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=== Night and Day === by Trismegistus Shandy This story is set, with Morpheus' kind permission, in his Twisted universe. It's set a generation earlier than his Twisted stories. Thanks to Morpheus, Karen Lockhart and epain for their comments on earlier drafts. This story is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may repost it on other sites, for instance, or write new stories based on it, as long as you give me credit and release your own stories under the same license. My other stories on this site are released under Creative Commons license as well, though I may have forgotten to put the license notice on some of them. ----- We'd been awake almost twenty-four hours, and we were delirious with sleepiness. Forty-five minutes earlier I'd been about to turn in, and Bobby had said: "We've stayed up this long, why don't we go out and watch the sun rise?" "I don't know, man. I'm about to drop." "Come on, man, it'll be awesome. I dare you." "Sure, let's go." I don't think that was what Mom had in mind when she said we could stay up as late as we wanted. It was Monday of Spring break; we didn't have school or church or anything the next day. Mom would have the day off, so she could watch my little sister, and it would be okay if Bobby and I slept late. Bobby lived in the same apartment building, and we were both in the seventh grade at the same school; his parents had let him come to my apartment for a sleepover, but so far we hadn't slept any, daring each other to stay up later and later until sleep deprivation made us as high as a couple of kites. So we walked out the front door, careful to close it softly behind us, down the stairs to the parking lot and around the building to the playground, where we'd have a better view of the sunrise. We looked around; the eastern sky was a lot less dark than the rest of it. "Look," Bobby said, "the moon's setting too. I forgot it was the full moon." Over in the west the moon was just a little above the horizon; one of the taller buildings in that direction was jutting into its disc. After a few moments looking at the moon, we turned back toward the glowing eastern horizon. "And wow, I just remembered it's the spring equinox. The day and night are exactly the same length and it's the full moon, that's why the moon is setting exactly when the sun is rising..." Bobby was smarter than me, and read a lot; he knew a lot of stuff they didn't teach us in school. Maybe they taught those things at our grade level in some schools, but not in school districts like ours where the teachers felt lucky if they managed to keep their students from killing each other. "What a great night to stay up all night," I said. "Hey, we should stay up all day today, too, if the date's that important. Why waste any of it sleeping?" "You're on!" Bobby said. "Day and night, chasing each other's tails through eternity, and us along for the ride... Apollo and Artemis, the bright and dark, the yang and yin..." "What's that?" So he started talking about the Greek gods Apollo and Artemis, twin brother and sister, the gods of the sun and moon, daytime and night. "Apollo was like the best musician in the world, he played the lute like nobody's business. A lute was like an old-time harp or guitar or something. All the girls fell for him, and he got plenty of tail. Well, not all of them, there was Daphne who ran away from him, and he chased her, and she turned into a laurel tree to keep from having to have sex with him. Artemis was the complete opposite, she was a virgin and wanted to stay that way. She'd go hunting all night with other virgin ladies, and when a guy who was out hunting spied on them, bam! She turned him into a deer and his own dogs jumped him and tore him to pieces..." I watched the sky turn red as Bobby rambled on deliriously about all the Greek mythology he'd been reading. Now and then I'd glance back at the moon, which was almost completely obscured by tall buildings. The sun finally peeked its head over the horizon just as Bobby started saying: "Hail, Apollo, lord of the day!" and, turning, "Farewell, Artemis, lady of the night!..." But I barely heard him; I'd started feeling weird, first a bit queasy like I might throw up, and then tingling, like I'd shocked myself on an exposed wire. The electric feeling got worse and more intense, and I actually saw sparks flying off my body. Bobby saw and looked horrified. By the time I lost consciousness, I knew what was happening. Or rather, I knew that almost anything could happen next. ----- Fourteen years before this, the Antarctic Flu raged through North America like a wildfire, killing millions of people and almost killing millions more. My mom barely survived it; if she'd been just a little bit sicker, my older brothers would be orphans and my sister and I wouldn't exist. But she recovered after knocking on Death's door for a while, then running away just before he dragged himself out of bed to go to the door and see who was knocking at that hour. He was probably tired all the time that year, poor guy; he needed his sleep. But I digress. Two years before I underwent spontaneous electrocution in the playground of my apartment complex, an eleven-year-old kid named Caz Lipton had the same sort of thing happen to him. He felt like he was being electrocuted, sparks shot off of his body, and he fell unconscious. While he was unconscious, his body transformed; he got six inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, most of it muscle. He'd been an enthusiastic but unskilled athlete before that, playing Little League soccer but almost never scoring a goal; after that, he played with kids several years older and he was an unstoppable force. And he wasn't just taller, stronger, and better coordinated; he figured out a few months later that he could create an almost impenetrable force-field around his body for a few minutes at a time. Nobody could explain where the extra mass came from when he transformed, or why he transformed at all, or how the force-field worked. A handful of other kids, about the same age as Caz, went through something similar in the next few months. Not all of them transformed the same way, and some didn't transform physically at all, but had weird personality changes. Some of them had some kind of superpower like Caz's force- field, though most were lame superpowers like you'd see in the comic relief characters in a superhero team movie. There was a girl who could make her nose glow red, for instance; I'm sure the kids at her school called her Rudolph, poor kid. The next year, there were over a hundred kids transforming in some way, and still nobody knew why. But the scientists scratching their heads over it had figured out one pattern: all the kids had at least one parent who'd survived the Antarctic Flu. Only a small fraction of the kids whose parents had survived the Flu were transforming, at least so far, but 100% of the ones transforming had a parent who'd had the Flu. And I'd heard on the news, a few nights before this happened to me, that almost a thousand kids had transformed so far this year. And now it was happening to me -- whatever was going to happen. I could become super-athletic, like Caz Lipton. I could get ridiculously fat, or even skinnier than I was already; I could get fur and claws like one poor kid who'd been on the news a few days ago, or maybe even turn into a girl. But what really scared me the most was the idea of my personality changing. Maybe my tastes would change just a little, so I'd like mythology like Bobby, or working on mechanical stuff like my older brother Jason. But I might become a completely different person. I had just time to pray: "Please, no," before I passed out. ----- When I regained consciousness, I felt strange and disoriented for a moment before I remembered what had happened. I'd felt like I was being electrocuted, and sparks started shooting off me. I must have transformed in some way, and I looked down at my body before I consciously took in much of my surroundings. I had breasts. I started to reach for my crotch, but stopped suddenly, not wanting Bobby to see me groping myself... but when I looked around, he wasn't there. I was still in the playground, and oddly enough, still standing up straight; I hadn't fallen down when I lost consciousness. But Bobby was gone, and Mom was there; my little sister Jasmine was over on the swing set. Mom was pushing her, and their backs were turned to me. Where did Bobby go, and how did they get here? And where did these clothes come from? They weren't the ones I was wearing before. They hung loose on me except in the chest, where my breasts pushed out against them, the nipples poking through the fabric. When kids transformed in a major way, all their clothes were burned off... Mom must have put some new clothes on me while I was out. Then I noticed another weird thing. The sky was red in the direction I was facing, but the sun wasn't above the horizon. And -- looking around at the orientation of the playground equipment, and the buildings on the skyline -- I was facing west, not east. That was the sunset I was looking at. Twelve hours had passed. At *least*. Just then Mom turned around, saw me, and gasped in shock. I won't repeat what she said, it's not something a good churchgoing lady should say. But after she'd gotten that out of her system, she said: "Jamie! What happened?" "It looks like I transformed," I said. "But... didn't you put these clothes on me after my old ones burned off? And why didn't you bring me inside?" "What are you talking about? It looks like you're a girl...!" "Um, yeah, I kind of noticed that. But if I've been out for twelve hours why didn't you notice before?" "Twelve hours? You weren't -- wait." She'd stopped pushing Jasmine, and when Jasmine heard us talking, she jumped off the swing and turned around. "Oh my gosh! Is that you, Jamie?" This was really weird in ways that had nothing to do with the weirdness other transformed kids had gone through, stuff I'd read and heard about. "Language, Jasmine," Mom admonished her, completely forgetting the much stronger language she'd just been using. "Let's get you inside and have a look at you," she said, turning back to me. "Fine with me; I just want to know why you didn't bring me inside earlier." "What are you talking about?" "I mean, you left me in the same place I passed out all day! What's up with that, Mom?" "You mean..." She looked at me strangely. "Don't you remember?" "Remember what?" "You woke up about nine-thirty. I got Jared to help me carry you into the apartment and put you to bed, after Bobby woke me up and told me what had happened. You were... different, but not *that* different. Not a girl. When did this happen?" "Um -- I don't know, it felt like I just woke up. You mean I've been awake all day but I just forgot everything that happened since this morning?" "It looks that way." We walked around to the other side of the building and up the stairs to our apartment. The pants I was wearing were tight in the hips, but loose everywhere else; the shoes fit pretty well, though. I wondered why I wasn't freaking out about being a girl; just before I'd passed out, I was thinking of it as one of the worst things that could happen, almost as bad as getting a total personality change. Maybe I *had* had a personality change. How could I tell? That could be why I wasn't so freaked out about being a girl. Not that it felt normal, exactly, it just wasn't as worrying as the idea of losing a big chunk of my memory. Oh God, what if it happened again? Jared and I had watched an old movie from around the turn of the century where a guy kept forgetting things, pretty much everything that happened since he had a head injury. He couldn't form new memories, so he kept being surprised by his surroundings whenever he got distracted, remembering nothing since the day of his accident. What if I kept forgetting everything that had happened since my transformation, kept waking up and being surprised by my body and my surroundings every time it happened? Mom opened the door and we found my brother Jared watching a movie. He glanced up and said "'Sup?", then did a double-take and said: "Who's that?" "I'm Jamie." "What happened?" "He transformed again," Mom said. "At least his clothes didn't burn off this time, and he didn't lose consciousness." "Never heard of that happening, but all these changes are pretty weird," Jared said, still staring at me -- at my breasts, actually. "First time for everything, I guess." Mom sent Jasmine to her room, and took me into her bedroom, where she had me undress and measured me all over -- height, waist, hips, breast size, and so forth. Not surprisingly, I was as female in the crotch as I was in the chest. "I'm going to have to take you shopping tomorrow after work," she said. "My bras would be too big on you." "I think I need a doctor," I said. "I mean, it's not normal -- even for kids who transform like this -- to lose memories like that." She sighed. "I don't know if we can afford that. Let's do some research on the Internet and see if we can find out about any other kids who lost memories after they transformed. If not... we'd better do it. We'll get you into something that fits a little better and take you to the emergency room." So she gave me some of her underwear, which was a little loose on me, and had me put on one of her blouses over one of Jared's T-shirts, and put back on the pair of Jared's old pants I'd been wearing before. I was wearing new (well, used but not too worn) shoes -- she told me, on the bus ride to the hospital, that she'd taken me out to the Goodwill to buy shoes after I transformed the first time and destroyed my old ones. And she showed me a photo on her phone of the way I'd looked that morning. I was taller as a girl than I'd been before the sparking, but apparently before I changed the second time, I'd been taller still, almost as tall as Jared. And I'd had blonde hair, and would have been a chick magnet if it weren't for the hand-me-down clothes. Now I had black hair, and a lot darker complexion though I was still Caucasian. Mom said my breasts were almost a B cup, which was pretty big for someone who'd just turned thirteen; she thought I looked more like fourteen or fifteen. We couldn't find anything on the Internet about transformed kids who lost memories, so we left a few minutes later and waited for the bus that would go by the hospital. When we got to the emergency room, we had to wait for quite a while since I wasn't bleeding or unconscious. Mom hadn't brought me to the emergency room this morning, she said. "I've heard on the news that most kids who go through this end up healthier than before, and I've never heard of one not waking up pretty soon after they transform. So I figured you were probably okay, and then you seemed to be fine, or better than fine, after you woke up. But now..." She shook her head. "How long did I sleep?" "You woke up about nine-thirty --" "No, I mean later, after I woke up from being knocked out. Didn't I take a nap later?" I didn't feel at all sleepy anymore, and two hours wasn't enough sleep after being awake for twenty-four. "No -- you've been awake since then. Huh. That's right, Bobby said you two had stayed up all night to watch the sun rise." "So maybe I don't sleep any more, and that's messing up my memories. I mean, Ms. Stratemeyer" (my science teacher) "said that if you stay awake for several days in a row you start going crazy." "I don't think it's normal to lose a big chunk of memory after being awake only... let's see... about thirty-six hours, minus a couple of hours asleep. Or knocked out." It was about half an hour before a nurse called me to get my vital signs checked, but then we went back to the waiting room for almost three hours before a doctor could see us. "I see here it says your son transformed into a girl," he said severely. "I know it's shocking, probably traumatic, but please, it's *not* an emergency. Hundreds of children have changed in various ways; few of them have been in worse health afterward, even if their new bodies were very different, and none of them had *acute* medical problems. You should take her to your primary care doctor during business hours tomorrow." "That's not all," I said. "I also forgot everything that happened for about twelve hours after I transformed the first time." "After you -- wait, the first time?" "He changed twice," Mom said. "Once the usual way, with electric sparks shooting off and all, and his clothes burning up. But he didn't turn into a girl *then*; he got taller and more muscular, and his hair turned blonde. Then twelve hours later -- nobody was watching when it happened, like before, but I turned my back on him for a few minutes and when I turned around he'd changed into a girl. And the clothes he was wearing were fine, not even any little holes burned in them." The doctor scratched his head. "That's a new one." "And after I turned into a girl, I couldn't remember anything since I started feeling the electric shock. Before the first transformation." "That's different. Could it be perhaps that you fell and hit your head when you lost consciousness during the first transformation?" Mom and I glanced at each other. "Bobby didn't say anything about that," Mom said. "We could call and ask him, but it's the middle of the night, he and his parents are probably in bed." "This Bobby was the only witness of the first transformation?" "Right," I said. "He's my friend; we were hanging out and suddenly I felt that electric shock and passed out. Next thing I know, twelve hours have passed and I'm a girl." "Well... I'll order a brain scan to see if anything's wrong. Hmm, might as well make it a full-body scan to see if you have the internal organs of a girl as well..." That made me feel queasy. He gave us some paperwork and sent us off, with a nurse's aide escorting us, to another part of the hospital, where they had me change into a hospital gown and then lie perfectly still under a big machine of some kind for several minutes. We went back to the emergency room lobby and waited for almost another hour before the doctor called us back again. "I can't see anything abnormal on the scan," he said, "nothing that would account for the loss of memories. There's no sign of any brain injury. And you're a normal, healthy teenage girl, as far as the scan shows... I hesitate to make predictions when we're dealing with a phenomenon we hardly understand, but I'd guess that you'll start your first period in a bit under a month." "Oh no!" "Anything's possible, of course, when we're dealing with this kind of thing -- but you ought to prepare yourself by buying pads or tampons. Ma'am, you should probably give her the talk, and take her to see a gynecologist. As for this second transformation..." He was quiet a few moments, and said: "Have your primary care doctor refer her to a neurologist if this memory loss keeps happening. If she transforms again without memory loss, though... there are probably researchers who would like to interview and examine her, if you're willing. The stipend differs from one research program to another, but a hundred dollars per clinic visit is typical." Mom's eyes and mine got wide. A hundred dollars would go a long way. But it wouldn't be worth it if I lost my memories every time I transformed. Fifty years from now I might wake up as an old man or woman, puzzled at why I'm not still thirteen, surprised that I'm in a nursing home instead of the playground. When we got back to the apartment, it was almost three in the morning. Mom crashed right away, but I still didn't feel sleepy. I went to the living room and watched a movie with the sound turned down. After it was over, I got worried about suffering sleep deprivation, even though I didn't feel at all like I had the morning before when I'd been awake for twenty-four hours. I was about to go lie down on my bed, but I remembered that Jared was sleeping in our shared bedroom, and I was a girl now. Probably Mom would say we should move my bed into Jasmine's room. But for now, I just laid down on the sofa and closed my eyes. An hour later I got up without having slept a wink, turned on the TV again, and watched another movie. But halfway through I got restless, and wanted to go outside. I unbolted the door, went out and quietly closed and locked it behind me. It was still dark, but the sky was brightening a little in the east. I walked around to the playground so I could see the sun rise. And the moment it poked its head over the horizon, I was suddenly several yards away, wearing different clothes, facing the other direction, and watching the sun set. Bobby was staring at me in fascination. "Let me guess," I said, "I just lost another twelve hours." "Dude!" he said, "you're a girl!" "Yeah, I kind of noticed." "I mean, Jared told me how you turned into a girl yesterday evening after I went home and crashed, and your mom took you to the emergency room because you couldn't remember anything. And then when they woke up this morning you were a guy again but couldn't remember being a girl. Do you remember being a guy all day today?" "No; last thing I remember, I came out here to watch the sun rise." "Oh wow... a few minutes ago we were hanging out and playing _Roar and Rampage_ when you said you wanted to go out and watch the sun set." "Hmm. I bet this change and loss of memories is caused by watching the sun rise or set. Tomorrow morning I'm going to stay indoors and keep the curtains closed." He looked thoughtful, and said: "But then you won't change back into a guy! Why not watch the sun rise tomorrow, then stay inside during sunset?" "Because I don't want to lose my memories again." "Huh. That makes sense, I guess. But I think it would be worth losing a few hours of memories to not get stuck as a girl." We stood there staring at each other for a few moments, and then I said: "Want to go for a walk?" "Sure." We walked a long way down the street our apartment complex is on, as far as the convenience store, and then back again after looking at the magazines but not buying anything. Bobby's mom had called my mom in the interim and asked for him to come home to dinner, so he left as soon as we got back. I changed into slightly better-fitting clothes and then ate supper with Mom, Jared and Jasmine; Jason had called and said he had to work late, but he'd come by later. (He'd moved out and gotten his own place a year earlier; he was seven years older than me and four years older than Jared.) "You should have come here right away after you changed into a girl," Mom said, after I told her what had happened and that I didn't remember anything since sunrise, "not gone for a walk with Bobby." "Sorry. Normally you don't mind me walking around if I'm with Jared or Bobby or somebody..." "You're a girl now," she said. "At least at the moment. You're more of a target, more vulnerable. And you should have told me what happened right away; we need to figure this thing out." "Sounds like it's triggered by watching the sun rise or set," Jared said. "And I'll bet changing back and forth from girl to boy is your superpower." "That's what I figured. I'm going to stay in and keep the curtains closed tomorrow morning and see if it doesn't happen." "I was going to take you shopping today," Mom said, "but I'm pretty tired, and the stores won't be open much longer. If you stay a girl by not watching the sun rise tomorrow morning, we can leave as soon as I get home from work tomorrow." After supper Jasmine came over and hugged me. "I'm glad you're my sister now," she said, "even if you turn into a boy again tomorrow." I tousled her hair. "It's kind of weird, but I don't mind being your sister either." Jason came over an hour later. "Whoa," he said, looking at me, "Mom told me you'd turned into a girl, and then back into a guy... I guess you changed again?" "Yeah, at sunrise. No, I mean sunset." Mom and I explained what had happened, and Jared pitched in with his theories about it. Jason shook his head. "I've heard some on the news about these kids that change suddenly, but I've never heard of it happening more than once to the same person." "I don't think it is, not the same way exactly. The later changes haven't felt weird or electrical; it's just suddenly twelve hours later. And my clothes don't burn off, either." "This morning you were complaining about waking up wearing girl's underwear and a blouse," Jared said with a smirk. "If I can't stop from changing into a guy again, he's going to be complaining about wearing a bra too," I said. That was the first time I called my daytime self "he," like he was a separate person -- which he was. "I'm taking her shopping after work tomorrow," Mom explained. "She can't go around in Jared's hand-me-downs, and my clothes are all too big on her." "Let me know if you need me to help out," Jason said. He earned decent money as a mechanic, and now and then he helped us out with the rent or something when Mom had to miss work because of being sick. I suspected he was making money on the side in less legal ways, but we didn't talk about it. "Actually," Mom said, "can you and Jared move Jamie's bed into Jasmine's room?" "I don't think that's necessary," I said. "I don't think I need to sleep anymore. Did the daytime-me sleep any?" "Not that I know of," Mom said, "but I was at work most of that time." She looked at Jared, who said: "Not when I was around." "I didn't sleep any last night, and never felt sleepy," I added. "Maybe we can get rid of my bed and free up some room." Mom looked thoughtful. "Well... let's not get rid of it until we're *sure* you never sleep. Maybe you can just get by on a lot less sleep, like an hour or two every few days... Wasn't there a kid like that on the news a while ago?" Jason shrugged. I said: "I'll try to look it up on the Internet." So we didn't move my bed that night. Jasmine was sent to bed as soon as she'd had a hug from Jason, and another one from me, and an hour later Jason left and Mom went to bed. Jared and I played _Roar and Rampage_ in two-player mode until he got sleepy and went to bed. Then I got out the tablet Jared and I shared and started looking up stuff about people like me. You're probably wondering why nobody in this story has used the word "Twisted" yet, why we were talking about "superpowers" instead of "tricks." That's because when this phenomenon was new, nobody agreed on what to call it yet. Some people were calling us the "Transformed," some the "Changed" or "Altered," some "Supers" (at least those of us with powers), and a few -- in those days it was only conservative talk show hosts -- were already calling us "Twisted." It was a dark night when that stupid pejorative caught on as the standard term for us. I still don't like it, and sometimes refuse to use it, though I know it's a lost cause. I spent most of the night reading about other kids like me. More or less like me; no two were exactly alike, and I couldn't find anyone else who'd transformed more than once, or anyone who routinely went more than twenty-four hours without sleep, though there was one kid who only slept one or two hours a night since his transformation. Just before dawn, I started feeling a hankering to go out and watch the sun rise, but I resisted it. A lot of the kids I'd read about had some sort of compulsion since their transformation, and it looked like I had one too. It got harder and harder to stay indoors, and after a while I thought: "Maybe if I just open the blinds a little..." but suppressed that thought. I went into the bathroom, which had no windows, and took a shower. I'd barely started exploring my new body when I lost another twelve hours. ----- I came to in the playground again, wearing loose clothes and holding a note in my hand. It read: "Thanks for being naked when we transformed this time. Waking up with panties pinching my junk was no fun. I'm going to try to stay in and take off my clothes when the sun sets, but if I can't resist the compulsion to go outside, I'll at least put on loose clothes." It was my handwriting, of course. "You about ready to go?" Mom asked. I turned and looked at her. "Sure," I said. "Shopping, you mean?" "Yes, let's not waste any time." Jared was watching Jasmine. We walked around to the bus stop and waited a few minutes for the next bus. It let us off a short walk from a Wal-Mart, where we bought panties and bras, and then we took another bus to the Goodwill, where we bought a few shirts, blouses and pants. I didn't like the idea of skirts or dresses, or pants tight enough to restrict my movement. Most of the pants were still tighter than the pants I wore when I was a boy, but I also got one pair of loose sweat pants to wear while transforming. "Things are going to be really tight this month," Mom said, "with these clothes and the emergency room bill. Jason said he could help out, but we're not going to have any money for extras." "I understand," I said. I still didn't sleep; I spent the night reading, watching movies, and playing games. I wore panties, a bra, girl jeans and a T-shirt most of the night, but when I felt the need to go out and watch the sun rise, I changed into the loose sweat pants with no underwear and went out. I "forgot" to take off the bra, just to mess with my other self. Once I was out there watching the eastern sky brighten, I wondered if I should have written a note for him, but it was too late; I couldn't go inside and make myself miss the sunrise. ----- Bobby was there when I woke up. "That's still freaky even after seeing it a couple of times," he said. "Thanks. Mind if I go inside and change clothes?" "I guess you'd better. Oh, and you told me to tell you to look in your pocket." I fished in my pocket and found this note: "The bra was NOT FUNNY. Don't try that again or I'll wear the tightest T-shirt I can fit into." I was wearing the loose sweat pants I'd worn that morning, but the T- shirt I was wearing was a little too tight across the chest, and I didn't have a bra on under it; my nipples were showing, and naturally enough, Bobby was kind of staring at them. I went into Jasmine's room, where Mom and I had stashed my new girl clothes, and changed; I also wrote out a note: "Wear a looser shirt tomorrow at sunset. The pants were fine." and set it on the sweat pants to remind me to hold it when I changed tomorrow morning. Then I went out to the living room, where Bobby gawped at me in my girl clothes. I felt a little bit angry about that, and suppressed it; Bobby was just surprised, he wasn't leering at me or anything. "How long have you been hanging with me?" I asked. "The daytime me, I mean." "Since lunchtime... we walked to Peak Park and hung out for a while, then came back to my apartment and played games until a few minutes ago when you said you wanted to see the sun set. You went home and changed clothes and met me in the playground." "It's weird having another self who does all this stuff I can't remember," I said. "But at least we both still like to do the same things." "Except for this obsession with watching the sun rise and set." "Yeah, that." We played _Knight of the Living Dead_ until supper; Bobby joined me, Mom and Jasmine for supper, while Jared was eating supper at a friend's place. After supper, when Jasmine had hugged me and gone to bed, and Mom had gone to her bedroom to read a while before bed, Bobby and I played a couple of old puzzle games and chatted some. "What's it like being a girl?" he asked. "It was a little weird at first," I said. "But not so much now. Peeing is kind of messy, and I'm not looking forward to having a period, but I don't actually miss having a dick. I don't know why." "Could be a personality change... they say a lot of the kids who transform get personality changes too." "Yeah, I'm kind of worried about that. Do I seem different to you?" "Except for wanting to watch the sun rise and set every time, and not freaking out about being a girl, not really." "Good." After a while he asked me: "So, do you still like girls? Or do you like boys now?" "Ugh," I said. "No, I don't like boys. Not that way. I... I guess I still like girls, but I'm not sure, I haven't hung around any girls except Mom and Jasmine since the change." There were some women and girls at the emergency room, patients and nurses both, but I couldn't remember being attracted to them either. "I guess you'll find out soon, when you start seeing more girls." "Yeah, after school starts back -- Wait. No. I'm not going to school. I don't have to go to school!" I laughed in delight. "Yeah, you do. I mean, you're not sick... Oh. I see." "Yeah, my daytime self has to go, but I don't." "That'll be fun in the short term, but you'll regret it eventually. I mean, every day you're getting more and more different from each other, and in five years he'll have a high school education and maybe even be going to college, and you won't have anything. Except what you learn on your own, I guess." "Huh. I guess you're right. I'd better... I don't know... study the daytime-me's textbooks, and stuff like that. And maybe take online classes." "Good idea." Just then I heard Mom's phone ring, muffled by the walls, and a minute later she came out of her bedroom. "Bobby, your mom says it's time to come home." "All right, Mrs. Sullivan. Good night, Jamie." "Good night," I said. I needed to keep learning stuff, even if I couldn't go to school, but I figured it could wait until the end of Spring break. I spent the rest of the night playing video games and reading torrented comics. ----- When I woke up in the playground that night, I was standing behind the swing, and Jasmine was swinging in it. I must have been pushing her while I watched the sunset, because she turned around and said "Don't stop -- yay, you're a girl again! I'm glad to see you. Keep pushing." I laughed, and started pushing Jasmine again. Bobby came out a few minutes later. "Sorry I missed your transformation," he said, "I had to go to the bathroom. You still don't remember anything that happened to you today?" "Not since sunrise, same as usual." "We need to test the limits of that. I know you don't remember stuff that *happened* in the daytime, but you might know stuff that the daytime-Jamie learned. Um, let's see... who were Zeus's children?" "I don't know," I said. "Oh, wait, you were telling me about them the other night, right? Apollo and Artemis." "Any others?" "Not that I can remember." He shrugged. "It was worth a try. I gave your daytime self a lesson on Greek mythology a few minutes ago, to see factual knowledge would stick when experience-memory doesn't. Apparently not. So you're not going to get any benefit out of your daytime-self's education; you need your own." "Keep pushing," Jasmine admonished me. I pushed her little butt again the next time she swung toward me. After a while Jasmine got tired, and we got hungry, and we went back to my apartment. Mom was working late, apparently trying to get overtime so she could pay for my new clothes and the emergency room visit. I felt bad about that, but I was too young to work a real job. I'd worked odd jobs for our neighbors sometimes, but not since I started changing. So Jared and I fixed supper for ourselves and Jasmine and Bobby. After supper, Bobby said: "Jared, can you watch Jasmine for a while? I've got something to show Jamie." "Sure," Jared said, "you two watched her for a couple of hours there." "What's this about?" I asked as we walked over to Bobby's apartment. "You said you weren't sure if you were attracted to girls," he said, "you hadn't seen enough to be sure." "No, I guess not." I'd seen some women and girls around the apartment complex early in the last couple of evenings, but mostly they were either really young like Jasmine, or really old like Mom. I'd seen one girl about Jared's age who lived upstairs, but I remember thinking, when I was a boy, that she was just okay, not really pretty. "So let's find out," he said. "In the spirit of scientific experimentation." He opened the door to his apartment and let me in. "Jamie?" Bobby's mom asked. "Is that you?" "Yeah, it's me. Apparently I turn into a girl after dark these days." "Bobby told me, but I could hardly believe it." "We'll be in my room," Bobby said. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Bobby's stepdad said, and Bobby's mom swatted him on the arm. I followed Bobby into his bedroom and he shut the door. Then he lifted up the edge of his mattress and got out some magazines I recognized but hadn't seen in a while. "Oh," I said, feeling a vague disgust. "I guess that will tell us something." "Take a look," Bobby said, and proceeded to read -- well, look -- over my shoulder as I did so. I wasn't turned on by those pictures of naked women. I felt disgusted at the way they were posed, and the looks on their faces, and I felt sad for them. "What do you think?" Bobby asked after I'd flipped through a few pages. "I guess I'm not attracted to girls either," I said. "Are you *sure* you're not attracted to guys?" he asked. "Flip ahead a few pages, there's one of a guy and girl together." I flipped through till I got to the page he'd mentioned. If anything, I was even more disgusted at the naked guy, even though his penis wasn't showing. "No," I said firmly, shutting the magazine and handing it back to him. "Do not want." "That's interesting," he said. "I was doing some reading about kids like you, and some of them got kind of obsessed with sex, and some changed their orientation or got a new fetish, but none of them lost interest in it entirely." "I guess we're all special snowflakes." "Apparently." ----- The next time sunrise abruptly changed into sunset, I found myself in the parking lot of our church. Jared was with me; I was wearing the usual T-shirt and sweats with no underwear. We didn't always go to church on Sunday nights, but apparently Mom thought I should go to church and not just my daytime self. "Come on," he said, "Mom said to come back inside as soon as you're finished changing. Oh, and you're supposed to go in the restroom and put this on." He handed me a grocery bag; I opened it and saw panties and a bra. Mom and Jasmine were sitting in the back pew, which wasn't our usual place, probably so daytime-me could slip out at sunset and I could come back in without disrupting the service too much. Jared and I came in in the middle of the last hymn before the sermon. After the service, several people wanted to talk with us. "Is this Jamie?" Mrs. Walton said. "My, you look nice." "Thanks," I said. "So you turn into a girl at night and a boy during the day?" she asked. "Yes, ma'am, at sunset and sunrise." "That must feel very strange." "It felt strange at first, but I'm getting used to it." Some kids in the youth group had come over while we were talking, and I said hi to them after Mrs. Walton walked off to talk to someone else. "You're Jamie?" asked Colin, a guy a year older than me. "Yeah. I know it's weird, but -- there's nothing I can do about it." "I guess so. Why didn't you tell us about it this morning?" He hadn't told them about me? What a surprise. "I don't know, but I can guess... he probably didn't want you to know he turns into a girl at night. I imagine it's kind of embarrassing." "Wait a minute, who's 'he'?" Janice asked. "My daytime self, the boy version of me. We share memories up until we transformed early Tuesday morning, but since then, I don't remember anything that happened to him and he apparently doesn't remember what happens to me." "Weird!" "Tell me about it." "So your superpower is to turn into a girl and back again?" Pete asked. "And you can't even control when it happens? That kind of sucks." "Yeah, but if you haven't noticed, in the real world most superpowers are kind of sucky. Caz Lipton's an exception, and even he can't keep his force-field up long enough to battle a supervillain." "There aren't any supervillains," Colin pointed out. "Give it time," I said. "I expect you'll see some in a few years." We found out later -- it was hushed up at the time -- that Caz Lipton snuck out one night to fight crime with his awesome new superpower. He nearly got killed when his force-field gave out at a critical moment, but the police rescued him from the gangsters he'd been tangling with, and took him to the hospital. When he got well enough to go home, his parents grounded him for months. The police took a similarly dim view of other transformed kids using their new superpowers (which weren't called "tricks" yet) to fight crime, still less to commit crimes, and almost none of them got away with it for long. But more about that later. ----- Daytime-Jamie went back to school Monday. I was hoping he'd leave me a note to tell me how it went, but no such luck. I found out a little from Bobby, though, who wasn't with me when I transformed, but came over later, after he finished the day's homework and ate supper. "Did your other self finish his homework?" he asked me. "I don't know," I said. "He might not have had time to do it all before the sun set. You should finish it for him if you can." "Huh. I guess maybe so." I went in to mine and Jared's bedroom and looked through the papers on our desk; sure enough, there was a note in big letters on top, saying: "Got to go watch the sun set. Night-Jamie, can you finish this please?" "I didn't see this until now," I said; "I helped Mom fix supper and then played _Nocturne_ for a while." "I'll help you with it if necessary." So we worked on my other self's homework until we finished it. Bobby answered my questions about the bits I didn't get because I hadn't attended that day's classes. When we were finished, he said: "Your daytime-self is still interested in girls." "Not surprised," I said. "He didn't change as much as I did." "In fact, he asked Rachel Timson out, and she said yes. But I don't know how he's planning to take her on a date when he turns into you at sunset." "We're not allowed to date until we're fourteen, anyway. What was he thinking?" I vaguely remembered thinking that Rachel Timson was hot, but I hadn't had the courage to go up and talk to her. Maybe my other self had more courage because of a personality change, or maybe he just felt more confident because of his new body. "I don't know. I don't think he's told anyone at school that he turns into you at night; he asked me not to tell anybody, and I didn't." "That skink! He didn't want to tell anybody at church, either. I think he's ashamed of me." After Bobby went home, and everyone else went to bed, I spent the next couple of hours reading ahead in the textbooks before I allowed myself to play any more games. I wanted to go outside and walk around, but I knew Mom wouldn't approve, and I was a little scared too; she'd pointed out that I was more vulnerable as a girl, though I was taller and might have been a little stronger than before. Even going out to the playground just before dawn wasn't the safest thing to do, but when dawn approached I could no longer think rationally about the risk of rape; it was all I could do to change into looser clothes before I went out. ----- My daytime self didn't have as much homework the next night, but as if to make up for that, he left almost all of it for me to do. I did it, not needing as much help from Bobby after I'd read ahead in the textbooks, but I left him an angrily worded note: "I'm not doing all your homework for you again. You need to do as much as you can before sunset." Once I got the homework done, half an hour after supper, Jared and I played _Roar and Rampage_ for a while. But just before Jared's bedtime, the screen suddenly went blurry. Jared swore, and Mom chewed him out for it. I felt like swearing too, although I knew it was a miracle that our game system had lasted this long. It had been used, and several years old, when Mom gave it to us for Christmas the year I was nine. You couldn't get new games for it anymore, not that we could have afforded anything but used games anyway -- it had been months since we bought a used game, but since Bobby had the same kind of system we could trade. Now it was kaput, and who knew how long it would be before an affordable one turned up at the Goodwill again. I watched a movie after Jared and Mom went to bed. Later, I slipped quietly into mine and Jared's bedroom, got the tablet off the desk, and went back to the living room. I read ahead in the textbooks some more, but got bogged down by a boring passage in the algebra book, and thought about what else I could do. I wanted to go out for a walk, but I was still too scared by what Mom had said to go out at this time of night. Then something reminded me of what Bobby had been saying a week ago about those Greek gods, Apollo and Artemis. One was a sun god and the other a moon god, right? What else did he say about them? I looked them up on the Internet and read for a while. It was sort of interesting, definitely more so than the algebra textbook. Then I noticed something. Artemis was a virgin and planned to stay that way; I didn't have any interest in sex, with anybody. Apollo was a ladies' man; if my daytime-self wasn't that, he was at least more confident with girls than I'd been before. Had I been influenced in my change by what Bobby was rambling on about in his sleep-deprived delirium? Could I turn guys into deer by looking at them funny? No such luck, probably. I'd never heard of anybody with a superpower that awesome, and probably my only power was turning into a boy and never seeing the sun except when it was rising. I looked up one of the sites that was documenting kids' changes (mostly anonymously) and looked around; it seemed like a few kids had two different superpowers, and one might have had three, but somebody argued that they were different manifestations of the same basic power. So I could have another power I hadn't discovered yet, and it might be less sucky. That cheered me up. I noticed that a lot of kids seemed to have been influenced in their change by what they were doing when it happened; one guy who'd turned into a girl (I wasn't the only one, apparently; there were at least a dozen others documented on this site and probably more) had been dressing up as a cheerleader for Halloween, and some of the kids who'd gotten taller and stronger had been playing a sport or exercising when they changed. So yeah, it was plausible that Bobby's talk about Apollo and Artemis had influenced the way I changed. And I'd been staying up for twenty-four hours when it happened; that could be why I didn't sleep anymore. I created an account on the site -- I used the handle "Artemis" -- and posted about my change: several details about my age, and what my day and night selves looked like, and how we switched back and forth at sunrise and sunset, but no names or places. Then I realized I was still using the same email and social media accounts as my daytime-self. That was probably okay for now; he didn't have any friends that I wasn't friends with too. But that would change over time, as he went to school and I didn't, and I hung out more with people online because I was shut up in the apartment all night. I went to kidmail.com and created a new account under the name "Artemis Sullivan". (In those days most email services wouldn't provide email to people under eighteen, because of legal liability; Kidmail was about the only one that would let kids get email accounts, and they monitored the hell out of their traffic, reading all the messages with certain keywords flagged and randomly reading a sample of others to watch for adult predators corresponding with kids.) Then I went to my social media services and created new accounts under "Artemis" or "Artemis Sullivan", and made one last post to my old "Jamie Sullivan" accounts telling people about my change and about my new Artemis accounts. I took a selfie with the tablet and posted it as a profile picture on the systems that used them. Then, instead of writing out a note by hand and holding it while I transformed, I sent a long email from my Artemis email account to my old Jamie email address, telling him what I'd decided. Then I went out and sat in the swing, watching the sun rise, holding a little slip of paper that just said "Check your email." ----- I was standing near the merry-go-round watching Jasmine spin on it; Mom was sitting on a bench a few yards away. "He said to check your email," Mom said. "And we need to talk about this name business." "Sure," I said. But Jasmine said: "Keep spinning me!" I couldn't resist, and neither could Mom; we stayed out there playing with Jasmine for another half hour before we went in and ate supper. "Can I use the tablet to check my email?" I asked Jared, who was reading from it when we sat down to eat. "I'm doing some reading for my term paper," he said. "You can use it after I go to bed." "Okay." "The daytime Jamie told me some of what you said to him in your note," Mom said. "He said you've changed your name to Artemis? Why? Jamie works fine for a girl as well as a boy." Better for a girl than a boy, I thought, remembering some of the teasing I'd had to put up with. No sense bringing that up now, though. "It's got to be confusing for you and Jared, though, and Bobby -- somebody mentions Jamie and the other person doesn't know which one of us you mean unless you say 'boy Jamie' or 'night Jamie' or something. And right now you can say 'Jamie's good at _Knight of the Living Dead_' and it's true of both of us, but in another year or two there won't be many things you can say about both of us and have them be true." "Well... but Artemis is such a pagan name! And Apollo is maybe even worse." "Isn't there a guy named Apollo in the Bible, too?" She looked thoughtful. "Yes -- or something like it. Apollos, I think. But the only Artemis in the Bible is the pagan goddess, when those worshipers of her made trouble for the apostle Paul in, what city was it? Ephesus or somewhere like that." I remembered something else I'd read last night. "What about Diana?" "That's much better." I smiled. If Mom didn't know that Diana was the Roman name for Artemis, I wasn't going to tell her. I could be Diana in real life and use Artemis as a screen name. Jasmine wanted me to read her a bedtime story after supper; usually Mom did that. I looked through the tattered books on her little shelf. "What do you want me to read you?" "Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!" she said loudly, and giggled. So I read that to her, and she still didn't look sleepy; she kept reciting bits of the book along with me. "What about another story?" I asked when I closed the book. "I Belong in the Zoo?" she said, but I said: "What about something new and different?" "Yay!" "Okay. So, a long time ago there was a lady named Diana." "Like you." "Yes, like me. She was a magician --" "Like Maleficent?" "No, she was good. Mostly. More like Glinda in _The Wizard of Oz_." I wasn't going to say she was a goddess, or I'd get in deep shit with Mom. "Or, you know, more like Bugs Bunny than either. Kind of a cross between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd," (Jasmine giggled uncontrollably), "because she liked to play tricks on people like Bugs Bunny, and she liked to hunt like Elmer Fudd. Only not wabbits, but deer, wild boar, lions, bears, things like that." "Bang!" Jasmine shouted, and giggled. "No, she used a bow and arrow, because this was a long time ago before guns were invented. She'd go hunting every night with her gal friends, who also liked to hunt. "Then one night they'd been hunting a while and they got tired and sweaty, and they came to a place where a river made a wide pool, and they decided to take a bath. In those days people didn't have bathtubs and showers, they just went swimming in a river or lake when they wanted to get clean." "Gross!" "Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it. Anyway, they took off their clothes and went swimming slash bathing, and they were having a good time laughing and talking about the deer they'd shot, when suddenly this guy named Siproites comes along and sees them." "Oh. Who was he?" "Just some guy. I think maybe he was out hunting too? Anyway, Diana and her gal friends weren't happy about a yucky boy seeing them with no clothes on. And Diana used her magic on him -- what do you think she did?" "Made him blind so he couldn't see them?" Jasmine said after a few moments' thought. "Wow, you're a vindictive little squirt." Though Artemis had done a lot worse than that to Actaeon. "No, what she did was she changed him into a girl --" "Like you." "Yes, except it just happened to me, it wasn't a tricksy magician doing it. So now that Siproites was a girl, it was okay for her to see other girls taking a bath. And she joined Diana's hunters, and lived happily ever after." The mythology site I'd been reading hadn't said anything about what happened to Siproites after Artemis changed him into a girl, but I decided any story for Jasmine had to have a happy ending. "That was nice," she said, finally sounding a little sleepy. "I'm glad you're my sister." "I'm glad you're my sister too," I said, kissing her goodnight. After Jared went to bed, I checked my email, and found this from daytime-Jamie: "Give me a break! I'm in school or riding the bus for most of my waking hours; let me have some fun when I get home before I have to let you take over. I'll do some of the homework on the bus, but you need to do your share too. "And what's up with posting to social media about how I turn into you at night? You may not care about privacy anymore but I do. Stop it! I've changed the passwords on my accounts, since you decided to make your own. "P.S. 'Artemis' is a good name, even if Mom doesn't like it. I'm not sure if I want to go by 'Apollo', but I'll think about it." I was mad, and I got up and paced back and forth for a while before I let myself answer it. I said: "You can't expect to keep my existence secret forever. I'm not going to hide in the apartment all the time, especially in the winter when the nights are longer. If you wanted control over how our friends found out about me, you should have told them yourself. They're my friends too and I deserve to keep in contact with them even if we can't go to school together. "Mom's probably already told you by now, but we compromised on 'Diana'. I'm still going to use 'Artemis' as a screen name." I had no other personal emails, but there were several automatic notifications about new feedback on my social media accounts. I read them, and also the latest posts and comments on Jamie's account. He had unfriended me (I'd friended both accounts from each other after I created the new one), but we were still almost the same person, and it only took me two tries to guess his new password. I didn't do anything with it except read his recent posts and comments; hopefully if I didn't abuse my access by posting anything, he wouldn't notice. He'd deleted my posts from last night, and claimed somebody had hacked his accounts; but a number of people must have seen them while they were there, judging from the posts and friends requests on my personal account. There were a couple of comments along the lines of "You turn into a girl? Lamest superpower EVAR" and similarly sophisticated bullshit, but others were more sympathetic, and one, from Aidan Turner, my closest friend other than Bobby, seemed to be really trying to grapple with what had happened to me. He asked questions about how we switched places, and whether we really remembered nothing of what happened to the other one. A few hours later, presumably after daytime-Jamie deleted my post and claimed he'd been hacked, Aidan posted to my account challenging me and asking me to prove I was really the night version of Jamie. I re-read what I'd written the night before, and saw it wasn't as clear as I'd wanted it to be; I replied publicly to Aidan's questions, and added: "If you want me to prove that I'm real, that daytime-Jamie turns into me at night, and I turn into him in the daytime, just ask the Jamie you see at school if you can come over and visit. He might say yes, but he'll come up with some excuse for why you have to leave before sunset. Try to stay until sunset, or come over at or after sunset, and you'll see." Then I read a little more of each textbook, and did the remainder of daytime-Jamie's homework that he hadn't done on the bus. I still had half the night before me, and no game system. I started to look through the list of free movies on the TV utility, but then I remembered what I'd been reading about before, and tried filtering the list of movies looking for the keywords "Artemis" and "mythology." I found no movies about Artemis, but several about mythology, and watched _Jason and the Argonauts_, which was pretty fun. Three more hours to go. I went back to the mythology site I'd visited the night before and read more, clicking on the links from the page about Artemis, and reading about Callisto, Zeus, Zeus's other kids, the mortal women he and his sons seduced, their half-god kids, and so forth. I ran into a couple more myths about guys turning into girls or girls into guys; those Greeks were into some freaky shit. Tiresias, this guy who got turned into a girl for seven years because he messed with some snakes (seriously, what?), later on saw Athena bathing. Deja vu, right? She struck him blind, which made me wonder if I should give Jasmine the nickname "Athena" -- no, Mom would blow her top. Maybe "Minerva," but that probably wouldn't fly either; it didn't sound as normal as "Diana." Too bad Tiresias didn't happen upon Athena while he was a girl; talk about terrible timing...! Finally I got up, changed into our loose changing-clothes, and went out to greet the dawn. ----- That evening I woke sitting on one of the benches in the playground. Jasmine was swinging by herself, but as soon as she saw I had changed, she jumped down, ran over and hugged me. "I'm glad you're back," she said. "You're not mad at me, are you?" "What? No, of course not." "The boy you was mad at me. He wouldn't push me on the swing or anything." "Why, that --! Here, I'll push you or spin you or whatever." "Thank you!" She hugged me again. "You're the best sister." So we played for a while longer, until Mom sent Jared out to call us to supper. During supper, Mom said: "I finally got around to calling the numbers on those flyers the emergency room doctor gave me. About people doing research into kids who change like you did..." "Okay?" "This may not concern you, since probably all the research will be in the daytime, but I'm taking you -- the other you -- Jamie, out of school Friday, the next day off I have, and taking him to the university hospital where some doctors want to examine him and ask us some questions. It will be at least a hundred dollars, more if they ask us to come back again." "Tell them for completeness they should interview me too," I said. "With any luck we can get them to pay us twice, once for him and once for me." I thought briefly about telling Mom that Jamie was pretending I didn't exist, but decided against it. I could handle this on my own. Bobby came over after supper. "Dude, daytime-Jamie was mad as hell about you posting on social media about changing back and forth. He kept telling everybody who asked him about it that his account had been hacked. I'd already promised I wouldn't say anything, but... man. He's being kind of a dick." "Yeah, he can't keep me secret forever. It'll get easier for a few months while the days are getting longer, but then they'll get shorter, and watch out! By winter, I'll be changing into him on the school bus." "I don't think he can keep it secret that long, but I'm not going to break my word and tell anybody. I wish I hadn't promised, though." "Don't worry about it," I said. "I've got a plan." "What?" I told him about my post to my Artemis Sullivan social media account last night. "Friends are going to start asking if they can come over, and he'll make up lame excuses why they can't, or why they have to leave before sunset. And sooner or later somebody's going to come over around sunset and see us switch places." Bobby shook his head. "You two need to call off this feud. He can really make your life hell if you get him mad." "He's already pretending I don't exist and trying to cut me off from all my friends but you. How much worse can it get?" ----- After Bobby went home, and Jared finished his term paper research and went to bed, I checked my email and social media. There was a brief email from Jamie: "Maybe you haven't thought this through from my point of view. You're safe at home all night, you never see anybody outside the family except Bobby. I'm the one who's getting bullied at school because of rumors that I turn into a girl at night! I'm strong enough now to stand up to the bullies, at least one on one, but when they gang up on me, being taller than most kids my age isn't enough. Cut me some slack here." I thought about that for a few minutes before I replied. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize how bad it was for you. But try to look at MY point of view too. I get turned into a girl, and I'm not allowed to go anywhere because Mom says it's not safe around here for a girl at night, and she's probably right. At least let me have some contact online with the friends I can't see at school anymore. "And don't take it out on Jasmine! I don't know what was going on between you two, but leave her out of this." I saw that a couple of people -- acquaintances, not close friends -- had unfriended me, probably because they believed Jamie when he said his account had been hacked and the person posting under "Artemis Sullivan" was a prankster. I sighed and decided to be patient; the truth would come out sooner or later. I finished our homework, and watched another old mythology movie -- _Clash of the Titans_, which wasn't as good as _Jason and the Argonauts_. My daytime self would probably like it, as it had some naked ladies in it, but they didn't do anything for me. But they weren't disgusting like the women in weird poses in Bobby's porn mags, either. Then I read about Greek mythology for a while longer, until I got too restless to sit still. It still wasn't near dawn, but I wanted to go out. I was still a little scared to go out by myself as a girl, but somehow not as much as before. After pacing back and forth for a while, I decided I'd stick to busy, well-lit streets and wouldn't stay out very long, in case Mom or Jared or Jasmine woke up in the middle of the night and saw I was gone. I walked as far as the 24-hour convenience store, and read from a couple of magazines until the night clerk ran me off. Then I came straight home. None of the streetlights along that stretch were out, and nobody messed with me; I felt a lot more confident about going out again. ----- When I came to that evening, Jasmine was spinning on the merry-go-round with a little boy who lived in one of the apartments on the back side o