My Shallow Regret, Chapter 2 - Awakening free porn video

"Hi honey. We're headed out. There's fresh fruit on the table. Your bathing suit is hanging up on the deck. Don't forget about the barbecue tonight." My mother gave me a kiss on the forehead before closing the door to my bedroom and heading downstairs. I groggily rolled over underneath my oversized comforter and rubbed my eyes as I looked at my alarm clock. It was 7:30 in the morning. Did I really sleep all afternoon and night? And why was my mom being super-nice to me? And when the hell did I get a classic, gold double-bell alarm clock? Oh... shit. You know how in movies and TV shows, they'll show a character waking up slowly and then suddenly snapping up in bed because they're either late or something's horribly wrong? I'd always thought that was incredibly fake. No one really does that, right? Well, I just did. I snapped up and threw the comforter off my bed and immediately was hyper-aware of the fact that EVERYTHING was wrong. This wasn't my bed. This wasn't my room. And I'm starting to think that wasn't my mother. Actually, no, I'm pretty sure it was her. At least, it sounded like her, and from what I could tell from my half-opened eyes it looked like her. But then who the hell am I? I brushed the hair back from my eyes when it hit me that I had hair to brush back from my eyes. Hair that I brushed back with incredibly slender fingers, fingers with light-pink polish on the nails. That... that couldn't be good. I hopped out of bed and ran across the room to the silver, vintage full- length mirror in the corner -- a mirror that apparently materialized out of thin air overnight -- and what I saw staring back at me... well, it couldn't be. Could it? Reaching out to the mirror, it was clear that I was, well, whoever this is. And she -- yes, "SHE" -- was me. But that's impossible, right? It had to be. I backed away slowly from the mirror and turned to my bed. Only it wasn't my bed. MY bed was just a queen-sized box spring and a mattress stacked on the floor. This was a full-sized, cherry-finished hardwood bed with storage drawers, a complete cream satin bedding set and more throw pillows than I could count. I wanted to scream but I was hyperventilating too hard to get anything but breaths out of my lungs. I felt my chest constricting and I put my hand on it to try and calm me down, but that only made things so much worse. Instead of feeling my overweight man-boobs through a blue T- shirt, I instead felt the distinct feel of a woman's breasts beneath a thin baby blue camisole. My breathing quickened, then, before I could even contemplate my next move, it turned to retching. I didn't have to be an expert in female anatomy to know what was coming next. Despite my confusion, and fear, and more confusion, I ran out of my room and down the hall to the bathroom. I slammed the bathroom door shut, not worrying for a second that I might wake my sister, got on my knees and leaned over the toilet. At the last second, just before anything could come out, I instinctually grabbed my hair with my right hand and held it back, holding onto the seat with my left hand. I'd had some experience holding a girl's hair back as she vomited, just never when that girl was me. Oh, God... this girl is me. I'm... I'm a girl. And just like that... vomit. I actually looked down at the toilet to see what was there, and honestly there wasn't much. I don't think I physically needed to vomit, but doing so at least seemed to calm me down from my initial shock. I got up and flushed the toilet, then stepped over to the sink to wash my mouth and face. Doing so, I looked at myself again in the mirror. Hmmm... not bad. The thing that struck me the most -- you know, aside from being a completely different person than I was when I went to sleep -- was that I was thin. Not just "thinner", mind you. Hell, pretty much everyone was "thinner" than I was. No, this person, this body, whoever she was, was really thin. And pretty. Not like supermodel pretty or anything, but definitely someone I wouldn't kick out of bed. I just kept looking into her eyes and thinking "this has to be a dream, right? This can't be real." I mean, that's the only thing that makes sense. I'm just having a really vivid, really weird, sexually-confusing dream. And when I wake up from my nap, it'll just be Tuesday afternoon, and I'll go online and look for some apartments and I won't have boobs. Actually, looking in the mirror, I wasn't sure I really had "boobs" now. Well, I mean, it wasn't like they weren't there. They were just really small. Like smaller than any girl I've ever dated has had. Why the hell would I dream about a girl with small boobs, much less being one? This made no fucking sense at all. Then again, what if this wasn't a dream? What if I really got turned into a girl, a girl with smaller boobs than I had as a guy? Then what? OK, Andrew, just think. I closed my eyes and cupped my hands over my face, trying to concentrate. I just had to think of this like troubleshooting. Identify the problem: Well, assuming this isn't a dream, I seem to have become female overnight. Despite that being scientifically impossible. And completely illogical. Diagnose the cause: The cause? I don't know. This whole situation is fucked. This literally cannot be happening. But it is. And then I was hyperventilating again, because this was just too crazy to comprehend. I just needed to calm down and figure this out, right? Oh, God, I can't calm down. I'm panicking. I just... I just need to figure something out. I started looking around the room for anything to calm me down, anything that made sense at all, and it hit me. A shower. If I can't calm my mind, at least I can calm my body. A nice warm shower, and I'll feel so much better. I took off the camisole and immediately regretted my decision. I was still operating under the hypothesis that this is a dream, but if it wasn't, I didn't think I was ready to jump straight to full nudity. I slipped the camisole back on and made my way back to the bedroom. Just to the left of the door, there was a small desk with a white vanity chair. There was plenty of make-up, jewelry, a box of tissues, a stack of books and -- the thing I'd been looking for -- a pad of paper. I dug through the drawers to find a pen, and pulled out... of course... a pink one with some kind of fluffy, feathery thing on the end. Thankfully, the pink color of the plastic was just decorative; the ink itself is blue. So instead of panicking, it was time to get back to the troubleshooting process. Specifically, diagnosing the cause. Again, if this wasn't a dream, then how the hell did this happen. I grabbed the pad and just started writing down whatever came to mind. - Maybe someone cast a magic spell, turning me into a girl - But if so, who? And why? - And is magic real? If so, doesn't that have major worldwide implications? - OK, that's totally getting off track. And I don't know why I'm writing it down. Or this, for that matter. - I could be in a coma. Which would make this a kind of dream. And that's back to the dream theory. - Did I get caught up in some kind of government nano-technology experiment? - Maybe there was some kind of gender-altering sauce in my sandwich yesterday? - Someone could have gone back in time and changed the circumstances of my conception, resulting in me being born female. Hell, maybe I went back in time and don't remember it. - I could be in an alternate dimension, where everyone is the opposite gender from their regular dimension. - Or maybe I just switched minds with an alternate dimension version of me. - Or what if I've always been like this, but somehow have the memories of a male version of me? - Oh, God, what if I've just had a mental breakdown, and I just think I used to be a man? - Or what if I'm still a man, but I've had a mental breakdown and I just think I'm now a girl? I started to hyperventilate again, and I looked down at my list. The handwriting. It wasn't mine. It was... whoever this body was. It was cursive, and light, and legible, and had "i"s dotted with little hearts and... WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING?! I threw the pad across the room, dropped the pen, and just broke down and started crying. I think the last time I cried was after we lost our last football game my senior year in high school, but this felt totally different from that. This cry felt, well, it almost felt good. Something inside called out to me. Just let it out. No, dammit. You're not... this crying, sad little girl. You're Andrew Carlysle, dammit, and you're going to figure this out. I walked across the room to pick up the pad. Looking at what I'd written, everything still seemed impossible. But, it was like that old line from Sherlock Holmes. "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." The truth? The truth was this situation is crazy. And I couldn't tell anyone about it, because they're going to think I'm crazy, and they're going to put me in a padded cell for crazy people and then I'll never figure this out and I'll never be able to fix it and I'll die a crazy old lady who tells people she used to be a man. So I've really only got one option at this point: figure out who the hell I am and pretend to be her for as long as it takes me to figure out just what the hell happened, why it happened, how it happened and how to change it back, if it can even be changed back. I picked up my pen and flipped to the next page on the pad, and drew a quick grid on the page, writing the words "What", "Why", "How" and "Fix" on the top of each quadrant. If this... this whatever the hell this is is going to drag on, then I'm going to need to take notes as it does. I was also going to need to figure out who I was, starting with my name. Fortunately, there was an easy way to do that. I thought. I hoped, at least. I opened up the drawer of my bedside table, and inside was my iPhone. Well, AN iPhone. A 3GS to be specific. Great, whoever I was now was two years behind on iPhone technology. That's awesome. I also had 13 unread text messages and two missed calls, and it was only... 9:45 a.m.?! Did I really spend more than two hours freaking out and puking and crying and trying to figure this out? It honestly hadn't felt like more than a few minutes. Well, I guess time flies when you're living a Kafka-esque nightmare. Then again, was it a nightmare? I mean, sure, my gender was completely different, and my whole life had been turned upside down, but was that such a bad thing? I mean, what was I really giving up? I got up, tossing the phone aside on the bed, and walked back over to the mirror, to really get a good look at myself this time. OK, let's take stock of this. I started touching myself from head to toe as I took a physical inventory of all the changes. Touching the top of my head, I was clearly shorter than I'd been. Way shorter. The mirror looked to be about a 6-foot tall mirror, and I didn't come close to the top of it. My hair, as I ran my hands through it, was slightly longer than shoulder length and black, like my dad's. As a guy, I'd inherited my mom's blonde hair, so it was weird that of all things that would get reversed. It was kind of wavy too, but for all I knew that could have come from a salon and not been natural. My eyes were still blue, though the color stood out a lot more in contrast with my black hair and my fair skin. God, my skin was flawless. Like, not a blemish to be found anywhere. I ran my hand over my cheek and it was just so soft and smooth. My nose looked, well, like a nose. Like literally everything else about me, it was way thinner. It was funny, even before I got really fat, I'd always thought I'd had a fat nose, so it was kind of weird to see this one in the mirror. It was perfectly positioned above my bow-shaped lips. They had a natural pinkish hue to them, to the point that I touched my lower lip to make sure I wasn't wearing lip gloss. Nope, they just looked like that. "Great," I said, sarcastically. It was the first time I'd said anything out loud all morning, and the high-pitched sound of my voice caught me a bit off guard. Given my appearance, the sound should've been what I was expecting - it wasn't like my voice was super squeaky or unnaturally low; it was a girl's voice. Coming from a girl's body. Nothing abnormal about that, right? I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths to get myself re-centered, then resumed the visual examination. As I'd discovered earlier, my breasts were small. I was sure I could have dug around the room to find a bra to get an exact size, but just holding them in my hands, I would've estimated about an A cup, if that. Well, at least I no longer had bigger boobs than my sister. Of course, if I am still 25, then how embarrassing is it that my 16-year-old sister has bigger boobs than me? I had to stop focusing on my boobs, which I was finding hard to do, since... well, you know... boobs. But I moved on and lifted up my camisole to get a good look at the rest of my upper body. And, wow, it was impressive. Completely flat, good muscle tone... whoever this girl was, she kept in shape. I started to look more closely at my arms, which looked like twigs compared to the giant, flabby, hairy ape arms I used to have. Everything was trim, with lean muscle. There were no bulky biceps, no thick shoulders, nothing. Speaking of nothing... I looked down below my waist, to a pair of pink, boy-cut panties. Is this really what I slept in, I wondered, looking at the outfit in the mirror. The shortness of the panties really accentuated the length of my legs, which, like my face had perfectly smooth skin. I started running my hands down my right leg, when I realized I was touching my foot with ease. I looked in the mirror at the position I'd contorted myself into. I should've been in pain, or at the very least straining, but I barely felt anything at all. I kept reaching down, and I was able to put my hands all the way behind my feet, though I practically had to tuck my head between my legs to do so. As I did, I was able to catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror on the desk across the room, and my ass looked amazing. It was small, perfectly rounded, and incredibly tight. There wasn't a single extra ounce of fat on this body. I returned to a normal position, and then stretched my arms up as far as they would go. Amazingly, I didn't feel a single pop in either shoulder, something that wouldn't have been close to true a day ago. I did a couple of neck rolls. Nothing. No pops, no cracks. It's like years of football injuries and weight stress had just been washed away. I giggled a little bit -- yeah, I actually giggled -- at the thought of this being some kind of cosmic cure-all. It wasn't until I'd been stretching for a couple of minutes that I realized I'd totally forgotten my primary objective: figure out who I was. I grabbed my phone off the bed and opened up the contacts application. Holy shit, there were a lot of contacts on the phone, and most of them just had first names. I figured it'd be easier to search for my last name, and I was right. Only one name came up: Alana Carlysle. That... that couldn't be right. That's my sister's name. And though I may not know exactly who I was, it was pretty clear from the reflection in the mirror that I hadn't magically ended up in my sister's body. So how was I now Alana? I thought I'd have time to investigate, but before I could go any further, a text message popped up from "Gwen." "Running a little late. Can we push back the gym session to 11?" Well, I knew I'd have to face this eventually. I couldn't spend the rest of my life in this bedroom. I was going to have to go out like... this. OK, not like "this", per se. I'd have to put on some actual clothes. But I couldn't avoid living life, no matter how confused or frightened I was. So I texted her back. "Sure thing. See you then." Shit. What the hell did I just get myself into? OK, I was going to the gym, which -- based on my physique -- is something I probably did often, which meant... I interrupted my own thoughts to head over to the closet. I opened the door and there on the floor was exactly what I was expecting: a gym bag. I opened it up and everything I needed was there: a t-shirt, shorts, socks, running sneakers and, oh yeah, a sports bra. I picked up the shorts and was immediately struck by how tiny they were. It shouldn't have surprised me, but I wasn't even sure these things would've covered my foot yesterday. At least they were black and not some outlandishly girly color. Ditto for the T-shirt, which was gray and had "NYU Athletics" in purple across the front. Hmm... that could've been a clue. Or, it could've just been a T-shirt. Either way, it was something for me to look into later, because for now, if I was going to go to the gym, I was going to need to take a shower first. I was not particularly looking forward to it, but I'd much rather do it in the privacy of my own home, rather than a public locker room. ***** I stepped out of the shower, turned off the water and immediately grabbed a towel to cover myself. It felt weird to be overly modest when there was no one else around, but in some way I felt like I would be doing something wrong by prancing around nude in a body that wasn't really mine. Not quite as wrong as sitting down to pee -- which I'd done before taking the shower -- but still wrong in some way. I dried myself off as quickly as possible, though it was immediately clear to me that my old method of just running the towel over my hair once or twice wasn't going to cut it. With a new, dry towel wrapped around my body, I opened up the cabinet under the sink and found a hair dryer. The last time I used one of these was, well, actually it was about a week ago. But that was to try and dry out a water-soaked hard drive. This was different, and I knew there was no way I was going to do it without completely screwing up my hair and making it completely obvious that I wasn't who I was. So I decided to dry it as lightly as possible, and then just pull my hair back into a tight ponytail, which would be perfect since I was going to work out anyway. I grabbed the purple scrunchee that was sitting on the counter and wrapped it tight around my hair at the base of my neck. Looking in the mirror, it wasn't perfect; there were plenty of loose strands falling around my face, but it would do for now. I put the hair dryer back in the cabinet, and noticed something leaned up along the wall: a scale. I decided to pull it out and weigh myself, just to get a sense of exactly what I was dealing with. I placed it on the floor and gave it a second to settle into place before stepping on. It was one of those fancy digital scales with BMI measurements and memory and all that. I stepped on, and after a second the readout appeared: 103.3 pounds. 16.2 BMI. +0.1 pounds. 103 pounds? That's... hell, I didn't think I'd been 103 pounds since I was in elementary school. But I felt great. I went back to my room, dropped the towel and started putting on my gym clothes, when I realized there was no underwear in the bag. I looked at the shorts, and held them up. They were pretty short, and looked like they'd be pretty tight. There was a second layer in the crotch. Did that mean I was supposed to wear them without underwear? I slid them on, and once they were in place, it was pretty clear that I was doing it right. They were skin tight, and any underwear I wore underneath would just have bunched up. I still didn't feel right just wearing these shorts, possibly because of how short they were. I was showing a lot of leg. I slid on the sports bra, which fit snuggly over my small breasts -- which probably wouldn't have had too much bounce during a workout anyway -- and then tossed the T-shirt on over it. I gave myself a quick glance in the mirror but didn't linger too long. I felt strange and uncomfortable looking at this girl who wasn't me, then I realized how much more strange and uncomfortable it'd be having other people look at me. I considered texting Gwen back and telling her I was bailing, but I'd already agreed to meet her at the gym and I didn't want to raise suspicions this early. The more non-Alana-like I acted, the more people would start probing and the more likely it would be that I ended up in a padded room somewhere, which wasn't going to get this situation resolved at all. So I decided to suck it up, put on my socks and shoes, and headed down to the kitchen to grab my keys and make my way out into the world. I got about halfway down the stairs when it hit me -- I have no idea where I'm going. "The" gym? What is this, a movie, where I can walk into a bar and order "a beer"? I didn't want to ask Gwen "which" gym, so I knew I was going to have to figure it out myself. And quickly, if I didn't want to be late. When I got down to the bottom of the stairs, I immediately saw something that might help: a purse. A small, unmistakable Coach handbag with a slim shoulder strap. It didn't seem like the kind of thing my mom would have, and was probably too expensive to be something a younger sister would have. So it had to be mine. I'd seen plenty of bags like this helping customers at the bar, usually carried by some stuck-up 20-something who'd gotten her iPhone wet spilling what she said was "wine" but by the smell of it was cheap beer. Was I one of these girls now? A self-absorbed, entitled bitch? God, I hope not. That'd almost be worse than losing my dick. Almost. I opened the purse and fished out the matching wallet inside. Staring right at me was my driver's license and it confirmed what I'd learned earlier from the phone. I was -- or at least this body was -- Alana Carlysle. Except in this picture, I was a blonde. And kind of frowny. But what do you expect from a driver's license photo? Everything else checked out. Date of birth was the same. Address was the same. That little organ donor heart was there. Blue eyes. Height: 67 inches. That's different. So down from 6-foot-3 to... I hesitated as I did the math... 5-foot-7?! I thought from looking in the mirror earlier that I'd lost a few inches, but I was hoping that I was wrong. I wasn't. I couldn't be 5-foot-7, could I? I think that's actually tall for a girl, but it made me feel like a midget. I hadn't been less than six feet since I was 14 years old, and now I wouldn't hit that mark even in three-inch heels - which I saw plenty of in my closet. Staring at my license and lamenting my shortness wasn't helping, so I started rifling through the other contents of the wallet. I had half a dozen credit cards, not even counting the ones to specific stores -- I didn't even realize Abercrombie had its own credit card -- a Starbucks loyalty card, a library card and... ta-da! A temporary membership card at New York Sports Club. So at least I knew where I was going now. I tossed the wallet back into the purse, flung it over my shoulder and headed into the kitchen. My mom wasn't lying; there was fresh fruit on the table. Apples, oranges, bananas... quite a change of pace from an oversized bowl of Fruity Pebbles. I grabbed a banana, and a bottle of water from the fridge -- which, shockingly, had no soda in it at all -- then grabbed my keys out of the dish by the back door. It was kind of refreshing to come across something that hadn't changed. We'd been using that same key dish in that same spot ever since we'd moved into this house, and even better, my keys had that trademark Dodge logo. As I headed outside, I thought to myself that things were starting to look up. ***** "Oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me." I said the words out loud as a knee-jerk reaction, but the sound of my new voice only added to my indignities, the latest of which was staring me in the face. Instead of my black Hemi-powered Dodge Charger with black-and-red interior, the car sitting in the driveway was a Dodge Neon. An old Dodge Neon. An old, purple Dodge Neon. Well, technically "deep amethyst", if I'm remembering the official color names right, but anyone seeing the car for the first time would call it purple. So great, not only am I a girl, I'm a girl who drives a 12-year-old purple car. With tiny ballet slippers hanging from the rearview mirror. Once again I got the urge to go back inside and crawl back in bed and stay there for the rest of my unnatural existence, but I couldn't let something as trivial as a different car be the thing that deterred me from figuring this out. And on some level this actually made sense. The Neon WAS my car in high school -- though mine was black, not amethyst -- so apparently in this reality I just hadn't bought a new car since then. I'm sure there was a valid reason for it; I just had to figure it out. Like everything else. That list of "everything else" was getting longer by the second. I looked around our backyard and things were quite different. Our deck -- once a simple, flat construction of wood boards over the grass -- was now an impressive multi-level structure with fancy patio furniture and a high-tech grill. As for why the deck was two levels? Well, the top led to a platform attached to an outdoor pool, an addition my mom and sister had always wanted, but my dad was opposed to and I was indifferent about. At that moment, staring at that rectangular pool with its blue outer wall and white trim, my mother's words from this morning rang in my ears. "Your bathing suit is hanging up on the deck." I walked up the stairs to the platform by the pool and saw a rack against the far wall. Hanging on the rack were a towel and two bathing suits. I immediately knew from the relative size that the blue-and-black one piece wasn't mine. It was far too big for this stick of a body. Which meant only one thing: my bathing suit -- if you could call it that -- was the tiny, two-piece American flag string bikini hanging from the top bar. It certainly was appropriate for the holiday, but I had no intention of parading myself around at the block party/barbeque "wearing" that. I knew that all the guys at the party would be checking me out, making inappropriate passes. Until this morning, I'd been one of those guys, planning to do exactly that. Then again, I thought, as I looked down at what I was wearing to the gym, I wasn't exactly dressed like the queen of modesty at the moment anyway. I picked up the bikini top by one of the strings and held it up against my body. It was small, and certainly revealing, but if that's what I was planning on wearing before this happened, then that's what I'd have to do. "No padded room," I kept repeating to myself in my head. I just had to keep doing what seemed and felt natural, so as to not draw unnecessary attention to myself. I tossed the top back on the rack, walked back down the stairs and got in my painfully old, painfully purple car, and tossed my purse on the passenger seat. Starting up the car, I was instantly greeted by the underpowered clunking of a four-cylinder engine, which was quickly drowned out by the sounds of Kiss 95.7 on the radio. Sure, I couldn't stand that it was an annoying song by Flo Rida, but at least it was a radio station that was on the presets in my car too, which meant not everything was totally different. I checked the mirrors, buckled up and backed out of the driveway. The 10-minute drive to the gym was wholly uneventful, to the point that after a couple minutes I'd almost forgotten about my predicament. It was a bit of that highway hypnosis, minus the highway. I just kind of lost myself in my normal thoughts and the mediocre top 40 music. It wasn't until I parked in the garage that the newness of my reality hit me again. As I got out of the car, I had to remind myself to grab my purse. I stretched over the driver's seat to the passenger seat and heard a whistling behind me. I realized that bent over like this, I was exposing my legs and my ass to anyone passing by. I quickly snatched the purse off the seat, stood up, turned around and slammed the door behind me. There was a group of high schoolers hanging out by the entrance. I was sure that's where the whistle came from, and I didn't have any choice but to walk past them to get to the gym. There were only three of them, and they looked like... well, probably about like I did hanging out with my friends in high school. I didn't know if they were football players or not, but they sure had that look about them. There was a tall, quarterback-type, wearing an Abercrombie T-shirt and jeans that were probably too hot for this weather, but he didn't care. The little guy of the group had on a throwback Knicks jersey and baggy cargo shorts, and the fat guy -- the one I would've been -- was wearing an oversized black T-shirt that went about down to his knees, in a feeble attempt to hide his expanding gut. They were definitely looking in my direction and whispering too each other. I fully expected to be harassed as I walked by, but instead, something weird happened. Nothing. Sure, they stopped whispering when I walked by, and started up again as soon as I was past them, but they didn't say a word to my face. Did they get a glimpse of me up close and suddenly decide I wasn't hot enough to hit on? It's because I have small boobs, isn't it? Wait... no, that's not... they probably weren't even talking about me at all. I just needed to stop thinking about them and focus on me. And Gwen. Who I was supposed to be meeting but I had no idea who she was or what she looked like. I walked in the doors of the gym and started scanning the place for possible Gwens. It was a big gym with tons of cardio equipment, plenty of weight-training machines and multiple class areas, but it was only moderately filled this morning, which wasn't too surprising for a mid- week holiday. Still, there were people on most of the machines, and I certainly couldn't go up to each of them and be like, "Hi, are you Gwen, the friend I'm supposed to be meeting here." That'd put me on the fast- track to crazy town. So, instead, I stood there for what felt like forever but was probably only a minute, when a woman emerged from the locker room. She immediately spotted me and started waving. Could this be Gwen? She definitely wasn't what I was expecting. First of all, she was black. Not that I didn't expect to have only white friends, I just kind of associated the name "Gwen" with bubbly blondes with skinny bodies and bland personalities. I guess that's the Spider-Man fan in me though. This Gwen was short, curvy, and most definitely not bland. "Hey, girl," she yelled across the gym. "Thanks SO much for moving this back." I walked over to her, as she started stretching to get ready for her workout. I had to stop myself from checking out her Kardashian-like ass, which was beautifully framed by her blue capri-length workout pants. As she turned around and leaned forward in her loose workout T-shirt, I could see her red sports bra barely containing her ample breasts. I couldn't keep staring like this, so I looked towards the ceiling and pretended like I was doing neck rolls. "Yeah, no problem," I said, still averting my eyes as much as possible. "Cool, let's grab those open treadmills," she said, pointing over to two side-by-side machines that weren't being used. I let out a sigh of relief, knowing that if we were running side-by-side, I'd be less likely to be caught in an accidental stare. I hung my purse over the console of the treadmill on the right and Gwen stepped on to the treadmill on my left. She punched a few buttons then started walking on the machine at a relatively slow pace. It hit me then that Gwen was probably less interested in really working out, and more interested in gossiping. The former part was fine with me -- I wasn't particularly ready to test the limits of this body -- but I knew the latter could trip me up. "So how are things with Aiden," she asked, immediately putting me at a disadvantage. "Oh, you know... same as always," I said, evading the question as best as possible. I started up my own treadmill and started walking at a casual three-mile-per-hour pace. It was faster than Gwen was going, and certainly faster than I'd walk in my normal body, but I was sure for Alana-me, this wouldn't even cause me to break a sweat. Still, it was a good starting point for my plan, which was to ramp up the speed, force Gwen to keep up, and hopefully cut down on the chit-chat. Though, admittedly, the plan wasn't off to a great start. "Really," she asked, incredulously. "Even though he's in L.A. and you're here?" Shit. OK, I had to think quickly to get out of this. I immediately started running through every crappy rom-com I'd ever seen to think something to steer the conversation in a different direction. "Hey, it's just us girls here, let's not ruin it with talk about boys," I said, probably sounding way more like a 13-year-old than I'd intended. "That bad, huh," she responded. I turned up the speed on my treadmill a little bit, hoping maybe I could just run my way out of here. It was becoming clear to me I wasn't getting out of this girl talk quite so easily, and I had little-to-no experience in girl-talking (if that was even a thing). Then, at just the exact right moment, fate -- in the form of Kelly Clarkson -- intervened. "MY LIFE... WOULD SUCK... WITHOUT YOU..." The sound of the old No. 1 hit came blaring out of my purse. As the line repeated, I realized it wasn't my iPhone accidentally playing music, it was my iPhone ringing. God, what a cheesy ringtone. I reached into the purse and grabbed the phone, and... speak of the devil. It was Aiden, who apparently not only had a treacly custom ringtone, but an incoming call picture of the two of us making kissy faces at the camera. I wanted to puke, but instead I held the phone up to Gwen so she could see who was calling. "See... fine. I told you," I said, before answering the phone. "Hey Aiden," I said, trying not to let on that I had no idea who he was. "Hey babe, just woke up and saw you hadn't answered my text from last night. Is everything alright?" He sounded legitimately concerned, and had a bit of an Australian accent in his voice. I'd always been a sucker for an Aussie accent, but that was when it was coming out of someone who looked like Nicole Kidman, not someone who looked like Hugh Jackman's boy-band-fronting son. "Yeah, I just had a crazy morning," I said. What? It was true! "Hey, I'm at the gym with Gwen. Can I call you back later?" "Yeah, sure thing. Just wanted to make sure everything was okay. I love you." "Luv ya too," I said, sounding way more like I was saying it to a brother than a boyfriend. I quickly hung up the phone and put it on the reading platform attached to the treadmill, and then turned to Gwen. "See, same as always," I said, not remotely believing it myself. "Whatever you say, girl. I just know long distance never works out, and he's gonna have all kinds of Hollywood booty throwing itself at him out there." "Can we PLEASE talk about something else," I begged. "See," she said. "You KNOW I'm right." I turned up the treadmill a little more. At this point I was up to 5 miles per hour, at which point I could at least say I was jogging and not walking. Gwen had no interest in keeping up the workout, but plenty in keeping up the conversation. "You know you could have almost any man in this town, right?" "Almost," I asked, as that was somehow the part of the conversation that caught my attention. "Some men like curves," she said, moving her right hand around her exaggerated hourglass figure to emphasize her point. "What do you weigh these days? 105?" "103," I said. "103?! And you're still coming to the gym every day?" "Hey, you're the one who asked me to come today," I said, not realizing that it was entirely possible that it wasn't true. "Fine, fine, whatever," she said, dismissively. "Just promise me you'll eat a burger at the party tonight." I immediately thought back to the bikini, which would fully expose almost every inch of my body. I couldn't imagine how I'd look in that after my normal barbeque fare of three burgers, three hot dogs, multiple plates of potato salad, a few beers, then a couple more hot dogs to top it off. I got the mental image of my normal body wearing that string bikini, and immediately wished I hadn't. "Maybe. But only one," I said. I was pretty sure this Alana Carlysle wasn't a big binge eater, so I couldn't exactly start pigging out now without raising serious suspicions. My phone chimed, alerting me to a new incoming text message. It was a picture message from Aiden, making the "I love you" sign in sign language. OK, clearly no matter what Gwen though, this guy and I were not having any problems, especially since of the 13 unread texts I'd had this morning, nine were from him. I scrolled through the rest of them. One was from someone named Hannah, asking if I was going to be at the barbeque, one was from Victoria asking if I missed New York yet, and the last two were from Monica. Wait, Mark's Monica? It couldn't be, could it? I opened up the conversation and saw the two new messages. "I finally ended it with Bryce." "So wanna hit the bars this weekend?" Scrolling up on the conversation, I saw most of it was about this Bryce guy. I'd been advising her to break up with him because, and I quote, "you can do so much better." As someone who had been on the other side of the "I can do better" breakup, that stung a bit. I scrolled up more and didn't see any reference to Mark, making me wonder if this was in fact the same Monica. I got to the top of the page and hit the "Contact" button. The card that came up had Monica's picture. It was definitely her. So why wasn't she with Mark? And what did this mean for MY relationship with Mark. Did I even have one? There were two different Marks in my contacts application, but neither of them was my best friend Mark. There was Mark S. with a Brooklyn address and a Manhattan phone number, and Mark J. who had a Manhattan address and a California phone number. But no Mark Holloway from Connecticut. In my life, I'd known Mark since we were kids and we were inseparable in high school. High school! It just hit me, that's where I recognized Gwen from. She was a senior when I was a sophomore, and she briefly dated Zach, one of our wide receivers. I never really knew her because Zach and I ran in different circles, and they broke up early in the season anyway, but she was definitely there. Apparently she was more interested in getting to know Alana Carlysle than Andrew Carlysle. Or maybe Alana was just more interesting than Andrew was. Or is. Or... now I was confused again. I looked back down at my phone and made a mental note to follow up on the Mark thing and texted Monica back with a "Maybe." "Hey, an elliptical just opened up," Gwen said to me. "I'm gonna head over there. You good here?" I realized I'd been neglecting Gwen, who clearly just wanted to have a conversation with me, but it was probably for the best. I couldn't really keep up a conversation with someone who knew more about me than me. At least not a coherent one. So I let her go off, slowed down the treadmill and started going through my phone. It was 2012. You could learn everything about someone just through their phone, especially if they had Facebook. And everyone has Facebook. Thankfully, that included me. I launched the Facebook app on my phone and went straight to Alana's profile page. The profile picture looked almost professional, and the cover photo appeared to be Alana dancing on stage. Which would've been confusing, except the job field said "Dancer." And the education section revealed I had both a B.A. and an MFA in Dance from NYU. Which explained both the T-shirt I was wearing and all the contacts from New York. My "Friends" list was massive. There must have been 40 or 50 people in the "A" section alone. I thought about scrolling to find Mark, but the photos were much more revealing. No, not in that way. Well... some of them in that way. But there were tons of photos from dance performances, going back almost a decade. It looked like I was pretty serious about this. I looked down at my own new body. "Duh," I thought. Who else keeps in shape like this but someone who is on display constantly? Eww... no, not like that. "Dancer", not "stripper." Besides, I didn't have the boobs to be a stripper. I kept scrolling through the photos and saw an album I certainly wasn't expecting. "NYCC 2011." I mean "I" was a comic book fan, and I was at that convention, but I certainly didn't expect that Alana-me was. I opened the album and was stunned to discover another surprise about me. I wasn't just a dancer, I was a cos-player. A pretty impressive one too, if this picture of me as Dark Phoenix was to be believed. I kept flicking through the pictures, all of which were OF me, rather than BY me. It was the complete opposite of my photo album from the show. And it pissed me off. Then I got even more pissed off when I noticed the watermark on the photos. Alana wasn't a cosplayer, she was a hired model. For a brief moment I thought I'd found some common interest between me and this new version of me, but that was quickly washed away. Otherwise, my Facebook exploration was actually incredibly enlightening, as I filled in the gaps of my life. I'd apparently been living in New York for the last four years, as an NYU student. Two years as an undergrad after transferring from the Hartt School of Music, and then two years as a grad student. I'd been part of a handful of professional dance performances, including an off-off-off broadway production of Chicago. And during the 2009-10 school year/basketball season I was one of the Knicks City Dancers. And yet it was my most recent post that intrigued me the most. "On to the next phase of my life. It's been fun New York. No other road. No other way. No day but today." That was posted last week. Part of me was amazed that I'd gone an entire week without posting on Facebook, but the more concerning thing was what that post meant. That mystery would have to wait though, as Gwen was back from the elliptical. I looked down at my phone and realized I'd been going on the treadmill for a full 45 minutes, and hadn't even broken a sweat. God, being thin was so different from being a fat slob. Yesterday I would've been sweating just getting up on this thing. I turned it off and hopped off, grabbing my purse and making my way to the door. "Umm... aren't you going to shower," Gwen asked. "I just figured I'd do it at home," I said. "But what about lunch," she asked, making her way closer to the locker room. "I... umm..." I hesitated, not knowing how to respond. "I forgot my gym bag at home, so I don't have any clothes to change into." "I thought you left an outfit in your locker the other day." Shit, she had me. Well, I guess I was showering. In the girls' locker room. As a girl. I followed her in and headed straight to the shower area. Fortunately, this gym had individual stalls, and not just a communal shower, which was nice. I was worried it was going to be a football locker room all over again, and I wasn't even close to ready to show off my naked body or see other naked bodies, as nice as that latter benefit would be. I grabbed a towel off the rack, hung my purse up on one of the hooks and started undressing. Quickly. Gwen was still getting stuff out of her locker, so I did my best to get into the shower stall before she came over. The sound of a locker door closing let me know I had to hurry up, so I just tossed my T-shirt in a pile and jumped into the shower stall, closing the curtain and starting the water with my sports bra still on. I didn't really care, I just didn't want to be seen. With my privacy intact, I peeled off the bra, tossed it over the curtain, and just let the water run over me. "Hey, so I was thinking either Bar Taco or Umi Sushi," Gwen said over the soothing sound of the water. "Which sounds better to you?" I honestly had never eaten at either of them, and kind of just wanted to suggest McDonald's, but that didn't seem like the type of place Alana preferred. I didn't know what she actually preferred, but I knew Andrew wasn't a fan of raw fish, so the choice was easy. "Bar Taco sounds good," I said, pumping some soap from the dispenser on the wall and running it over my arms. I still felt incredibly awkward touching my own body, like I was violating someone. I moved from my arms to my chest as nervously as possibly. I'd only showered with a girlfriend a couple times, but that was sensual. It was... incredible. This was "incredible" in the book definition of the word. As in "not credible", "not believable." I wasn't rubbing soap on some other girl's breasts, I was rubbing it on mine. My mind kept darting back and forth between "ohh... this is so sexy" and "eww... this is so icky." The only thing that kept my mind off the icky sexiness of the whole situation was my continued fascination with my flexibility. Washing my legs had always been something that just kind of happened via the natural gravitational flow of water. But in this body I could actually reach down and rub my legs with soap. I could clean between my toes without the help of a handheld shower head. It was kind of awesome. Gwen had started to wash her hair, which was my cue to end my shower and dry off quickly. I quickly rinsed myself off, turned off the faucet and reached over the shower curtain to grab the towel. After I was sufficiently dry, I wrapped the towel around my torso, collected my clothes from the floor, and my purse from the towel hook. I grabbed another towel from the rack for my hair, and headed back into the main locker area. Dumping my stuff on one of the benches, I started looking around at the lockers, hopeful I'd find a clue as to which one was mine. They were all numbered, but there were no names or other identifying markers on them. I sat down, making sure to cross my legs and not give anyone who might come in an unexpected show, and reached into my purse to grab my wallet. Pulling out the temporary membership card, my hunch was right. There was a locker number and lock combination written on the back, so I made my way over to locker number 238. 6 right, 23 left, 12 right, and it was open. Oh, hell no. There were clothes in there, but they certainly weren't clothes I was interested in wearing. A backless red halter top, a black denim skirt and calf-high leather boots with a two-inch heel. And a thong. A black lace thong. Which I was holding up and examining when Gwen came up from behind me and snatched it out of my hands. "I was looking for that," she said. "I guess it got mixed up with your stuff." Another relieved feeling came over me. I wasn't at all interested in stuffing a thong up my ass crack. Gwen, on the other hand, had no such qualms as she slid it up her legs and under the towel wrapped around her body. She dropped her towel and grabbed a bra out of her locker, putting it on impressively fast. She then grabbed the rest of her clothes out of her locker and dropped them on the bench. "So are you gonna get dressed or just stare at my fine curves?" Oh, shit. I was just staring at her curves. My eyes got wide with embarrassment and she started laughing. "Girl, you know you're jealous of my jelly." "Yep, that's it," I said, with a nervous laugh. "I wish I had your boobs." She cupped them and said "You wouldn't even begin to know what to do with these" before covering them up with a button-down purple top. Well "covering them up" wasn't quite accurate, since she left the top three buttons open. But looking that the shirt it's clear that's how it was supposed to be worn. And looking at my shirt, it was clear that it was supposed to be worn like any backless halter: with my back fully on display. Well, at least it's my back and not my front. I slid it over my head and pulled it into place. Then I looked at the skirt. I thought about sliding it on, but then I realized I'd be going commando. I dug around the locker for underwear but didn't see any. It wasn't until I moved the boots out of the way that I figured out what was going on. I'd stuffed my panties and socks in the left boot. They were simple white satin panties and white cotton ankle socks, which wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been. The socks and underwear were easy to get on. The skirt was too, even if it was a little tighter and shorter than I would've liked. The boots were a bit of an adventure, since I didn't realize at first that I had to unzip them, then put them on, then zip up the calf. I'd always just worn sneakers that I left tied and treated like slip-ons. I couldn't do that with these. Gwen worked on her makeup in the mirror, while I just got used to walking around in these heels. The weird thing was that as long as I didn't think about it, I was fine. Just let the muscle memory handle things. I'd obviously have to be careful with curbs and grates, but it wasn't like I was wobbling around like a drunken sorority chick. I pulled a tube of lipstick out of my purse -- it was pink, matching my nails, and decided to put a little bit on. It wasn't weird; I was just keeping up appearances. Gwen and I both gave ourselves one last look in the mirror, then closed up our lockers and headed out. I didn't really want to go to this lunch, but there was no turning back now, right? ***** "Ok, I'll see you tonight." Gwen said her goodbyes with a kiss on the cheek, and then walked in the opposite direction from where I was parked. Our lunch had been surprisingly uneventful. I ordered a salad and let Gwen do most of the talking, and I found out quickly that she liked to talk. My experience working in a customer service job had taught me many things, most of which were useless in day-to-day life. But one tip I did pick up was how to "direct" a conversation, specifically to avoid personal questions. I didn't like talking about my personal life, particularly with old, computer-illiterate people I barely knew, so I'd answer their questions with general statements that didn't really answer anything then quickly follow up with a question or observation of my own. When you talk with enough people, you find that most of them really just want to talk about themselves. Gwen was no exception. Most of the time, she didn't really press me for more details, and my vague answers were fine. But there was one time she surprised me. Or rather, I surprised myself. She had been talking about something... I honestly don't know what, because my mind was wandering as I was picking at my salad. She casually asked if I was going to see Aiden any time soon. Before stuffing a piece of lettuce in my mouth I said, "Yeah, I'm flying out Sunday so we can meet up for a couple days." It wasn't something I said to throw her off or stop her from asking or placate her. I said it reflexively, like I knew it. And as it left my lips -- my pink, glossy lips -- I knew it was true. Only I had no idea how I knew it. I spent most of the rest of the lunch ignoring whatever Gwen was talking about and trying to access more of Alana's memories. Were they buried inside me? If so, it seemed like they were only accessible at a subconscious, or even unconscious, level. As scary as it was having this set of memories I couldn't access, the scarier thing was the possibility that they might surface and push my own out. What would happen to me then? Would Andrew just cease to exist and I would go on living life as Alana, with this day or however long it takes being nothing but a weird dream. Compared to that, dealing with having to wear a bikini at the block party tonight was nothing. Nor was having to deal with walking past the Abercrombie T-shirt-wearing high school guy, who was still hanging out by the garage. His buddies weren't with him anymore, but he was just sort of loitering. As soon as he saw me approaching, he perked up. Great, I'm sure this was going to be fun. "Hey, you're Lexi's sister, right," he asked. I kept walking past him to my car, but he followed me. And for the first time, a thought crossed my mind: what if I'm not safe? Up until a day ago, I'd never worried about people messing with me, because, well, I was a mountain of a man. But I wasn't that anymore. I was a pixie stick of a girl, who was apparently in great shape and trained as a dancer, but I wasn't sure how that was going to help me if this guy wanted to do something to me. Then again, maybe I was just overreacting. "Hey, look, I'm sorry about before," he said. "My friends are... well, they're idiots." I stopped and turned to give him a shot. Standing face-to-face with him, I realized just how not "face-to-face" we were. He was definitely taller than me -- even Andrew-me -- and my heels barely helped. "So why are they your friends," I asked him. I didn't care, but it just seemed like the thing to say. "Well, we're teammates," he said. "Northwest basketball. I go to school with Lexi. You're her sister, right?" "That depends," I said. I honestly didn't know if I was "Lexi"'s sister, and I didn't know what he wanted, so I tried to remain as noncommittal as possible. "Well, I was just hoping maybe she'd talked to you about me. Ryan James?" "And if she had, I'm just supposed to spill to you, some guy hanging out in a garage?" "I just... I mean, I wanted to ask her out, but she's always dating these smart, creative guys, and well..." "You're a jock," I said, interrupting him. But the thing about "smart, creative guys" was interesting. My sister's only type was "whoever would piss off mom and dad the most." "Smart, creative guys" certainly didn't fit into that description. Of course, it's entirely possible this overgrown goon was wrong and I wasn't actually Lexi's sister, but I was growing more certain that wasn't the case. "Yeah. I mean, we've talked a couple times... me and Lexi that is... but I never got the sense she'd give me a shot. So maybe you could put in a good word for me?" "You mean after you and your buddies were checking out my ass?" He started blushing in embarrassment. Holy crap, I made this guy blush! That was awesome. "OK, I'm sorry about that," he said, and he seemed sincere. "I just, I mean, look... just forget I said anything." He started to walk away, but something stirred in my and I reached out and stopped him. In a way, he kind of reminded me of me when I was his age, though certainly a better-looking version of me. He had a crush on a girl who he was pretty sure wouldn't give him the time of day, and didn't want to do it unless he had some assurance it wouldn't end in total humiliation for him. "I'm just messing with you," I said with a disarming giggle. "I'll put in a good word for you with Lexi." "Seriously," he asked. "You'd do that for me?" "Sure," I said, "if you promise to stop hitting on girls who are way older than you. And out of your league." "You're not out of..." he started to say, before catching himself. "You're still messing with me, right?" "A little," I said, as I turned back to my car and got in. It was actually kind of fun to be on THAT side of that interaction for once, even if I wasn't entirely sure what I'd just gotten myself involved with. He walked off and I tossed my purse on the passenger seat, noticing I'd left my water bottle and banana sitting there. Normally I wouldn't let any food, even a warm, mushy banana, go to waste, but even after having just half a salad at lunch, I just wasn't all that hungry. If anything, my stomach was kind of tossy-turny. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to not eat that burger I'd promised Gwen tonight. I was starting to get the sense that this body, this version of Alana, wasn't a meat-eater. God, what if I was a vegan? I'm not sure I could deal with that. I added "standard diet" to the mental list of things I needed to figure out, and drove home. As soon as I walked in the door, I tossed the mushy banana in the trash and heard a voice call out for me. "Hey, Ali, can I borrow your car later?" I heard the girl coming down the stairs and head in my direction to the kitchen. As she came into view, I was taken aback. It was Alana -- or, I guess "Lexi" now -- but it wasn't. The sister I knew dressed like a juvenile delinquent, had piercings in her nose, eyebrow and lip (among other, less visible, places) and, as of yesterday had short blonde hair with pink streaks in it. This version of my sister was... well, a couple years ago for Halloween, Alana had dressed up as a "preppy, country club girl." This girl approaching me looked kind of like that, except it wasn't Halloween, it was the Fourth of July. She was wearing a puffy, floral-print mini-skirt, a pink button-down sleeveless shirt and had her auburn hair held back by a headband that matched her skirt. Her bare arms were free of any tattoos, and she wasn't holding a cigarette, which was probably the most shocking thing. "Lexi," I asked, confused about, well, so many things. "OK, I know I only have a learners' permit, but you know you can trust me with it, right?" Yesterday, the answer to that question coming from my sister would've been "Fuck no," but looking at Lexi, she looked totally trustworthy. And on some level I felt like I owed her. I mean, I had stolen her name, even if she never knew it was hers. "Fine," I said, tossing her the keys, "but just YOU. No friends. No boys." She tossed the keys back to me. "So which was it," I asked. "Friends or boys?" "Friends," she said. She came right up to me and put her hands around my hand that was holding the keys. "I swear, we're just going to the movies after the barbeque. None of us has a car and we really don't want to have a parent drive us." There was my opening. "What about Ryan," I asked. "Does he have a car?" "Who," she asked. "Ryan James, from the basketball team? He was asking about you today." She let go of my hand and grabbed an apple off the kitchen counter. I could immediately tell she knew exactly who Ryan was and was trying to play it cool. "So, does he have a car," I asked again. "And more importantly, do you like him?" Just like Ryan had earlier, Lexi started blushing. "Oh my god, you do like him!" "I dunno," she said. "I mean, he's not really my type." "You're 16," I said. "You don't have a type yet." She took the apple and headed back upstairs. "So, do you still need the car," I asked her as she walked away, though I was pretty sure of the answer. There were a few seconds of silence before I heard her say "Hey... Ryan?" That was good enough for me. As I took an apple of my own from the bowl on the kitchen counter, I realized that I'd just had the most civil interaction with my sister that I'd had in years. Hell, it wasn't just civil, it was good. We talked without sniping at each other, calling each other names or raising our voices, and I think I even helped her. I started to ponder if what my sister really needed in her life was an older sister she could emulate, rather than a brother she could hate. But my thoughts were quickly interrupted by the sounds of a car coming up the driveway. I went out the back door to see who it was. My mother emerged from the passenger's side of the white Ford Explorer, while a man I didn't recognize followed shortly behind from the driver's side. He was short -- not much taller than my mother, who was only about 5- foot-6 -- and had closely cut brown hair. He walked around the car and gave my mother a peck on the cheek as they grabbed bags of groceries out of the back of the car. "Alana," my mom called out, "if you're not too busy just standing there, could you give us a hand?" It sounded like exactly something my mom would say, but she said it in a tone that was more playful than bitter, like she knew that even if she didn't say anything, I would've chipped in and helped. Which might've been true of Alana, but the Andrew in me was totally planning on just standing there and watching. My mom walked past me and inside to put some bags on the kitchen counter, and I walked to the car to grab some from the man. I'd never seen him before today, but if this different man was my father, then that would certainly explain a lot of the changes and narrow down some of the possibilities. "Thanks Dad," I said, as he handed me two bags of ice. He had a look of confusion on his face. "Yeah, umm... why don't we stick with 'Ron'," he said. "I'm not sure your real dad's ready for you to be calling me that. And I'm not sure I am either." There goes that theory. "Sure thing, Ron." I took the ice bags and headed inside, where my mom had put a cooler out on the counter. "Just put the ice in there," she said. "Your dad is bringing the beer later." "So," I asked, "Dad and Ron are both going to be here tonight. Isn't that going to be..." "Honey, I know you just got back home, but it's been four years," she said. "Your father, your stepfather and I are all friendly. Your dad has no problems with Ron." "Oh, I know," I said. "I was just asking for... umm... so what's that?" She was holding a box of tofu burgers. Oh, God, I was a vegan, wasn't I? "Oh, your sister's going through a vegan kick," she said. "Didn?t you go through the same thing at her age? Maybe talk some sense in to her, tell her meat isn't the worst thing in the world. I bet if she hears it from you, she'll listen." "But you're her mom," I said. "Yeah, but you're the one she trusts. Plus," my mom added, "if someone as skinny as you tells her it's fine to have a burger once in a while, maybe she'll believe it." "Speaking of burgers," Ron said, walking in the door, "I can't wait to get these babies on the grill." He put two large bags filled with ground beef on the counter, then handed me another bag, filled with typical cookout sides. "Ali, can you put these in the fridge until we're ready to put them out," he asked. "Wouldn't want the macaroni salad to go bad." "Sure," I said. "So what time are..." I started to ask what time we were heading over to the party, but I caught myself. It was pretty obvious that we weren't "going" to the party, we were hosting it. Which made sense. We had the fancy grill, we had the pool, we had a set of married adults who weren't constantly yelling at each other about their sham of a marriage. "What time is what, honey," my mom asked. "The fireworks," I said. "I just... Monica wanted to go out later tonight and I wasn't sure if I'd miss them or not." "I think they're on Saturday this year," Ron said. "Saturday," I asked, incredulously. "What the what is that about?" "It's Hartford, not New York," my mom said. "I don't think anyone's too broken up about them moving the celebration to the weekend. Besides, that means you can go out with Monica." "True," I said. I put the groceries in the refrigerator and asked if my mom and Ron needed any more help. They said they were all set, so I headed upstairs to my room. I realized between the slip with Ron, the confusion about Lexi and nearly asking when we were leaving for a party we were hosting that I couldn't do as good a job faking my way through things with my family as I could with my friends. I needed to study up on my own life. Which meant I needed my computer. I looked around my room, with my still unmade bed and my clothes from last night still piled up on the floor, and didn't see one. I went back through my vanity drawers and there wasn't a laptop in there, though I did find an Apple MagSafe charger, so that was a good sign. I checked the drawers under the bed, and though I didn't find a laptop, I found more bras and panties than I was comfortable owning, including at least a half dozen 32A push-up bras from Victoria's Secret. Another drawer had skirts and pants, while another was filled with what had to be my dance clothes. So many leotards. Finally I just gave up and went down the hall to