cowards!" I ran up to the thick glass doors and pushed them open. I was wearing heels and a short skirt and the cool air inside the building was clammy against my bare skin as the heels clacked on the hard floor. I knew exactly where she'd have gone and I smashed the girl's room door open as hard as I could to startle her. Tina was sitting on the tile floor at the far end of the room at the end of the line of sinks, the skin around her eyes red. That made me smile. "Hi Turnip," I said. "Go away," she sniffed. "I don't know what you're upset about," I said, "you think that it's because you're fat and wear glasses that you're unpopular - cause you're stupid - but it isn't at all. You could be in with everybody else if you wanted to be." "How would you know!" she demanded, sniffling. I smiled, feeling superior. "'Cause that's what I would be like if I was like you." She looked at me through her pebble glasses as if she were wishing I was her and that I could have a chance to prove it, and I got the queerest feeling suddenly, right through my whole body. It was similar to feeling sick but it didn't make me feel bad in the least. I snorted and turned on my heels. I laughed and shouted "Turnip!" one last time as I walked away down the empty hallways. I hadn't consciously intended to imitate her voice when I shouted but I decided it was a nice touch of mine all the same. In the afternoon we all got to skip class. It was time for the yearly free eye test for all the kids. My friends and I were at the back of the queue, talking; and as luck would have it, Turnip Tina was just in front of me. "I wonder what the optician will say about four eyes," I said. Everyone laughed. People laughed all the time when I spoke. We sniggered at one of the younger boys who came away crying because he was going to have to wear glasses from now on. Most of the afternoon was gone by the time we made it to the front, but I couldn't believe it. Some of the parents had showed up to watch the tests being done and my mum was one of them. It was really embarrassing. I waved at her and we all giggled. The deep voice of the optician interrupted us, talking to Tina. "I can't believe it," he said, "but the checks prove it." She was beaming. "I want you to try going without your glasses for a couple of weeks and then come and see me again." She didn't need to wear glasses anymore! He finished giving her warnings about wearing them if her eyes started to hurt and then she broke away from him and walked past us. Still smiling. Max was my boyfriend. He was with the rest of us there and he shocked the hell out of me when he said, "She's got nice eyes without her glasses on actually." I was next up. My mum smiled reassuringly as I took my seat. I sighed and looked to heaven. The optician put a patch over one of my eyes and pointed to the board in the mirror. "Just start to read the letters on the board for me please," he said. I looked. I got as far as the third row before I started having a bit of trouble. "Okay," he said. He put a weird spectacle apparatus on my nose and took away the patch and then he started trying out different lenses in it, humming to himself as he asked me questions about which ones made it easier. It took a bit of time but eventually he got a set-up that was just like looking through a window. I could see almost all the board perfectly. Then he whipped it off. "It's the most amazing thing," he said. I wasn't really listening. The glasses had really screwed my eyes up. I was having major trouble clearing my vision. "First Tina walks away with perfect eyes after wearing glasses for ten years and then you come in. The complete opposite!" "What?" I looked at him but he was all out of focus. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you Tina. I'm sorry - Lucy! It looks like you're going to have to start wearing glasses immediately." "I... What?" My mum came up to us. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I'm afraid so." "But it can't be!" I cried. "You'll need to come to my shop at the weekend and try on some frames." My friends were sniggering somewhere out of sight. "Oh dear," said Mum, "How much do you think it will cost?" "A hundred and fifty pounds up," I blurted in, "if they're going to look half decent." Mum looked at me very sternly. I was still having trouble focusing, even this close up. "I'm sorry Lucy," she said, "but there's no way we'll be able to afford anything like that for a long time. Your father's been made redundant. They didn't even give him any severance pay." "What?" "I'm sorry to hear that Mrs. Flanaghan," said the optician, "I wish there were some way that I could help." Then another voice entered the conversation. "Maybe I can help." It was Tina. "The optician said I wouldn't be needing these anymore. Maybe you could borrow them until you can afford to buy some more." I squinted down at her hand. She was holding out her thick pebble glasses. "I don't know dear," said Mom, "I don't think we'll be able to afford any for several months. Lucy would have to wear them until then." "That's okay," said Tina, "I won't be needing them." "That's so sweet," said Mum, "thank you dear." I just stared down at them in horror. "Well, take them then Lucy," said Mum, "I think you'd better put them on straight away if you're going to get used to them." I gaped at her, struggling to make out her features from the blur that had consumed everything now. There were tears creeping in at the side of my eyes. "Can't I wait till the Easter holidays start before I have to?" "No!" I looked down at the ugly brown plastic frames and the thick, pebble lenses. The optician was muttering to himself. "Completely unprecedented. I've never seen anyone's eyes get that bad so fast. You must have been hiding it from us Tina." "My name's Lucy!" I said. "Sorry. Of course." "Put them on then," said Mum. I picked them up out of Tina's podgy hand. Then feeling the tears running down my cheeks and the humiliation as my friends laughed at me, I slipped the glasses up onto my nose. And in that second I could see perfectly. Even Max was laughing hysterically now. I felt the weight of the glasses on my face as though it were an iron mask. I hated them. "I want to look in a mirror," I said. The optician pointed to the one he used. I got to my feet, having trouble adjusting to the way the world was slightly distorted now. And I looked at myself. I was still slim and beautiful. My clothes were still the best money could buy; but something about the way I looked was completely altered now. The lenses were so thick they made my eyes bulge. There was no way to get around how geeky I looked, how plain. My mum took me straight home after that. I was too upset for anything else. When we got home I just stared at myself in the mirror while my mum thanked Tina's mum over and over again on the phone for what her daughter had done. I looked like someone else. I hated myself. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, half listening to what my mum was saying, comfort eating. I got a chocolate cake out the freezer my mum had made a few weeks earlier and defrosted it. Then I sat there, nibbling. After about half an hour my mum came off the phone. "Have you eaten that whole cake?" she asked. I stared down at the chocolate on my fingers and licked my lips. "I guess so." "You'll put on weight if you aren't careful." She shrugged her shoulders. "That was Tina's mum on the phone. She's so nice. Like her daughter." I tutted to myself. "Anyway," continued mum, "she's kindly offered for you to go and stay with them for the holidays up in their cabin. I told them you'd love to." "Mum!" "Be quiet Lucy!" she snapped, "times are very hard for us at the moment and your father and I need some time to sort things out here alone." "But I've got loads of things planned with my friends! Their cabin's miles away from anywhere!" "Don't say another word," she said, clearly angry, "you're going!" I explained the situation to Max on the phone. He wasn't very pleased by the idea. "Shit, we were going to finally--" "I know." I still wasn't completely sure about that little plan and in a way this trip was a way of not facing up to it. Max swore for a while on the other end of the phone. "Hey," I said finally, "you know I have to wear glasses now?" He paused. "Yeah." "Well you don't mind do you?" I said, "I mean you still like me and everything." "Sure!" he said and laughed, "'sides you'll probably be in contact lenses by the time I see you again, so you won't look like a dork for long and the guys'll stop making fun of me." I felt a weight in my stomach. "Mum says she won't be able to afford glasses for me for at least a few months. And she says that she never got to wear contacts; she doesn't see why I should be able to." I was starting to cry. Max didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, "Look, I've gotta go Luce... I'll maybe call you. We'll see." I went upstairs. I put my flashiest little dress on and my red high heels. I tied my hair up and plastered my face with make-up. Nothing helped. I just looked like some geek putting on airs. The glasses even made me look fatter in the face. So I went back downstairs and started rooting through the cupboards for something to eat to cheer me up. By nightfall the following day I was in a big four by four that Tina's parents owned pulling up to their little cabin in the woods. It looked as though it had been made by one of the original frontiersmen but they assured me there was hot and cold water as well as electricity. I got out. My cases were stuffed full of my best clothes in case there had been the opportunity to go out somewhere around there, but it had been clear by the miles of narrow lanes that no such thing was going to happen. I strained with them across the grass to the front door. Tina seemed quite different from her usual self. Without her glasses her eyes really were sparkling. She carried her extra weight energetically across the rocks around to the side of the house. I went inside, found myself a seat and flicked the TV on by the remote control. Tina's father muttered that I was obviously the perfect match for their daughter. Tina, however, was nowhere to be seen. Her parents set off on a trip for a couple of days the next morning. They assured us both that there was plenty of food in the cupboards. As soon as they were gone I devoured the chocolate gateau they had probably been saving for a special occasion. It made me laugh to think I was ruining it for them. Tina came bursting back in with a big grin on her face. She was looking quite a bit thinner. It was really strange to see the difference that was presumably from a change in her posture. I patted myself on the back that my theory was correct. However she still had her little turned up nose that was about a million miles from my beautiful straight one, and straight dark hair but even that was longer now, and fuller. "What you doin'?" she asked in her ridiculous thick Birmingham accent. "Minding my own business Turnip," I said, "and watching TV. What are you doing?" "I thought I'd start on one of the 'omework assignments we were givun," she replied. "You'll need to start early with your little brain," I said, and laughed at my own joke even though I knew it was very cruel. She sat down and got to it and I smiled to myself smugly when I thought of the hard time she was having with it. It was on the fifth morning, the day after Tina's parents were supposed to be back that we received a phone call from them. They said that they had changed their minds - that they were going to leave the two of us alone for the rest of the four weeks and have a third honeymoon. They sent us a whole lot of money and the keys to a weird one seater bubble car they'd bought when they were in fashion and kept locked up for the last twenty years. Not that I cared. I couldn't drive. And with them out of the way there wouldn't be anybody to tell me off for watching TV all day in the middle of all that natural beauty. I stood looking at myself in the mirror while Tina read the letter out in the other room. In the last couple of days I had put on some weight. If I relaxed, my belly stuck quite a long way out and my face was a bit fuller. But I shrugged. All the sports I did at school would get the pounds off quick enough. It made me feel a bit depressed though. That and the glasses made me somewhat less attractive. I decided to cheer myself up with some more bacon and eggs. Over the next two weeks I watched TV mostly. Tina was outside almost all the time, going for walks in the hills. She said something about being in training that I didn't bother paying attention to. Every so often she'd cook a big meal for both of us but apart from that she hardly ate at all. She was trying to lose weight I think. Even after cooking it she'd usually just go off for an evening stroll and leave me to finish it off for her. I, on the other hand, couldn't be bothered to waste time cooking fancy things. There was plenty of junk food in the freezer and I filled up on that. It was weird. It seemed like I was always hungry even though I never really went out and did anything to burn it off. There were more than enough crisps and chocolate to keep me going but it never quite satisfied me. It was amazing. I couldn't believe how good it was. It was like I was discovering food for the first time. A far stranger thing was happening however. I started to get on quite well with Tina. We actually talked! It was very weird but we seemed to be getting things in common. One Sunday morning I woke up late and cooked some breakfast for myself. Tina had left hours before for one of her hikes. I had the works like I always did. Bacon, eggs, fried bread, mushrooms, tomatoes. Then toast and breakfast cereal on the side. It was great. Then I started to run a bath. I took my clothes off and let the steam rise up to keep me warm. Then I looked in the mirror. I was fat. I had been eating so much and I hadn't even really realised how far it had gone. I was really really fat. My breasts must have doubled in size. The fat around my stomach had become two massive folds. I had a double chin! I couldn't believe it had gone this far! All the clothes I'd been wearing had been very loose and there hadn't been that to gauge it. Even so, I realised I must have been blocking it out somehow, not letting myself realise it. After my bath I tried on some of my tighter clothes. None of them fit. Even the baggy ones were a little close now. Tina came back and it hit me in a flash. She was grinning, face flushed and she was almost thin. It was amazing. I hadn't really noticed that either. She had only popped in for light provisions. She left soon afterwards. I started to make myself a big dinner of pizza and chips. Then I paused. I looked at myself in the little mirror on the side of the cupboards and thought, "What am I doing?" Sad, enormous eyes stared back at me through my thick glasses. But I shrugged. Somehow, the idea of being fat seemed kind of nice. It seemed kind of safe. I put the grill on. We had a week left of the holiday. Tina and I were searching around the house to see if we could find anything funny or interesting that belonged to her parents. "My God, look at this," said Tina, rooting through the bathroom cabinet, "I can't believe it." She pulled out two plastic labelled bottles. "My mum dyes her hair!" One was for blond, the other brunette. She laid them aside. We both started laughing. My mind was on other things a little though. I'd been trying not to think about Max. I'd left my number on his machine but hadn't called me once. It didn't make me feel good to remember that. "I'm going to call him," I said. "Okay," said Tina, "good luck." My hand was trembling a bit when I dialled. He picked up in almost no time and he sounded cheerful. "Hello?" "Hi Max, it's me." "Oh... Hi." The smile fell off my face. My response was almost flat. "I was just calling to say hi." "Hi." Neither of us said anything. "You still got the glasses?" he said. "Yeah." My stomach was locking up. I was going to cry. I took the handset away from my face. I could still hear him breathing on the other end though and he didn't speak. He didn't say anything at all. I put the phone down. I was still crying when Tina came in. She put her arm round me. "It's okay." "Do you ever wish you could just escape out of your life?" I said, "Just walk away and be someone else?" "All the time," she replied. We sat still, thinking for a long while. Then I brightened suddenly, a thought glowing in my mind. "Why don't we?" I said. "Huh?" "Look, I have to wear your glasses now, right?" She frowned at me. "Uh huh." "And you're really thin; while I've... you know, put some weight on and everything." It was more than true. My figure was barely recognisable. It made me want to go through with my weird idea all the more. "So what?" she said. I grinned. "Well there are two bottles of hair dye in there. Why don't we dye our hair and switch clothes and everything for a few days and pretend we're the other person? You could be me and I could be you?" "It's so weird," said Tina. "No!" I shook my head. "It'll be kind of therapeutic. It should give us, you know, perspective, a chance to get away and see what it's like away from our personal problems." Tina sat still for a second then she looked at me and grinned. "Okay." We both ran into the bathroom and got the hair dye. We couldn't stop giggling as we read the labels and started mixing the contents in the right proportions. Tina's hair was harder to do because it was darker to start off with and we needed to perm it so we did hers first. It took quite a while until we could leave it to set. Then we did mine. Two hours after we had started I stood looking at myself with dark hair in the mirror. It made me look completely different. I didn't really look like Tina but I didn't look like myself anymore. It was nice. Tina on the other hand looked quite like me except for her turned up nose and smaller eyes. "Your hair's all wrong Lucy," she said, "you'll never really look like me with long hair like that." I frowned. "You think I should have my hair cut?" She shrugged. "Why not?" I shrugged too, a little giddy and a little crazy. "What the hell?" I sat on a stool in the kitchen while she went and found some scissors. Then she went to work, cutting away all the thickness at the back until there wasn't much left. She went over the whole thing, cutting away the curls that were left from my old perm. It was going to be shorter. Much shorter. She narrowed her eyes, trying to get it level into a bob running round just below my ears, trying to make the fringe as straight as possible. I hadn't had a fringe in ten years. All the time I watched this all with glee as though I were seeing it happen to somebody else. I didn't think for a minute about what everybody would say at school. I'm not sure I cared anymore. Then she was finished and I looked at myself. From a distance it was incredible. Only up close could I tell it obviously wasn't me. The hairstyle, one I would NEVER have chosen to have normally made me into somebody completely different. Although I still wasn't satisfied personally. "Let's wear each other's clothes too," I cried. We had separate wardrobes on either side of our big double bedroom. We were both standing next to our respective dressing tables. "We can pick out clothes for the other one to wear," said Tina. "Okay." I went over to my wardrobe and opened it up. I stared at all my clothes hanging there, trying to think what I would normally have chosen to wear on a day like this. I picked out a boob tube and a cardigan and some black leggings. Then I chose a pair of red flats to match the top. I laid these out for Tina on the bed next to the purple dress she'd set out for me. We walked round and changed places, swapping sides of the room. Then we climbed into them. I pulled the dress on over my head, struggling to pull it over the flabby curves of my body. I seemed even fatter now curiously, as though some further transformation was occurring. It was strange but the whole experience was slightly hazy. I just went with the flow. Then we were standing there, looking at each other, in each other's clothes, with each other's hairstyles. I was wearing her glasses and where once I had been slim, now I was porky. We laughed for about twenty minutes solid. I felt odd though. "One last touch," said Tina, then we really will have switched places." "What?" "Our rings! We should swap them too." We both wore a single ring. Mine was small and stylish, hers a little too big and gaudy. I liked my ring and kind of wanted to keep it. I still felt weird and a little scared suddenly. "Come on," she said. "Okay!" I pulled off my ring, glad to in a way because it was far too tight, and handed it to her. She passed me hers. We looked at one another for a moment. Then I slipped hers on. It fit perfectly. "You're me now," she said, "and I'm you. We should call each other by the right names too shouldn't we?" I nodded. My face was a bit itchy. My nose felt funny. "Okay... Lucy." That was really odd. And my voice had caught a bit. Something in my throat made it come out a little deeper. "And you're Tina," she laughed, "or should I call you Turnip!" This made her really crack up although I didn't see the humour. Then suddenly the front door of the cabin opened and in walked Tina's parents. Her father seemed as distracted as ever but her mother smiled at us. "Hi girls!" she said. She turned to me. "Hi Tina." She kissed me on the cheek. I stared back at her, unable to speak for a few moments. I couldn't believe she couldn't tell the difference, even if we had changed looks so extensively. "Lucy" started to laugh. She clapped her hands. "Have you been having a lovely time?" asked "my" mother. "Lucy" grinned and nodded, then - in an almost perfect imitation of my voice - said, "Sure. It's been great. I thought you weren't coming back for a few days." She had managed to drop her rather common way of inflexion in favour of my soft, slightly higher pitched, smooth voice. "We decided to cut it short," said "my" father, "Looks like just in time. What, were you planning to dye each other's hair?" "Er, no. Yes." I said. "We were thinking about it but we didn't." It wasn't something stuck in my throat. My voice sounded deeper all of a sudden. I did my best to imitate Tina's accent and found it surprisingly easy. "Sorry about the mess... Dad." "That's alright Tina," he said, patting me on the head. "Lucy" grinned at me and winked. "Oh, I see you're wearing your glasses again. That's too bad." "Yeah," I said. "We're just going to get the rest of the bags," said "Mum." They made their way out, leaving "Lucy" and me alone. I still found it hard to articulate what I was feeling. "Isn't this amazing!" said Lucy, still imitating my voice, "they really believe you're me! You are me! You're Tina!" I shook my head, stunned. "How can they believe it? They're probably just playing along." Then I looked Lucy in the face. I squinted hard and I understood suddenly how it was that they could. She was a little taller than me now. I didn't understand how except for the benefits of posture, but I had no problem seeing her face, even through my glasses. Her little piggy turned up nose looked different now. Straighter. Even her eyes seemed bigger, her lips fuller. She really did look like me, like Lucy. Then I turned to the mirror and looked. I looked at piggy eyes, made bigger than they were by over-thick glasses - glasses held up on my face by a turned up nose. Then I heard her last words again as though she had spoken them aloud. "You are me! You're Tina!" "I don't believe it," I said, touching my face, the contours unfamiliar to my hand but completely familiar to my eye, "how could this have happened? I've really turned into you! I really am Tina now!" "Isn't it great!" "What are you talking about?" I was starting to feel upset. "It isn't even possible." "Lucy" was more excited than ever. "I know it isn't. But while it's happening we might as well enjoy it." "That's easy for you to say." I wasn't really sure. She broke away suddenly and walked round behind me. Then she erupted in giggles. "You've even got my mole on the back of your neck!" I felt for it, the world feeling huge and out of control suddenly. I started to cry. "I'm not you! I'm not you." This made her laugh even more. "No, you're you Turnip! Why are you crying for anyway you big twerp? Why don't you go and watch TV? It's all you're good for." I glared at her. "Why are you being so horrible?" "I'm just playing the part," she said, "like we agreed." It was true. She sounded almost exactly like me now, voice and personality. "You wanted to switch places with me to get away from your life remember? Just play along. It's not forever. We can switch back whenever you want." "I want to switch back now." She shook her head. "Not yet," she said, "but soon, I promise." The phone started to ring. "Do you want to get that," she said absently. It was an order that hung in there air. It was like she was in charge now. I wanted to tell her to get lost and get it herself but I found myself trotting over to pick it up. "Hello." It was a boy's voice. "Hello?" "Max?" I said. "Yeah." My heart fell. I really didn't want to talk to him, especially after how horrible he'd been before. "Is that you Tina," he said. I closed my eyes. The world was slowing down suddenly. "Yes. It's me. Tina." It was such a relief to pass the buck. I couldn't face him at all. "Is Lucy there?" I looked across at her. "Yeah. Lucy's right here." I passed it over, and in that instant it seemed that I made some kind of decision that I was going to make a go of it, at least for now, and take over Tina's life. Lucy took the phone. "Hello?" She looked at me a little fearfully. "Max?" She paused. "I'm fine. How about you... That's okay. I don't have to wear my glasses anymore anyway." My face fell even further than it already had. I had no such luck. Lucy carried on talking to Max, sitting down on the sofa and then finally lying back all over it, her legs crossed, tapping her foot, blond curly hair spreading out and down over the cushions. She laughed, shrilly. My laugh. I took a few steps backward until I was in the doorway to our bedroom. She glanced at me and winked. "Why don't you mind your own business, four eyes," she snapped, loud enough so that Max could hear on the phone, "go on! I'm trying to talk to my boyfriend." To him she said, "Sorry about that. Fat Turnip's moping about staring at me and trying to listen in on our conversation and pretend she has a love life." I stepped backward and stood with the bedroom door half closed, gaping at her. She laughed at something he said on the other end of the line. "Yeah, you're right. As if she'd ever find someone." I shut the door. It was one of the strangest feelings as I sat down on the bed and looked at myself in the mirror. I felt sad and lonely; persecuted. But these feelings were kind of distant. I was still just pretending to be Tina. Wasn't I? I knew that deep down, however real it felt that was all it was. Lucy was only repeating what I had used to say to her... before we were friends. By dinner, Lucy had tried on every one of my clothes and settled on a red short-sleeved dress with white polka dots, and red heels. She'd tied her hair up in a bunch at the top of her neck and laughed loudly at all the jokes her ex-father made. I quietly reached for some more food. "Anyway," she said, "my boyfriend Max said he might come up and visit tomorrow. Would that be alright?" "Of course dear," said Mom. I stared at my plate, eyes wide. He wouldn't have come if I'd asked him. I felt a little panicky at the thought of him coming here. I knew he would be able to recognise me despite any cosmetic differences. I was afraid of what he'd say when he saw what I'd become - who I'd become. "He even said there was a chance he might drive me back with him," said Lucy, "that I could stay at his parents' house for the rest of the holiday!" She seemed so happy at the prospect. I knew for a fact that Max's parents were away. Staying with him for a while had been my original plan. "I don't know," said Mom, "you'd have to check with your mother first. I'm not sure she'd agree to that." "Okay," said Lucy, "No problem." She looked at me and grinned. "You'll be glad to be rid of me I bet, won't you Tina?" I shovelled some more food into my mouth and looked away. Max arrived at about eleven o'clock the next morning. I'd spent the evening watching TV while Lucy rang round some of my old friends and listened to my music. There were lots of great programs on that I was really getting into now that I hadn't even known about before. I had three favourite soap operas that I followed without fail. I'd always been a late sleeper in the past but I found myself wide- awake at seven. Mum said "Hi Tina," when she came through, wiping her eyes. "Hi mum," I replied. I made a huge cooked breakfast for everyone, but Mom and Dad only picked at theirs and Lucy didn't rise until ten thirty so I had to finish most of it off. The funniest thing happened after I cleared away the breakfast things and went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I glanced at myself in the mirror and then looked away. I looked back and tutted at a spot that looked as though it might soon rise up. Then suddenly I froze. I'd been poking at my face for a few minutes. I'd brushed my teeth, looking right at it in the mirror, and the whole time I had seen nothing strange and unusual about my appearance. There wasn't any moment of realisation and remembrance of the change. It was only then that I remembered who I really was. I had been answering to "Tina" all morning. The face in the mirror had been my face. It felt so comfortable and normal. I almost couldn't picture myself in the mirror as Lucy and then I suddenly had a flash of memory. Trying a dress on in a second hand shop the Christmas before. Looking into the changing room mirror and seeing myself, as Tina, looking back. I sat down to do my homework at Mom's insistence with Lucy when she was up. I found the whole idea really funny. I couldn't wait to see our teacher's face on Monday when she saw our work. Tina had never been much good at work and I'd never really had to do any. My projects seemed to write themselves. I opened my maths textbook. It was all gibberish. In the last two weeks I had managed to forget almost everything I knew. I struggled to recall simple formulas, having to refer back to Tina's old notes and dodgy handwriting again and again. It was a nightmare. After ten minutes Lucy stood up. "Aren't you doing it?" I said, a little sarcastically. "I've done it," she replied, simply. I looked back down at my work. It was a mess. I felt really bad that she had managed to outdo me for the first time in my life. I hated to let her see it. So I waited for her to leave the room then I went to the back of the book to look at the answers. I copied them down, sniggering to myself as I worked out the questions backwards, filling in the gaps easily. Then I glanced at some of the answers to the questions I had already done. They were almost all wrong. I couldn't believe it. I threw the exercise book on the floor and crossed my arms. After a while I went to pick it up. I thumbed through it looking for the page I was on, the sudden change in handwriting I knew would show where I started work in "Tina's" book. I couldn't find it. I went to the front of the book, then flipped to the last page with writing on. My mouth probably dropped open. There was absolutely no difference in the handwriting styles between what I'd just done and what Tina had written several months before. They were exactly the same! It was then that I realised that I'd been blotting out reality. It didn't matter how impossible it was, as I looked in the mirror over my dressing table I knew that something that was beyond everything I had ever believed possible had happened. I looked exactly like Tina. Little eyes. Turned up nose. The mole on the back of my neck. The double chin. The clothes and hair were simply the icing on the cake. And now the handwriting and the homework. It was as though my mind was starting to work like Tina's too. I was already watching TV all day long like she always did. I decided to do a couple of experiments. In front of the mirror I cleared my mind as best I could. I blanked out everything that might otherwise have distracted me. Then as abruptly as I could, trying to startle even myself, I said, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain," as normally as I could. My voice was deeper than it had used to be, my accent common and crass. I sounded exactly like Tina always did! The next experiment. I sat down at the kitchen table with a pen and some paper. I cleared my mind the same. Then I thought about the TV shows I'd watched the night before, and as I did so I wrote down my name and address, my telephone number. I turned the paper over immediately without studying it. Then as carefully as I could on the second sheet I wrote out Tina's details: Her name, address and telephone number. I turned the first sheet over. They were exactly the same. So that was it. I was more Tina than Lucy, even in my mind. And now Max was coming to take "Lucy" away - my body and my mind - and I would be left with Tina's existence - her face and body, her accent, her personality, her hobbies... even her stupidity. For several moments the full horror of the switch hit me. I reeled, taking in the full significance of it all. Then all of that washed over me and away and I realised, curiously, that there was no horror at the thought of this. In many ways I'd always hated the pressure of my life before, the constant scrutiny and demands of conversation. I had longed to be able to turn away from all that, to watch TV if I wanted to, to stay in, to sit at the back, to not feel as though I had to excel at every piece of school work. And I realised Tina's failure to take advantage of her situation for what it was. I still believed that she could have chosen to be in with the crowd if she had wanted to. In a way she had the best of both worlds. She could be as sociable as she wanted without anyone expecting anything of her. She could do nothing and no-one's opinions of her would change. Sure that was because they were so low already, but I realised the beauty of just accepting that and being happy with it. I realised that maybe being Tina was preferable to being Lucy. And Max chose precisely that moment to arrive. He knocked and I opened the door, and he stood there with me gaping at him, taller to me now than he'd ever been as if I'd needed more evidence that I was a different person. I was afraid suddenly that he would laugh at the ridiculous clothes I was wearing now, at my new hairstyle, as though I were Lucy still. But he frowned. "You're Tina right," he said, frowning. I didn't move for a moment, holding myself back from the impulse to kiss him as I always did when we met. Then I nodded. "Yes. I'm Tina." "Is Lucy here?" he asked. Before I could answer a slender arm snaked in around his neck and down around his chest and Lucy appeared at his shoulder. She bit his ear, playing with it with her tongue, and then she brought his mouth round with the tips of her fingers and locked her lips to his. They kissed passionately in front of me, eyes closed. She lifted his shirt and forced her hand up inside it. He was completely lost in it. Then she opened her eyes, still kissing and looked at me. She pulled away. "What are you looking at Turnip?" I felt my face colour. "Nothing." "Get out of here Turnip," said Max, sneering, "go and play with your dolls or something." I backed up. Lucy came alongside Max. Then she reached very deliberately down the front of his jeans, her eyes fixed on me. "This is my boyfriend here," she said, coldly, "and I don't want you so much as looking at him anymore." Max laughed. "You're just a fat little geek who'd sooner win the Nobel Prize than get a boy to kiss you. And we all know how thick you are, don't we, Dippy?" Max burst out laughing and went outside. I backed up into the bedroom doorway. "Now get out of here Turnip," said Lucy, making to leave as well, "stop being a pervert. He's mine now. This is your life." She pointed to the TV, the dirty plates from the breakfasts I'd eaten. "Full of soap operas and fatty food and sexual fantasies about Prince Charmings that will never come and take you away. I hope you enjoy it." Lucy and Max left. They left me in Tina's life as Lucy had said, exactly as she had described it. I went outside and climbed the slope above the cabin (with difficulty) to sit in the thick grass and look out across the treetops and the valley. I couldn't work out whether Lucy had been sincere with her words of hate and disgust. She certainly had good reason to be with all I had said in the past. The words could, after all, have been mine. They probably were mine in the past. Or perhaps she was doing as she'd said she would, playing the part of the bullying, rude, bratty girl. I squinted through my glasses, self-conscious of the lesson that was being painfully pressed on top of me, my past deeds thrown up in my face to persuade me to change my ways. I waited for some change in the face of this revelation. I waited for me to be transformed back to my old self, to leave me free to chase after "Tina" and beg her forgiveness; turn over a brand new leaf at last. It didn't come. Ten minutes later I was still Tina. Lucy had well and truly left me behind in her old life and I realised quite painfully that perhaps this twist of fate wasn't a means of showing me the error of my ways but punishing me for them. This was my hell. I went back to the cabin. My parents were still out on some ramble or other. I had the place to myself at last. I stood for some minutes staring between the refrigerator and the television. Then I suddenly thought that maybe I should fight against this. It struck me that I was letting myself slip into Tina's old habits, into her life; that I didn't have to. I could be my own person if I wanted to be. I could do anything I wanted. I took a deep breath, trying to think what I really wanted. Food and television was my conclusion. I made myself a couple of bacon sandwiches and took a seat on the settee.