AUTHOR’S NOTE: A few years ago, I tried to put out my first TG serialized story, but I ended up abandoning it after about 2 1/2 chapters. Last year I decided to revisit it, and after doing some serious reworking on what I’d already done, I managed to put together a complete story. After releasing it in pieces on another site, I’ve decided (thanks to much feedback from the community) to release the full product here. I hope you enjoy it.

*****

DAY ZERO

“Reboots always suck.”

Mark closed the door on his Ford Explorer, and I knew we were in for another debate. This had been our routine ever since we were old enough to go see movies without a parent with us. After the movie let out, we would analyze it from all angles, often disagreeing but never dismissing the points made by the other person. When we were younger, these debates would take place in the lobby of the theater, often times while our parents waited frustrated in the parking lot. Once we were old enough to drive, the parking lot became our battleground. No matter how late the showing of the movie, we’d be out there, right next to his Explorer or my Charger, like a couple of fanboys on a message board.

We’d just left a midnight showing of “The Amazing Spider-Man”, which I’d liked, but Mark... well, I’m not sure it’s fair to say he didn’t like it. He seemed more opposed to the concept of it than upset by anything that actually happened in the movie. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He’d been on his anti-reboot stance ever since the movie was announced.

“What about ‘Batman Begins’,” I retorted. “That was a reboot, and it was awesome.”

“OK, so ONE reboot didn’t suck. But how many others did? ‘Superman Returns’ was awful, ‘The Thing’ was unwatchable, and you just know the new ‘Bourne’ movie is going to be a disaster.”

I didn’t respond.

“See, Andrew, you know I’m right.”

“OK, but aside from it being a reboot, what actually sucked about the movie,” I asked. Now it was Mark’s time to fall silent. “If you look at it objectively, it was really no worse than Raimi’s first Spider-Man.”

“I don’t see why they couldn’t have just continued the series, even if only to keep MJ around. A Spider-Man movie without her just isn’t the same. And even if you replace the cast, bring on a new director, why not just keep it the same Spider-Man?”

He had a fair point. As I tried to think of a rebuttal, I started thinking of my own life. How nice would it be to get a “reboot”, just like Spider-Man got? Pick and choose the best parts of my story to keep, drop the parts that didn’t work – I’m looking at you, dancing emo alien suit – and get a fresh start.

“Dude, you OK?”

I realized I’d spaced out for longer than I thought.

“Yeah, just thinking.”

But I wasn’t JUST thinking. I was cataloging. Going through my life and thinking about all the mistakes I’d ditch from my own personal reboot. My life wasn’t bad, at least not in a global perspective. Any time I got down, I tried to remind myself of that. You know, how like your parents would tell you there were starving kids in China who didn’t even have food to eat when they wanted to get you to eat your vegetables? When you took the whole world into consideration, there were billions of people who had it worse than me. On the flip side, there were millions, if not billions of people who had it better.

It wasn’t always this way. Back in high school, I was one of the big shots on campus. It helped that I was big, literally. Six-foot-3, 290 pounds, I was a star offensive lineman. Sure, our team wasn’t great, but the football players run the school at every high school, and we were no exception. Mark was our quarterback and I was his left tackle/bodyguard. We got everything we wanted, and it was incredible. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I’d hoped it would last a little longer.

Neither Mark nor I was recruited to play in college, but at least he stuck it out without football. I enrolled and tried walking on to the football team, but it was clear two days into practice that I wasn’t cut out for the game at that level. My parents tried to convince me to give community college a shot, but I told them I just wanted to take some time to think. That was six years ago.

It’s not like I’ve sat around doing nothing for six years. I got a job working at the Apple Store, and I make decent money. Not enough to live on my own, which, of course, is another problem coming up in my life. I let out a big sigh.

“My mom is kicking me out,” I said.

Mark looked surprised. I wasn’t sure why. This had been a long time in the making. My parents had been threatening to make me get my own place for about two years now, but this time my mom was serious.

“I have to be out by the end of the month.”

“Dude, that... that sucks,” Mark said. “I mean, you know I’d offer to let you move in with me, but I’ve only got a one-bedroom and Monica spends most of her time there as it is.”

Ah yes, Monica. Mark’s essentially live in girlfriend. Hell, calling her a “girlfriend” probably wasn’t accurate at this point; they were practically engaged. I think Mark was just waiting for his promotion to go through at work before he popped the question. We’d both been working at the Genius Bar for a while, but he was ready to go corporate. Meanwhile I was staring at a future of living in a 300-square-foot studio apartment, spending 40 hours a week swapping iPhones and never seeing my best friend because he was spending all of his time with his better half.

Yeah, suddenly a reboot wasn’t looking so bad.

“No, I know. I’ll find a place.”

“Hey, you wanna grab a drink?”

I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket and looked at the time. It was almost 3 a.m.

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna call it a night. I just got a new hard drive for my MacBook Pro and I wanna get that installed before I hit the sack.”

“OK, sounds good.”

Mark opened his door and started to get into his SUV, but then turned and looked back at me.

“Hey, Andrew,” he said. “I know you’re off tomorrow, but if you wanna grab lunch, I should be on break from 2 to 3.”

“Cool,” I said, half-heartedly. “I’ll catch you later.”

Mark got in his car and drove off as I walked across the empty parking lot to my car. The lights in the lots were flickering. Mine was the only car left, and as I approached it, I couldn’t shake the thought that something just felt wrong.

*****

I pulled into my driveway at 3:15 a.m. and tried to be as quiet as possible as I headed up the stairs, which is easier said than done when you’re as big as I am. I may have been 6-3, 290 in high school, but that was more than six years ago and in the time since then, I’d made far too many trips to the Burger King at the food court on my lunch breaks. I still worked out when I had the time, but it was mostly strength stuff. Cardio, flexibility, agility... that was all stuff I did just to play football.

I walked inside, being sure to lock the outer door behind me and set the alarm for the night; I knew my mom would get on me if I didn’t and I didn’t need that hassle. I headed upstairs and walked past my sister’s room. I could hear music playing, which meant that despite the late hour, Alana was still awake. That was no surprise. Hell, the surprise was that she was even home. She might only be 16, but she parties like she’s 25. I think that’s part of the reason my parents want me out of the house, to send a message to her. They think that she sees me cruising along living at home and she’ll be able to get away with doing the same, no matter how fucked up her life gets.

In a way, I feel bad that I haven’t been a better influence on her. I mean, the smoking, the drinking, the piercings, it’s not like she got that from me, but it’s not like I’ve been a positive role model to look up to either. For a second, I thought about knocking on her door and seeing if everything was OK – though I knew her definition of “OK” was far different from mine – but instead I just kept walking to the end of the hall and the same room I’d lived in for the better part of 20 years.

My room was something of a mess, with dirty clothes piled up, two computers in various states of disrepair and a general desperate need of a good dusting. Still, it was my room, and I didn’t really look forward to leaving it behind. I peeled off my 3XL Apple Store T-shirt; despite the rules against us wearing them outside of the store, I did it pretty much all the time. The solid color T-shirts were perfect for someone like me, who’d always been a lazy dresser. I’d had girlfriends in high school, and even since, who’d tried to get me to be more fashionable, but I never saw the need for anything other than a basic T-shirt and jeans.

I threw my jeans in the same clothes pile and grabbed a pair of basketball shorts to wear for the night. I didn’t have much work to do with this MacBook hard drive install, but I wanted to be comfortable as I did.

I sat in front of my already-disassembled computer and pulled out the new hard drive, a 256-gigabyte solid-state drive, designed to infuse some new life into this three-year-old computer. The new drive had arrived this afternoon, but I only got halfway through the installation process before I had to go to work and then the movie.

I popped the hard drive in, closed up the machine, and then inserted the OS X install DVD so I could start fresh. I considered reinstalling from my Time Machine backup, but all this talk of reboots got me thinking; if I can’t have a fresh start, my computer sure can. Hell, I wish it were that easy for me. Just take out the last five years of “data”, the college misfire, the failed relationships, the dead-end job, the extra weight... the extra weight on top of the extra weight... just dump it all and build a whole new me.

I quickly clicked through the default installation process, and the progress bar slowly moved along, indicating the complete installation would take just 27 minutes. Imagine that, a completely fresh start in less time than it takes to watch a single episode of “Parks and Recreation.” That thought gave me an idea; instead of staring at this stupid progress bar, let me fire up the DVR and throw on an episode of “Parks & Rec.” But first, I decided to head downstairs to grab a soda from the fridge.

I went down to the kitchen, and who should I see there but Alana, pouring herself a glass of vodka.

“You know, it’s a little late and about five years too early for you to be drinking that,” I said.

“Fuck off.”

She was in quite the cheery mood.

“I’m just saying...”

“Yeah, well why don’t you shove another donut in your fat mouth so you can stop saying.”

God, the fuck is her problem? It’s one thing for me to feel a bit of remorse for not being a better role model, but sometimes she acts like I’m personally responsible for every single thing that’s gone wrong in her life. And sometimes she’s just a raging bitch about it. Maybe it’s just that time of the month.

Rather than engage her and continue this amazingly high-level discourse, I just grab a bottle of Diet Coke – yeah, because THAT’LL solve all my weight problems – and head back upstairs as she heads out to the porch, likely to smoke one last cigarette before passing out drunk on the living room couch.

I swear she wasn’t always this bad... and hell, I wasn’t always this bad either. But a few months ago our parents decided to separate, and to no one’s surprise that had a negative impact on the entire family. Alana and I are much quicker to snipe at each other, and our mom is much quicker to yell at us for it. I don’t blame her, since we’re both well past the age of having “sibling rivalry” type fights. Besides, she’s got bigger shit to deal with than my me and my sister I hating each other. I think that’s part of the reason she wants me out... so she can focus on that bigger shit. It’ll probably help having me out too, since if mom and dad do decide to get divorced, they’ll probably have to sell the house. Parents’ separation, moving... God, it’s just more shit for the reboot pile.

I get back upstairs, and the progress bar is already at 23%. Only 21 minutes left. I could turn on the TV, but instead I just plop on to my bed, watch the progress bar, and eventually fall asleep.

*****

The buzzing of my iPhone’s text message alert roused me from my sleep, though it certainly wasn’t early. I rolled over and grabbed it off the nightstand, and it was already 12:45. I unlocked the phone and there were three text messages from my mother.

“Headed out for the day. Won’t be home tonight. You’re on your own for dinner.”

“Need you to pick up your sister from the doctor at 4:00.”

“Also, don’t forget to look for apartments. Should be plenty of places opening up in August.”

Oh, yay, this should be fun. I casually tossed my phone aside and slowly dragged myself out of bed. I felt like I had a hangover without actually having had anything to drink the night before, which is a really shitty feeling to say the least. It wasn’t necessarily physical, not like I was about to puke or anything. It’s emotional. I was just now realizing the shittiness of my situation, and I couldn’t say I liked it one bit.

Fortunately I could meet up with Mark for lunch and blow off some steam before I had to pick up Alana. Her doctor is only 10 minutes from home, but that 10-minute car ride was going to be excruciating. And being in the same house with her all night was going to suck just as much; although it’s far more likely that she ducks out five minutes after we get home. She might be grounded, but she’s never cared much for authority or rules, and I highly doubt she’s going to start now.

I had a little bit of time to kill before I need to head over to the mall, so I headed back over to my computer desk to resume what I started last night (well, technically this morning). One tap of the spacebar woke the computer and brought me to the initial setup screen. I see these every day at work, but it had been awhile since I had the opportunity to do one for myself.

The very first step asked if I want to transfer information from a backup or another computer. I glanced over at my two-terabyte external hard drive and considered connecting it and restoring all my original files, but instead I slid my finger over the trackpad and clicked “no.”

When prompted for a user name and password, I typed in “Carlysle” – my last name, the same user name I’ve used on every computer I’ve ever owned – and my default password, “TwoFour603972”. At my job, I always advised people to pick something easy to remember but hard to guess, and in this case I took my own advice. It was my birthdate – Dec. 30, 1986 (or 12301986) – multiplied by two then spelling out the first two digits. It was a trick Mark taught me years ago and I’d kept using throughout the years. Easy for me to remember; hard for others to guess.

As soon as the user account was set up, the computer immediately prompted me to install about a dozen software updates. I hit the button to get those started, and then got up and headed down the hall to the shower. If I was going to go out today (and I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, since I had to pick up my sister), I might as well clean up before I left.

I dropped my shorts and stripped off my shirt and got the water running. After just a few seconds, it was warm enough to shower. I took off my boxers and, before I got in the shower, I took a look at myself in the mirror. I couldn’t say I was happy with the guy who looked back at me. He might only be 25 years old, but thanks to his weight and his stubble and his slightly receding hairline, he looks much older. And he certainly doesn’t look happy. But right now he just looks like he needs a shower.

*****

An hour later, I was showered, dressed and on my way to the mall to meet up with Mark for lunch. I threw on a pair of cargo shorts and a Patriots T-shirt (yeah, I’m a real snappy dresser!) and grabbed a soda from the fridge before heading out. I’d pulled out of the driveway and was halfway down the street when I realized I’d never checked on the software updates on my computer after my shower, which means it was probably sitting there waiting for me to click “restart” before installing another round of updates. Oh well, something to do tonight before the Red Sox game comes on.

After the short drive over, I pulled into the mall’s parking lot. One thing that sucks about working here – well, one of the many things – is that even when you’re here on a day off or as a visitor, you have to park in the designated employee parking spaces, otherwise you’ll get ticketed (and if you get ticketed enough, you’ll get towed, which super-sucks). I shouldn’t complain, since other stores in the chain are at malls that only have paid parking, but the spaces are pretty far from the nearest entrance, and, as I’ve mentioned, I’m not in the best of shape. Plus, it’s really fucking hot out. Like 90 degrees, which might not seem that bad, but it’s also like 90 percent humidity. I almost didn’t even want to get out of my car.

Finally, after sitting in the AC for a few more minutes and staring at the clock, I got out and headed toward the store. It was 1:55, which meant Mark should just about be headed to his break. Perfect timing. Or so I thought.

As I got in the store, it was swamped, even by Apple Store standards. And Mark was behind the bar helping an elderly customer with a new iMac, which could either mean it’d be two minutes to fix the dumbest problem ever or two hours to fix an even dumber problem.

I didn’t want to interrupt, so I just kind of hovered behind the people at the bar, at least as much as a 6-foot-3, 300+ pound man can “hover”, and after about a minute or so, Mark spotted me. He stepped away from his customer and out from behind the bar, and gave me the traditional handshake/bro-hug greeting we always shared.

“Hey, so we doing lunch?” I asked him. “I can wait around if you’re swamped.”

“Yeah, about that...” he responded, hesitantly.

I quickly saw him looking past me and I turned around to see Monica entering the store. Of fucking course.

It’s not like I don’t like Monica. Quite the opposite. Well, wait no, not exactly the opposite. It’s not like I’m attracted to her. Sure, she’s good-looking, especially today, wearing a tight blue tanktop and black leggings with her blonde hair pulled up and her Gucci sunglasses covering half her face. She’s just not my type. And I’m definitely not hers, as a dating option or even a friend. And she was clearly trying to push us apart. Literally, in fact, right now, as she pushed her way between us to give Mark a kiss on the cheek.

“You ready, sweetie?” she asked him, not even acknowledging my presence.

“Yeah, I just gotta finish up with this one guy, then I can take my break,” he said to her.

I sighed loudly. Well, not incredibly loudly, but definitely loud enough for Monica to pick up on. She turned around looked at me. At least I think she did. I couldn’t really tell behind those glasses.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, in the smarmiest way possible. “Did you two have plans?”

I thought about telling her off right there, but I knew that wasn’t going to help matters in any way. Plus, for all my big thoughts and plans and mental declarations, I’m generally a non-confrontational person. I think it’s what made me such a mediocre football player. So instead of telling her what I really want to say, I just admit defeat.

“No, it’s cool,” I said. “I was just stopping by to make sure everything was okay here.”

I knew my voice didn’t mask my disappointment, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t even wait for her response, or Mark’s before turning around and making my way out of the store. I turned down the hall and made my way to Panera Bread. It wasn’t my first idea for lunch, but there was no way Mark and Monica would be there, so it wouldn’t be awkward. On the way there, my iPhone buzzed again. It was probably my mom, nagging me again, so I just hit the power button to ignore it.

I got down to Panera and I saw... her. No, not Monica. Panera Bread Girl.

I’m assuming “Panera Bread Girl” isn’t her actual name, but that’s what I’ve called her ever since I first saw her six months ago. She doesn’t wear a nametag – none of the employees at this Panera do – so I don’t know what to call her. I’m pretty sure she told me her name at one point, but I was too busy staring at her to actually hear her.

I’d ask her out, but then we’d live in a world where she most likely rejected me, instead of a world full of possibility where she hasn’t rejected me yet. I make no delusions about the fact that she’d totally reject me. She’s so far out of my league we’re not even playing the same sport anymore. There’s no way she’d ever date a guy like me, and that’s assuming she isn’t already dating someone.

I walked up to the counter and said pretty much the only words I’ve ever said to her.

“Hi. Umm... Smokehouse Turkey Panini, no tomato, with a large Diet Coke.”

“Is Diet Pepsi okay?” she asked in response. I’d been coming here regularly enough that I know Panera is a Pepsi affiliate, but I always order Coke, just to hear her ask the question.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Okay, that’ll be $7.23.”

I handed her my credit card, she ran it and then handed me my receipt. I moved down to the other end of the counter to await my order, but I couldn’t help but look back at her as she helped the next customer. She was about 5-5, maybe 5-6, with short, wavy red hair, but not the kind of red that looked clownish or fake. It was more like an auburn strawberry, and the soft waves perfectly framed her beautiful face while complementing her green eyes. Her body was amazing, and she somehow even made the boring Panera Bread uniform look sexy. She had curves in all the right places, with the kind of breasts that came straight out of a Victorian painting. I could only imagine how great she’d look dressed up for a night out. But unless I grew a set, it’s not like I’d ever see her like that.

I tried not to stare, but I couldn’t help continually glancing over. Finally, after what seemed like a period of time that was both too short and too long, my order was ready, and I took my tray over to a seat in the corner, out of view of the counter area. I knew the only way to keep myself from staring at Panera Bread Girl was to not even be able to see her. I quickly ate my lunch, and then made my way out of the restaurant.

When I left, I turned and looked back one last time. As I did, the red-headed beauty smiled and waved at me.

“Have a nice day,” she said.

I couldn’t tell if she was just being polite, or if there was something else there. Either way, it brought a smile to my face.

Of course, that smile was quickly wiped away when I checked my buzzing phone. There were two text messages, both from my sister. The first was the one I’d received before lunch, and the second had just arrived.

“Got an earlier appointment. Pick me up in like 10 minutes, OK?”

“Hey, I’ve been waiting for you for like forever. Where the fuck are you?”

Great, instead of getting a handful of moments to enjoy, I have to go pick up my spite-filled sister, who’s already pissed at me.

“Sorry, got hung up,” I texted back to her. “On my way now.”

I was going to head back up to the store, but instead I went straight to my car. I hooked up my iPhone to the USB input and turned on a Kanye West album. I knew my sister didn’t like Kanye, or rap in general, and I wasn’t intentionally trying to antagonize her, but I just needed something to go my way today.

A couple songs into the album, I pulled up at Alana’s doctor’s office. She was sitting out front, smoking a cigarette, and looking pretty pissed at me. She got up and into my car, tossed her purse on the floor and buckled up without saying a word to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said.

“Do we have to listen to this crap?”

10 minutes. I just kept telling myself “10 minutes.” I wasn’t sure whether to even try to make small talk, but I guessed it was better than sitting here in silence (well, not silence... Kanye’s hot beats... but still...). I turned down the music and gave it my best shot.

“So, how was the doctor?”

She let out a bit of a derisive laugh.

“Really?” she asked. “You really want to know?”

I didn’t know how to respond. Before I could, she began to speak again.

“Yeah, well seeing my OB-GYN was awesome. I took off my pants and got in the stirrups and she looked up my vagina. Of course, you know all about that.”

I still didn’t say anything.

“Because you have a vagina.”

“Because I have a vagina,” I said back, sarcastically.

“Well, I just assumed, since you’ve got bigger boobs than me.”

OK, small talk was a bust. I just turned the music back up, right as it was hitting “Runaway.” The lyrics seemed incredibly appropriate at the moment.

“And I always find, yeah, I always find somethin' wrong. You been puttin' up wit' my shit just way too long.”

Yep. That about covers it.

Alana slipped on her earbuds and started listening to... well, anything that I didn’t like. I really didn’t care anymore. I gave the friendly, familial small talk a shot and now I just wanted this drive to be over.

Fortunately, just a couple minutes later it was. I pulled into the driveway. Alana didn’t even wait until I came to a complete stop before hopping out. She wanted to get away from me so quickly that she even left her purse in the car. I parked the car and grabbed the purse. By the time I got inside, Alana was already upstairs, and I heard her door slam. I thought about bringing her purse up to her, but instead I just tossed it on the kitchen table.

I knew things had been tense between us, but she seemed more on edge than usual. I was pretty sure something was wrong, but I didn’t even know how to broach the subject with her. So I just headed up to my room.

As soon as I got in, I saw my computer asking me for a reboot, as I’d expected. I sat down to finish off the updates, when I got a text message. It was from Mark.

“Hey, dude, sorry about earlier. Monica just kind of sprung that surprise on me.”

“No biggie,” I texted back. “I had to pick up Alana early anyway.”

“So we cool?”

“Yeah, we cool.”

I wasn’t sure I meant it, but what was I going to say? “I’m pretty sure your girlfriend hates me and is monopolizing your time to keep us apart and I don’t blame you for choosing her over me because she’s pretty hot and puts out on the regular while I’m just your fat friend you talk about sports and comics with.” That wouldn’t even fit in a text message.

“Hey, you gonna be at the barbecue tomorrow?”

Ah, the annual Fourth of July block party barbecue. Mark and I had been going for years, since he grew up right down the street from me. He lived in a different city now – at least one of us moved out of our parents’ house – but he still came to the barbecue every year.

“Yeah. See you there?”

“You know it. Gotta get back to work now. See ya tomorrow.”

I didn’t really want to go to the barbecue, but if it meant getting to hang out with Mark, I figured I’d put up with it. Plus, maybe the celebration would put my mom in a good mood and I could talk her out of making me move out.

Shit, that reminded me. I hadn’t done any apartment hunting today. Well, since it was 2012, I could pretty much do it online. But first I wanted to take a nap. I was still feeling a little groggy from having stayed up so late last night, and to be honest I had a headache that didn’t really feel like it was going away any time soon.

So I hit the restart button on my computer and flopped back into bed. Just for a quick nap...

*****

DAY ONE

"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 Lexi's room. It was strange not to hear music blaring from it or see smoke wafting out from under the door. Strange, and nice.

"Hey, Lexi," I asked, knocking on the door, "have you seen my laptop?"

"Oh, sorry, I borrowed it to Skype with dad," she said. "It's right on my bed, just grab it."

I opened the door and walked right into Lexi's room, not even thinking about why she couldn't have just given it to me. And I immediately learned why. She was getting dressed.

"Ohmigod, put on some clothes," I said, shielding my eyes from my half-naked sister.

"What," she said. "I'm just putting on my bathing suit. Which one do you think Ryan would like better, this one or this one?"

She was holding up a suit in each hand, which meant there was nothing covering her breasts. At least she still had underwear on. Was this normal? Did sisters do this, just stand in front of each other naked? I kept trying to make my way to the bed, where I could sort of see my laptop, while peeking back to see the two bathing suits my sister was asking me about. The one in her left hand was a black one-piece with side cutouts and halter ties. The one in her right hand was white two-piece with a strapless top and a ruffle-trim bottom. Neither left much to the imagination, but at least the black one looked like a swimsuit, whereas I was pretty sure the white one was just two strips of fabric.

"The black," I said, still shielding my eyes as much as possible. "Definitely the black."

I picked up my laptop with my free hand and headed out of the room as quickly as I could.

"Thanks Ali," my sister said as she turned her attention back to her mirror. I left and closed the door behind me, since while apparently she was fine with me seeing her topless, I was fairly confident that she didn't want to repeat that scene with our mother or stepfather.

Sitting down on my bed, I opened my laptop and another change struck me right away. My laptop was no longer a four-year-old MacBook Pro. It wasn't a MacBook Pro at all. It was a MacBook Air. And an 11-inch one to boot.

"Great," I said out loud to no one in particular. "Tiny body, tiny computer."

I opened the lid and was greeted by a login screen. It was possible Lexi used the guest account that's installed by default, but it was also possible I gave her my password. We seemed close enough. But even if she knew it, I certainly couldn't ask her for my own password. That'd be super suspicious. I tried restarting the computer to see if it would auto-login after a reboot, but it didn't.

OK, password guessing time.

"password". Nope.

"Alana". Nope.

"Aiden". Nope.

After three tries, the password hint came up. All it said was "primary".

So I tried "primary".

Nope.

I tried to let my mind go blank, hoping it would just pop into my head, but I was already too focused on guessing it that there was no way that unconscious memory was going to kick in. Then, on a whim, I tried something.

"TwoFour603972".

The login screen went away and my desktop appeared. I couldn't believe it. This version of me and the me I knew had almost nothing in common, and yet we used the same obscure password. That had to mean something. But it wasn't particularly high up on the priority list during this fact-finding mission. I immediately popped open Mail, Safari, iPhoto, Quicken, Microsoft Word… basically any application I thought might have any useful personal information. And I got to digging.

*****

Three hours went by before my mom finally knocked on my door, breaking up my research session.

"I brought your suit up," she said through the closed door. "You should probably get ready. People will be arriving soon."

"Thanks," I said, as I opened the door to get my bikini from her.

"You've been awfully quiet up here," she said. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, everything's fine mom," I said, lying through my teeth. "Just catching up on my reading."

"OK, well get dressed and we'll see you downstairs in a few minutes. Ron's already got some food on the grill if you're hungry."

I closed the door and tossed the bikini on my bed, then hopped back on the bed and took another look at the computer. In only three hours, I'd learned quite a bit, way more than I had in my quick Facebook session at the gym.

Most enlightening was the fact that my parents had separated six years ago, right around the same time I started college, and finalized their divorce a couple years after that. I'd always heard about how children of divorce often blamed themselves for their parents splitting, but in this case I was wondering the opposite. In my life, my non-Alana life, was I responsible for my parents staying together even though they didn't want to be anymore? If I'd been more stable and responsible, like this version of me was, would they have followed their hearts? And how much had them staying together long past their expiration date as a couple affected the tension in our family the last five or six years?

I learned a bunch about Aiden too, though that wasn't going to help me tonight, since two weeks ago he moved out to Los Angeles for a movie role. We'd met at NYU; he was a 21-year-old undergrad, which kind of creeped me out, not just the idea of dating a guy, but dating one four years younger than me. He was from New Zealand, not Australia, and apparently I'd been attracted to him in the first place because of his voice, seeing him perform in a student version of "Guys and Dolls". So apparently male or female, I'm a sucker for that accent.

But as much as I had learned from our Facebook messages, wall posts, e-mails and texts, I hadn't learned why when he went out to L.A., I decided to return home to Connecticut. It didn't make much sense at all, even if my lease was up in New York. There had to be more opportunities for a graduate-level dancer in New York and L.A. than in Connecticut. The only dancing I knew of in this area was the exotic kind, and I didn't think I went to six years of college for that.

"Then again," I thought, looking over at the string bikini I was apparently planning on wearing at the barbeque. No, I had to stop thinking that way. Just because a girl wore skimpy clothing it doesn't mean she's a stripper or a slut. I was clearly the kind of girl who was confident enough to show off my body -- my Facebook photos and iPhoto library were evidence of that -- so I tossed off my halter and slipped on the bikini top. And then the bottom. It took a little adjusting, but I got it into a position that covered the majority of my ass. Apparently a bikini bottom that covered my WHOLE ass would've been too much to ask for. At least it wasn't a thong.

I slipped on a pair of wedge sandals and started to head downstairs, but not before giving myself one last head-to-toe look in the mirror. I couldn't say I loved the reflection looking back at me, but I couldn't say I hated it either. No matter what I thought about being a girl, I had to admit that by most measures -- not the least of which was attractiveness -- Alana was better than Andrew. And while there was no way I could be everything Alana was at this party, I had to put on the happy face and play the role.

As I got downstairs and walked back into the kitchen, I saw my sister there in her black bathing suit, sipping on a bottle of water and texting with someone.

"Ryan," I asked.

"No, just Stephie," she said. "But Ryan said he's gonna come by later. And then we might all go see 'Ted'. And then…"

She trailed off. I knew exactly what followed that "and then", and it was nothing good.

"Just promise me you won't rush into anything, OK, Lexi?"

"You know I won't," she said. God, it was incredible. She looked so much like the sister I knew, but she couldn't have been more different.

I headed out the back door to leave her to her texting fun when she called out to me at the last second.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she said. "Doctor Briggs's office called. You're all set for Friday."

"Thanks," I said, having no idea who Dr. Briggs was or where his office was or when my appointment was Friday. But at least now that I knew ABOUT it, I knew how I could look into it.

As I got outside, Ron immediately handed me a paper plate with a burger on it.

"I didn't know if you wanted a bun or not," he said. "If so, they're over on the table."

I looked over and there was a portable picnic table set up on the deck with an impressive spread of sides, condiments, buns, and a serving plate piled high with already-grilled burgers. The part of me that was still Andrew -- that is, to say, pretty much everything but my body -- was drooling at the sight of it. But my mouth wasn't producing any actual drool. And if anything, my stomach was feeling queasy. I handed the plate back to Ron.

"Actually, I was gonna take a dip in the pool," I said. "But save me one for later, OK?"

"Sure thing," he said. He was so chipper. And even though I'd just met him, I liked him, because he seemed to make my mom happy. It bugged me a little bit when I found out he was only 35 -- closer to my age than my mother's -- but, again, he made my mom happy, and that's really all that mattered.

Heading up to the pool, I was surprised to see there was already someone in it. It wasn't Ron, my mom, or my sister. I thought it might be my dad, but it didn't look anything like him. He was hanging out around the far end of the pool, so I kicked my shoes off and decided to just slide right in. It was about 95 degrees outside, even as the sun lowered in the sky, but the water was refreshingly cool. It was only about four feet deep, so I was able to stand comfortably without submerging my head, though the bottom of my hair was definitely getting wet.

"You can swim on down this way. I don't bite," said the man at the other end of the pool. He looked like he was about my age, maybe a little bit older, but the shaved head was throwing me off. For all I knew he was a creepy 50-year-old who just kept in remarkable shape. Though I didn't know many 50-year-olds with barbed-wire tattoos on their right bicep and a tribal eagle on their left arm. Regardless of age, that wasn't exactly a trustworthy combination. I didn't budge, so he swam over toward me.

"Alana, right," he asked. "I'm Cash."

He extended his hand to shake, but I left him hanging. I did kind of feel bad doing it, but I didn't know this guy from… well, from me. After a couple seconds, he pulled his hand back.

"I work with Ron over at Pratt," he said, continuing to try to make small talk. "Well, I work FOR him. I mean, he's my superior. Well, not SUPERIOR, I just… I report to him. I… you know, feel free to jump in here at any point, save me from babbling like an idiot."

OK, I had to chuckle at that. Because he was babbling like an idiot. And he kept glancing down at my breasts, which I had to admit looked spectacular in this bikini. I arched my back, thrusting them forward in his direction, while wearing the biggest shit-eating grin of my life. He tried his hardest to avert his gaze, so I splashed some water at him.

"Hey, if I'm gonna put on a show, the least you can do is watch," I said, totally baiting him. "So… Cash? Is that a first or last name."

"First," he said.

"Really? Like given birth name? Not a nickname like 'people call me Cash because I'm SO money." I was trolling him, only he didn't know it. Or if he did, he so badly wanted to get in good with me that he wasn't going to call me on it.

"Hand to God," he said, literally holding his left hand up like he was being sworn-in for testimony. "I'll get my driver's license if you don't believe me.

"No," I said. "I believe you. No need to get your driver's license. But you can get me a drink."

"Beer," he asked. "Or are you more of a wine cooler girl?"

"Honestly, just a water will be fine," I said.

"Oh, really. Well, that's easy enough."

Then he splashed some water in my face before hopping out of the pool. I turned to watch him walk across the deck and down to the lower level, when I saw Gwen standing there, wearing a purple halter bikini under a sheer white cover-up -- a piece of clothing I wish I'd thought of wearing when I'd put this bikini on.

"Ohmigod," she said. "You were totally flirting with that guy."

"I was not," I said. I pulled myself out of the pool, and sat down on the deck, putting my feet back in the water. Gwen pulled off her flip-flops and sat beside me.

"You totally were," she said. "You should go for it. He's way hotter than Aiden. And way more not all the way across the country."

"We were not flirting," I said. "We were just talking."

"And giggling," Gwen added. "And splashing."

I had to admit, Gwen had me there. I really just thought I'd been harmlessly messing with the guy. But was it flirting? I'd always sucked at flirting.

"Look, I literally just met the guy," I said. "I know his name, that he works with Ron, and that's it. I don't even know if he's interested in me."

"I'm pretty sure he's interested in you," she said. "I mean, the guy is breathing right? And he's not blind, is he?"

"Who's blind," asked Cash, coming up from behind, startling me to the point that I almost fell into the pool. I had to catch myself on the deck, and Cash helped, grabbing my shoulder from behind.

"Careful, there," he said. "Wouldn't want you to drown."

"Yeah," Gwen butted it. "You'd have to dive in after her and maybe give her mouth-to-mouth."

I was starting to very much hate Gwen. I needed something to distract from the horrible shade of red I was turning, so I did the only thing I could think of.

I pushed Gwen into the pool.

She let out a scream that probably got the attention of the entire neighborhood, and made a splash big enough to get Cash and I wet. Well, wetter than we already were. She completely submerged, soaking her hair and her cover-up.

"What. The. Hell." she asked as she came up from underwater.

"Sorry," I said, making a "who, me?" kind of shrug. "I must've slipped."

"Not cool," she said.

"I dunno," Cash chimed in. "It was pretty cool."

Cash sat down next to me on the deck and handed me a bottle of water. I took a sip, then looked over toward the driveway where more cars were pulling up. The upper part of the deck extended far enough around the pool that there was probably room for a dozen or more people to sit like this, plus countless others in the pool itself. So it wouldn't be long before Gwen, Cash and I were joined by others, and it would be harder for us to talk. So I just decided to go for it.

"OK, cards on the table," I said. "What's your deal?"

"My 'deal'," he asked.

"Yeah, are you trying to mack on me or something?"

"Well, no, I'm not trying to 'mack' on you, because I'm not a 1970's pimp," he said. "I just thought maybe, you know, we could, umm, hang, I guess."

"Well, that depends," I said. I put the bottle of water down and dove forward into the pool. "Can you hang?"

He put his beer down and jumped in after me.

*****

"I know how to throw a football."

I kept repeating the words, but Cash kept not believing me. It was understandable, given that with my new tiny hands and their perfectly manicured nails I could barely get decent grip.

I played football from the time I was six until the time I graduated high school, and though I was never a quarterback, I also never had any problem throwing the ball. I could even throw it a solid 25 yards downfield with my left hand. But now I threw it... well, like a girl.

It was incredibly embarrassing, and just another reminder of my predicament, but without being able to get a grip on the ball, I ended up more pushing it than throwing it. If I'd just kept my mouth shut, I wouldn't be standing here, with Cash half pretending to teach me how to throw and half hitting on me. But he started talking about football, and I -- forgetting myself ever so briefly -- challenged him on the subject. It turned into a proverbial dick-measuring contest, which -- of course -- I was guaranteed to lose.

Even knowing the exact proper mechanics wasn’t helping. Cash kept coming back to me and standing right behind me while repositioning my arm. He said he was "coaching" me, but I was pretty sure his style of "coaching" would be frowned upon at the Manning Quarterback Camp. He was spending way more time with his hands on my hips than on a football.

The worst part was I didn’t entirely hate it.

I mean, sure, the THOUGHT of this guy -- this 6-foot-1, well-built guy with an engineering degree -- getting all touchy-feely with me was mentally off putting, but when he actually put his hands on me, my body responded. It liked being touched. It didn't help that I was still wearing nothing but a string bikini, while Cash was going bare-chested (and when I say bare, I mean it. I think he manscapes.). It was taking every bit of concentration I had to not let this body's natural responses take over, which wasn't at all helping me concentrate on throwing the ball.

"Good, you're getting the hang of it," Cash said, totally lying as another one of my tosses fell harmlessly at his feet. I really needed this embarrassment to end.

Fortunately, right on cue, Ron came over with food.

"Got a couple burgers for you too," he said, handing me the plates.

"Thanks, Ron," I said. I looked at the two plates and it was immediately apparent which one was mine. The double-cheeseburger on the toasted bun with a pile of chips on the side... nope, not anymore. Mine was the single patty on a bed of lettuce. Yay, dancer's diet!

"Go deep, Ron," Cash said, picking up the football. Ron obliged running back up the driveway, where Cash tossed a deep pass, one that Ron hauled in nicely while narrowly avoiding crashing into the back of my mother's car.

"Didn't we need that," I asked Cash while handing him his food.

"No, you totally proved yourself to me," he said, mockingly. "You obviously know how to throw a football."

"I do," I yelled back. "I just can't. Not in this..."

I caught myself. I nearly said body without even thinking about it. I was finding that when I got emotional, I was more likely to slip, and in just a day I was finding myself getting emotional more often. I wanted to chalk it up to "hormones" but it was probably something more complex than that. Still, I was safe this time.

"Bikini," I said, finishing my sentence after a bit of an awkward pause. "I feel like I'm trying out for the lingerie football league."

"We'll, if you did, I'm sure you'd be great," Cash said. I wanted to call him a condescending ass, but instead I just cut off a piece of hamburger with my fork and stuffed it in my mouth.

Most of the partygoers were in the back on the deck or in the pool, but Cash and I made our way to the front porch, where Gwen was engaging in some unabashed PDA with a guy I didn’t recognize. I looked over awkwardly at Cash, afraid of giving him any ideas.

"So, umm, how's your burger," I asked, trying not to say anything about kissing or making out or touching or anything that would lead him on.

"It's good," he said, before taking another bite. Oh, God, this was so awkward. And Gwen and this guy just kept going to town on each other's lips.

"I wonder if they need to come up for air at any point," Cash said. I laughed, not because it was particularly funny, but just because it was SOMETHING to break the tension. I forced down another bite of my burger, then looked back at Cash. And he looked at me. We were doing that thing where we made eye contact and both knew what was next, but didn't know how to say it.

Fortunately, we didn't have to, because just when the awkward tension was reaching its peak, Gwen separated herself from her symbiotic kissing partner enough to say something.

"Oh, hey, this is Darnell,” she said. “He works at The Cloud and can get us in tonight. Want to go?”

The only "Cloud" I was familiar with was the one where my iPhone stored files, but I knew that wasn't what Gwen was asking about. Nor was she asking me.

"I dunno," Cash said, turning to me. "Am I coming?"

Ew, he said "coming". My overgrown juvenile mind immediately wanted to say "that's what she said", but I didn't think that would go over too well. So I went noncommittal instead.

"You're an adult, you don't need my permission to go to a club," I said. As soon as I said it, I realized how bitchy it came off. I tried to recover. "I mean, like, if you wanna come, or not, it's like, no big deal, or whatever."

OK, maybe I overcorrected. But it worked.

"OK, well, I'll head back to my place in a few and get changed," he said. "Unless you think they'd let me in like this."

As good as he looked wearing nothing but a black bathing suit and flip-flops, there was no club on the planet that would let him in like that. OK, maybe in South Beach. But we weren't taking our talents there, we were taking them to downtown Hartford. Where I was fairly certain that "no shirts, no shoes, no service" was still the baseline and "dress to impress" was the preference.

Oh, shit. That meant I was gonna have to get dressed for a club too. This day just kept getting worse. Why couldn't I just throw on some shorts, grab a giant bowl of ice cream and watch "Independence Day" like I did every year on the Fourth of July? No, I had to be little Miss Popular who wants to spend time with her friends going out and living life. This was fucking draining.

And on top of all that, this burger -- which I'd only eaten half of -- was starting to make me queasy. Well, queasier. I'd been fighting a weird feeling in my stomach all day. God, I hope it's not cramps. I was ready for a lot of random shit I was going to have to deal with until I got this fixed. My period was not one of them. Honestly, if I could magically somehow not have to deal with those, that'd be fucking phenomenal.

Cash finished off his burger and headed down the street to his car, a black Dodge Charger with black-and-red interior. I wondered if that was a sign, or if it was the universe's way of fucking with me. Or maybe it meant nothing -- it's not like it was a rare car with an uncommon color scheme. As he pulled out, another car immediately pulled into the vacant space, a red Mercedes-Benz C350 with tinted windows. I recognized it immediately, and wasn't surprised when the driver stepped out. It was Monica.

As much as I wasn't looking forward to seeing her, it was nice to see that one thing -- her car -- hadn't changed. And Monica herself hadn't changed much either, though the version of her I was looking at was… well, "better" probably wasn't the way to describe it. She was more primped. Monica had always taken special care of her appearance when she was dating Mark, but her style was "laid back". She wore good looking clothes that were also comfortable and casual and while she wore a lot of makeup, she made it look like she didn't. This version of Monica was "night club" Monica. She was wearing a white glitter dress with matching four-inch heels and her traditional Gucci sunglasses. Her hair was down, and perfectly waved with fresh highlights, like she'd just come from the salon. She waved to me as she got out of the car, then pushed her sunglasses up on her head, revealing some seriously heavy eye makeup.

"You know we're going to a club in Hartford, not Paris, right," I asked. She kissed me on the cheek and flipped her sunglasses back down.

"There's nothing wrong with looking your best," she said. "Especially if you might run into your ex."

Right, Bryce, the guy I'd apparently been advising her to break up with, which she finally did yesterday.

"How are you doing," I asked, trying to play the role of the sympathetic friend.

"I'm good," she said, not that I really cared.

Truthfully, I'd always resented Monica for getting between me and Mark, and now not only were my suspicions about her personality confirmed but I was apparently enabling her, which didn't speak well about the kind of person this body had been before I'd ended up here. But the weird thing is that so far everyone I'd encountered seemed to like me. Though honestly I wondered what they were saying about me behind my back. Was Gwen telling Darnell how much of a bitch I was just before I walked by? Did Monica hate me for telling her to break up with Bryce? I just wanted to go back to when I KNEW everyone I knew hated me. Life sucked like that, but it was certainly easier.

"Hey, Gwen," Monica called out, as Gwen waved back. "We're gonna head upstairs so Ali can get ready, OK?"

Wait, what? Get ready? Already?

"We've got time," I said. "Let's just hang out for a bit."

"Oh, please," Monica said. "Knowing you, if you start getting dressed now, we should be at the club just in time for last call."

She started walking up the walkway to my front door, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me along in the process. I guess I didn't really have any say here. I was getting dressed up for a night of clubbing, whether I was ready or not.

*****

I finished taking a shower to get the chlorine smell off my body and had started drying myself off when Monica knocked on the bathroom door.

"Leave your hair wet," she said. "I want to try something."

"OK," I said nervously. All day I'd just been pulling my hair back into a ponytail, so any type of styling was going to be an adventure.

"I still can't believe you dyed it," Monica said, still talking to me through the closed door. "You were perfect with the red."

So, I guess I dyed my hair black for some reason, and apparently it had been red before that, and blonde whenever I got my driver's license photo. Who knows how many other colors I'd gone through over the years?

"I was so over the red," I said, which was a blatant lie on every level. Not only did I not know if that was the reason I dyed it, but I adored redheads. My favorite comic book character of all-time was Mary Jane Watson from Spider-Man and I had a giant poster of Jennifer Garner from the first episode of Alias hanging in my bedroom growing up. If I had to be a girl, I’d want to be like them – instead I looked more like Lois Lane, which I kind of hated, since I wasn’t remotely a DC fan.

I wrapped the towel around my body, and patted down my hair with another one, leaving it wet but not dripping. Monica and I went back to my room, and she immediately opened up my closet, which was bursting with clothes.

"So, how badly do you want to make this guy drool," she said.

"What guy," I asked. I really had no idea.

"Oh, don't play dumb with me," she said, running her finger along hangers to find a dress. "I saw you flirting with that guy from the party before I showed up."

"You mean Cash," I asked. I still felt stupid saying his name, and Monica seemed to concur.

"Cash," she said, laughing. "Oh, honey, please tell me that's some frat nickname or something."

"No," I said. "He swears it's his real name."

"Yeah, just like he swears he totally knows what those Chinese characters tattooed on his shoulder mean," she said.

"Wow, so you got a pretty good look at him from your car," I said. "Your car with its tinted windows, while you were wearing your sunglasses."

"OK, fine, you got me," she said. "Gwen might've texted me some details. And a photo. And I might've checked on him on Facebook."

"Ohmigod," I said, exasperated. "You know you're not my mom, right?"

"I just feel like I owe you," she said. "You said from the start that Bryce wasn't right for me, and you were totally right."

"Speaking of Bryce," I said, trying to get the conversation off Cash and me -- if there was even a "Cash and me", which I'm pretty sure there wasn't, "how'd he take it?"

"Oh. My. God," Monica said. And I'm pretty sure she wasn't reacting to my question about Bryce. She pulled out a red bandage dress and held it up. "When did you get this? Where did you get this? How did you… Ohmigod, this is a Herve Leger!"

Monica was freaking out over this dress, and I was freaking out about the possibility of having to wear it. It was low-cut in the front, open in the back and looked like it would barely fit me, even as tiny as I was. So I tried to get her to put it back.

"Isn't that a little dressy for tonight," I asked. "Even by your standards?"

"Oh, come on, you don't buy a thousand-dollar dress to leave it hanging in the closet next to this nerd costume," she said, pointing to the spandex Phoenix outfit I’d seen in those pictures from New York Comic Con.

Also, did she just say a thousand dollars? I think the most expensive piece of clothing I owned as Andrew -- outside of football jerseys -- was a $150 suit that I bought to wear to a wedding about a year ago. And I'd only worn that once before getting too fat for it. This thing Monica was holding up had about one-tenth the fabric of that suit (if that) and cost seven times as much. I couldn't even comprehend that. And I still didn't want to comprehend wearing it. So I improvised.

"Ok, let's say I'm trying to impress this guy -- which, I'm totally NOT, by the way," I said. "If I start with this, I really have nowhere to go but down. Shouldn't I build to it? You know, break it out when I need it the most?"

"You always did know how to play a guy," she said, hanging the dress back up, being incredibly careful not to wrinkle it in the process.

"OK, what about this one," she said, pulling out a black lace bodice dress. It was just as short as the last one, and still didn't have sleeves, but it wasn't quite as revealing. And both the top part and the skirt had an extra layer on top. Sure, it was lace, but it was better than nothing.

"That's much better," I said, holding my hand out. She handed me the dress, then started looking for a pair of shoes to match with it. I tossed the dress on my bed and opened my underbed drawer to find some underwear. I realized with my shoulders being covered only by lace, I'd either have to go with a strapless bra or a black one, unless I wanted to be super suggestive. And no, to make it clear, I did not. I grabbed the first black bra I found, which was a Victoria's Secret push-up bra with matching lace-lined panties. Suddenly going underwear-less seemed like a viable option.

"Oh," Monica said, looking over at my selection. "Well, if you're going with that, then these won't do."

She was holding a pair of black ballet flats with a lace ribbon on top. They would've gone perfectly with the dress and not destroyed my feet all night, but apparently my choice of bra had sent Monica a signal that I wanted to look "sexy" and not "cute". Was it too late to just call this whole thing off?

I dropped the towel and pulled on my underwear as quickly as possible. The 32A bra was a little tight, but once it was on, I could see in the mirror that it noticeably enhanced my cleavage. I'd gone from looking like I barely had breasts to looking like I had a decent pair worth showing off, even if I didn't want to. I was about to pull the dress on, when Monica stopped me.

"Wait," she said. "Let's do your hair first."

I sat down in my vanity chair and she put her sunglasses down on the table. As I watched her work in the mirror, I was impressed with how well she was able to manipulate my hair with her long nails. I'd thought mine were long when I first noticed them this morning, but hers were a solid half-inch longer, with a french manicure. I didn't remember her wearing them that long before, but I never really paid that much attention to them, since she was Mark's girlfriend, not mine.

"You should probably start doing your makeup," she said while pulling some of my hair into a small braid. I wasn't sure if I could. I knew I couldn't get away with just a fresh coat of lipstick like I had at the gym this morning. And given Alana's stage and costuming background, I also couldn't get away with saying "I don't know how."

Just think, Andrew. I'd seen plenty of girls do this at the genius bar while completely ignoring my instructions on how to use their computer. It shouldn't be that complicated. I thought maybe if I just kept it simple, stuck to the basics, I could be OK.

Then something strange happened.

As soon as I reached for the makeup kit, I felt a tingling sensation in my head. I thought at first that it was something Monica was doing with my hair, but at that moment she was reaching down into her purse for another hair-tie to pull a couple of the braids together -- I knew she wasn't close to finished, but honestly my hair looked kind of idiotic like this, with just a couple of side braids.

Without even thinking about it, my hand picked up some foundation and started applying it. That makes sense, I thought. It's called "foundation" for a reason. I started with a few quick dabs in the middle of my face and worked outward, blending as I went. I put the foundation down and applied some powder to my face, not even knowing what it was.

Part of me was amazed and part of me was scared. I had no idea how I was doing this, and more importantly, I couldn't seem to stop. I put down the powder and tried just leaving the makeup at that -- which, honestly, wasn't really an application of makeup at all -- when the tingling started again. Instinctively, I reached for a jar of Glamour Daze Powder Blush from MAC.

Funny, I always used to joke when people called us "The MAC Store" that we didn't sell makeup. It was one of those jokes that only nerds and frequent Apple Store customers appreciated, which was understandable, since it was a pretty nerdy joke, and a bad one at that. But it caught on, and I was far from the only one who used it. Hell, Cole practically said it every day, and he was one of our store managers.

I started to wonder about Cole, and the other people I worked with at the store, and if I knew any of them as Alana. And as my mind wandered, my hands kept working. I'd gotten so lost in Andrew's thoughts that I had barely noticed that Alana was now wearing smoky red eyeshadow with thick black eyeliner that blended nicely with her dark red lips. I looked down and saw tissues where I'd removed the pink lipstick from earlier in preparation of this darker, more club-like look, and I was holding a Cremesheen Glass lipgloss tube.

Monica had also just about finished my hair, pulling all the braids into a single wet bun. She was finishing tightening the wet strands now, creating a stick look with the hair. But I couldn't focus on the hairstyle while I was still freaked out about the makeup thing. This went way beyond muscle memory or even randomly accessed memories like at lunch with Gwen. It was like Alana took over for a few minutes while Andrew was daydreaming. And it freaked me out.

I tried to take a few deep breaths to calm myself down, but Monica quickly noticed me panicking.

"Are you OK," she asked. "You like the hair, right?"

A couple more deep breaths, and I was back in business, though my stomach was still doing somersaults.

"The hair's fine," I said. "No, better than fine. It's stunning."

"Not half as good as your makeup job," she said. "Even with all the tips you’ve given me, I can't get mine that nice."

"I guess I'm just a natural," I said, which this time was the God's honest truth. I dabbed a bit of lip gloss on the middle of my top and bottom lips and puckered them together -- that was something I'd definitely seen girls my age do at the bar -- and closed up the tube. Then I put on my dress, which was a bit tighter than I'd expected. Still, I was able to close the side zip with no problem at all. Thanks newfound thinness and flexibility!

Monica handed me a pair of lace, VC Signature booties with a four-inch heel. I immediately took one look at them and decided that if I was going to wear them -- and I pretty much had to since Monica picked them out and even I had to admit, as fashion-challenged as I was, that they were a perfect match for this dress -- that I wouldn't be doing too much drinking tonight. It was probably a given that Alana's body didn't have a high tolerance for alcohol, given that she was barely 100 pounds, and the last think I needed was to be tipsy in heels I wasn't comfortable walking in. But I pulled them on, then stood up and gave myself one last look in the mirror.

"We're drinking free tonight," Monica said.

She put her sunglasses back on and started walking down the stairs. I grabbed mine -- a basic black-and-pink pair that looked to be a designer knockoff -- along with a silver watch from the vanity. As Andrew, I never wore a watch; my phone was more than enough to tell the time. But this was more fashion accessory than timepiece. I picked up my phone, tossed it in my purse and headed downstairs after Monica.

As I got downstairs, I ran into my mom in the living room.

"Headed out," she asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Hitting the club with Monica."

"OK," she said. "Don't get into too much trouble."

God, I hoped I wouldn't.

*****

"Are you having a good time?"

It was the third time Monica had asked me that question since we'd arrived at the club, and my answer had been the same every time.

"Yeah," I said. "This is fun."

But it wasn't, and she could definitely tell that I wasn't having fun. And why should I be? I'd never liked the club scene, the loud music, the expensive mixed drinks… none of it was me. It didn't help that at the moment I wasn't me. I woke up this morning as a female version of myself and now I was sitting in a club wearing a dress with men trying to pick me up by buying me drinks while my best friend -- who I only previously knew as the girlfriend of my actual best friend -- was running interference on guys she deemed unworthy of me. And thank God she was, because the last thing I wanted to do was be hit on by some skeevy club guy with too much gel in his hair and too little brains in his head.

"You want another drink," Monica asked.

"No, I'm good," I said, running my finger around the rim of a vodka-cranberry cocktail. I'd ordered it as soon as we got here, because it was the only thing I could think of that seemed like something Alana would drink that I was also willing to force down, but I hadn't had a sip yet. I'd just been occasionally looking back at the glass, watching the ice melt and water down the alcohol.

"Actually," I said, "I could use a water. Just water. Ice water. On ice. It's really hot in here."

Monica went off to the bar, briefly leaving me alone at our booth. It comfortably seated six, so it felt mildly embarrassing to be in it by myself. I guess sitting here solo keeping watch over Gwen's purse was a better option than going to the bar myself and ordering my own drink. Still, sitting alone at a bar was a feeling that was all-too-familiar. And as much as I was desperate for familiar feelings right now, this wasn't one I was particularly keen on reliving.

From across the room, I could see Monica at the bar, and she was happily flirting with a decent-looking guy, which meant I probably wasn't getting that water any time soon. I took a sip from the glass I already had at hand and immediately regretted the decision. I wasn't a liquor drinker; beer was my drink of choice, the cheaper the better. Give me a sports bar with big TVs, two-dollar drafts and plenty of wings in the kitchen and I was happy. I didn't need cocktails, dance floors or -- most especially -- fancy clothes.

I looked down at my body and was a little distressed to see that I'd been tapping my foot to the music, the terrible dance-pop music pulsing through the club. It was just another of those involuntary reflexes that had been happening all day, my "Alana moments" as I'd already come to call them. I felt stupid coming up with a name for it, considering I was still holding out hope that this would be my first and last night in this body, but I was slowly losing hope of that.

The thought seemed ironic as Rihanna's "We Found Love in a Hopeless Place" started blaring from the club's speakers. Forget love, I just wanted to find me. I closed my eyes and took another sip from my drink when I felt a hand on my shoulder, startling me and causing me to drop the drink before I could even wet my lips.

"Oh, fuck me sideways," I said, seeing the mess the spilled drink had made on the table. I quickly snatched my purse before it got wet, then turned to see Cash sliding up beside me.

"Well, if you want to move that fast," he said, trying to ease the tension. At least I hoped that was what he was doing, and didn't really think I was propositioning him.

"No, that's not… I mean… I'm just… I'm kind of a klutz," I said.

"Really," Cash asked. "I figured a dancer like you would be really graceful."

"Well, I mean, I am," I said, stumbling to cover my idiocy. "I just, I get kind of klutzy when…"

"When you've had too much to drink," he asked, interrupting me.

"Like, totally, way too much," I said. I played it up by trying to stand up and "falling" toward him. I'd only had a tiny sip of alcohol all night, but he didn't have to know that. Thankfully he arrived an hour late, and seemed pretty gullible. Or was just willing to believe anything a pretty girl told him, a feeling I certainly knew.

"OK," he said. "So no more drinks for you tonight."

"That seems like a good plan," I said, playfully. "Or maybe you're just too cheap to buy me a drink."

"If I buy you a drink, you promise to keep it in the glass and not on the table," he asked.

"Maybe it'll end up on you," I said, flicking up some of the spilled cocktail from the table onto his black button-down shirt. He quickly brushed it off, and sat down at the booth as Monica arrived back with two large martini glasses.

"That's not water," I said to her as she handed me the glass with a pink cocktail with strawberries in it.

"Oh, come on," she said. "One Tickled Pink isn't going to hurt you."

Hurt me? No. Embarrass the crap out of me? Possibly. Then again, what did I have to be embarrassed about? I was a tiny little girl drinking a girl drink in a girl dress with my best girl friend? Girl. The word just kept reverberating in my head, giving me a headache on top of the nausea I was already dealing with. Holding the glass in my left hand I started rubbing my head with my right. Cash took the glass from me and helped sit me down.

"I think she's already had enough," he said to Monica.

"Enough," Monica asked. "She's barely…"

"Barely 100 pounds," Gwen said as she approached the booth with Darnell, the guy who’d gotten us in without a cover charge and helped us stake out this VIP booth for ourselves. "That girl has NEVER been able to handle her liquor."

Gwen took the drink from Cash and clinked glasses with Monica's drink, a blue-tinted cocktail similar to mine, with an orange-peel garnish instead of strawberries.

"You got that right," Monica said, before they quickly drank down the cocktails. Gwen took the strawberries from hers, popping one in her own mouth and one in Darnell's. I got the sense that Gwen wasn’t really interested in Darnell, but was playing the part so we’d continue to get cheap drinks and preferential treatment. She gestured to have him sit down with us, as they sat to my left and Monica and Cash pushed into the booth on the right, leaving me trapped in the middle. Great, I was the center of attention, the exact one spot I didn’t want to be in.

"So Ali, are you planning on staying in town long," Cash asked.

"Yeah, Ali, you've been pretty quiet about your plans since you got back," Monica said. I thought if Alana would've told anyone about why she left New York it would've been Monica, but I guess I would've been wrong about that. Though I wouldn't put it past Monica to play dumb just to get me to open up to Cash. Or any good-looking guy with a nice set of pecs and a thick wallet in his pants.

"Right now, I'm just thinking about next week," I said. "And everything will fall into place after that."

"Of course it will," Gwen chimed in. "Because everything always falls into place for Ali."

"I'll toast to that," Monica said, as she and Gwen clinked glasses again and drank their cocktails.

I detected a hint of jealously in Gwen's voice, and I couldn't begrudge her that if she was telling the truth. I lived a life where nothing fell into place, and couldn't stand people who had everything go their way without working for it. The sad thing about that, though, was that was exactly what I wanted from life. I wanted success, fortune, love, all those things, but I never wanted to work for them. Alana appeared to have most of those things -- well, not "fortune" per se, but it was clear from her extensive wardrobe that she wasn't hurting for money -- but I also didn't think it all just fell into her lap. You don't get a master’s degree by accident.

Sadly, though, I didn't have any ammunition to fire back at Gwen with, mostly because I didn't really know Alana.

"Hey, leave the girl alone," Darnell said. "She clearly doesn't want to talk about whatever she's got planned for the future."

God bless you, Darnell.

"So let's talk about the past," he added.

God damn you, Darnell. The whole "strong, silent" thing had really been working for you up until now.

"Is it true you dated one of the Knicks," he asked.

"I was a dancer for the team," I said, which thanks to my Facebook research earlier today I knew was true.

"That doesn't answer the question," he said.

"Oh, sweetie," Gwen said, "A girl like Ali doesn't kiss and tell."

"So there was kissing," Darnell asked, before letting out a deep laugh, which made me laugh, which then made me self-conscious about my girlish giggle.

Before Darnell could continue to grill me about a dating history that was a complete mystery to me, Gwen tapped me on the arm and pointed across the dance floor.

"Hey, is that…"

I had no idea who she was pointing at, but I suspected from it was someone that we weren't interested in running into.

"Bryce," Monica said. "I KNEW it! I knew that asshole would show up."

Monica reached over Cash and angrily grabbed me by the left arm, pulling me out of the booth. I awkwardly contorted my body over Cash's, accidentally shoving my breasts in his face in the process.

"Omigod," I said, blushing out of embarrassment.

"Never mind him," Monica said, continuing to pull me away. "I need you. NOW!"

I wasn't sure exactly what Monica had planned, as she towed me to the far side of the club to the DJ booth.

The lanky hipster behind the two MacBook Pros had on an enormous pair of Sony studio headphones, so he didn't hear Monica at first, but she kept angrily waving her hand in his direction, eventually getting his attention.

"I NEED A FAVOR," she yelled at him, but with his headphones on, he couldn't hear her, so he gestured to her to come around the booth. She quickly obliged, telling him something in his ear as he briefly uncovered it. He nodded, and she stormed back around, and then dragged me onto the crowded dance floor, picking out a prime spot near the bar, where Bryce was trying to order a drink.

As the last strains of the latest Ne-Yo song faded out, they were quickly replaced by an unmistakable beat.

"Let's dance," Monica yelled to me, not so much asking as demanding I go along with her plan to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. This felt wrong on so many levels. Not only was I a girl, dancing with another girl, but this girl that I happened to be dancing with was still -- in my mind -- my best friend's girlfriend. I didn't even know if I knew Mark as Alana, but I felt like I was betraying him nonetheless.

Still, I couldn't help but be attracted to Monica as she rubbed up against me, with the familiar strains of Katy Perry's voice filling the club.

“This was never the way I planned, not my intention…

No, it certainly was not. I wasn't sure how to proceed here. Part of me wanted to tell Monica that she didn't need to do this, that she was above juvenile games like making an ex-boyfriend jealous. Part of me wanted to tell her that if she was this concerned about what Bryce thought then she probably wasn't over him and should go just talk to him. And then part of me, some part I didn't want to admit existed, just wanted to go with the flow and dance with Monica. She looked amazing, and the way the club lights reflected off the glitter on her dress, it made her look like the most amazing, sensational person in the club.

Before I knew it, instinct was taking over, and it was no longer just Monica dancing with me… we were dancing with each other. My body moved perfectly in tune with hers and in tempo with the music. I dropped my ass down to the ground and snapped as I came back up, and Monica slapped my ass. I turned around and grabbed her ass and pulled her in close. We were face-to-face as the chorus hit, and right then, with Bryce staring right at us, it happened.

“I kissed a girl and I liked it…”

And this wasn't just a quick peck on the lips. She put her hands behind my head and pulled me in close, closing her eyes right before laying her wet lips right on mine. My left leg kicked up as she slid her tongue in my mouth and worked it over with her silver tongue stud. Her left hand moved down my neck as we moved our heads back and forth, working each other over. It felt like we'd been lip-locked for hours, but the song hadn't even reached the end of the chorus when Monica finally pulled her tongue back and let me breathe again.

The look of shock on Bryce's face was only exceeded by the one on my own. I struggled to catch my breath as a warm feeling came over my entire body. I HAD kissed a girl, and I MORE than liked it. I wanted more, but Monica just blew a kiss to Bryce, then turned and headed back to our booth. For a few seconds, I was too stunned to move, but I composed myself and managed to quickly follow her -- well, as quickly as I could in these ridiculous heels.

"That'll teach him to cheat on me," Monica said, sliding back into the booth. Cash slid over next to Gwen to make room for the two of us. I really wanted to go sit by Darnell, if only to prevent myself from doing anything further and dumber with Monica, but if I asked everyone to move, it'd be obvious what I was doing. So I came up with a different plan.

"Gwen, honey, can you hand me my purse," I said. "I need to go freshen up."

"I bet you do," she said, with her eyes wide with shock. Obviously making out with her friends was not something Alana did often.

"Maybe I should've asked if you dated one of the Knicks dancers," Darnell said. Everyone at the table laughed, and I nervously joined in, before shuffling off to the bathroom, where there was a line of girls waiting to get in. Fuck. I didn't really need to freshen up, I just wanted a moment of privacy, and I didn't feel like waiting. So I did the only thing I could think of.

I went into the men's room.

What? As far as I was concerned, I was still a man, just one that happened to be in a very unmanly body at the moment, and at this point "maintaining the illusion" was so much less of a priority than regaining my composure.

Luckily no one was in the bathroom when I stormed in. It was a single-occupancy restroom, though it did have a urinal and a stall. I went into the stall, closed the door behind me and sat on the toilet -- making sure to put the seat down, so I wouldn't fall in. I didn't need to succumb to that female cliché on my first day as a girl.

I sat there for about a minute when I heard my iPhone chime with the default text message notification sound. Putting aside my surprise that Alana hadn't customized that, I pulled out the phone and saw the message was from Monica.

"Sry 2 put u on spot. thx for helping me get back at bryce."

Before I could respond, another message came in.

"btw, ur a great kisser ;)"

Well, at least I had that going for me. Which was… not the point at all. Still, I had to admit, the kiss itself had made me feel good. No, not good. Great. I wasn't sure if it was my male mind or my female body that was more turned on by it, but I couldn't deny that it was a huge turn on. And the fact that it was so wrong on so many levels made it even more of a turn on. It wasn't just hot, it was dangerous and hot, which made it even hotter.

Before I could text Monica back, I heard the bathroom door open.

"Ali," a voice asked. "You in here?"

It was a male voice, but I didn't recognize it as Cash's or Darnell's. I didn't know what to do, so I quickly switched my phone to vibrate and stayed silent.

"Look," he said, knocking on the stall door. "I saw you come in, and unless this is a very different type of club than I was expecting, no dude is rocking those heels."

Busted. I tossed my phone back in my purse, got up and flushed the toilet, before opening the stall door and trying to quickly walk past the man who was standing outside it.

"Sorry, the line for the ladies' room was so long," I said, trying to scamper past whoever this guy was. But he reached out and grabbed me by the arm.

"Ow," I said. I wasn't just playing the part. He'd grabbed me hard enough that it actually hurt. I really felt scared – and this wasn’t just a hypothetical fear like I’d felt when I encountered Ryan earlier. Here I was, in a nightclub men's room with an unfamiliar guy who knew my name and was holding my arm tightly. He spun me around and grabbed my other arm with his other arm. I looked up and saw that it was Bryce, but before I could react, he'd pulled me up and stuck his tongue down my throat.

I wanted to push him away. I wanted to kick him in the balls, scream rape and run out of the bathroom as quickly as I could. But instead I froze. I did nothing.

Then, as instinct took over, I kissed him back.

My mind was racing with conflicted thoughts. I was screaming out, asking what the hell I was doing, while at the same time experiencing that warm, tingly feeling again.

His 6-foot-1, 195-pound frame had no trouble spinning me back into the bathroom stall. He let me go to close and lock the door behind us.

"That was quite a show you two put on," he said.

"WHAT THE HELL," I yelled out, trying to force my way past him.

"Oh, come on, Monica's not here," he said. "And it's pretty obvious you didn't tell her about us."

US?! What the hell is going on with this girl's life?

"There is no 'us'," I said. But I knew from that kiss that it wasn't true.

"Sure," he said. "We're just fucking around, I get it. But with Monica out of the way, I thought…"

"You thought what," I asked, angrily. "That I'd just turn around and betray my best friend?"

"You have been sleeping with her boyfriend for six months now," he fired back.

Oh my god, I'm the worst person ever.

I mean, I certainly didn't like Monica, at least not the Monica I knew, but she didn't deserve this. I know I wanted her and Mark to break up, but I would've never told Mark to cheat on her. And yet Alana was perfectly fine not only telling Monica to break up with her boyfriend, but helping move that process along behind the scenes by FUCKING HIM?!

Ohmigod, did Bryce think we were going to have sex right here? In this nightclub bathroom? Is that why he followed me in here?

"Well, we're not doing that tonight," I said.

"No, I know," he said. "You have to play it cool with Monica. But we can't keep going like this forever."

"I have a boyfriend, you know," I said to Bryce.

"Yeah, the Australian guy, right," he asked. "How many times have you done it with him? Once? Twice? Yeah, you two are real tight."

"Love isn't just about sex," I said. I couldn't believe I was having this conversation, and it was starting to make me sick. All those warm, fuzzy feelings from my kisses with Monica and Bryce had faded away, and the queasy feeling from earlier in the night had returned.

"Oh, 'love'," he said, air-quoting sarcastically. "That why you let him go to L.A. while you stayed here?"

"Look, you don't know anything about my love life," I said.

"I know I want to be a part of it," he said. Great, Alana's fuck-buddy wants to be Alana's boyfriend. And I'd totally be mocking the fucked-up-ness of this situation if at the moment I wasn't Alana.

I reached past him and unlocked the stall door. He moved out of the way and let me open it.

"We can have this conversation," I said. "But not here and not now."

I walked towards the bathroom door and Bryce started to follow me, before I turned around to stop him.

"Wait 10 minutes before coming out," I said. "We don't want to cause a scene."

He backed up and leaned against the wall, pulling his phone out of the back pocket of his pressed black slacks to check the time. The screen glowed against his tailored navy blue shirt, which nearly matched the color of his eyes. Even after our quick kiss-and-tussle, his blonde hair was still perfectly coiffed. I had to admit that if I was going to pick someone to completely betray my best friend with, I certainly could've done worse.

"10 minutes," he said in agreement. Leaning against the bathroom door, I gave him one last look before heading out, catching a glimpse of the one piece of clothing that didn't quite go with the rest of his outfit: his shoes.

"Nice Jordans," I said.

He gave me a quizzical look as I slid out of the restroom, hoping no one would see me, the girl who'd just been making out with another girl on the dance floor, leaving an occupied men's room.

*****

DAY TWO

"Do you, Andrew Carlysle, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

I heard the question, but didn't quite believe it. Even given everything that had happened in the past 24 hours, it made no sense. Why was I suddenly getting married? And why did the preacher call me "Andrew"?

I looked at Bryce, standing there in his tuxedo and his Air Jordan 11 Concords -- the same shoes he was wearing at the club -- and so many questions were running through my mind. I tried to speak, but I just stood there, mouth agape, unable to form words that would even begin to logically explain what was happening.

"Well," the preacher said, waiting for an "I do."

"Maybe this would help," Bryce said, as he took off his tuxedo jacket. Suddenly, underneath the jacket, he wasn't wearing a shirt and tie… he was wearing a wedding dress. And he wasn't Bryce anymore. He was Monica.

"Aww, look," she said. "We're twins."

I looked at her dress then looked down to realize I was wearing the same exact one -- a white, strapless ballroom gown that seemed to puff out three feet in each direction at the bottom. Only while hers fell perfectly on her flawless frame, mine was a mess on my 300-pound body. That's when it hit me. The preacher called me Andrew because I was Andrew. Except in a wedding dress. Holding a bouquet and getting married to Monica. Or Bryce. I wasn't sure anymore.

Just then a man tapped on Monica's shoulder.

"Can I cut in," he asked. Monica stepped aside and now standing in front of me waiting for my answer was none other than my best friend Mark.

"Are you confused," he asked me.

"I am," I said, finally able to speak, in a voice that sounded like a hybrid of my own and Alana's.

"Do you want this to be over," he asked.

"I do," I said. Before I could even follow up with a question of my own, the preacher continued.

"Then by the powers vested in me by the State of Confusion, I now pronounce you husband and wife," he said. "You may kiss the bride."

My eyes widened with panic as I realized what I'd done. Mark leaned in to kiss me. I closed my eyes and right as our lips touched, I snapped up in bed.

"Ohmigod, it was just a dream," I said to myself.

Wait… it was a dream. Then maybe the whole thing had been a dream and I was still Andrew -- though an Andrew with some obviously psychological issues to be worked out in years upon years of therapy sessions.

I looked down at myself. No such luck. I was in the same four-post bed with the same fluffy bedding as yesterday, still wearing the bra and panties I'd fallen asleep in last night. I glanced over at my pillow and saw the unmistakable marks of smeared makeup, realizing I'd forgotten to take mine off after Monica dropped me off well after closing time.

I managed to survive the rest of the night without anyone else's tongue or any alcohol ending up in my mouth (the latter of which probably helped me stay focused on the former), but I was still feeling like crap this morning. My stomach was churning and for the second consecutive morning I found myself rushing to the bathroom to make a sacrifice to the porcelain gods.

I made it just in time, before vomiting into the toilet, and once again immediately felt better, though I wasn't looking to make this a daily habit. Though that did remind me of something I was fairly certain Alana did daily. I pulled out the scale from under the sink and weighed myself.

103.6 pounds. 16.2 BMI. +0.3 pounds.

Well, that was… interesting. I barely had anything to eat yesterday AND I worked out AND I just vomited again and yet I'd gained three-tenths of a pound. I guess what I considered a workout -- 45 minutes of light jogging while checking Facebook -- wasn't exactly the kind of workout Alana's body was used to. I made a mental note to hit the gym harder when I got the chance. The last thing I wanted to do was wreck this body for Alana before I could give it back to her.

Taking a look at myself in the mirror, my makeup looked bad, but wasn't the Joker-esque disaster I'd been imagining. My hair, on the other hand, was an utter mess. I started undoing the braids Monica had done the night before and began to wonder just how I was going fix this situation. Not the hair, the whole "being in the wrong body" thing. I didn't have the first idea how this had even happened… well, I had a ton of ideas but none of them were remotely plausible and sounded more like something out of science fiction than real life. And even if I knew exactly how this had happened and what was happening, that wouldn't mean I'd be able to fix it overnight. So life goes on.

I started washing the dried and smeared makeup off my face when I heard a voice behind me.

"Rough night," she asked.

I turned around to see my little sister Alana -- or now Alexis "Lexi" Carlysle -- in a pink bathrobe and fuzzy bunny slippers. My sister, or at least the sister I had two days ago, would've never been caught dead in fuzzy bunny slippers. I didn't want to make too many snap judgments, considering how much my opinion of myself changed over the course of the day yesterday, but it was clear that growing up with a loving older sister rather than a distant older brother had done wonders for this girl, regardless of how appropriate of a role model the Alana version of me actually was.

"No, not in the way you're thinking," I said.

"Oh, really," she said, pushing past me to get her hair brush. "Didn't I hear you coming in at 2 a.m.?"

"Was it that late," I asked, playing coy.

"It was, which reminds me, what are you doing up so early," she asked back.

"Early? What time is it," I asked, as we continued to have a conversation in which we answered questions with questions. I hated it.

"It's 7:30," she said, finally breaking the string. I'd only slept about five hours and despite the cross-dressing, groom-morphing nightmare and the morning vomit, I felt totally refreshed.

"I just couldn't sleep anymore," I said. "I really wanted to get up and get going."

Yeah, going back to my normal life.

"Going where," she asked. "And will this 'going' require use of your car?"

"You really want to borrow my car, don't you," I said. "OK, fine, if I'm not 'going' anywhere, I'll let you borrow it, and if I am, you can take it as long as you drop me off and pick me up."

She hugged me, put her brush back on the bathroom counter and started running down the hall back to her room.

"Ohmigod thank you so much I promise you won't regret it I'll be super careful with it and…" she started to tail off as she got out of earshot. I gave my face one last splash of water and headed back to my room.

I don't know if it was the realization that it was only 7:30 or just the weight of my situation hitting me again, but I was suddenly tired again. I slipped out of my bra and threw on the camisole from the night before and jumped back into bed. I had to admit, I wasn't entirely hating the oversized comforter, the satin sheets, or even just the ability to be in bed on a hot summer day without sweating out of every fold of fat in my body. But before I drifted off to sleep, I whispered to myself.

"I want to go back."

*****

I woke up to the ringing of my iPhone, which, embarrassingly, had Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" as the ringtone. At least I knew it wasn't Aiden calling. I wasn't looking forward to the inevitably awkward conversation with him now that I knew I was cheating on him.

Rolling over in bed, I picked up the phone and saw it was Bryce calling. My first instinct was to throw the phone out the window, but I pressed the answer button instead.

"What do you want," I asked, angrily and pointedly.

"Whoa, calm down, Ali," he said. "I just want to talk."

"So talk," I said. He could talk, but I didn't have to listen. And as he rambled on with some half-assed explanation, I let the words go in one ear and out the other. I was far more interested in fixing my own problems than getting deep into Alana's.

"Ali…" he said. "You there?"

"Sorry, Bryce," I said. "I just need some time to process everything."

"What's there to process," he said. "Just call Aiden, tell him you're done and we can be together."

"And Monica," I asked.

"What about her? We're over," he said.

"Yeah, but we aren't! I'd like to still have a friendship with her. Look, you just don't get it, and I don't want to have this conversation right now, so why don't you call me back when you're ready to be an adult."

I hung up the phone and pulled the covers back over my head.

"God, I didn't ask for this," I said, not expecting an answer.

But I got one.

I threw off the covers and sprung up from bed.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself. I did ask for this. Well, not this exactly. But I asked for something. A reboot. I wanted a reboot on my life, and my re-installed operating system asked me "do you want to reboot" and I clicked yes. Holy crap, did I do some kind of magic OS rewrite of my own life? Was this "A. Carlysle 2.0"?

I mean, it certainly wasn't unheard of for a character to switch genders in a reboot. "Battlestar Galactica" had a female Starbuck. The new "Green Arrow" show is supposed to have a female Speedy, and I heard the "Evil Dead" reboot has a female Ash.

This seemed like a longshot, but it was no less stupid than any of the ideas I'd had yesterday. I headed over to my vanity and pulled out the yellow notepad where I'd written everything down. My four quadrants were still there, with nothing written under them. But I finally had something to add to the page.

Under "What", I wrote "life reboot".

Under "Why", I wrote "because I asked for it", then added "karmic joke?" in parentheses.

Under "How", I wrote "magical software update" with a huge question mark. And then I underlined the question mark. And added another one for good measure.

Then I got to "Fix". This was the stumper. The one thing I hadn't done with my actual reboot of my computer was restore from Time Machine, but I didn't see how that would help me now. Even if Alana regularly backed up her computer to a Time Machine drive, restoring from it would just restore her life. At least, that's what I think would happen. But I guess erasing her computer and restoring the software from scratch was as good a start as any. But I didn't want to do that until I was sure I had a backup of what was on there. Which meant I'd have to buy an external drive. And that meant a trip to my old stomping grounds, the Apple Store.

I walked down the hall to Lexi's room, where I could hear her talking on the phone through her closed door. I waited for her to finish the conversation -- taking care not to eavesdrop on what she was saying -- then popped my head in.

"If I let you take my car, can you drop me off at the mall, and pick me up when I text you," I asked.

"Sure thing," she said, with a bubbly smile on her face. "So when are we leaving?"

"Just give me half-an-hour to get ready," I said.

"OK, so two hours," she said back. I couldn't tell if she was kidding or, if like Monica, she really thought I'd take that long to get ready.

"30 minutes," I said, closing the door. "I promise!"

I went straight to the bathroom and took what I thought was a super-quick shower but turned out to have eaten up 22 of my allotted 30 minutes. Washing this long hair was no joke. I dried off, wrapped a towel around my body and then plugged in a hair dryer to speed things along. I'm sure it's not what Alana would've done to keep her hair in perfect condition, but I just threw the switch to the highest setting and ran the dryer over my hair a few times while brushing it with my other hand. As I did, the towel around my body came loose and fell to the floor, exposing my naked body in the mirror. I looked up and couldn't help but admire my own beauty. Why was I in such a rush to give this up? A chance to experience life from the other side -- people would kill for this? And with a healthy, stunning body, a loving family and a massive group of friends? What was I rushing back to?

After getting lost in my own reflection, I only snapped back to reality when I heard a knocking at the bathroom door. I scrambled to pick up the towel and cover myself when I realized the hair dryer had long since been put away and my hair had been pulled back into a side French braid, and a light application of makeup had appeared on my face.

"Oh, thank god you're almost done," Lexi said as she opened the door.

"It's been…" I looked down at my phone on the counter before continuing that statement. I'd assumed that maybe I'd gone 35 or 40 minutes, but I was shocked when I saw that it was now almost Noon. "OK, 90 minutes… So I was a little off."

"A little," Lexi asked, with an annoyed tone. "You're not even dressed yet."

"I'm just gonna throw something on real quick and then we'll go, I promise," I said, though those words had meant little earlier this morning.

"Fine, whatever," she said, sounding a bit more like the sister I'd known. "I'll be waiting downstairs."

I put down the mascara brush and headed back to my room, once again a little worried about the cruise-control mode I'd gotten into. Both times it had happened, I'd been looking at myself in a mirror, so I made a mental note to try and avoid that for a while. Which was certainly going to make getting dressed a bit of an adventure.

Still, I forged forward, opening my drawers and picking out clothes. I couldn't believe I was doing this, but I decided to embrace a fashion trend that I absolutely hated. I put on a pair of black leggings to wear them as pants. I always thought it looked incredibly stupid when girls did that, like they'd forgotten a piece of clothing, but after spending all day yesterday in either a skirt, bikini bottoms or a dress, I wanted to at least wear something that felt like pants, and most of Alana's jeans looked like they'd be a struggle to put on and walk around in. The leggings felt a bit like a second skin while not leaving me feeling like I was exposing myself.

The first T-shirt I grabbed was a white, one-shoulder number, and putting it on quickly reminded me that I needed to be wearing a bra, unless I wanted my nipples poking out all day, because the A/C at the mall was always ridiculously cool. So I pulled out a solid pink bra, similar to the one I'd worn the night before without quite the same push-up effect, and put it on before throwing the T-shirt back on. It wasn't the hottest look, but it was certainly something I could get away with for an afternoon. I found the black ballet flats Monica had picked out last night and slipped my feet into them before grabbing my sunglasses off the vanity and heading downstairs.

"I hate you," Lexi said as I descended the staircase. That felt like it came out of nowhere.

"What," I asked.

"You can get dressed in ten minutes and look like a movie star," she said. "I take an hour to pick out my outfit and I look like this."

She was wearing a low-cut ruffled blouse, a matching blazer/skirt set and some silver shoes and, honestly, I saw nothing wrong with the outfit.

"Don't be silly," I said. "You look fine."

"FINE?! I look… FINE?!"

OK, clearly that was the wrong thing to say.

"Lexi, don't be like that," I said. "You look amazing and you know it. Now, are you going to drop me off at the mall then go impress whoever you're meeting for lunch with that stunning outfit, or are we going to stand here and be bitchy to each other all afternoon?"

"How'd you know I was meeting someone," she asked.

"It's a big sister's job to know," I said, before pulling the car keys out of my purse and tossing them to her. And in that instant, all was forgiven as she raced out past me to the car.

*****

Lexi drove off with a huge smile on her face, as she went to meet Ryan across town. Just two days ago a 10-minute drive with my sister had been a total chore -- and nearly a total disaster -- but in the 10 minutes it took to get to the mall from our house, we didn't fight at all. She did most of the talking, telling me about how dreamy Ryan was and how she couldn't believe someone like him wanted to go out with someone like her and how amazing this all was, and it actually made me not completely hate everything that was going on with me for a few minutes.

But even so, I was still firmly resolved to reverse this situation, and that started with getting a hard drive. I walked into the Apple Store and headed right back to where we'd always kept the external hard drives. I really just wanted to grab the first one I saw, pay for it and get out, because as soon as I entered the store, I got this nagging feeling that something was wrong. It wasn't quite the vomit-y feeling I'd been dealing with for two days, but something else. Like my Spider-sense was tingling, only I wasn't Peter Parker (though given my current state, Ultimate Jessica Drew probably would've been a more appropriate analogy).

I bent over to look at the bus-powered drives on the bottom shelf when I heard the unmistakable sound of an iPhone camera shutter. That's when I realized that these leggings -- as comfortable as they were -- left nothing to the imagination and bending at the waist the way I'd been doing was putting on quite the show. I snapped back up and walked around to the other side of the hard drive island, where any bending I'd do would have my butt pointed at the store's back wall, rather than a crowd of people.

I bent down again, this time bending at the knees, when one of the store's employees approached me from behind.

"Can I help you find something," he asked. I didn't need to turn around to see who it was. The voice was unmistakable.

It was Mark.

I hadn't even considered the possibility that I'd run into him here, I was so focused on just fixing my problem. Then I remembered the dream from this morning, and our near wedding-sealing kiss, and started blushing. I took a deep breath to compose myself before standing up and turning around.

"Mark," I asked, trying to play it cool.

"Oh…" he said, as if disappointed to see me, "it's you."

Not only was I not disappointed to see him, I was pleasantly surprised that he didn't look much different from the way I remembered the Mark from my life. From my new perspective he certainly looked taller, but he was still in shape, still sporting a blonde crew-cut, still wearing the blue store T-shirt, baggy jeans and a pair of beat-up old Jordans. About the only noticeable difference was a tattoo of a dagger on his left forearm.

But he didn't recognize me, at least the me I wanted him to recognize.

"Yeah, it's me," I said. "Alana Carlysle."

I was hoping he'd say "no, you're Andrew and what the hell is going on", but I had no such luck.

"I'd heard you were back in town," he said. "I'm surprised you bothered to show up here."

"Well, I needed a hard drive," I said. I was getting a really angry vibe from him, and I didn't want to pry, so I tried to stick as close to the basics as possible and hopefully just end this interaction quickly.

"OF COURSE," he said, loudly, "because it's always about what YOU want, isn't it, Ali?"

OK, so it was becoming really clear to me that despite Mark's non-existence in Ali's contact list, Facebook profile or e-mail history, he wasn't a non-entity in her life.

"I didn't think…"

"No, you didn't," he interrupted. "Because you never think. You just do. Like when you ran away to New York just to get away from me. You didn't think about how that would hurt me, did you, Ali?"

The disdain he had for me dripped off his words, especially in the way he said "Ali". I desperately wanted him to stop saying it, to call me Alana or Andrew or literally anything else right now. He was my best friend in the world and having him yelling at me like this, in a place where we'd shared so many good times, it was… well, it made me feel even tinier than I already did. I could feel my lower lip quivering and my hands starting to shake.

"This was a mistake," I said, barely getting the words out.

"Just like saying you'd marry me was a mistake, right, Ali," he asked. "You make a lot of mistakes, but they're never your fault, are they, Ali?"

Oh, God.

Alana's memories flooded my mind like an emotional onslaught. Four years ago, nearly to the day, Mark had proposed to her, and she said yes. But a week later, she had second thoughts. She left the ring -- and a note -- on his dresser, and left for New York.

I felt all the blood rush from my face, and tears started to roll down my cheeks.

"Oh, don't start with that," Mark said. He'd seen the "Alana uses emotions to get what she wants" show before, and wasn't interested in falling for it again. But as I continued to cry, his demeanor changed. He quickly calmed, and motioned to another employee to get him some tissues.

"Look, don't cry, I shouldn't have gotten so angry," he said. "I just… I haven't seen you in years and then you just show up here and it brought up a whole bunch of stuff that…"

He trailed off. A female employee who I didn't recognize handed me a stack of tissues, but I couldn't stop the tears from coming. I just turned around and started walking quickly to the front of the store.

"Ali, wait," Mark yelled out after me.

I pushed through the crowd of people as best I could, as some moved out of the way and others moved closer to get a glimpse of the scene. I even saw one person recording the whole thing on an iPhone, and wondered how quickly "Crazy girl has emotional breakdown at Apple Store" would go viral on YouTube. But I didn't break stride.

"Ali, please don't do this again," Mark said.

I was five steps outside the store before I turned around and looked back at him. Tears were starting to well up in his eyes too. I'd clearly opened an emotional Pandora's Box that none of us were ready for. I wanted to say something, anything to reassure him. I even thought about telling him the truth, as insane as it would've sounded at that moment. But instead I just turned back around and ran down the hall as quickly as I could.

So many things had changed in the last day and a half, and the thing with Mark just really pushed it over the top. But one thing that hadn't changed is that when I got emotional, I got hungry. So I made my way to Panera Bread, because I needed something constant, something unchanged. I needed a Smokehouse Turkey Panini and a large Diet Pepsi.

I walked into the restaurant and I could tell people were looking at me, and I couldn't blame them. I hadn't even bothered to try and clean up my face, which had to be a mess of smeared makeup and dried tears. I just headed straight for the counter, and people actually got out of my way to let me move up in line. That was a decidedly nice perk of having an emotional breakdown, though certainly not enough to make me not feel like shit.

As I approached the ordering spot, I reached into my purse to pull out my compact and more tissues, to try and at least start to clean myself up. I brushed away the two longest streaks on my cheeks, and looked up to see Panera Bread Girl standing behind the register, not even looking up at me.

"Smokehouse Turkey Panini with a…" I hesitated. Alana didn't seem like a soda drinker, at least not at lunch.

"A bottle of water," I said, ordering what I thought would be right.

The redheaded object of my unrequited affections punched in the order then looked up to tell me the price.

"Alana," she asked. "Alana Carlysle, is that you?"

I just looked at her, dumbfounded. Panera Bread Girl knew who I was.

"It's me," she continued. "Sara Carpenter. From Hartt?"

Hartt… where Alana had gone to school for two years, before moving to New York… after breaking off her engagement with Mark… and with that reminder tears started to well up in my eyes again.

"Oh, honey, is everything all right," Sara asked.

"I've just… I'm having the worst day," I said. That was a vast understatement, to say the least. I tried to hold back the tears, but this body reacted to emotions far more rapidly than I was used to, and I could feel them starting to flow again.

"Alex, can you cover for me for a few," Sara said to one of her co-workers, a gangly teen who quickly stepped in behind the register and kept the line moving as Sara came out from behind the counter and walked with me to a table. She sat down across from me and took the mirror from my hand, holding it up to my face.

"Here, let me help you with that," she said.

"Thank you," I said, through my sniffles. I got the crying under control and cleaned up my makeup as best I could, as one of the other employees brought over my sandwich and my water. I took a bite, then a sip of the water, and started to compose myself.

"So Sara," I said, "what've you been up to?"

We both laughed. Her laugh was melodic, like a Disney princess. It was almost enough to make me swoon.

"When was the last time we saw each other," she asked. "Professor Smith's Intro to Music class?"

"God, that was what, four years ago," I said.

"You were such a natural," she said. "I always loved the way you moved on stage. I heard you were performing in New York?"

"I was," I said. "But I'm back here now. What about you? You work… here?"

"Oh, this is just a temporary gig," she said. I guess it was possible. I'd only seen her there starting a few months ago, and it's not like she was there every day. And what reason did she have to lie to me?

"So what do you do the rest of the time," I asked.

"Well I've got one semester left to get my master's degree and then I'm going to go into teaching," she said.

"Teaching?"

"Oh, I'm still working on my music too," she said. "But I want to have something solid to fall back on."

I took another bite of my sandwich, a big one. My appetite was starting to come back, and on top of that I was too nervous to say anything. Here I was having a conversation with my dream girl like it was no big thing, and I couldn't even tell her how I truly felt.

"It's funny," she said. "I'm actually going to be in New York next week to try and hit up some singer/songwriter nights. I was going to look you up, but here you are."

"Yeah, the world works in mysterious ways," I said, in another incredible understatement.

"Hey, do you want to hear my demo," she asked.

"Sure," I said. I tried balancing my internal desire for her with what I thought should be Alana's more measured reaction. "Do you have it here?"

"It's online," she said. "I can send you the link."

"That'd be awesome," I said. "I could use something good today."

"Yeah, you were kind of a mess when you came in," she said. "What's going on?"

"Oh," I said, letting out a big sigh. "Where to start? Umm… well, how about… I ran into Mark today, for the first time in years."

"Mark, as in your ex Mark," she asked.

"The very same," I said. "Obviously it wasn't a happy reunion."

"At least this one is going better," she said. "I'd toast to old friends, but I don't have a drink and your water is almost empty."

"Well, do you, maybe, want to get a drink," I asked, hesitantly.

"It's 12:30," she said. "And I'm working for another few hours. But…"

"But…" I asked.

"No, I'm sure you already have plans," she said.

"Try me."

"Well, I'm playing a gig tomorrow night at the Red Door," she said. "I'd love it if you came. I mean, you are practically the reason I'm still doing this."

"I am?"

"Yeah, if you hadn't been there for me freshman year, I probably would've given up on music entirely," she said. "I would've dropped out, taken a job like this full time, and who knows where I'd be now."

"Probably still here, questioning every decision you'd made in life," I said, speaking from experience. Sara laughed.

"Oh, god, could you imagine," she said, still chuckling. "Letting so much potential go to waste, working in a mall your whole life?"

Great, now I wanted to cry again. But I took my last sip of water and held it together.

"Well, then, I guess it's a date," I said.

"Yeah, I guess so," she said. "Hey, I've gotta get back to work, but it was great catching up."

"And if you need to talk or anything," she added, taking a pen out of her pocket and writing her number on a napkin, "just call me, okay?"

"OK," I said, with a big smile on my face.

Sara went back behind the counter and resumed working, giving me a little wave as she did. I smiled and waved back, and then texted Lexi asking if she could pick me up.

"Did you get what you needed," her response asked.

In some weird way, I think I did.

*****

"Whose car is that?"

Lexi spotted the car parked in front of our house as she pulled around the corner.

"I don't know," I said. I'd never seen it before -- at least not as Andrew -- but right now I could only think of one person in Alana's life who would have a red Porsche 911 with "B MONEY" vanity plates.

Lexi drove past the car and pulled up our driveway, and, to my total non-surprise, there was Bryce, sitting on our back porch.

"Is that Monica's boyfriend," Lexi asked.

"Ex-boyfriend," I said, making sure to emphasize the “ex” part.

"So what's he doing here?"

"I wish I knew."

Lexi walked right past Bryce without him saying anything to her, but I knew I wouldn't be so lucky.

"Where you going so fast," Bryce asked as I tried to quickly follow Lexi inside.

"What are you doing here," I asked.

"Well," he said, sitting back down on one of our patio chairs. "I thought we could talk."

He was wearing black skinny jeans, an Affliction T-shirt and the same Concord Jordan XIs from the club. Aside from the sneakers -- my favorite pair ever -- he looked like a total douche. I wanted to punch him, but in this tiny frame, I was fairly certain that wouldn't do any good. So, instead, I sat down in the chair across from him.

"So," I said. "Talk."

"You sure you don't want to go upstairs," he said. "Fix up your makeup, put on something nice?"

"Holy shit," I said. "Are you TRYING to make me hate you?"

"Oh, come on," he said. "You know you like it when I talk shit to you. It gets you all hot."

He leaned back in his chair and started to take his shirt off.

"No," I said. "NO. That is NOT happening."

He slid his shirt back down his torso. Well, that was at least one crisis averted. But I still had to deal with this guy who apparently I'd been sleeping with for six months, despite the fact he was dating my best friend at the time. And of course I didn’t even remember doing it, because up until two days ago, I was a guy named Andrew, not a girl named Alana.

"So you talk to Monica," he asked.

"Yes, we talked a lot last night," I said.

"About us," he asked.

"As I told you last night, there is no 'us'," I said. "We're not a thing. We might've been before, but we're not now. And we never will be."

"What the hell is up with you," he asked, growing angry. "Last week all you could talk about was wanting to be with me and now you're acting like you hate me. And last night at the club you said you liked my shoes…"

As he said that, he popped his feet up on the patio table, as if to throw the shoes in my face.

"… but you've always hated that I wear sneakers all the time. It's like you're a totally different person."

"Maybe I am," I said. I stood up, trying to send a signal that I was done talking, but Bryce was too full of himself to pick up on non-verbal cues.

"What does that even mean," he asked.

"It means I'm done talking to you," I said.

I turned around and started to head inside, but Bryce kept talking.

"Fine, be that way," he said. "I'll come back when you're off your period."

Oh. Hell. No.

I'd been a girl for less than 48 hours and in that time I'd suffered plenty of indignities -- not the least of which was having this asshole's tongue in my mouth -- but I was not about to stand here and listen to some douchebag accuse me of PMSing when I was the only person in this fucked-up love triangle who was trying to be an adult about the whole thing.

"My period," I asked, in a tone that, well, to be entirely honest, didn't exactly disprove his point. "You have got to be fucking kidding me. I've spent the last two days putting on makeup, parading around in dresses, bikinis and every other embarrassing piece of clothing I could possibly imagine, I've had my entire life stripped away and replaced with someone else's -- someone who I thought was pretty awesome but now I'm learning is pretty much a selfish bitch -- and you're gonna sit there and accuse me of being on my period?!"

"Oh… … kay… "

Bryce's eyes got wide, as he tried to process the crazy I'd just dumped on him. I quickly realized I'd gone a bit too far in my freakout, so I tried to do a little damage control.

"Ohmigod, you're right," I said, giggling. Playing the ditz was probably the best thing to do here. "I'm acting so totally crazy. Women, amirite?"

Bryce just sat there in shock.

"Like, I'mma just go take a Midol and lie down and like why don't I call you later, OK, bye-ie!"

And with that I headed inside. I definitely laid it on a bit too thick there, but it was better than the alternative, trying to explain what I'd meant when I said I'd had my life replaced. That was certainly a one-way ticket to the crazy house.

Instead, I was safely in my house, one of the few things that was familiar to me in these two days of drastic changes. Unfortunately, one of the unfamiliar things -- my vastly changed sister -- was standing in my way.

"Did I hear him right," she asked. "Are you sleeping with him?"

Shit. How much had she heard? OK… I needed to play this cool.

"HIM," I responded with mock indignation. "Hell no. He's pissed at Monica and blames me for their breakup, so he was threatening to tell her that I DID sleep with him, even though I totally didn't."

"Really," Lexi asked, not quite believing my story.

"I mean, just look at him," I said, as Lexi did just that, looking out our kitchen window as he walked down the driveway to his car. "He's totally not my type."

"Oh, good," she said, with a sigh of relief. "'Cause you and Aiden are like totally perfect together. How great is it gonna be to see him next week?"

"So great," I said, faking enthusiasm. Truthfully, I was dreading it. I'd barely had time to adjust to all the changes in my life and now I was going to have to fly all the way across the country and spend two days alone with a man I literally knew nothing about, aside from his name and how we'd met. And I was going to have to act like I was in love with him, despite knowing that I'd been cheating on him from the day we started dating.

And here I thought my life as a guy sucked.

Lexi grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and headed up to her room -- probably to gossip with her friends about her lunch date with Ryan and the Drama with a capital D between her sister and her sister's best friend's ex-boyfriend -- and I headed into the living room.

I turned on the TV, and went to turn on some baseball. Only, as it turned out, in this reality, we didn't have the MLB package. Which meant with the Red Sox off, watching any American League action was out. So I settled for the only other local option on our cable system, the Mets.

Plopping myself into the familiar leather recliner, the one that had been in our living room for more than 15 years, felt kind of good. I leaned back, kicked off my shoes and just… exhaled. For the better part of the last two days, I'd been living in a non-stop state of chaos, and I was beginning to feel weighed down by it. Ironic, since I'd had such a literal massive weight lifted from my body. Just getting a chance to sit here and watch a baseball game -- even one I had no interest in -- felt… well, right.

I got up to get myself a beer from the fridge, but before I could, I was jolted back to my new reality, as my phone rang with Aiden's specific ringtone.

"Hey sweetie," I said, trying to play the role of the dutiful girlfriend. "What's up?"

"Are you all right," he asked. I had to admit, though I still felt no physical attraction toward other males, the sound of his voice – that strong, deep voice with that Australian accent – kind of made me melt.

"I'm fine," I said. "Ohmigod, was I supposed to call you this morning? My head's been kind of all over the place… you know, with the move, and getting ready for next week, and everything."

"No, I just heard about what happened between you and Mark and I wanted to make sure you were doing OK," he said.

Wow, word traveled fast.

"No, it was really no big thing," I said.

"No big thing? You ran out of the store blubbering with your makeup a total mess," he said.

I didn't know what to say, but my silence spoke volumes.

"How did you…"

"Someone showed me the video," he said. "You're quite a smash on YouTube."

I heard him laugh a little as he said it.

"Oh, is my pain funny to you," I asked.

"Well, you have to admit, you were a bit… shall we say, 'dramatic'," he said. "It's a shame you couldn't have channeled that emotion at your audition."

"My audition?"

Once again, my lack of knowledge of my own life was lacking, leaving me in an awkward position.

"Oh, speaking of which," he said, continuing on as if I had any clue what he was talking about. "I spoke with some people here and they're willing to meet with you when you're in town. They can't promise anything but… fingers crossed!"

"That's great," I said. "But back to the thing where you were laughing at me crying my eyes out."

"I wasn't… I didn't… I just… " he said, stumbling over his words. "I'm sorry. But I did call to see if you were all right, right?"

I have to admit, he did. Plus, if I'd seen the video of how I'd acted at the store, and it had been anyone but me, I probably would've been laughing at the crazy girl too.

"OK, fine, you're off the hook," I said. "And I do appreciate you calling."

"So you're OK then," he said.

"I am. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"OK. I love you."

"Love ya too."

I still couldn't bring myself to say "I love you" like an actual loving girlfriend to this guy. I'd at least like to see him in person first.

Hanging up the phone, I grabbed a bottle of Heineken from the fridge and headed back to the living room. I sat back in the recliner and popped open the beer, but before I could even take a sip, I was interrupted by someone walking into the room.

"Careful, now," the man said. "I wouldn't want my little princess getting a beer belly."

I turned around as best I could in my chair and saw who it was.

My father.

"Come here and give your old man a hug," he said. He seemed happy, which was a nice change of pace, and he wasn't yelling at me, my mom or my sister, which almost never happened.

I got up from my chair and gave him a half-hearted hug, and he pulled me in tighter.

"Oh, I'm sorry I missed you at the party yesterday," he said. "Your mom said you went out with some friends."

"Yeah," I said. "I… I wasn't trying to avoid you or anything."

"Oh, I know that, sweetie," he said, taking the beer from my hand and sitting in the recliner. "I'm just glad I got to see you before you headed out of town again."

"So…" I didn't even know what to talk to him about. I'd never had much of a good relationship with my own father, and 95 percent of our conversations were just about sports -- at least when he wasn't yelling at me for being a lazy freeloader. But given that this dad had divorced my mother years ago, I was even more lost on where to start.

"So…" I continued. "What brings you over today?"

"Oh, Ron and I were talking about the Camero last night and he had an idea for getting rid of that clunking sound," he said. "So he told me to bring it over this afternoon. Any idea where he is?"

"No, I just got back in," I said, sitting down on the couch across from him. "So how've you been?"

"Good," he said, taking a swig of the beer I'd gotten for myself. I really wanted a drink of my own right now. "The construction business is finally picking back up, and I think Marie and I might finally be ready to settle down."

"Marie," I asked.

"Oh, that's right, you haven't even met her yet," he said. "Well, we've been going out for about a year. She's really sweet. Your sister loves her."

"That's great," I said. "I'm glad you're happy."

I really was. My father and I had certainly had our differences over the years, but it wasn't like I wanted him to suffer. And it's clear that staying with my mother had been causing him to do just that.

This was so confusing to me. For every horrible thing I found out about my life as Alana, I seemed to find out some great thing too. I really couldn't decide if this version of my life was better or worse, and what lessons I was supposed to be learning -- if any at all.

"Are you happy," he asked me. "I know leaving New York must've been hard on you."

"Not at all," I said, which was true. Leaving New York hadn't been hard on me since I wasn't the one who left New York. "It's a new chapter."

"Oh, come on," he yelled. I thought for a second it was at me, but I quickly realized he was reacting to something happening in the game. "Stupid Davis…"

"Why don't I leave you to the game until Ron gets back," I said. "I've got some stuff to take care upstairs anyway."

"Thanks honey," he said. "Let's make some time to catch up before you leave though. Dinner this weekend?"

"That sounds great," I said, before heading back up to my room.

When I got upstairs, I found that my bed had been made, and there was a basket of clothes sitting on top of it, with a note attached.

"Needed to make some room for laundry, so I brought yours up for you. - Mom"

I tossed the note aside and started sorting the clothes. There was plenty of stuff that made me shudder when I thought about wearing it, a few things that were perfectly acceptable and one thing that caught my eye – a silver ankh on a black string necklace.

It looked like the one Death wore in the Sandman comics, which felt a little symbolic given my current state. I ran my fingers over the edges of the ankh. It was cold, which was strange, given that it had been sitting on top of the warm laundry. I slipped it over my head and onto my neck.

"Death becomes me," I said to myself. I liked how the necklace looked on me. It fell right between my breasts, but somehow didn't look particularly sexual. As I packed up everything else, I decided to leave it on.

I looked out my bedroom window, and saw my father and Ron working on the car, which meant the living room was once again likely vacant -- if my mom had started a laundry cycle, she'd likely be bouncing between the basement and the bedrooms for the rest of the afternoon. I grabbed my computer off the vanity to do a little more "Alana" research -- hopefully to find out more about Aiden and who else I might be meeting in Los Angeles -- and figure out exactly what I needed to back up before I wiped this thing clean. Just as I did, my phone beeped with a new text message. It was from Monica.

"Call me."

Before I could even text back, another one came in.

"NOW"

Uh-oh.

*****

"What the fuck were you thinking?!"

Monica hadn't even waited for me to call her after sending her urgent text. True, I had hesitated, looking at the texts for a couple minutes, trying to figure out what to say to her. That was a long enough delay to prompt Monica to call me, and yell at me as soon as I picked up the phone.

"It's not what you think," I said, hoping she would calm down at least a little.

"Like hell it's not," she said. "I can't believe you'd go behind my back like that."

Part of me couldn't believe it either. I'd been living Alana's life for less than 48 hours, and didn't know much about her -- at least not as much as I wanted to know. But it was pretty clear that Monica was her best friend, and sleeping with her boyfriend seemed like a real shitty thing to do. And now here I was, being forced to take the blame for something I hadn't even done.

"I didn't… I can't… I mean…"

I was at a loss for words. I briefly considered telling her the truth -- the REAL truth. But now didn't feel like the right time for that.

"You promised me," Monica said, "that you were never going to see him again."

Wait, now I was really confused. Did Monica know there'd been something between Bryce and Alana? Because Bryce sure hadn't made it seem that way.

"I didn't mean to," I said. "It just kind of… happened."

"Oh, sure," Monica said, sarcastically. "You just HAPPENED to be at the mall and HAPPENED to go to the Apple Store and Mark just HAPPENED to be working at that time."

Holy shit, this is about Mark?! I let out a deep sigh of relief and actually started laughing.

"What the hell is so funny," Monica asked.

"I just… I thought you were pissed about something else," I said. "The thing with Mark it was totally an accident, I swear. I really didn't think I'd run in to him."

"Well you did," she said. "And I saw the video. I told you nothing good would come of ever seeing him again, but NO, you didn't believe me. Well, see, I was right."

"You were," I said.

"So are you okay," she asked, finally sounding like a supportive friend instead of a betrayed one for the first time in this whole conversation.

"I am, really," I said.

It couldn't be further from the truth. I still had to deal with the whole Monica/Bryce thing at some point, I couldn't just leave the Mark thing hanging like that and, oh yeah, I still had the problem where I was living a totally different life as the complete opposite gender I'd been my entire life, and I was getting no closer to solving that problem, thanks to having to deal with all of Alana's drama.

"No you're not," Monica said. "I can hear it in your voice. I'm coming over."

"That's really not necessary," I said. "I just need some time to process."

"Process? No, what you need is some girl time, some 'Grey's' DVDs and maybe a little retail therapy."

"Trust me," I said. "The last thing I need is some retail anything. I'm just gonna relax. I'll be fine. We can catch up tomorrow."

"You sure," she asked.

"I'm sure."

And with that, a crisis was averted, at least temporarily. I knew I couldn't keep Monica from the truth forever, but I was hoping I could somehow get my life back normal before I'd have to deal with that.

I headed downstairs into the living room to watch some baseball and do more search into Alana's life, but my mom was in there folding laundry. Two days ago, running into my mom at home would've led to a long conversation about where I'd be living next month. Now, well, I had no idea what to expect from her. I knew we were much closer and much more congenial than before, but that almost made things harder. I couldn't ask her about my life or my family or anything like that, because I'd be expected to know the answers.

"Hey mom," I said, settling into the small loveseat in the corner while she laid out folded laundry on the couch.

"Oh, hi, Alana," she said. "Don't mind me. I've just got a couple more loads to take care of. Which reminds me, I put some of your laundry upstairs on your bed, and your last load is in the dryer right now."

"Thanks mom," I said. It'd been years since my own mother had done my laundry for me. She made me start doing my own when I was 18 and still living at home. I guess living away from home for years makes your mother more amenable to helping take care of your chores.

I opened up my MacBook Air and tried to figure out the mystery behind Alana's cryptic last Facebook status update. She posted it last week, just before moving back home, but it seemed like Monica, Gwen, Alexis -- really anyone I'd encountered -- had no insight into Alana's plans beyond the next week. I didn't seem to have a job waiting for me at home, nor any type of permanent housing solution, so why'd Alana suddenly pack up and leave New York?

The thing with Bryce had made it a little clearer why she hadn't followed Aiden to Los Angeles. If she'd been sleeping with someone else behind his back for literally the entirety of their relationship, it would seem that she hadn't been taking it very seriously to begin with.

As I went through Alana's e-mails, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with this whole situation, to the point it was once again making me physically ill. For a while yesterday, it'd really seemed like this cosmic mishap had dropped me into a better life, but I'm finding that's not the case. And the novelty of the whole situation had worn off; it wasn't "cute" anymore being in this tiny frame or having to pee sitting down or wearing a bra. It was just wrong.

"What's wrong, honey," my mom said to me. Great, I was giving off that "something's wrong" vibe to everyone now. I really should've just gone back upstairs to my room to have some privacy.

I closed the laptop and put it on the seat next to me, then instinctively adjusted how I was sitting, putting my right leg under me while my left foot was on the loveseat as I wrapped my arms around my left leg. I'd seen the body language before but never been on it from this side, closing myself off.

"Mom," I said, hesitatingly. I wanted to ask her if she thought I… or rather Alana… was a good person, but she's my mother. Of course she'll think that. Hell, as much as my mother and I hadn't gotten along before this insanity happened, she certainly would've said I'm a good person. So I went with a different question, one that had been bugging me on a smaller level since yesterday morning. "Why'd you name me Alana?"

She chuckled.

"That's a funny story," she said. "I can't believe I've never told you."

"I don't think you have," I said. "I mean, it's not like I don't like the name Alana. I do. Even if everyone calls me Ali. Alana's a pretty name."

"It is," my mom said as she continued to fold laundry. "But it wasn't supposed to be your name."

"Really," I asked, intrigued. "So what was my name supposed to be?"

"Andrew," she said, without hesitation.

My jaw dropped. This was the first time in two days I'd heard that name -- MY name -- and to hear that it was SUPPOSED to be Alana's name was, well, jaw-dropping (obviously).

"Yeah, up until the day you were born, your father and I were convinced you were going to be a boy. We had your name all picked out: Andrew Steven Carlysle. So imagine our surprise when you came out."

"Yeah, imagine that," I said. "So how'd you end up with Alana?"

“Honestly, it was always the name I’d planned on giving my first daughter, but we were so certain we were having a boy that I never even discussed it with your father,” she said. “When you came out, and it was clear you weren’t going to be an ‘Andrew’, your father wanted to just shorten it to ‘Andi’, but I held firm. You had to be Alana.”

"Interesting," I said. "Wait… so why were you so sure I was going to be a boy?"

"Well, I'd love to tell you it was an ultrasound or something high tech or even based in science," my mom said. "But I'd be lying. It was just… a feeling. All my sisters had boys first, same with your father's sister. Heck, you're the only girl out of all your first-born cousins. I'd never really thought about that before… it's weird."

"VERY weird," I said. I was getting the sense there was more to this sudden gender reassignment than I'd previously believed. Whatever caused this reboot went all the way back to when I was in the womb and changed me then.

"But we got a girl, and we're very happy with our Alana," she said. "Now, I can't even imagine if you'd been born a boy. You and your sister get along so well, you're such an amazing dancer… who knows where you'd be?"

"Probably not sitting here talking with my mom," I said.

"No, I'd imagine not."

She folded the last piece of laundry and put all the folded clothes into the laundry bin to bring it upstairs to her bedroom. As she picked up the basket and walked out of the room, she turned back to me.

"What sparked this trip down memory lane," she asked.

"I dunno," I said. "Just… thinking about… stuff. Life… I guess."

"Well, don't over think things," she said. "You've always been more of a doer. It drove me crazy at times when you were growing up, but you've really made yourself into something special."

"Oh, I've made myself into 'something'," I said to myself under my breath.

As my mom left the room, I stretched my legs back out, then sat back and spread them in the most un-lady-like position possible. I really wanted to stick one hand down my pants, grab a beer in the other and hope that would magically turn me back into a man, but I knew it wouldn't help. So I recrossed my legs and sat "Indian style" (I know it's not "politically-correct" to call it that anymore, but the last time I was physically able to sit like this, it's what it was called), popping open my computer on my lap. I got through about three e-mails, but I just couldn't concentrate. My mom telling me that I was supposed to have been born a boy was messing with my head. So I closed up the laptop and brought it with me as I headed upstairs.

I put the laptop down, took off the "Death" necklace and then took off my shirt and bra. Having small breasts, wearing a bra hadn't been the most annoying thing about this situation, but every time I took one off, I was reminded just how uncomfortable they were. It didn't help that all of Alana's bras could easily be categorized as "fashionable", as the form was clearly much more important to her than the function. I rubbed my shoulders where the straps had dug in a little; I had to admit that a little bra discomfort was nothing compared to the pain years of football injuries had left me with. I figured Alana had probably had her share of bumps and bruises in her dance career, but I certainly hadn't felt them yet in my time as her. Unless "stomach pain" was a symptom of dance injuries.

I slipped on a black sports bra and a tight blue tank top and traded my leggings for some running shorts. I needed to clear my head and I wasn't sure why, but it seemed like the best thing to do was to go for a run. It's possible that was the Alana in me talking, but it seemed like a better idea than sitting around and wallowing in my misery. Plus, this way if Monica decided to pop in, I wouldn't be home and I could put off facing her for a little longer.

I grabbed my iPhone and some earbuds off my vanity. Before I headed out, I stopped by my sister's room.

"Hey," I said, cracking open the door. "I'm going for a run. Please don't take the car out while I'm gone."

"You know mom wouldn't let me anyway," she said.

"Fair enough."

I closed the door and headed out, popping in my earbuds as I waved to Ron and my dad before embarking on my run. I didn't know where I was running or why I was running. I just wanted to run.

I really wanted to run back into my old life, especially when Alana's playlists started kicking in. As if the Ke$ha and Pink weren't bad enough, I'm pretty sure she had every Taylor Swift song known to man on here. And when it wasn't shuffling through a selection of Top 40 songs that made me want to stick a Q-Tip into my ears until I heard a pop, it was running through random broadway and ballet songs, which I'm sure were from her life as a dancer. The only rap album she had on here was "Take Care" by Drake, and I barely considered that rap. I made a note -- an actual note in the Notes application -- to buy some new music when I got back home. If I was going to be living this life, even on a short-term basis, I wanted it to have a decent soundtrack.

As I let the dulcet tones of the scorned Taylor Swift wash over me, I just kept running. Before long, I found myself at the town reservoir, about three miles away from my house. I'd been running for three miles, and looking at the clock on my phone, I'd been doing it at about a nine-minute-mile pace, and I wasn't even winded. I decided to keep running up through the woods, to the lookout point above the lake. There was a spot along the path where the trees and been cleared out and there was a big rock that you could sit on and just look down at the water. It was actually where I'd gone on my first "date" in middle school. A lot of kids my age then went on "dates" there, since we weren't really old enough to do anything special. It was either have your parents drive you to the mall or the movies, or go to the reservoir. And the latter made you look "sensitive".

A few minutes later I reached the spot and took a seat on the rock. Looking down on that lake now, my emotions weren't being faked. They were certainly conflicted, but they were real. The serenity of the whole scene was relaxing, but inside I was a bundle of nerves that couldn't be settled. I was impressed with my physical fitness in this new body and worried that it was going to be something I'd have to maintain long term. I wanted this nightmare to be over, but I also was in no rush to get back to my mess of a normal life.

I took out my earbuds and Instagrammed a picture of the scene. The sun wasn't quite setting yet over the water, but it was low enough in the sky that it was reflecting nicely. It was, well, it was just pretty. But it wasn't real -- the "lake" was man-made, obviously. Pretty, but not real. The story of my new life.

I put my headphones back in and made my way back down the hill. As I neared the bottom, I stepped the wrong way on a rock, and rolled my right ankle. I was able to catch myself before falling over, but I immediately felt the sharp pain in the joint. I tried taking a few steps, and while the pain wasn't unbearable, I definitely wasn't going to be able to run the rest of the way home. Walk slowly, maybe, but definitely not run. Before I ventured back onto the road, I headed down to the edge of the water and took off my right shoe and sock. I put my foot in the water, which was colder than I'd expected. But that was a good thing. It felt right, even if very little else about my body did at this point.

*****

It'd only taken me about half an hour to run to the reservoir, but thanks to my ankle, it took me almost 90 minutes to walk home. To be fair, I'd stopped a couple times to get off my foot and massage the ankle, but it still took way longer than it needed to. Now it really was starting to get dark, and I was really happy that I was only a block away from home. I probably should've called my mom or my sister or Ron or even Monica to come pick me up and drive me home, but I had this nagging sense of pride to try and fight through the injury. I did wonder, though, if I was doing permanent damage to my ankle and if that was something that Alana would have to deal with after I got back to my life.

That thought got me thinking even more. Would Alana, this Alana, exist after all this? What about Alexis? Would she still live her life, or would she turn back into my juvenile delinquent sister Alana? For that matter, were the people in my old life still living their lives? And what did that mean for me?

I'd gone out on this run to try and clear my head, but now it was more muddled than ever. And things were about to get worse before they got better, because who should be sitting on my front porch as I turned the corner?

Mark.

My house was three houses down from the corner, and Mark, still wearing his work clothes, wasn't looking in my direction, so I spotted him before he spotted me. I thought about trying to make a quick dash up one of my neighbors' driveways then sneaking into my backyard, but with my ankle being as messed up as it was, I wasn't going to be doing anything quickly. And with the pool in our backyard now, there was much less backyard to sneak into.

Any hopes of hiding or turning back around were dashed when Mark finally looked over in my direction. He dropped the bag he was holding, hopped up from his seat and quickly ran to my side.

"You're limping," he said, trying to get me to use his body as a crutch.

"You're not supposed to be here," I said, snippily. I pushed him away and tried to keep moving forward, but the closer I got to home, the more I was becoming aware of how much pain my ankle was in. I took a few more steps and stumbled, and Mark reached out to grab me.

"I don't want your help," I yelled at him. "At least… not like this… "

"Like what," he asked.

"Like… it's… never mind," I said. I was on the verge of just telling him everything, but instead I just accepted his help in getting me to my front door. He helped me up the front steps to the porch, where he'd left an Apple Store bag.

"So what are you doing here," I asked. "Didn't get enough of seeing me cry this afternoon?"

"I wanted to apologize," he said, "and give you this."

He handed me the bag, as I leaned back against the door. I needed the support, as I'd reached the point I could barely stand without pain. I really just wanted to get inside and get some ice on this thing. Thankfully I was already going to see a doctor tomorrow, so I didn't have to worry about making an extra appointment. Mark was standing there waiting for me to look inside the bag, so I obliged. It was a hard drive.

"You said you needed one," he said. "I kind of ran you out of the store before you could buy it."

"How much do I owe you," I asked.

"It's on me," he said. "For… well, for acting like an asshole. I know we didn't end things on good terms, but I had no right treating you like that today. I just, umm, well, you were kind of the last person I ever expected to see today."

"You know," I said, "As bad as it was today, I have to admit I was still kind of happy to see you."

Mark's eyes got really wide. That certainly wasn't the reaction he was expecting from Alana.

"I'm serious," I continued. "I've had a couple of really confusing days, and it was kind of nice to see a familiar face in a familiar place."

"Wow," he said. "You haven't changed one bit."

"Ummm… is that… good," I asked.

"It's… you," he said. "Somehow, someway, you could always find a way to be the coldest, cruelest bitch and the sweetest, most caring girl, all at the same time."

"That's quite an apology," I said.

"Hey, at least you got one," he said. "I'm still waiting on mine."

"Fine, I'm sorry," I said.

"For?"

"For everything," I snapped. "For walking out on you. For walking back in on you. For not being who you needed me to be and for being who I am. I'm sorry I'm not perfect. I'm sorry I'm a bitch. I'm sorry you had to fucking help me walk half a block home because my sorry ankle can't tolerate being rolled over a little bit. I'm just sorry, okay?!"

I started to tear up again, and I could see Mark was upset that he'd made me upset, but it really had nothing to do with him. Well, it had everything to do with him, because he reminded me of my old life and it hurt to see him. Seeing him made me want everything fixed right now, so we could go back to bitching about movies and I could finally be honest with him about Monica and he could help me get my life straightened out. But instead here we were still bitter with each other about a wedding that never happened and a reunion that shouldn't have happened and then before I knew it, his lips were on mine.

Oh.

My.

God.

Mark is kissing me. My best friend in the world, the guy I've known since we were both five years old, the guy whose blindside I protected through multiple levels of football, is kissing me.

I flashed back to my kiss last night with Bryce. That one had felt more wrong than right, for a multitude of reasons, but this felt totally different. As our lips connected, I closed my eyes and the tears stopped. Before I knew it, I was inside, lying on my bed with Mark propping up my ankle with a pillow, putting ice on top of it.

"You know you shouldn't be here, right," I asked, still somewhat confused about how either of us had gotten "here."

"I know," he said.

"So…"

"So…"

"Mark, I appreciate your help," I said. "I appreciate the hard drive, and I REALLY appreciate the ice, but there are SO many reasons why you shouldn't be in my bedroom, not the least of which being I have a boyfriend who called me to comfort me after you made me feel like crap earlier today."

"I know," he said.

"You know," I asked. "So why are you still here?"

"I don't know."

"You're not being very helpful. Were you this taciturn when we dated or is this another new feature, like that ugly tattoo on your arm?"

"Oh, this," he said, pointing to the dagger he had inked on his forearm. "I had to do something to cover up your name. You know how hard it is to date when your ex's name is tattooed on your arm?"

"Well…"

"Though I guess for you," he said, interrupting, "It'd be even more awkward. I'd assume you got yours removed."

"I…"

Again, before I could say anything, Mark moved toward my bed and lifted up my tank top on the left side, just above my waist.

"It looks good," he said, running his finger along my bare skin. "You can't even tell I was ever there."

He kept tracing his finger up my torso, lifting my shirt as he went, stopping right in between my breasts.

"Was I ever here," he asked, pointing to my heart.

"Mark," I said, nervously. "This isn't…"

"No, you're right," he said, rolling my shirt back down. "I'm gonna go. I hope your ankle feels better. And when you're up to it, maybe we can have a real reunion. One that doesn't end with you crying?"

He started to walk out of my room, but before he did, I called out.

"Wait, Mark," I said. "I just… I mean… you… "

He stood by the open door, waiting for me to say something. So I said the only thing that came to mind.

"I'm scared," I said. "And I don't want you to go."

He closed the door and turned back to my bed with a smile on his face. Before he took a step, he reached back and turned off the lights.

*****

DAY THREE

"Oh, shit. What the hell did I do?"

I wasn't reacting to the vomit in the toilet -- that had become almost routine at this point. Well, as "routine" as any of this madness could be. As I looked up at my reflection in the mirror, the unfamiliar female face that looked back at me looked very concerned.

Thankfully, when I'd woken up this morning, I still had all my clothes on. That was the good news. The bad news was that Mark -- the man I knew as my best friend but who in this reality had been Alana's ex-fiancé -- was also in that bed, with his arms wrapped around me.

I managed to slide out of bed without waking him and limp to the bathroom. Surprisingly, the ankle I rolled yesterday was feeling much better even if my stomach wasn’t. The daily vomiting was enough of a concern for me that I made a mental note to bring it up at my doctor’s appointment later today.

For now, I had more pressing concerns. Like, primarily, how to get Mark out of here without anyone seeing him, and without bringing up any more… feelings between us. We definitely didn’t need any more… feeling.

I sat down on the toilet, making sure to put the seat down first, and just put my head in my hands. A few days ago, I may have been unhappy with my life, but it certainly wasn’t this complicated. The worst part was that I couldn’t tell if I’d made a mess of things or if Alana dealt with this insanity on a constant basis. She was certainly able to juggle a relationship with her L.A.-based boyfriend Aiden and an affair with Bryce, who up until two days ago had been dating her best friend Monica. I’m just not cut out for that. And as much as I want to maintain Alana’s life, so no one suspects that I’m not really Alana, I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going. Hell, I almost broke down and told Mark the truth last night. But given the past between Alana and Mark, I’m not sure he’s the right person to bring this too.

Just as I was getting up and getting ready to head back to my bedroom, the bathroom door burst open.

“Ohmigod, did I see who I think I saw in your bedroom,” excitedly asked my little sister Alexis.

“Umm, hello, a little privacy,” I said, incredulously. I was fully dressed and getting ready to leave anyway, but I couldn’t believe my sister would just burst in like that. Just another thing I had to get used to in being a big sister rather than a big brother.

“Hey, it’s not my fault you left your bedroom door open with a dude in bed,” she said.

“That’s not what I was talking about,” I said, gesturing back to the toilet.

“Oh, whatever,” she said. “So are you and Mark back together? What about Aiden? Did you tell him? Does Mark know about Aiden?"

"That's a lot of questions that I don't have the answer to," I said as I nudged Lexi back out the door. I could hear her still talking as I closed it and locked it. Thankfully she trailed off, and I had another brief moment of privacy before I had to go back and face Mark. And as much as I KNEW that, to me, Mark was just a friend, my body was certainly sending me mixed signals the night before. I knew there was no way I would do anything, but the kiss we'd shared had sparked something inside Alana, and I couldn't really just tell my brain to turn it off.

"OK," I said to myself. "You can do this."

I opened the door, and standing right there in front of me was Mark. So I did the only thing that felt right.

I quickly closed the door and ran back to the toilet to throw up again.

"Oh, wow," he said. "The sight of me really makes you sick? That's… comforting."

In my haste to try and vomit my emotions, I'd forgotten to lock the door. I'd also forgotten to hold my hair back, but fortunately for me, nothing but a dry heave had come out.

"It's not you," I said, lying through my teeth, which were in desperate need of a brushing. "I just haven't been feeling well lately."

"How's the ankle," he asked, leaning back against the door.

"It's fine," I said, tersely. I tried not to come off as the bitch who'd broken his heart so many years earlier, but I also didn't want to become emotionally entangled. "You should probably go."

"So… that's it," he asked. "We're not gonna talk about last night?"

"We are," I said. "Just not in my bathroom. And not with my mom and sister sleeping down the hall."

"Your sister's not sleeping," he said.

"That's so, SO, not the point," I said. I flushed the toilet and reached past Mark to open the bathroom door. He quickly put one hand on the door to keep it shut, and the other around my waist, trying to pull me in.

"No," I said. "Not here. Not now."

"I wasn't…" he said, trailing off. "I just thought I'd help you get back to your room."

"I told you," I said as I turned the handle and opened the door, "my ankle is fine."

It wasn't "fine" though, as I still had a small but noticeable limp as I made my way back to my bedroom. Mark followed behind, and entered as I was bending over to pick up his sneakers to hand to him.

"Still as great a view as always," he said. I once again realized I was bending at the waist and showing off my ass, which made me quickly snap back up. I wanted to throw the shoes at him, but I was pretty sure I was blushing, and my fear of turning around and facing him was greater than my anger at his sexist comment. But I composed myself as best I could and brought the sneakers over to him.

"As much as I appreciate being told my ass looks awesome, you really need to go," I said. "We can talk later. Are you working today?"

"Yeah, 11 to 8."

"Well, I can't do it tonight. I'm meeting up with a friend."

"Why don't we just go get some coffee and some breakfast and talk now," he asked as he slipped on his shoes.

"I can't. I have a doctor's appointment," I said. "And besides, I'm not even dressed, and by the time I got showered and ready you'd probably have to go to work."

"It did always take you forever to get ready," he said with a laugh. As he smiled, I felt myself smiling too. There was something comforting about seeing that familiar smile, even in a completely unfamiliar situation.

"I'm free all day tomorrow," I said. "And I promise, I won't take forever to get ready. Maybe just an hour or two."

"OK then, tomorrow it is," he said. Then he leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek before turning around and heading out. For a brief second I considered chasing after him, but my life for the past few days has been some kind of weird "Freaky Friday" movie; I didn't need it to turn into a shitty RomCom too.

I heard the front door close and ran -- well, really more hopped -- to my window to see Mark walk down the street. Given that he wasn't walking toward a car, my guess was that in this version of our lives he still lived with his parents, which would make finding him considerably easier when I decided I wanted to go down that road.

Right now I had a sister to deal with.

"Hey Lexi," I said, politely and softly knocking on her open door. "So, could you, um, maybe, like, not mention Mark to anyone? Just, you know, for a while."

"Did you guys have sex," she asked, in a tone that was a little too excited for my tastes.

"No, we did not have sex," I said. "We just slept together. I mean… slept in the same bed. Sleeping. With our clothes on. NOT having sex."

I clearly wasn't helping my cause at all, but Lexi bought it. Or she just didn't want to embarrass me any further.

"What was he doing here anyway," she asked.

"It's a long story," I said. "One I'd be happy to explain later. Like, say, maybe when you drive me to the doctor?"

"Really," she asked, in a tone even more excited than when she was probing about my sex life. "You want me to drive you?"

"Well, I hurt my ankle last night and I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be driving with it," I said. It wasn't a total lie, but it served as a convenient way to deal with the fact that I had no idea where this doctor was, and Lexi clearly did.

"OK, sure thing," she said. "And we can talk about Mark on the way there."

"Maybe," I said. "But until then, keep your lips zipped, okay?"

She zipped her lips, then locked them, then tossed the key away, and gave me a thumbs-up. It was amazing how much different she was from the sister I remembered. My sister, Alana, hated me. But Alana's sister, Alexis, adored her. I wanted to figure out why, so that when I fixed my own predicament, I could go about fixing my relationship with my sister, my real one. And then maybe fix my fraying friendship with Mark. And my relationship with my parents.

One problem at a time.

*****

OK, this was a whole new problem.

As we pulled up to the doctor's office, I recognized the building. It was where I'd picked up Alana the day before this craziness all happened. Dr. Briggs wasn't a physician. She was an OB/GYN. I had a gynecologist's appointment.

"So I'll pick you up in a couple hours, OK," Lexi asked.

"Uhhhh…"

"Look, I promise I won't take the car anywhere," Lexi said. "I'll just drive it home and then back here."

Yeah, 'cause that's what I was nervous about. This shitty 2000 purple Dodge Neon. I let out a big sigh and opened the car door.

"Please be back here AS SOON as my appointment is over," I said as I got out of the car. "Sooner, if possible."

"I will," Lexi said. "Have fun!"

Fun? Like that had any chance at happening.

I slung my purse over my shoulder and headed inside, where I hesitantly approached the counter.

"Hi, uh, Alana Carlylse," I said. "I have an appointment."

The receptionist behind the desk didn't even look up from her paperwork as she handed me a clipboard.

"Fill this out and have a seat. We'll call your name when you're up."

Looking at the form, I realized how much of a problem this was going to be. I knew almost nothing of Alana's medical history, and this thing was detailed. Like, super-detailed. And all I knew was that I was an in-shape 25-year-old who was allegedly sexually active, has been throwing up a lot and sprained her ankle -- the latter of which I'm pretty sure a gynecologist wasn't really the kind of doctor to see about.

Fortunately, before I got too deep into making stuff up on the form, I heard my name called out.

"Miss Carlysle," the receptionist said. "Just head down the hall to waiting room 3."

I held up the clipboard to try and indicate I wasn't finished with the form and delay the inevitable a little longer.

"Don't worry about that," she said. "Dr. Frazier sent your charts up from New York. And if Dr. Briggs has any other questions, she'll just ask. Now head back to waiting room 3. There's a gown on the table."

A gown. I assumed she wasn't talking about evening wear. I took the clipboard with me as I walked down the hall. The office was well-lit and decorated nicely, with pictures of flowers lining the walls (no symbolism there, right guys?), but it felt like a prison.

That feeling didn't go away as I entered the examination room and saw the table with the stirrups. I almost wanted my brain to go into that auto-pilot mode it had done a couple nights ago, but no matter how hard I tried, it seemed like I was stuck here for the duration.

I changed into the dressing gown as quickly as possible and sat up on the side of examination table. I wasn't going to get into "the position" until I absolutely had to, and based on my experience with doctors, moving from the waiting room to the examination room only meant you were going to wait some more.

After a few minutes of sitting in silence and staring at the wall, I pulled my phone out of my purse. I wasn't surprised to see I had text messages waiting for me from Aiden, Bryce, and even Mark. And a voicemail from a number I didn't recognize. On some level it was nice to be wanted -- I couldn't remember the last week when I got texts from three different people, much less the last morning -- but given what had transpired with each of those guys over the last couple days, it was really the last thing I wanted to deal with. My Facebook app wasn't much more inviting, sitting in the dock with a bright red badge showing 33 new notifications. I hadn't opened it or logged on to Facebook since my last Alana research session, and I'm guessing that my extended absence from the platform was starting to concern some people.

However, Alana's return to social media would have to wait, as the woman I presumed was Dr. Briggs entered the room.

"Hello Alana," she said, not even looking up from the chart she was holding. "How are you doing today?"

God, I have no fucking idea how to even begin answering that question.

"Fine, I guess," I said, noncommittally.

"Well, if you're fine," she answered, putting down the chart and looking at me for the first time, "then you don't really need to see a doctor, do you?"

She looked at me square in the eyes for a second, and then let out a little laugh. I admit, I needed that. It was the first time since pulling into the parking lot here that I felt like I could let my guard down. Hell, it was probably the first time since all this had happened that I felt like that.

"OK, well 'fine' might be overstating it," I said. "Honestly, I've been vomiting a lot lately."

"Have you been eating any differently," she asked as she sat down in the doctor's stool in front of me.

"Not really," I said. "And it's not like I'm throwing up after I eat."

"OK, then, let's check you out."

I started to turn my body toward the stirrups, prepared for the worst, but Dr. Briggs reached for the blood-pressure armband on the wall. For the next few minutes, everything felt mostly like a regular doctor's appointment. She tested my blood pressure, did the whole "open and say ahh" thing, had me get on the scale -- an even 104 -- listened to me breathe... nothing out of the ordinary. I was starting to think I'd get out of this experience without having to do anything horribly embarrassing, when she finally said it.

"Why don't you lie down and we'll check your breasts?"

Yeah, that certainly wasn't part of my normal physical routine. I tentatively leaned back on the table, but before I could get all the way down, Dr. Briggs reached over and stopped me.

"Oh, wait, just have to get this first," she said, pulling on the top drawstring of my gown. Oh, crap, I have to be topless for this. I mean, that makes sense, obviously, but... oh, c'mon, why couldn't Alana auto-pilot mode just take over here.

I was fully prone on the table as Dr. Briggs began poking at my small, but obviously womanly, breasts. Fortunately, I was too weirded out by this whole experience to feel even remotely turned on. It's not that Dr. Briggs was unattractive. She was actually quite pretty for a woman who appeared to be in her early 50s and was wearing an ill-fitting lab coat. It's just that if there's going to be any breast examining in my life, I'd always prefer to be the examiner and not the examinee.

"Everything seems good there," she said after a couple minutes. "Why don't you get up in the foot rests and we'll do a quick pelvic exam."

Yeah, and after that, you can just shoot me in the head, because being dead seems like a better option right now than living through this experience. If I ever get back to my normal life, I'm never giving another woman crap about being on her period or anything involving her reproductive system ever again.

"All right," I said, trying to mask my growing anxiety as I slipped the top part of the gown back over my torso. I lay back on the table and slipped my feet in as best I could, wincing a bit as I hit my right ankle against the edge of the foot rest.

"Are you okay," Dr. Briggs asked.

"Yeah, I just sprained my ankle yesterday," I said. "I think I just wanted something to talk to you about other than my vomiting."

"We could talk about your sex life," she said. "Are you currently sexually active?"

"I… um… I mean… WHAT?!"

"I know, stupid question," she said. "You're 25, of course you are. Are you using any birth control?"

I was still too stunned by this line of questioning to answer. I mean, sure, it made sense, given what kind of doctor she was, but it came out of nowhere and she was being so casual about it while staring at my vagina under a paper-thin medical gown.

"When was your last period," she asked.

"I… I don't know," I said, being completely honest. I tried to force my brain to access Alana's memories to give her a better answer, but it still didn't work that way.

"That's okay," she said. "It's not uncommon for women in your field to miss a cycle or two. You are still in dance, right?"

"When my ankle isn't hurt, yeah," I said.

"Given your low weight and the amount of exercise you put in during an average day, it wouldn't surprise me if you were off cycle," she said, as she popped her head back out from under the gown. "But let's go ahead and get a blood test just to be sure."

As Dr. Briggs went back to her chart and began writing up the order for the blood test, my mind started racing. Was there something wrong with me? With Alana's body, I mean. I began thinking about every possible horrible thing that could be wrong with me... cancer, AIDS, other STDs... just the whole gamut. I've been a generally pessimistic person for a while now, and this certainly wasn’t helping. Dr. Briggs was still talking to me as she was filling out the paperwork, but I wasn't hearing a word. Eventually she ripped off the top sheet from her pad and handed it to me.

"Just take this down the hall and they'll get you all set," she said. "If you want, we can set up a follow-up for next week, or just wait until the results come in and discuss it then."

"Ummm…" I hesitated, not having heard pretty much anything she said up until then. "Let's just wait and see."

"OK," she said, with a bit of a chipper tone in her voice. It was both reassuring and off-putting at the same time, like she was being way too calm about something I was freaking out about. "You can go ahead and get dressed, and I'll let Cynthia know you're coming."

Getting dressed had been a nightmare ever since this change happened, but right now leggings and a blouse seemed downright normal compared to this gown. I threw on my clothes as quickly as possible, not even bothering to put my bra back on. I just stuffed it in my purse. My purple blouse was dark enough that it wasn't likely anyone would notice, and I was headed back home right after this blood test anyway.

Heading down the hall, the heels of my sandals made a loud, echoing click with every step, reaffirming the change I'd been through -- as if being in an OB/GYN's office wasn't affirmation enough. At the end of the hall, a girl -- probably about my age, wearing pink scrubs -- was waiting for me. She took my paperwork and led me into a small room, where I sat down in one of those small school chairs with a mini-desk attached to one of the armrests. Three days ago, I wouldn't have been able to fit in the seat, but this body slid in just fine.

The nurse, Cynthia, pulled out a syringe and a couple of empty vials and began prepping my arm. I'd always been scared of needles -- one of the many reasons I could never take PEDs as a football player -- so I just did my best to look away.

"OK, ready," Cynthia asked as she prepared to stick the needle in my arm.

"As ready as I'll ever be," I said. I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them back up, I'd be back in my bedroom as Andrew. Sadly, I had no such luck. Cynthia finished up, and let me know that Dr. Briggs put in a rush request on the testing, which didn't ease my concerns in any way.

"So that's it," I asked.

"Yep," she said, in a tone that -- like Dr. Briggs' -- was a little too cheery for my tastes. "We should have the results for you later today."

I wanted to believe that everything was fine. That if there was really any concern by anyone that something was seriously wrong with me they'd be more straightforward about it. But I couldn't get this nagging voice out of my head, a voice that was telling me that none of this was normal procedure.

Still, all I could do was wait.

*****

I'd had all sorts of things I wanted to get done that afternoon -- starting with backing up Alana's hard drive to test out my reboot theory -- but I couldn't take my eyes off my phone. I kept waiting for a call from Dr. Briggs' office, but as the hours ticked away, it seemed like that call wouldn't be coming.

Texting kept me plenty busy, as the various men in and around my life all wanted some kind of attention. I managed to keep Bryce and Mark at bay, but Aiden could tell that something wasn't right with me. I'd done a decent enough job faking things when we talked and texted, but I feared what would happen when I was with him face-to-face.

That was still a few days off, however, and I had a night out planned to take my mind off of it. This certainly wasn't how I wanted my first date with Sara, the Panera Bread girl, to go. I mean, I was thrilled it was happening, but I imagined myself wearing khakis, a button-down shirt and a nice pair of Jordans. Instead, I was looking at myself in a mirror wearing a light blue mini-dress, black leggings and heeled boots -- the right one of which I could barely zip up, thanks to my swollen ankle. I desperately wanted to skip the heels, but the only shoes I could find that didn't have them were my workout sneakers and ballet slippers, neither of which went with any kind of outfit that would be appropriate at The Red Door.

To be entirely honest, I wasn't sure this outfit was great, but my sister seemed to like it, which was approval enough for me. I kept looking in the mirror, nervously twirling my long, black hair. I looked fine, right? No, I looked better than fine, even without makeup (I'd tried sitting down to put some on, but I couldn't get into autopilot mode, and wasn't nearly practiced enough to try it myself). Still, something felt off.

Looking around the room, something caught my eye: the ankh. It was sitting next to my bed, with the last bit of sunlight coming through the window and reflecting right off it. I picked it up and slipped it on; it still felt heavy around my neck, but looking back at my reflection in the mirror, it seemed like the perfect thing to complete this otherwise sparse outfit.

I cracked a brief smile. My emotions were still so conflicted. Sure, I was gonna go watch my crush play live music as her personal guest, but I was also still... this -- not to mention the whole "blood test" thing hanging over my head.

"It's now or never," I said to myself, as I grabbed my purse and headed out.

The 35-mile drive to The Red Door was surprisingly uneventful -- if a bit slower in this shitty Neon than it would've been in my Charger. I even enjoyed listening to the radio for the first time in years, since the rap selection on Hot 93.7 was far superior to that on Alana's iPhone. I wasn't sure what type of music Sara would be playing that night, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't resemble Meek Mill or Rick Ross. Even if it wasn't my kind of sound, I told myself to enjoy it. It was about the girl, not the songs.

"ID, please."

The bouncer at the door caught me off guard. I hadn't been carded in years -- even before I was 21 I was big enough and looked old enough to get in bars no problem -- but apparently going sans makeup had the strange effect of making me look younger than I was. It didn't help that the dress I was wearing was loose and hanging low off my shoulders; it looked like I'd raided it from the closet of a big sister I didn't have.

"I'm 25," I said, reaching into my purse to dig out my driver's license. "And I'm on the list. Alana Carlysle."

"ID," he repeated. The guy stood about 6-foot-2, probably about 275 pounds or so. His tight black shirt showed a physique that wasn't quite chiseled, but was certainly imposing enough to me in my new, tiny form. God, I hated so many things about what I was going through, but this recurring feeling of weakness in the face of someone bigger than me -- someone who wouldn't have been so three days ago -- was getting on my last nerve. I briefly considered telling this asshole off, but instead I just showed him my license and headed inside, where I scoped out a spot at the bar by the stage.

I really just wanted to mind my own business, maybe have a drink and get to know Sara better, but it quickly became clear that wouldn't be easy.

"Can I buy you a drink?"

A man sat down next to me. Well, calling him a "man" was probably being generous. He looked like he was about 19 years old, and calling him a "hipster" probably would've been an insult to hipsters. He couldn't have weighed much more than me, and was wearing black skinny jeans that might've been tighter than my leggings. His "vintage" shirt was probably brand new and cost at least $200, and... fuck me, I was giving off a hipster vibe, wasn't I? The whole "dress with leggings, no makeup, faux-vintage necklace" look totally played into what this guy was looking for.

"I'm not interested," I said, trying to brush him off as quickly as possible, but he wasn't giving up so easily. He sat down in the seat to my right and flashed two fingers at the bartender.

"If you're not interested in a drink," he said, "then a bar is a weird place to be."

"Are you even old enough to buy a drink," I asked. I probably would've been better off just ignoring him, but he seemed like the persistent type.

"I've been around," he said. "Where've you been? I mean, besides my dreams."

"Sweet Christmas, that's your line? Really?"

The response came from behind me and I turned around to see just about the last person I expected: Cash.

"Oh, hey," the hipster said to Cash. "Is she with you?"

"Yes," I injected quickly. "And we'd like it if you left. Now."

He put his hands up as if to say "I'm sorry", then hopped up out of his seat and headed down to the other end of the bar, where a cute blonde was sitting by herself. I almost felt sorry for her, but at least I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. Cash, on the other hand...

"Thanks," I said to him, letting out a big sigh.

"No problem," he said. "That guy didn't really seem like your type."

"And you do," I asked

"Well," he said. "At least I'm dressed like an adult."

He was wearing a black suit with a light blue button down shirt. My guess is he'd come straight from work, and probably just took off his tie and left it in the car. I had to admit, he looked good. I'd never had the physique to dress like that, but he was pulling off the look quite well.

"You are," I said. "Blue's a nice color on you."

"It's better on you," he said. "Oh, God, that was such a cheesy line. I should probably just go hang out with that guy."

"No, it's fine," I said. "Well, yeah, it was a cheesy line, but at least it came from an honest place."

"You know," he said, "I was gonna call after the other night, but I wasn't sure if you wanted me to. You were kind of weird at the club."

"It wasn't really my kind of scene," I said, being honest in that regard. But that was so far down the list of reasons I would've seemed "weird" to him that night.

"Same here," he said. "Places like this are much more my speed."

"Well, if we're being entirely honest, I normally wouldn't be here either," I said. "But I've got a friend performing tonight."

"Me too," he said, enthusiastically.

"OK, now you're just going along with me to butter me up, aren't you," I said. I crossed my legs and crossed my arms across my chest, to make it clear via body language that I was "closed for business".

"No, I'm serious," he said. "My sister Sara is going to play some of her songs tonight. She's up first. That's the only reason I'm here so early."

"Sara Carpenter," I asked.

"Yeah," he said, quizzically. "How'd you know?"

"That's who I'm here to see," I said, excitedly. "We're old college friends."

"Small world," he said. "So, while we're waiting, can I buy you a drink?"

"Just water for now," I said. "I'll save the heavy stuff for after the show."

Truthfully, I just didn't want to get drunk and accidentally test this body's alcohol tolerance -- and possibly do something stupid in the process. While mentally I had no interest in any guy, there'd been enough moments with Cash, Bryce and Mark over the last few days where my body sent me signals totally opposite of what my mind was saying. And with my mind already in a vulnerable place in regards to Sara, who knew what could happen if alcohol was thrown into the mix. I wasn't much of a chemistry student in high school, but even I knew that all made up a bad formula.

The bartender brought over water for me and a bottle of Sam Adams for Cash and we turned our attention to the stage. After a couple minutes of small talk -- and me avoiding any talk of Aiden or the OB/GYN -- Sara came out on stage and took a seat at the keyboard. There was some decent applause and she launched right into her first song without even introducing herself.

The music was your basic piano rock/pop, like a Vanessa Carlton or a less-angry Fiona Apple. It wasn't my thing AT ALL. But damn if I wasn't enthralled by her voice. Her singing voice was deeper than I'd expected from talking to her. There was a soulfulness to it that belied her small frame. And the lyrics...

She sang of lost love, not in a Taylor Swift-ian "OMG, I can't believe my boyfriend left me AGAIN" kind of way, but in a way that expressed true pain, true hurt. The kind that you didn't just move on from. She wasn't just singing words, she was singing her life. Part of me wanted to just go on stage and hug her and tell her it'd be all right, but not only would that be super-unprofessional, it'd just be flat-out strange.

As she played the final notes of her opening song, the bar grew completely silent, then erupted in applause, no one cheering louder than me.

"Hi, I'm Sara Carpenter," she said, finally introducing herself to a very receptive audience. "That was a song I wrote. This next one I didn't write, but I love playing it, so if you know the words, sing along."

As she said the last part, she seemed to look over at me and smile. It gave me a tingly feeling in a place that, quite frankly, I didn't feel comfortable feeling tingly.

The rest of Sara's set was just as breathtaking as her opening number. She easily bounced between covers and original songs, and the audience loved every minute of it. You could see the joy in Sara's face as she left the stage, knowing she'd done what she loved and made people happy doing it. It was the same expression I had every time I ran off the field with a crowd cheering after a win -- the kind of look that says "I love this and I don't ever want it to stop."

"She was pretty good, wasn't she," Cash said to me before finishing off his second bottle of beer.

"Pretty good," I responded incredulously. "She was amazing. She was incredible. She was... perfect."

"I don't know about perfect," said a voice from behind. Cash and I both turned around to see Sara standing there. I immediately starting blushing, though thanks to the low level of lighting in the bar, I'm not sure Sara noticed. At least I'd hoped she didn't. Cash got up from his seat, allowing Sara to sit down next to me.

"Well, if you weren't perfect," he said as she sat down, "you were damn close."

"I can't believe you think you need something to fall back on," I said. "You were born to do this."

"I don't know about that," she said. "I was just so nervous and then I saw you and Cash here and all of my butterflies went away and I just played. It's never been that easy before. I just… I felt the music."

She took a deep breath and looked down at her hands.

"God, they're still shaking… I need a drink. How do you do it?"

"Do what," I asked.

"Perform in front of people night after night? I mean, you've been in ballets, musicals, you practically live on stage, right?"

"I guess I just don't think about it," I said. "And, to be honest, alcohol helps."

She laughed that laugh that just made me want to melt, and then signaled to the bartender, who brought over three more bottles of Sam.

"A toast," Cash said, reaching over Sara and grabbing one of the bottles. "To two beautiful, talented artists. And Alana."

"Oh, engineering is an art now," I said, jokingly.

"Well, if you dance as well as you throw a football..."

"I had a bad day," I said. "Besides, this isn't about me. It's about Sara. To a brilliant performance."

I picked up my beer and she picked up hers.

"To friends," she said.

"And maybe more," Cash added.

"Maybe," I said, looking more at Sara than him.

We touched our glasses, and right as I went to drink, my purse started shaking.

"I think it's your phone," Cash said after taking a big swig of beer. My eyes darted back and forth between my purse and my beer. I wanted to just take a drink and ignore whatever was trying to distract me, but then it hit me: Dr. Briggs' office!

"Oh, shit, I better get that," I said.

I put my beer down on the bar and quickly rummaged through my belongings to pull out my iPhone.

"Hello, can I speak to Alana Carlysle," the woman on the other end asked.

"This is," I said.

"Miss Carlysle, we have the results of your blood test," she said. My face went white. I couldn't imagine they'd be calling me this late on a Friday night if it wasn't something really bad.

"And," I asked, hesitantly.

"The test came back positive," she said.

Oh, God, I knew it. I'm going to die. I'm 25 years old, I'm stuck in a body that isn't even mine, and now that body is going to die.

"Positive," I asked, my voice quivering as I slumped in my stool.

"Yes," she said.

"You're pregnant."

*****

DAY FOUR

"I'm dead."

I looked at myself in the mirror, and I certainly appeared to be alive, but being dead seemed like the only logical explanation. I'd obviously died Tuesday afternoon in my bedroom, and everything that had happened since then had been me experiencing some kind of hell, a punishment for failing to be a good person in my life.

Because there was no way I was pregnant. None.

But the plus sign on this stupid stick I was holding confirmed what a more professional and accurate test from my doctor's office already told me.

I'm a woman and I'm going to have a baby.

When the nurse from Dr. Briggs' office called and told me that last night, I was too shocked to do anything but run out of the bar and drive straight home. I didn't even say goodbye to Cash and Sara. I just put my drink down, picked up my purse and bolted. Cash texted me to ask what happened, but I wasn't about to tell him the truth. When I got home, I called him back and made up some story about a family emergency, which I realized this morning was a really stupid idea, since he works with my stepdad and would probably ask him about it.

I figured it'd be at least a few months before "pregnancy brain" set in, not a few minutes.

Oh, God, I think I'm going to be sick.

My mind was racing as thousands of questions filled my head. I slumped to the floor, and as I closed my eyes, I tried to regain focus. As I did, one thought became clear.

“She knew.”

In an instant, it all fell together, clear as day in my head — which I still wasn’t entirely comfortable calling “my” head. Before this happened, before my mind... spirit... essence... soul... whatever you want to call it... took up residence in Alana’s body, Alana knew she was pregnant. The Facebook post, the moving back home, not moving with her boyfriend out to Los Angeles... it all adds up. She knew this had happened and had no idea what to do next.

So did SHE do this to me? Did she make this switch as a way of getting out of being a mother? It seems awfully drastic, and not particularly well-planned, since aside from the not being pregnant, my life as Andrew was much more of a mess than Alana’s life. I mean, sure, she was sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend — a man who I’m now afraid may be the father of this unborn child, since it seems like Alana was far more sexually active with him than with her own boyfriend — and she didn’t appear to have much of a post-college career lined up, but I mean, I was a total mess.

But I wasn’t pregnant.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked down at my stomach. I’d put on a couple pounds in my short time as Alana, but I certainly wasn’t anywhere near showing yet. It was difficult to process that I’d only been in this lightweight, healthy body a few days and now — unless I figured out a way to reverse whatever caused this, and soon — I’d have to live with it blowing up, and due to circumstances entirely out of my control.

God, how was I supposed to deal with this? I’d never even experienced anything remotely close to a pregnancy scare from the other side of the equation, and now that I’m on this side, I’m not just dealing with a scare, I’ve got a fucking person growing inside me.

I closed my eyes again and started taking deep breaths to try and compose myself. There were so many things I needed to do, so many ways my life would be turned upside down — again — and I wasn’t going to be able to do any of it sitting here on my bathroom floor having a panic attack. Pulling myself up by the shower curtain, I flushed the toilet and made sure to grab the home pregnancy test (and the box) before I headed back to my bedroom. I didn’t need anyone in my family coming across the evidence before I was ready to tell them, assuming that I would ever be ready.

It was still very early for a Saturday morning, and no one else was awake, so I managed to make it back to my room without any interruptions or unwanted encounters for once. After quickly stashing the pregnancy test in the very back of my bottom desk drawer, I grabbed the yellow notepad and a pen off my desk and sat down at the edge of my bed, trying to think of all the things I needed to deal with in the immediate future.

Even beyond the pregnancy, it all seemed overwhelming. I was supposed to leave for California in two days, but I had to figure out how to get Bryce out of my life, preferably while not completely ruining a friendship with Monica. I hadn’t even begun to seriously address where I stood with Mark, I had no idea what was going on with Cash, and on top of all that I was pretty sure I was still crushing on Sara, though my current physical state — the womanhood, not the pregnancy — certainly complicated that situation. I had no job, a complete inability to draw upon any of Alana’s years of dance training, and a pile of clothes I had to cram into an empty suitcase at some point before Monday morning.

Okay, this is simple... well, not simple, but I just needed to take care of one thing at a time, starting with what was likely going to be the easiest.

I pulled out Alana’s tiny laptop — just another in the endless line of reminders that nothing was the same — and logged on to her Facebook page. There were dozens of messages waiting for me, some from friends, others from what could easily be categorized as “creepers” (they were easy to identify, since most of them started with some variation of “hey, sexy”). A few people had posted on my wall asking where I’d been, and there were plenty more asking to meet up when I got to L.A., even though I was only going to be there for a couple days.

“Hey everyone,” I started typing in the status update field. “Sorry I haven’t been around. Things have been totes craze in CT.”

God, I hated how that sounded, but I needed to make this post match the tone of Alana’s past posts as much as possible, and writing how Andrew would write wasn’t going to do that.

“I’m WAY excited to be visiting L.A. (and my awesome boyfriend Aiden, kisses!) and I’ve got some big things coming soon. Can’t wait to share with you! xoxo”

Immediately after hitting “Post”, the comments came flooding in. Where are you staying? Can we get together for dinner? And far too many “I love you”s from people I was pretty sure Alana didn’t actually know. I thought, “What the hell did I just get myself into?” But I was nearly certain that nothing could be worse than my current predicament.

As my phone rang, I was quickly dissuaded of that notion. The number wasn’t in my contacts list, so it didn’t show up with a name and picture on my iPhone’s home screen, but I recognized the 10 digits immediately. It was Mark. Of all the unexpectedly complex interactions I’ve had in this week from hell, none have been more confusing than dealing with him. On some level, I feel like he’s the one person I may be able to be honest with about what’s happening, and yet at the same time I feel like he’s the last person on Earth I should be telling.

“Hello,” I asked as I answered the call, pretending not to know who was at the other end.

“Ali, it’s Mark.”

He paused, waiting for some kind of response from me, but I had no idea what to say. So he jumped right back in.

“I know you said you needed some space yesterday, but I really wanted to get together and talk.”

Again, silence.

“Look, Ali, if you don’t want to get together, that’s fine, just say so.”

I briefly consider just hanging up, but that’d just make things so much worse.

“Alana,” I finally say. “It’s Alana.”

“Oh, so it’s like that,” he said.

“Look, Mark… this is what I was trying to avoid,” I said, being mostly honest with him for the first time since… well, since we’d shared our opinions on movie reboots. “Things between us are… complicated…”

“So why don’t we sit down, talk, and un-complicate them?”

He knew it wasn’t that simple, and so did I, but us going back and forth on the phone wasn’t going to help anyone, and it was honestly just making me more pissed off, which I wanted to chalk up to hormones, which made me even more pissed off.

“I have to go see the doctor in a couple hours,” I tell him. “Can we meet up for lunch after that?”

“That sounds good,” he said. “How about Panera Bread before I go in to work?”

Yeah, because that wouldn’t be awkward at all. “Oh, hi Sara, girl of my dreams. Me and my ex-fiance, who spent the other night in my bed, would like to order lunch oh and sorry about running out on you last night and all.”

“Can we make it CPK,” I asked, not wanting to see Sara until I’d come up with a more credible reason for bailing last night.

“Sure, see you then.”

And just like that, he hung up. No “love you”. No “looking forward to it.” Not even a chance to let me say goodbye. I tried not to read too much into that, but I couldn’t help but think that maybe Mark was so eager to get together in person because he felt it was the only appropriate way to break things off between us for good. And I also couldn’t help but think that maybe that would be for the best.

Whatever was in store for me and Mark, I was looking forward to it more than I was my follow-up appointment with Dr. Briggs – which I still actually had to confirm was happening, since I never actually responded “yes” to the nurse when she’d asked me if I could make it in this afternoon.

I called the office and they were more than happy to squeeze me in that day, even on a weekend. In fact, the receptionist seemed more excited about my pregnancy than I could possibly be.

With that out of the way, I picked up my notepad again and started sketching out a plan for the next two days, before my flight to Los Angeles.

- Doctor
- Lunch w/ Mark
- Pack for Cali
- Catch up with Sara?
- Or Cash? Or both?

As I was jotting stuff down, I scrolled through my phone’s calendar. I had a brunch “date” scheduled with Monica and Gwen on Sunday morning, and I wondered if I could get out of it. I quickly shot her a text – “still brunchin tomorrow” – thinking maybe I could “incept” her into thinking she wanted to back out.

I jotted down a couple more quick notes on the list before deciding to really start my day in earnest. After a quick shower, I threw on some workout clothes and headed down to the kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat. My ankle was still a little sore, but I figured I could at least go for a light walk around the neighborhood to burn off some calories and clear my head before my family was awake.

That plan, however, was derailed rather quickly. My mother, as it turned out, was already in the kitchen, cooking eggs and pancakes. I hadn’t seen my mom cook anything, much less breakfast before 9 a.m., in years.

“Oh, hi sweetie,” she said, barely looking away from the stove. “Are you going for a run?”

“A walk, actually,” I said as I began to salivate over the smell of home-cooked breakfast food filling the air. This wasn’t a pregnancy craving. This was an “I’ve been eating like a skinny dancer for three days after a lifetime of eating like a fat football player and I’m fucking hungry” craving.

“Well, I’ll have some fruit and oatmeal ready for you when you get back,” my mom said.

“Actually,” I responded hesitantly, not wanting to get too out of character, “could you save me some eggs? I’m in the mood for something different.”

“No problem,” she said, opening the fridge to get some more eggs. “Have fun on your walk.”

As I put my headphones in and started listening to Alana’s less-than-enjoyable playlist, I kept thinking that for all the things that had gone so wrong for me in this change, my family life certainly wasn’t among them. My mom was happily re-married and had a cordial relationship with my dad. My well-behaved, pleasant sister basically adored me. And everyone in my family embraced me, no matter what.

I looked out at the driveway in front of me and I couldn’t say the symbolism didn’t strike me. What was I running, or more accurately, walking, away from? Wasn’t everything I needed, whether it was as Alana or Andrew, behind the door behind me? I popped my earbuds out and turned back around, into the kitchen where my mom was still cooking breakfast.

“Mom,” I said, nervously, as she calmly cracked eggs over a mixing bowl.

“Oh, you’re back,” she said. “Did you forget something?”

“No,” I said. I was hesitant to continue, but I knew I’d have to say it eventually. “I’m… I’m pregnant.”

And just like that, the egg she was cracking missed the bowl entirely and landed on the floor, and she froze up.

“Okay, I’m not eating THAT egg,” I said, trying to break the tension.

She grabbed some paper towels off the counter and cleaned up the mess on the floor, without saying a word. After she threw the towels in the trash, she turned off the stove, and walked into the dining room. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do, when her voice called out.

“So, are we going to talk, or were you just going to drop that news and go for a run,” she asked.

I let out a sigh of relief. For a second there, she had me worried that I’d really upset her with that news.

We sat down at the dining room table and just started talking. I admitted that my pregnancy certainly wasn’t something I’d been planning, and when she asked if I’d told Aiden yet, I just said no, without admitting that I wasn’t even sure if he was the father. Given how my relationship with my mother had been in my life prior to this change, I’d expected a line of judgmental questioning leading in to outright lecturing, but that wasn’t the relationship Alana had with her mother at all. In fact, telling her I was pregnant made her dismiss all my “weird” behavior from the past few days, which I wasn’t remotely ready to explain otherwise.

She didn’t really have any specific advice for me but it was the way she talked to me and just generally comforted me that made me feel safe and, more importantly, confident that I’d made the right decision to tell her… and also that I’d make the right decision about this baby and its future, whenever the time would come for that decision.

We didn’t talk for a long time -- maybe 20 minutes or so -- before Ron made his way downstairs expecting a fully cooked breakfast. I’d made it clear to my mom that I wasn’t ready to share my news with everyone yet – I hadn’t even planned on telling her – so she just told Ron that we’d been talking about my upcoming trip. Which, to be fair, we did talk about briefly, in the context of “yes, mom, I’m still going, if only to talk to Aiden about this in person.”

So as my mom went back to making breakfast and Ron started getting old-person-frisky with her in the kitchen, I headed out for that walk I’d meant to go on earlier. And, strange as it was, a playlist filled with Taylor Swift didn’t seem as off-putting as it had just a few minutes earlier. But that wasn’t going to stop me from downloading some of my own music when I got back.

*****

“Can we get much higher? So high... Oh, oh, oh…”

I knew I sounded ridiculous singing along to Kanye West alone in my room, but it was soothing to have a bit of my own music added into Alana’s iTunes library. I’d started downloading some after I got back from Dr. Briggs’ office, and I probably went a bit overboard on the Yeezy – hell, I didn’t even really like “808s and Heartbreaks” – but it was like auditory comfort food, a blanket of sound I could wrap myself in.

I was bobbing my head to the beat and drumming my hands on the desk when I knocked over the Apple Store bag with the hard drive Mark had brought over for me. I paused the music and picked it up, my eyes darting back and forth between the drive and the computer. Two days ago, it was all I could do to get my hands on this to back up Alana’s drive and try and “restore” my life. But now it wasn’t just my life in my hands. The visit to the doctor, and the pile of prescriptions I came away with, had made that clear.

As much as I wanted my life back, I knew I couldn’t do anything until I’d figured out how it would impact Alana’s unborn child.

But I also had realized something else between my conversation with my mother, my mind-clearing walk and even my doctor’s appointment: if this was going to be my life for the time being, I needed to live it my way, and not keep trying to pretend to be Alana, a girl who I only know through social media posts and anecdotal conversations. Which meant listening to my music, eating my food – though still less than I was used to, since I’d been given this miraculous weight loss and I didn’t want to blow it – and spending time with MY friends, starting with Mark this afternoon.

I’d already showered and eaten (and my god, did those eggs taste amazing after three days of barely eating), but I was still sitting around in my bathrobe only 30 minutes before I was supposed to meet Mark. Downloading music had distracted me, as had texting back and forth with Aiden. I still hadn’t broken the news to him – about Bryce or the baby – but I managed to dance around that all morning. Which was ironic considering I couldn’t possibly be as good a dancer as Alana was.

Rummaging through my closet and my drawers, I managed to find an outfit that didn’t totally creep me out to put on: a mid-thigh denim skirt and a short-sleeved shirt with a built-in v-neck vest. Looking at myself in the mirror, I looked a bit like a black-haired version of Emma Stone in “Amazing Spider-Man”. I even found some nice knee-high boots to go with it. The whole ensemble was more “cute” than “sexy”, which was the signal I wanted to send Mark. I didn’t have time to put makeup on, which I’d hoped would help send that same signal. Now I just had to make sure to ignore the signals my own body was sending me.

Ever since that night he helped me up to my room, just thinking of Mark gave me a weird tingly feeling in places I wasn't entirely comfortable feeling weird and tingly. I would have loved to have chalked it up to a mix of female emotions and pregnancy-fueled hormones, but I knew it was far more complicated than that. Mark and I had been so close in my real life, and Mark and Alana had been even closer -- at least for a period of time -- so I didn't know exactly what I was feeling. And I knew I wasn't going to solve that over a lunch at a shitty mall pizza chain, but I could at least create some space between us to give me more time to think.

As I headed down the stairs to leave, I heard the unmistakable excited voice of my little sister.

"Ohmigod, you're going to see Mark, aren't you?!"

"What," I asked, caught completely off guard by both her presence and her accurate guess. "I'm just... going out. For lunch. With... a friend."

Well, I mean, it certainly wasn't a lie, at least not from my perspective.

"Yeah, a friend," she said, the sarcasm dripping from her voice in the way it only can from the voice of a teenager. "Sure. And you just happen to be wearing Mark's favorite outfit."

Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me. I randomly picked out one thing from Alana's massive, overstuffed closet and it happened to be the one thing Mark loved seeing her in most?

"This old thing? I didn't even think about it," I said, again not entirely lying. "I just threw on whatever I could find."

"I still haven't heard you say you're not going to see Mark, which means you're totally going to see Mark. I knew you guys would get back together eventually."

"We are NOT getting back together," I said, starting to lose my patience. It was good in some way to know that even this sweet, caring version of my sister still knew exactly how to get on my nerves.

"But you ARE going to see him!"

"I'm leaving now," I said, walking to the back door. I quickly picked up my purse off the kitchen counter and as I opened the door, I turned back to Alexis and said, "Also, what the hell did you do to your hair?"

She frantically started looking for a mirror, and I chuckled as I closed the door behind me. Her hair was fine, and quite frankly I'm not sure I would've noticed if she had done anything to it -- good or bad. I just needed to make a quick getaway and I knew that would stall her."

As I backed out of the driveway, I saw a text message from Alexis:

"MY HAIR LOOKS FINE. YOUR AN ASS. SAY HI TO MARK 4 ME."

I responded back:

"*YOU'RE"

She was right, I was an ass. But this felt playful and fun, as opposed to the kind of bile my sister and I would spit at each other before this whole insane change happened.

Driving to the mall was much better today, mostly because of the soundtrack ("Late Registration") but also because I wasn't worried about possibly running into Mark, I knew for a fact I was going to see him. And I knew for a fact what I wanted to say.

"Mark, I know we have a history, and we've always had strong feelings for each other, but I'm in a committed relationship right now with a man who loves me unconditionally and I have no intention of breaking his heart. I hope we can mend old wounds and be friends, but we need to take things slow and set proper boundaries."

At least, that was exactly what I'd planned to say -- I'd literally rehearsed it multiple times in the vanity mirror before getting out of the car -- but as soon as I walked into CPK and saw him sitting there I completely forgot the words.

"Hey," he said, giving me a friendly hug. "I'm glad you made it."

"Me too," I said. "I mean, I'm glad you made it not that I'm glad I made it. Not that I'm not glad I made it, because I am happy to be here but that's not what I was trying to say and... I'm rambling."

"You are," he said. "But it's cute. Your outfit is too."

I let out a deep sigh. We were already falling into a pattern that I'd hoped to avoid, not that I was doing anything to help avoid it.

"Can we just sit down and talk," I asked. He nodded, then pulled out my chair for me.

"That's not necessary," I said. "But... thank you."

"You're welcome," he said. He had this look of hopefulness in his eye, like every little thing he did was helping his chances of winning me back. It was so different from how he'd greeted me in the store the other day. It was almost like he'd built up this whole image of Alana as an unredeemable bitch, but then I had to come along and mess it all up all because I wanted to connect on some level with my lifelong friend, and now he was thinking like the 20-year-old idiot who proposed to this girl way too early.

"So, Mark... I know we have a history..." I started to say, but before I could get any further in my monologue, a waitress came over.

"Oh, your girlfriend is here," she said to Mark, "Can I get you some drinks?"

I tried to correct her, getting as far as "I'm not his..." before Mark went ahead and answered her with "I'll have a Coke and she'll have a Diet Coke with lemon. Thanks."

The waitress walked away, and I shot Mark a look that could've frozen a Brazilian beach in July.

"What," he asked, surprisingly picking up on my signals.

"Why didn't you correct her," I asked. "I'm not your girlfriend."

"Sorry, old habits, I guess," he said. I wasn't buying it at all.

"That's kind of what I wanted to talk to you about," I said. "I know we kind of slipped back into things the other night, but it was nothing."

"Nothing," he asked. "Because it sure felt like something."

"Well, not nothing. Just, I mean, I don’t want you to think that just because we spent the night together that we're together," I said. At this point, the waitress brought the drinks over, which gave me a moment to compose myself and remember what I'd practiced. As Mark took a sip of his Coke, I started again. "We've always had strong feelings for each other..."

"Always" he asked, interrupting me. I was starting to think I'd never finish saying what I wanted to say. "Because it didn't seem that way when you left."

"I certainly made mistakes," I said. "But I never stopped caring about you. You were the most important person in my life for so long."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized this was getting away from me. In my -- Andrew's -- desire not to lose my best friend, I'd started leading on my -- Alana's -- ex. Mark looked like he was about to say something, so I quickly jumped in again.

"Wait, let me finish. We've HAD strong feelings for each other. Past tense. HAD. I can't say that I feel that same way about you anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't want you involved in my life. I want us to put the past behind us, but I don't want to rush into anything that is gonna mess things up even more for both of us."

He took another sip of his drink and looked at me silently for a few seconds before asking "Are you finished?"

"I am," I said.

Then, right as he was about to respond, it was my turn to interrupt him.

"Wait, no, also I forgot, I have a boyfriend who loves me very much and I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt him," I said.

"Seems like kind of a big thing to 'forget'," Mark said.

God, he was right. I wasn't remotely plausible in barely remembering to bring up Aiden in the reasons why I didn't want to rekindle a relationship with Mark, and why would I be? I've literally never met this guy, I know for a fact that I've been unfaithful to him, and OH YEAH I'M HAVING A BABY THAT'S PROBABLY NOT HIS. Worst. Girlfriend. Ever.

"Things between me and Aiden aren't always perfect, but that doesn't have anything to do with him. In fact," I said, pausing to take a sip of my own soda, and gather my thoughts, "I probably don't deserve him."

"Don't say that," he said. "If anything, he doesn't deserve you."

"Mark, I appreciate you saying that, but you more than anyone know how awful I can be."

"True, but I also know more than anyone how amazing you can be."

I honestly didn't know how to respond to that. On some strange level, I was hoping he'd just agree about my awfulness, and we could start moving on, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that he still loved me and hadn't gotten over me leaving. His reaction at the store the other day was probably more of shock and of expecting me to be the bitch that Alana had grown into at a distance these past few years apart. But me trying to be a friend was eroding any negative resentment he'd built up, which was just drawing him in closer. And here I was, sitting at this table, looking across at my best friend, the one person in this crazy world who made me feel slightly less crazy, and I just had no idea what to do.

"Get away from him!"

Well, that's certainly one option. I turned around to see who'd yelled that out, and -- to both my complete surprise and no surprise at all -- it was Monica.

"Monica," I said shocked. "What are you doing here?"

"Clearly saving you from yourself," she said.

"Hi Nikki," Mark said.

"You," she said, pointing at him with her perfectly-manicured index finger but all the time maintaining eye contact with me, "don’t get to talk. And DON’T call me Nikki. No one's called me Nikki since high school."

"Monica, we were just talking," I said.

"No you weren't," she said. "You weren't talking at all. You were staring at each other, and probably two seconds from making out right here."

"Look, Ali was just saying," Mark tried to say before he was interrupted again.

"Uh, uh, uh... I SAID you don't get to talk," she said, pushing her finger right up against his nose. Then she took her other hand and wrapped it around my arm -- which, admittedly wasn't nearly as hard to do as it would've been last week -- and started to pull me up from my chair. "We're leaving. NOW."

"Monica, you're not my mother," I said. "And even if you were, I don't let my mother choose who I get to spend time with."

She finally took her finger out of Mark's face and reached into the back pocket of her white form-fitting jeans to pull out her phone. She tapped on it a few times, then handed it to me.

"I'm just doing what you asked me to do," she said.

There was the evidence right there on the screen. A text message from me -- or in this case Alana -- from 10 days ago in which I told Monica that I was coming back to Connecticut and I wanted her help in keeping Mark away from me. So I kind of understood her confusion over the fact that not even two weeks later I was voluntarily spending time with him, and it wasn't the first time I'd done so.

"Look, Monica," I said, trying to come up with a plausible lie on the spot. "I was just being silly. Mark and I are both adults, and we can spend a lunch together without our history becoming a whole thing."

"I'm not here to argue with you about this," she said, taking her phone back. "I'm here to save you from him."

She pulled me completely out of my chair, then spun me around and starting pushing me toward the door. Then she stopped and turned back to the table.

"And you," she said to Mark, "just leave Ali alone. She's moved on. She moved on years ago and you clearly never did. You're just … sad."

Then she picked up his Coke and poured it out on his lap before turning back around and continuing to push me out the door. I looked back at Mark as he tried to clean himself up and something in me just snapped. I’d never been Monica’s biggest fan when I knew her as Mark’s fiancée, and this version of Monica was completely intolerable. So I did the first thing that came to mind.

I slapped her.

Now, I’d been raised to believe that you never hit a woman. I’d never done so in my life and never believed I would, but the circumstances I was facing in this moment were vastly different than they would have been just a few days ago. And while I’m certainly not saying it’s okay for a woman to hit another woman – well, actually that might be exactly what I’m saying, especially when the woman getting hit just poured out a drink on the other woman’s friend. Oh, and the woman doing the hitting just found out she was pregnant. So basically it’s a very narrow spectrum of acceptability and … and now I was realizing Monica probably didn’t agree with me, based on the completely pissed off look on her face.

“WHAT THE FUCK, ALI?”

“I’m sorry Monica,” I said, lying my ass off. I wasn’t sorry at all. Well, I was kind of sorry I had to resort to hitting her, but I wasn’t sorry that she deserved it. “I just need you to listen to me.”

“SO TALK,” she said, still beyond angry with me. “DON’T HIT.”

“I tried,” I said, growing increasingly angry with her. “YOU. WEREN’T. LISTENING.”

By this point I could tell we were making a scene – okay, we were making a BIGGER scene than the one we’d just made about 30 seconds ago – but Monica clearly didn’t care.

“No,” she said, jabbing her finger into my chest. “You. Weren’t. Listening. TO ME.”

She then took her finger out my chest and pointed it back towards Mark, who had gotten up from his chair and was starting to walk toward us.

“He is wrong for you, he doesn’t deserve you, he never did, and you shouldn’t be anywhere near him. He’s not boyfriend material.”

“And what would you know about boyfriend material,” I asked, completely pissed off at this point. “You spent the last six months with Bryce, who was fucking around behind your back the whole time and you didn’t even know it.”

Whoops.

I did not mean for that to slip out, but it did and I could tell right away by the look on Monica’s face that I’d crossed a line. She’d gone completely past anger and rage straight to total agony. It looked like she would burst into tears at any second. I don’t know if she’d put together that I’d been the one sleeping with Bryce, but if she hadn’t she was right about to get there.

At that point, Mark walked right past Monica and stood right next to me.

“Would you like to get out of here, Alana?”

I froze. Part of me wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible before Monica decided to try to kick my ass, and part of me wanted to stay there and try and make things right with her, even if I knew that was as impossible as Cleveland winning a championship. We stood there looking at each other, each probably wondering who would speak first, when she finally did.

“Go,” she said, barely above a whisper, clearly trying to hold back just about every emotion possible. “Get the fuck out of my face.”

“Monica, I’m…”

“GO,” she yelled before I could finish. Then she turned away and ran straight for the bathroom. I thought briefly about chasing after her but knew it wouldn’t do any good. After what I’d just dropped on her, she needed time to process, and me being in her face about it wasn’t going to help anything. So I just turned and quietly walked out with Mark.

He reached out to take my hand as we walked outside, but I pulled it away.

*****

DAY FIVE

“C’mon, just pick up the damn phone.”

No luck.

I’d been calling Monica every waking hour on the hour since yesterday afternoon, but she hadn’t answered once. I finally stopped leaving voicemails after the fourth or fifth call. I wasn’t even sure why I was still trying to get through to her, or what I’d even say if she answered. We were supposed to go see the fireworks together last night, but she didn’t show up, and I ended up leaving after about 20 minutes so I could continue trying to call her from a place where I’d actually be able to hear her if she picked up.

Meanwhile, I’d been dodging calls from Bryce all morning. I was guessing from the frantic tone in his voice in his first voicemail that Monica had pieced everything together – not exactly a stretch considering I’d handed most of it to her on an angry silver platter.

Dealing with everyone else in my life had been an exercise in awkwardness. Mark and I didn’t even say a word to each other as he walked me out of the mall. He texted me a few hours later asking, “u alright?” and all I could muster in response was “yup.”

Things weren’t much better at home. I mean, yes, everything was still a huge improvement on my previously life, but my mom and sister could both tell I was on edge. My mom at least chalked it up to the pregnancy news – which she almost let slip to the rest of the family twice at dinner – but my sister, not knowing anything about that, assumed it had something to do with the night Mark had spent in my bed – which the rest of family still knew nothing about. Basically what it boiled down to is I said all of about three words at dinner, which was completely unlike Alana at all and had everyone worried for me, which is exactly the kind of attention I didn’t want to draw to myself until I had things more figured out.

And I wasn’t anywhere close to figuring anything out. I had at least taken the step to back up Alana’s hard drive in case I did want to try another magic software reboot, but the whole concept of that just seemed more and more absurd to me. As I lay awake in bed last night, struggling to fall asleep with thoughts swirling in my head, I couldn’t help but think that the most likely scenario was that I’d suffered some kind of massive mental break due to all the stress in my life – that I’d been trying to avoid a mental institution, when in reality that’s exactly where I needed to be.

I was in a dark place. I looked like it too. I was wearing black from head to toe – a D&G lace sleeveless blouse, a matching skirt and leggings if you must know – and had even put on some black lipstick. Combined with the hair Alana had already dyed black before I got into this predicament, it looked like I was going through a teenage goth phase at 25.

Just when I was about to put on “808s and Heartbreaks” and spend all day wallowing in self-pity, my phone started buzzing.

“Monica?” I asked, answering without even bothering to see who was calling.

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s gonna be calling you any time soon, honey.”

It was Gwen, who sounded somewhere between pissed at me and worried for me.

“How much did she tell you,” I asked.

"She told me enough," Gwen said. "If you knew Bryce was cheating on Monica the entire time they were dating, then why the hell didn't you say something?"

"So … " I asked, hesitantly, "she didn't tell you who Bryce was sleeping with?"

"Who cares," Gwen said. "Probably some cheap skank who isn't good enough to get her own man so she has to steal someone else's. Fuck that stupid bitch."

I had to admit that hurt. I know it wasn't technically me who slept with Bryce, but it was this person I am now, and hearing one of my friends talk about me like that -- even if she didn't know it was me she was talking about -- cut to my core.

On top of that, I wasn't even sure if Monica not knowing it was me was a good thing or not. Sure, it gave me a short-term chance to salvage things, but I was going to have to tell her at some point.

"You're probably right," I said, saying what I thought Gwen would want to hear. "But I need to make things right with her. Do you know if she's still doing brunch this morning?"

"I probably shouldn't even be telling you this," Gwen said, hesitantly, "but she told me to meet her at 11. I really don't think she wants to see you there."

"I'm not looking to sit down and drink mimosas with her, but I at least want a chance to apologize," I said.

Gwen let out a big sigh.

"Dammit, Ali. Look, just let me butter her up and get a couple drinks in her first, and promise you'll leave right away if she starts to make a scene."

"I promise, Gwen. And, for what it's worth, I'm so sorry. I never wanted you to get stuck in the middle of this."

"Thanks. But remember, Ali, I'm not the one you need to apologize to."

We hung up and then it hit me: if Monica really doesn't know yet, then I need to make absolutely sure she doesn't find out from Bryce. I quickly scrolled to my voicemail on my phone and hit "call back" on Bryce's most recent one without even listening to it.

"Hey Ali," he said, answering way too casually for my tastes.

"Did you say anything to Monica?"

"I didn't get a chance to," he said. "She called me last night screaming about me fucking some other bitch the whole time we were together. Then I started laughing because she had no idea this bitch she was yelling about was her best friend, and that just pissed her off more and she hung up."

"So she still doesn’t know it was me," I asked, hopefully.

"Not a fucking clue," he said. "How could you be friends with someone so stupid?"

No, how could I sleep with someone who was such an asshole. I really wish I could talk to Alana -- the version that existed before Wednesday -- so I could ask her to begin to explain whatever insanity possessed her to do such an awful thing, and then leave me to deal with the aftermath. Then again, maybe trying to figure out the logic behind that is what drove her insane and left me in this mental state.

"Hello, Earth to Ali," Bryce said. "God, I hope you haven't gone stupid too."

"Gone stupid," I snapped back angrily. "No, I've always been stupid, I just didn't know it."

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down before continuing, because the last thing I needed was Bryce extending this reign of stupidity.

"Look, just don't say anything to Monica," I said. "If she hears from you that I was the one sleeping with you, then she'll do everything she can to keep us apart, and you don't want that, right?"

"You really think she'd do that," Bryce asked.

"I know she would."

I was lying my ass off. I had no idea what Monica would do -- hell, based on the last 24 hours, she'd probably tell me to enjoy my life with that asshole and that he was exactly what I deserved -- but I figured I could play on what I knew Bryce wanted to try and get what I wanted, which was just more time to try and salvage whatever could be salvaged from all of this.

“Fine, we’ll do it your way for now,” Bryce said. “But you owe me.”

“I don’t owe you shit you human embodiment of a used tampon.”

OK, so I didn’t say that out loud, but it was definitely the first thought that crossed my mind. Instead I just hung up before I actually said something I’d regret and tossed my phone on the bed. It was just after 10, which meant I had a few minutes to change and get ready to go see Monica.

I stripped off my blouse and started going through the pile of laundry that I still hadn’t put away and let my mind start drifting toward what I’d say to Monica when I saw her. I couldn’t think of a single time in my life where I’d pissed off a friend a friend this badly. Then again, I never really had many close friends other than Mark, and whenever we’d fight, we’d hash it out over drinks and video games and things would be fine within a day or two. I didn’t think Monica – particularly this version of Monica – was interested in an NBA 2K best-of-three.

It was at that moment I realized that since I’d become Alana, I hadn’t done anything I usually did, aside from listen to a Kanye West album or two. I had been so busy trying to live Alana’s life that I hadn’t taken the time to enjoy anything about life in general. It seemed silly, but I missed comic books; this was the first new comic Wednesday in years where I hadn’t gone to the store and picked up my weekly pulls. I missed video games; there weren’t even any decent mobile games on Alana’s iPhone. I missed pizza. Oh, God how I missed pizza. I started thinking about all the other things about my life that I missed and realized that for all my complaining about my life and all the things that weren’t going my way, I really hadn’t had it that bad. And I started to think that maybe Alana hadn’t had it that great. Sure, she was beautiful and popular but what did she really enjoy in life?

My mind kept wandering through what I’d learned about Alana, and before I knew it my phone was buzzing again. I picked it up and … it’s 11:45?!

Looking up at myself in the mirror of my vanity, I realized I’d slipped back into Alana-mode again. I had a bold, shimmering eye-liner with a hint of contrast in my brows, and vibrant red lipstick that was standing out against my lightened complexion. I’d changed into a red and black Diane von Furstenberg mini dress and matching strappy heels, more suitable for a Friday night cocktail party than Sunday morning brunch. It’s like Alana wanted to go to this to show Monica exactly why Bryce had bailed on her, while I really wanted to do this exact opposite.

I’d been so shocked by what I’d seen in the mirror that I totally forgot to answer the phone. Fortunately Gwen called right back.

“Where the hell have you been,” she said. “Monica’s just about ready to leave.”

“Stall her,” I said. “I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “But no promises.”

I realized I didn’t have any time to change to something more appropriate, so I just threw my phone into my nearest clutch and quickly made my way downstairs, where I ran into my Lexi.

“A little overdressed for church, aren’t you,” she said with a strong hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“I don’t really have time for this,” I said, probably in a harsher tone than I intended. “I gotta go.”

“Wait,” she said, as I sprinted out the back door to an empty driveway where my car should’ve been.

“Where’s my car, Lexi? Please tell me you didn’t do anything to my car.”

“God, Ali, no,” she said, exasperated. “Mom took it. Remember, she had to drop off her car at the dealer yesterday, and Ron’s at work today.”

“So we have no car?”

She just shook her head no.

“Fuck!”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I said to my sister, whose jaw had dropped with my sudden outburst. “I need to get across town in 10 minutes and I don’t have a car and the only people I know who could drive me are already at the place I need to be.”

“The only people,” she asked, with her eyebrow arched in a way I didn’t remotely trust. Then it hit me.

“No, I can’t call him. He’s exactly the wrong person for this.”

“Do you have another option?”

“No,” I said, letting out a deep sigh of resignation. I pulled my phone out of my clutch and dialed the number I’d known by heart for years.

“I need a huge favor, and I need you to not ask questions, and I need you to not make a thing of this at all, and I need you out front in two minutes. OK, bye.”

I hung up without even giving him a chance to respond, because I knew that Mark would do this for Alana and I hated toying with him like this. Meanwhile Lexi had this huge smile on her face.

“You called Mark, didn’t you?”

“Zip it,” I said, before turning around and storming out.

“Have fun,” she yelled to me as I walked down the driveway toward the front of our house to make my way down the street to Mark’s place. I rolled my eyes hard enough that I was pretty sure she could see them even though I was facing away from her. Absolutely nothing about this was going to be fun.

*****

“Just wait 15 minutes for me and if I’m not out here by then, then wait a little longer and absolutely do not come inside looking for me.”

Mark looked puzzled.

“But what if…”

“Ah, ah, ah,” I said, cutting him off. “I said no questions. I promise I’ll explain later, but for now I really just need to hurry.”

I didn't even wait for a response before sprinting inside, partially because I needed to make sure I caught Monica before she left, and partially because I needed to get out of this oppressive heat that was going to wreak havoc on my hair, which I'd styled beautifully when I zoned out and vainly wanted to keep this way, even if it was a reminder that I wasn't in total control of myself at all times. It really did look that good.

Fortunately, as I entered the restaurant, I immediately spotted Gwen and Monica toward the back, laughing it up and appearing to have a good time. Monica was sitting with her back facing me, so she didn't spot me, but Gwen did, and immediately reached for her phone. A few seconds later, a text message popped up on mine.

"She's calmed down a little bit, but she's still pretty pissed at you, so be careful."

"Should I come over right now," I texted back.

"No. I'll go to bathroom. Come over and sit down in my place."

"KK :)"

I waited in the lobby, peaking back at the table to catch when Gwen got up without letting Monica see me. A couple minutes later, Gwen made her way to the bathroom and gave me a quick nod as she passed by.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I had goosebumps on my arms, though I couldn't be entirely sure whether they were from nerves or from the over-active air conditioning hitting my under-covered body. But I definitely knew the feeling in my stomach was the nerves -- it was far too early in my pregnancy for it to be a kicking baby.

My steps slowed as I got closer to Monica's table. She was on her phone, taking an Instagram photo of her drink, and thankfully completely oblivious to my approach. Still, I hadn't thought about what I was going to say at all, and I was seconds away from having to say it.

Finally, I sat down right across from Monica, who was too engrossed in her social media feeds to notice it was me.

"So, what are we doing later," she said without even looking up. I hesitated, unsure if I should respond or how Monica would respond when I did. "I was thinking we could hit up Sephora. Maybe MAC. I really just want to get some new lipstick. I hate this shade."

"I think it looks nice," I said, before quickly covering my mouth, forgetting that Monica had no idea she'd been talking to me.

She put down her phone and her jaw dropped. Then she shot me a look that -- well, it was basically the same look I gave Mark when he didn't tell the waitress I wasn't his girlfriend, but amped up to 11. I'd been physically tiny for five days now but up until this exact moment I hadn't truly known what it was like to feel small. Monica didn't even say anything to me before pushing her chair back from the table and getting up.

"Monica, wait," I said, reaching out to try and stop her without physically restraining her. Then, without thinking at all -- something I'd been doing far too often the past couple days -- I blurted out the one thing I knew would get her to stop dead in her tracks. "I'm pregnant."

I really didn't want to play that card so soon, but it just sort of slipped out and now here we are. I watched her face try and process the information, and seeing her expression slowly change from passionate anger to pure joy was one of the most satisfying and terrifying things I'd ever witnessed -- maybe because halfway in-between she looked like a female version of The Joker at his most demented (the bright red lipstick wasn't helping).

"Oh my god I'm so happy for you," she said, way too loudly as she practically jumped across the table to give me a hug. Then just as quickly as she'd become joyful, she reversed course again. "Wait, it's not Mark's is it?"

"No, of course not, silly," I said, trying to sound casual enough that she'd just assume the father was Aiden and not ask questions that would lead to incredibly uncomfortable answers.

"Ohmigod, yay! My best friend is going to have a baby!"

Now Monica was being way too loud and other people in the restaurant were looking over, some of whom I'm sure had to know who I was, which meant this news wasn't exactly going to stay between us very long. But, almost as importantly, she’d called me her best friend.

“So we’re still friends,” I asked.

“Well, I’m still pissed at you for lying to me about Bryce, but c’mon… you’re having a baby! That’s so awesome!”

“Wait, you’re pregnant?!”

Well, Gwen was back at the table.

I made a shushing motion with my finger and Gwen immediately did the same, then pulled up a chair from an adjacent table without even asking if the people sitting there were using it.

“So what did Aiden say when you told him,” Gwen asked in a whisper.

“I haven’t told him yet,” I said, “which is why I’m trying to keep this quiet. So don’t tell anyone. Not Darnell, not my sister. No one.”

“Oh, Darnell and I aren’t a thing, so you don’t have to worry about me telling him,” Gwen said.

“Besides Ali,” Monica said, while typing on her phone. “We’re your friends. Why would we do anything like that?”

“Who are you texting,” I asked her.

“No one.”

“OK, then what are you posting on Facebook.”

“Nothing.”

“Monica, you’re a horrible liar.”

At that moment, my phone buzzed with a Facebook notification. Monica had tagged me in a post. I didn’t even open it. I just turned my phone toward Monica but before she could even register what was on my screen, Gwen snatched the phone away from me.

“What the hell, Gwen?”

“Smile,” she said, taking a picture of me with my own camera, before handing the phone to Monica.

“Aww, it’s your first mommy photo,” Monica said as she turned the camera back to me.

“Guys, seriously,” I said, reaching across the table to snatch my phone back. “Can you two please just keep this quiet until I tell everyone?”

They both nodded with huge grins on their faces as I finally opened up the Facebook notification.

Brunching with my bestie Alana Carlysle who just told me the best. news. ever.

OK, so that wasn’t so bad. I mean surely my mom would put two and two together, but she also wasn’t going to tell anyone before I had a chance to. So basically I just had to make sure no one else found out in the next 30 hours before I had a chance to talk to Aiden in person and break the news to him, which was probably going to be the most difficult conversation of either of my lives.

"Really, thanks for keeping this to yourselves," I said to them. "And Monica, I really, truly am sorry for not being honest with you."

And continuing to not be honest with you, because dropping two truth bombs like that in one morning probably violates the Geneva Convention.

"Bryce was the real asshole, and he's the one who should be apologizing," Gwen said.

"Whatever," Monica replied. "I'm just glad he's out of our lives forever."

I reflexively gulped nervously, and reached for one of the drinks in front of me before Monica reached out and took it from my hand.

"Sorry, no mimosas for you mommy."

"God," I said, rolling my eyes, "that's gonna catch on as a nickname, isn't it?"

"You know it, mommy," Gwen said, picking up another glass with just a tiny bit of mimosa left in it and toasting with Monica.

"Well, this has been embarrassingly swell, but I really have to get going," I said, starting to get up out of my chair.

"C'mon, stay," Monica urged. "Look, we'll order some more food, get you a couple Shirley Temples and talk about anything but Bryce or babies, okay?"

I sighed deeply, because I knew there was no convincing Monica to change her mind -- in that way this Monica was exactly like the one I'd known in my previous life.

"Sounds great," I said as convincingly as possible, as I pulled out my phone to text Mark.

"Change of plans," I typed out, the sound of my well-manicured nails clacking against the touchscreen. "Don't need ride back. Thanks for driving me. Will explain all later."

He replied almost instantly with "??" and I just as quickly fired back with "Evrything fine. talk later. xoxo"

Yes, the "xoxo" was probably more suggestive than I needed to be considering how strange things were between the two of us right now, but I also didn't want him following me in here and seeing Monica, given how their last encounter had gone. It boggles my mind to thing that in the life I'd been ripped away from, these two were hopelessly in love and ready to move in with each other. Now they couldn't even be in the same room together.

"C'mon, put your phone away," Monica said. I obliged, slipping it back into my clutch and putting the clutch under my seat. Monica signaled for the waitress, Gwen finished off her drink, and for a moment it seemed all was right in their world.

*****

After brunch was finished, I’d spent legitimately two hours packing, and had put maybe a total of one outfit in the spacious suitcase that was sprawled upon my fluffy bedspread. The me in me wasn’t comfortable wearing nearly everything that was in Alana’s closet, while the Alana in me wasn’t satisfied with anything I pulled out. I was nearly at the point of just grabbing an armful of dresses, tops, and skirts and stuffing them into the suitcase, but that seemed silly for what was supposed to be a three-day trip.

I’d reached the point too where the scheduled length of that trip was worrying me. I knew I had to break the pregnancy news to Aiden and I felt like I should probably be honest with him about what Alana had done to land me in that circumstance. However, I also knew that sitting on that news for 3 days would be nearly impossible, and breaking it to him at the start of a 3-day trip would likely bring a very early end to my visit. So I was very much between a rock and a hard place, and yet for some reason I couldn’t explain, I still felt compelled to make this trip and break this news in person.

For the time being, the bigger problem facing me was picking out clothes to wear. Most of what was in Alana’s wardrobe was far too tight or showed far too much skin, or sometimes both simultaneously. At the same time, there was a part of me that enjoyed looking good – an experience I’d had far too little with in my previous life.

After a few more minutes of struggling with the selections in the closet and failing miserably at picking out acceptable choices to put in my suitcase, I decided to get dressed in my workout clothes and go for a long walk. I’d hoped maybe the combination of fresh air – as humid as it might be at this time of day and year – and a bit of music might clear my head and get me more prepared for this trip.

As I slipped into my workout shorts and a grey NYU tank top, I realized that maybe getting away from my problems at home might be the best thing for me right now – that the most important thing I needed in this complex situation was time and distance.

Time and distance. The two things I managed to kill plenty of on the subsequent run, in that same outfit I’d lamented putting on shortly ago. It wasn’t long before my walk had turned into a power walk then turned into a run as my ankle was clearly feeling much better Even more surprisingly, I’d let my iPhone sit on shuffle, and ended up listening to far more of Alana’s original music than the songs I’d downloaded in recent days.

Before long, I found myself back at the reservoir, and quickly thereafter made my way up to the large boulder that overlooked the lake. The air was warm, but not oppressively so, and there was a soft breeze that felt good on the skin, like a comforting whisper from an unknown force that even though things seemed chaotic everything would be all right.

I lay back on the boulder and closed my eyes, letting the low afternoon sun beat down on me. In my old frame, I would've been sweating like a pig just being out here in this sun -- not even accounting for the multi-mile run -- but that wasn't a problem for me now. Alana did still have a fair complexion, so getting burnt was a definite concern, but I wasn't on planning on being here long.

After a few minutes of sun-bathing, I started to imagine myself as Superman, though I guess Supergirl would've been a more appropriate comparison in this scenario. I thought of the yellow sun of Earth recharging me, making me more powerful and able to face any challenge. And, man, did I have some challenges to face coming up.

I'd never been much for meditation, but I let the sound of the music in my headphones wash over me and started taking deep breaths. Weirdly, I wanted to let my mind drift, but stay cognizant of my thoughts at all times; I didn't want to slip into Alana auto-pilot again, especially after what had happened this morning.

One thought kept popping into my head over and over again: what if I just lied to Aiden? This whole situation wasn't my doing, so why should I be the one to have to clean it up? Just tell Aiden the baby is his, tell Bryce to stay out of my life forever, and move forward with our relationship -- and my relationship with Monica -- intact. But was that really an option? Could I build a life based on a lie?

Then again, wasn't any life I built as Alana the biggest lie of all? Assuming that something inexplicable happened to actually cause this, and that it wasn't just an insane mental break -- something I wasn't counting out by a long shot -- then wouldn't it in some way be better to just build an entirely new life of my own, rather than try to cling to whatever messed up relationships Alana had built?

I could feel my head start pounding thinking about all this, and my deep breathing had turned into heavy breathing. I took my headphones out and sat up and tried catching my breath, but it was clear what was happening.

I was having a panic attack.

Well, on the bright side, Alana's consciousness wasn't taking over. Instead, panic was. It took a few seconds, but I managed to get my breathing back under control, and then, out of nowhere, let out a primal scream of frustration. I just wanted to go back to having to deal with my shitty problems of needing to find an apartment and being stuck in a bad job.

Sitting there on the verge of tears, something that had become a way too frequent occurrence in recent days, I was startled by a voice from behind.

"Alana, is that you?"

The voice broke through the silence so suddenly that I jolted up and nearly spun my head around full-on Linda Blair style. I calmed down slightly when I saw it was Sara then quickly started experiencing an entirely different type of anxiety.

"Holy shit, Sara," I said, once again experiencing breathing problems that had nothing to do with physical health. "You scared the shit out of me."

"Sorry," she said. "I was on a run, and just saw you sitting there looking upset and I hadn't heard from you since you bolted the other night and was wondering if everything was all right."

"Well, it's obviously not," I said, more snarky than I'd intended. "I mean … I just … I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lash out like that. It's just things have been pretty shitty for me these past couple days and I was just trying to get away from it all."

"It's cool," she said. "I'll just get going."

"No," I quickly responded. "I'm kinda glad you're here."

I slid over on the boulder, which had more than enough room for two people -- especially two people as small as we were -- and motioned for her to join me. She hopped up and we both sat looking out at the reservoir.

"You know, I wasn't just on a run," Sara said.

"What?"

"I was looking for you. I stopped by your house, but your mom said you went for a run, and I remember you telling me you used to love coming up here."

"You were looking for me," I asked, looking at her, rather than the view. Even worked up from a bit of an uphill run, she looked spectacular. She was wearing a blue tank top that brought out the blue in her eyes, and her red leggings almost perfectly matched her gorgeous hair, which was held back by a pink headband.

"You had such nice things to say about my set, and then you just bolted without saying a word. I was wondering if it was something I said."

"No, it wasn't that. It's just … complicated."

"It's Cash, isn't it," she said, with a hint of disappointment in her melodic voice. "You know, he really likes you."

"That's great," I said, betraying my lie with my lack of enthusiasm.

"You don't feel the same way about him, do you?"

"I mean, I just met the guy."

"That's not an answer."

"No, I guess that's fair. I mean … he's just … he's probably a great guy and I'm sure he'll make someone really happy someday, but even if he was my type -- and he's definitely not -- my life is crazy right now."

"So," Sara said, hesitantly, "he's not your type?"

"Not remotely," I said, far more flippantly than I should have, as my eyes drifted back to the reflection of the sun on the water.

"So then," Sara said, "who is your type?"

Having looked away from her, I couldn't be quite sure, but I could've sworn I saw Sara adjusting her breasts as she asked that. Maybe she was just uncomfortable in her sports bra -- she definitely had way more squeezed in there than I had to deal with -- but maybe she was sending me a signal. I'd always been awful at picking up signals when I was a guy, not that I got many sent my way. Now the whole gender swap was confusing things even more. I didn't think Sara was a lesbian, but then again I had no real proof that she wasn't either.

"I … I guess I don't really have a type," I said, hesitantly as I looked back at her. "I just know whatever it is, it isn't Cash."

"That's … cool," she said.

We just looked at each other for a moment. Then a moment became a minute. Then a minute became a seemingly-endless awkward silence as neither of us knew what to do next.

"Screw it," Sara said, breaking the tension. Then before I could react, she leaned in and kissed me. I'd been dreaming of this moment for six months, but never like this. As her lips, with the slightest hint of bubble gum lip gloss, pressed against mine, I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in closer. She put her hands on the back of my neck and stuck her tongue into my mouth, and I felt a warm, pleasant feeling spread through my entire body.

She slid her hands down my back and started caressing it, and I responded by running my hands through her gorgeous hair and we continued locking lips. I hadn't had a makeout session this intense since high school, and it was almost hot enough to make me forget I was wearing almost as much makeup as she was. We finally stopped our only semi-private kissing and grope session for me to say something.

"I had no idea you were into girls."

"Girls? No," Sara said. "Just you."

"What," I said, taken aback. She stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff overlooking the reservoir.

"I've loved you since the day I first laid eyes on you in class years ago," she said with her back turned to me. Then she turned around and looked me right in the eye. "I never thought for a second you'd feel the same way about me, but then when you came into the store, it's like you were looking at me for the first time. And everything I felt four years ago just came rushing back."

"Wow," I said, walking up next to her. "I don't think anyone's ever felt that way about me before. Or if they did, they certainly never said it like that."

"Weren't you engaged," she asked.

Oh, right. Alana was. To Mark. But in that moment, I wasn't talking about the history Alana had -- the one I never actually lived through. I was talking about me. It was the first time since all this happened that I'd truly allowed the Andrew part of me to answer honestly and instinctively without worrying about how it conflicted with Alana's established life. And it felt great.

"That was a whole other life," I said, being 100% literal to me, but metaphorical to Sara.

"So," she asked, hesitantly. "How do you feel?"

I took her hand, then turned and looked her straight in the eye.

"I feel exactly the same way."

She leaned in to kiss me again, but I pulled back.

"But," I said, continuing my line of thought, "it's more complicated than that. That 'other life' I talked about, it's left me with some … stuff to deal with."

"Like your boyfriend," she asked, as she pulled her hand away from mine.

"Like that," I said, as clouds began to roll in. "I'm flying out to see him tomorrow, and I need to be honest with him. I don't see myself having a future with him, but I don't want to hurt him."

"And," Sara asked.

"And what," I asked back.

"I just get the sense you're holding something back," she said, as she reached out and started running her hand through my hair. "You don't have to. You can be completely honest with me."

Oh, Sara, how I wish that was remotely true. If I was completely -- and I mean 100% utterly and openly -- honest with you, you'd think I was crazy and never speak to me again. And maybe I am crazy -- I still haven't entirely ruled that out -- but I definitely don't want to lose you forever.

With being completely honest off the table, I settled for the next-best thing: more honest, at least honest enough to make Sara think I was approaching completeness.

"Sara," I said, my voice quivering as the wind picked up. "I'm pregnant."

Before she could respond, I took a couple of steps back and lay back on the boulder, letting out a deep breath and looking up into the sky. Then Sara climbed on top of me, putting her gorgeous face directly into my sight line.

"Am I the first person you've told," she asked with a look on her face that was a mixture of happiness and concern.

"No," I said. "But you're the first person I've wanted to talk with more about it."

She rolled over and was lying next to me as a few drops of rain began to fall from the sky.

"You mean like plan a future," she asked.

"No. Just... talk more, I guess. Maybe back at my place? You can help me pack for my trip. I mean, what exactly are you supposed to wear to tell your boyfriend 'I want to break up with you because I'm in love with the most beautiful girl I've ever seen and oh by the way I'm pregnant and there's a good chance the baby isn't actually yours?'"

Sara rolled back on top of me and kissed me again. The rain was starting to come down a bit harder, but the trees overhanging the clearing were doing a good job of keeping it off of us -- and Sara was doing an even better job keeping it off of me.

"What was that for," I asked.

"I'm really the most beautiful girl you've ever seen?"

"You are."

*****

Back in my room, Sara was digging through my overstuffed closet as I sat on the bed with my open suitcase and tried not to stress too much over what had just happened. We jogged back to her car, which was parked at the entrance to the reservoir, then drove to my place, mostly in silence. It’s not that we were scared to talk to each other, we just had so much to say and it seemed silly to try to say it in a five-minute drive. So instead we listened to music – it turned out that much like Alana, Sara is into Taylor Swift, even if she sounds different in her own musical style – and then started talking when we got upstairs.

Well, first we started making out on my bed, then after a few minutes of that, we remembered that wasn’t why we’d come back here at all, and we got around to talking and packing.

She’d picked out a couple of outfits I felt comfortable wearing and I’d packed them into the suitcase, which still had way more room for more clothes. Clearly Alana was the kind of girl who traveled with three times as many outfits as she actually needed to wear, whereas I was starting to think I really only needed one day of clothes as it seemed far more likely that my trip would end up being cut short.

“What is this,” Sara asked, as she struggled to pull something out of my closet. I noticed she was tugging on a red spandex sleeve.

“Oh, that’s my Dark Phoenix costume.”

“Your what,” she asked again as she pulled it completed out and held it up against her body. “It looks like a slutty figure skating outfit.”

“Shut up,” I said, giggling as I grabbed it away from here. “It’s just … a costume.”

“Oh,” she said. “So do you and Aiden, like… role play?”

“Not THAT type of costume,” I said as I tossed it into the growing discard pile of clothes on the side of my bed. “It was from a modeling job last year.”

“God,” she said, “you have lived such an incredible life.”

“I guess,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t really think so.”

She put down the blouse she’d pulled out and walked over to me as I sat on the edge of my bed.

“You have, you know,” she said, gently caressing the side of my neck. “So many girls would love to switch places with you.”

“Guys too,” I asked, knowingly.

“OK, your life is pretty awesome, but I’m not sure any guy would want to be pregnant, no matter how shitty his life was,” she said. I tried to hide my disappointment in hearing that, but I couldn’t deny it. As bad as my life had been a week ago, if you’d presented me with the option of becoming Alana, knowing everything about her, there’s no way I would’ve done it.

“Hey, what’s wrong,” she asked, picking up on my change in mood.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just mean… we’ve been picking through clothes for a while and I still have no idea what to wear when I see Aiden.”

“Oh,” she said, springing back up from the bed, “I think I have some idea about that.”

“Really,” I asked apprehensively.

Sara started digging back in the closet and then pulled out the one thing I absolutely did not want her to show me: the red Herve Leger bandage dress.

“OK, no way,” I said. “That’s WAY too dressy for a flight.”

“Oh c’mon,” she said, bringing the dress over to me. “Just imagine the look on his face when you walk off the plane in this. Anything you tell him after that won’t even matter, because all he’ll remember is how beautiful you looked when you told him.”

“Yeah,” I said, taking the dress and holding it up against me as I stood up and looked in the mirror. “But won’t that just make him more upset that I’m breaking up with him?”

Sara just smiled as she looked at me.

“Ohmigod, that’s what you want isn’t it,” I asked, starting to blush.

“Maybe I just want you back here sooner,” she said as she joined me by the mirror.

“I mean, just look at that girl,” she said, pointing at my reflection. “Would you want to spend a single minute apart from her if you didn’t have to?”

I started blushing, which Sara quickly picked up on. She took the dress from me and held it up against me just like I’d been doing, then let it drop as she kissed me. Just then I heard someone come into the room.

“Hey, Ali, can I borrow… your… lip…”

Alexis’ voice trailed off as she was clearly stunned by what she’d seen as she barged into my room.

“Oh, God, Lexi, I wish you’d knocked,” I said.

She was frozen in place, looking like a statue of a high school girl in a blue cocktail dress trying to look older than her 16 years.

“Umm, hi,” Sara said, awkwardly. She picked the dress up off the ground and put it on my bed as she went to introduce herself to my sister.

“I’m Sara,” she said, extending her hand to my sister, who still hadn’t moved, or even closed her jaw, which understandably dropped when she walked in on me making out with a girl. “Umm… I went to school with your sister and… well…”

“Sara, can you pick out some shoes to go with that dress, while I go talk to my sister,” I said, as I started leading Alexis out of the room.

We walked down the hall to her room, and I stood in the doorway as Alexis sat on her bed and tried to gather herself. There was an awkward silence and right as I was about to say something, Alexis finally spoke up.

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”

“Look, Lexi, I just need you to calm down for a second and…”

“CALM DOWN?! YOU WERE JUST MAKING OUT WITH SOME RANDOM GIRL.”

“Holy shit, Lex, just tell the whole neighborhood, why don’t you?”

She covered her mouth, realizing for the first time just how loud she’d been. Thankfully neither my mother nor Ron was home, so it was actually unlikely anyone other than Sara had heard her.

“I didn’t plan for this to happen,” I said. “It just sort of did.”

“So what does this mean for…”

“For me and Aiden? For me and Mark? Hell, for me and Sara even? I have no idea. I have no plan here, Lexi. I know you think of me as this perfect older sister who has everything figured out, but for the first time in my life, I don’t. And it’s scary and kind of amazing all at the same time.”

“So are you still going to L.A. tomorrow,” she asked, her voice getting quieter with each passing word.

“I am,” I said, as I sat down next to her. “I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but I know whatever I have to tell Aiden, I have to tell him in person.”

Then, out of nowhere, Alexis gave me a hug.

“What was that for,” I asked as she let go of her embrace.

“I dunno,” she said, nervously. “I guess I just thought you could use a hug.”

She was right. So I hugged her back.

“Thanks, Lexi. You’re my best friend and the best sister anyone could ever ask for.”

“Aww,” she said, hugging me back. “Now stop hugging me and go make out with your girlfriend some more.”

I playfully smacked her on the back of the head as I let go of the hug and she let out a laugh.

“Oh, Lexi,” I said as I started walking out of her room to go back to Sara. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Not even Monica.”

“I won’t,” she said. Unlike earlier with Monica and the pregnancy news, I felt confident that Lexi wouldn’t betray me – even though on some level I was betraying her by not telling her that particular piece of news.

As I returned to my room, I saw Sara put a couple more pieces of clothing into my suitcase.

“So, is everything okay,” she asked me.

“I think so,” I said, picking up the strappy red heels she’d picked out to go with the way-too-revealing dress that I was apparently now committed to wearing on my early morning flight. “Do you really think this will look good on me?”

“Yes,” she said, closing up the suitcase and leaning over it to give me a quick kiss on the lips. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing it on you right now.”

She walked over to the window to pull down my shade, and then closed the bedroom door, being sure to lock it so no one would disturb us.

*****

DAY SIX

“I look ridiculous.”

I stared at myself in the mirror in this airplane bathroom and immediately regretted every wardrobe decision I’d made. This bandage dress was too tight and too revealing. These four-inch strap heels were too high and made me feel like I was going to fall over every time I took a step – not that I could even take long steps in the dress.

My eyes were lined with black eyeliner and accented with a dark shadow matching my hair, while my lips were coated in a shiny red gloss that matched the dress. Even my nails were painted a deep red, courtesy of Sara who stayed late last night to help me look perfect.

And I did look perfect – if I was trying to make Aiden fall in love with me all over again. The only problem was I was about to break up with him and tell him I was pregnant with a baby that most likely wasn’t his. I should’ve worn dirty workout clothes and forgotten to put on deodorant.

There was a knock on the door, and the flight attendant said “Excuse me, miss, but you need to return to your seat. We’re beginning our final descent.”

I took one last look in the mirror at my face – the face I’d seen so much in the past week but was still so unfamiliar to me – and opened the door to go back to my seat. I was stuck in a middle seat between an 80-year-old man who thankfully slept for the entire flight and a high school girl who was wearing a cheerleading warm-up outfit and decided after hearing I was a dancer that we had to be best friends and talked my ear off about things I barely knew for the better part of four hours. Thankfully she had her headphones on as I slid by, and I quickly put my own on so the last 15 minutes of the flight would go by in peace.

We landed right as the opening piano notes of “Runaway” began to play, and as much as I wanted to listen to my favorite Kanye song, I threw my phone in my purse, put on my oversized sunglasses that covered half my face, and grabbed my carry-on bag from the overhead bin and tried to make it out of the plane as quickly as possible. I’d been able to stuff all my clothes into a carry-on – even if it probably exceeded the recommended size for the overhead bin – so I didn’t have to wait for baggage claim and I really wanted to just meet Aiden and get this over with as soon as possible, like ripping off a Band-Aid.

As I descended the escalator down to the arrivals area, I saw him waiting at the bottom for me. I’d never seen him in person before, but I recognized him from his pictures on my phone and Facebook page, and he was also holding a sign with my name on it. He saw ran over to meet me at the bottom of the escalator, and dropped the sign as he tried to give me a kiss. I turned my cheek so he couldn’t kiss my lips.

“Good idea,” he said in that voice that just made me quiver, even though I didn’t want to. “Wouldn’t want to mess up your makeup before the big surprise.”

“Surprise,” I asked. I was not in the mood for surprises, at least not other than the ones I was going to spring on him.

“I’d tell you, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise,” he said, as he reached out to take my bag from me. “Here, let me help you with that.”

I apparently didn’t have the option of telling him no, as he took the bag’s handle with one hand and my empty hand with the other.

“Ali, it’s so great to have you here,” he said. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I missed you too, sweetie,” I said, completely unconvincingly. How could I miss him? I didn’t even know him.

He began to lead me out of the airport towards the taxi area, the whole time talking about how beautiful the weather was out here and how much I’d love it if I moved out here, while I was spending the whole time thinking what the best way to break the bad news to him would be. I didn’t want to just tell him straight out in the middle of the airport, or even in the cab, but I knew the longer I waited to tell him the harder it would be.

And of course it just got immediately harder, as instead of leading me to a taxi, he lead me right past the line of yellow cabs to a waiting limo, complete with a driver holding open the back door.

“Is this the surprise,” I asked with significant apprehension.

“This is just the start of it,” he said as he handed my bag to the driver, who quickly moved to put it in the trunk.

Oh, crap. He’s going to propose, isn’t he? Shit. He’s about to ask me to marry him, while I’m standing here, trying to figure out how to break up with him. Okay, I need to try to do some pre-emptive damage control.

“Aiden, honey,” I said as gently as I could. “Please tell me there isn’t a ring in one of the champagne glasses in there. I don’t think I’m ready for that.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” he said as he started laughing. “We’ve only been dating a few months. I love you, but I think we should at least live with each other before we even think about marriage.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said. “So… can you tell me what the surprise is now?”

“You’ll see,” he said, as he helped me into the limo and closed the door behind us.

*****

We pulled into our final destination after a very awkward limo ride in which I did my best to avoid Aiden's questions and advances, and the driver opened the door for us.

"We're here," Aiden said.

"Okay," I asked. "So where is here?"

He motioned to the door, and we stepped outside to see we were standing in front of an auditorium.

"You got a limo to take me to a show," I asked, very confused.

"Not exactly," he said.

He led me inside as I grew increasingly nervous with each passing step down the aisle. We got to the front of the stage, and three people were sitting there in the front row: two middle-aged men in what appeared to be very expensive suits flanking a younger woman in a purple mini-dress, who was furiously tapping away at her smartphone, only looking up as the sound of my heels loudly clacked against the floor of the stage.

"Umm, who are they," I quietly asked Aiden.

"Remember those people I told you about who said they wanted to meet you about an audition," he said. Then he gestured over to them with his hand as if he were presenting them to me.

"Surprise!"

I stood there in silent shock.

"What's wrong," he asked.

"I'm not ready for an audition," I said, pointing to my outfit. "I can't dance in this dress, and even if I could, I hurt my ankle the other day and I'm nowhere near 100%."

"Oh, no need to worry about that Miss Carlysle," said one of the men, who clearly had been listening in to our less-than-private conversation.

"Aiden showed us your reel and we're sold on your dancing," said the other man.

"We'd like to hear you sing," the woman said while she slipped her phone into her purse. Great, I had her full attention, when all I wanted was for the three of them to disappear.

My eyes got wide as I turned back toward Aiden. I'd never actually seen a deer in headlights, but I didn't think I had to anymore, because I was 100% certain that it looked exactly like I did right now. I started shaking my head at Aiden, doing my best to indicate that I wanted no part of doing this without verbalizing it -- since I was pretty sure my vocal cords were incapable of producing sound at this moment.

"You've got this, babe," he said, giving me a big hug and a kiss on the forehead. "I've seen you do it 100 times before, and you're gonna nail it now."

"I … I don't even have a song prepared," I said, squeaking out what little noise I could.

"Just do your usual,” he said. "You'll be great."

He gave me another quick kiss then directed me to the stage before joining the three others sitting in the front row. I stood center stage in front of a microphone feeling completely alone and helpless. Part of me wanted to vomit -- something I'd done plenty of in recent days and felt confident I could summon on cue if needed right now -- and part of me just wanted to sprint out of the auditorium and get as far away as possible as quickly as possible.

Then, just when I was about ready to have a complete nervous breakdown right in the middle of the stage, I noticed a piano off to the side.

"Can I," I said into the microphone, creating some feedback that startled me, as I pointed over to the piano. "Can I use that?"

The woman curiously nodded, and I slowly walked over to the piano. I'd taken lessons from the time I was 8 until I was about 16 years old, and I'd been pretty good back then. I hadn't played at all in about 5 years, but they say you never forget how to play, and I figured between my years of knowledge and Alana's natural musical talents, I could handle something as simple as what I was thinking.

I sat down at the bench, took a deep breath, then played a high C, two octaves above middle C.

Then I did it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

All in all, the same forceful, angry C note 15 times before going one octave down for the next note. Then, I went back up to B, hitting it three times in the same cadence before dropping down one octave for a single lower B. Then back up to a high A three times, before going back down to the A above middle C. I glanced at the four people in my “audience” as I went back to the higher F twice, then to the E just next to it once. They clearly had no idea what I was doing, but I hadn’t lost their attention yet.

As I went back up to the high C, I knew I was still the only person on stage and the only sound in the auditorium was coming from this piano, but I closed my eyes and could hear the drum machine kick in with the vocal drops ringing in my head. I started bopping my head to a song they couldn’t hear and continued to play the piano as my cue for the lyrics finally arrived.

“And I always find, yeah, I always find something wrong… You been putting up with my shit just way too long…”

I’m sure to them it was strange – and completely unexpected – to hear this song being sung by this voice, but in this moment it was the only thing that felt right. As I continued to sing, I couldn’t even hear Alana’s voice, as beautiful as I’m sure it was. All I could hear was the original version of the song washing over me as I felt all the pain of everything I’d screwed up in the past few days, and everything Alana had screwed up long before that.

“I’m so gifted at finding what I don't like the most… So I think it's time for us to have a toast…

Let's have a toast for the douchebags…
Let's have a toast for the assholes…
Let's have a toast for the scumbags…
Every one of them that I know…”

I still had my eyes closed, so I couldn’t see how Aiden and the three people I was supposed to be auditioning for were reacting, but they hadn’t told me to stop yet, so I just kept going. In a way it was cathartic. I hadn’t actually confessed anything to Aiden, but the words of the song, and the way I was singing it, were doing that for me.

“Let's have a toast for the jerk-offs…
That'll never take work off…
Baby, I got a plan…
Run away fast as you can…”

Strangely, it was the best advice I could’ve given Aiden. He might’ve loved Alana, but everything I knew about her told me she didn’t love him back. I mean, if she did, there’s no way she would’ve done what she did with Bryce – which made me question whether she even really considered Monica a friend.

On top of all the horrible things Alana had done that I had to try and clean up, I’d been spending the entire week lying to everyone I knew – my family, my friends, my boyfriend… even Sara. I hadn’t been honest with her, and even though I wasn’t sure what would happen if I told her the truth, or at least what I believed to be the truth, I could’ve tried.

As I reached the final verse of the song, I could feel tears rolling down my cheeks, no doubt ruining my makeup. But I didn’t care. I just let the music flow through me and continued to sing and play.

“Never was much of a romantic…
I could never take the intimacy…
And I know I did damage…
Cause the look in your eyes is killing me…”

As I got to that line, I opened my eyes for the first time in the entire performance and looked over at the front row. I was shocked to see that the three people I was auditioning for seemed to be strangely captivated by my performance. Or at least not horrified, which is what I expected and what I could see on Aiden’s face. He was doing his best to hide it, but I could tell he was hurting and I continued to sing, repeating the bridge a couple times.

“Run away from me, baby, run away…
Run away from me, baby, run away…
When it starts to get crazy, why can't she just, run away?...
Baby, I got a plan, run away fast as you can…”

I stopped singing, but continued to play the notes on the piano, trying to hold back the tears. Finally, everything became too overwhelming and I just started sobbing, as I got up and ran out as fast as my idiotically-high heels and short dress would let me. I ran straight out of the building and back into the parking lot, where the limo was still sitting with the back door open, running into the back seat and slamming the door behind me.

I buried my head in my hands and wanted to be anywhere but here. Unfortunately, the limo wasn’t going anywhere without a driver, and he wasn’t the next person to arrive. Instead, it was Aiden, who joined me in the back seat, sitting right next to me and putting his arm around me. I don’t know if it was habit or it just felt right, but I leaned my head against his shoulder as I continued to cry.

Here I was about to tell him something horrible – some part of which he’d probably already figured out on his own – and he was still literally giving me a shoulder to cry on. In no way did I deserve someone like him, and I was doing him a favor by letting him go.

He let me cry for a solid five minutes before I was finally able to compose myself enough to say something. Say anything. Say the only thing I really needed to say.

“I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything, as he continued to rub my shoulder, trying to comfort me and calm me do. So I continued.

“I’m pregnant,” I said, trying to hold back the tears so I could finish what I had to do.

“It’s not mine, is it,” he said, more telling me than asking. He didn’t sound angry, just disappointingly resigned to the truth, which made me even more upset that Alana had treated him the way she did. Until that moment, I’d been holding out hope that maybe by some miracle the baby was his, but now I had to face what I knew in my heart to be true.

“No,” I said, my voice starting to crack.

“Who’s then,” he asked.

“Does it matter,” I said, finally pulling myself off of him and sitting up. “I screwed up.”

He still didn’t know what to say. I did.

“It’s over,” I said. “I’ll stay in a hotel tonight and get an earlier flight back.”

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “You can stay with me as long as you need. It may not work out between us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”

With that, I started crying again. I couldn’t begin to understand why he was being so nice about this.

“Why,” I started to ask through my tears. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“I’m upset,” he said, “but what good is getting angry going to do? It’s not going to make me feel better, it’s not going to make you feel better, and it’s not going to help either of us move on. I had a feeling when you wouldn’t move out here with me that it wasn’t meant to be. I was hoping that this trip might change your mind, but at least it brought me some kind of closure.”

“You’re too good for me,” I said, wiping my eyes dry again. “You set up this whole audition for me and I went and made an ass of myself.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, you sang beautifully,” he said.

“Please, stop complimenting me,” I said. “Can’t you just say one horrible thing about me? I deserve it.”

“Ali, why don’t we just go back to my place and talk?”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“It doesn’t have to be about us,” he said, sliding a little closer to me again on the back seat. “We can just … talk.”

“Okay,” I said, putting my head back on his shoulder and closing my eyes. I wanted to fall asleep in his arms and maybe somehow wake up from this nightmare, but instead I just tried to gather myself as the limo finally started to pull away.

*****

When we got back to Aiden’s apartment, I immediately took a shower, washing away both my horribly tear-streaked makeup and some of my emotional trauma. The warm water felt so good on my skin that I kind of just wanted to stay in there until I had to fly back to Connecticut, but I knew that wasn’t an option.

After the shower, I changed into a pair of green leggings and a purple sleeveless blouse that hung slightly past my waist. If the real Alana could see me wearing such a hopelessly unfashionable ensemble, she’d probably freak out, but since I was the one driving this ship, I was just going to wear whatever felt comfortable. Realistically, that would’ve been literally anything other than what I’d worn on the flight, since that dress was so tight I could barely breathe.

I walked out of the bathroom fully dressed, but with a towel still on my head, and sat down on the recliner in Aiden’s living room, while he sat on the couch next to it. We ended up just talking for a while about all sorts of things, mostly about him and his life out here. He seemed like he was well on his way to building a life without me, which made me feel slightly better about the way Alana had treated him and me moving on from that rather than trying to salvage a relationship that was never really solid to begin with.

We’d been talking for nearly an hour when he got up to offer me a bottle of water from the fridge – well, first he offered me a vodka, before catching himself and remembering I was pregnant – and out of nowhere I decided to confess something to him.

“It’s Bryce,” I said.

He stopped a few steps from the kitchen and turned around.

“What’s Bryce,” he asked. I pointed to my belly, which wasn’t close to showing any signs of pregnancy but sent the message anyway. “Oh. Wait, you mean Monica’s Bryce.”

“Well, not anymore,” I said. “Obviously.”

“Does Monica know,” he asked, walking back to the living room and sitting on the arm of the recliner right next to me.

“About the pregnancy, yes,” I said, as I stood up and started to pace around the room. “About Bryce? Not yet.”

“You’re going to have to tell her eventually,” he said.

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” I said. “I just… I don’t know how to break it to her.”

“Do you even like Bryce,” he asked.

“No,” I said loudly. “That’s the crazy thing. I hate the guy. He’s an asshole and I wasn’t lying when I told Monica he was all wrong for him, but for some stupid reason, I slept with him. A lot.”

He just stared at me with a look of confusion on his face.

“I guess it was just easier to do things that would make people hate me rather than admit that I hated myself.”

It was my mouth moving and my voice saying the words, but they were Alana’s words and feelings. I couldn’t explain how I knew that Alana felt that way, I just knew that she did, and in that moment, everything started to make a bit more sense to me.

She had been in a spiral of self-loathing for the better part of a year, becoming increasingly reckless with her interpersonal behavior to the point where she got knocked up by a guy she hated almost as much as she hated herself, going nuclear on her longest-lasting friendship in the process. She didn’t feel like she deserved to have anyone around her, so she tried to do things to alienate everyone in her life. Had I not been dropped in when I was, who knows what she would’ve done to her family.

I thought that on some level, finding out Alana was more displeased with her life than I’d been with mine would’ve been some kind of relief, but it ended up just making me more upset, because now I wasn’t sure if I should be trying to get back to my life or trying to fix Alana’s.

Aiden definitely picked up on my emotional distress, and got up and wrapped his arms around me.

“Hey,” he said, in a comforting tone of voice. “Everyone makes mistakes. That’s no reason to hate yourself.”

“I don’t hate myself because I’ve made mistakes,” I said. “I made mistakes because I hated myself. But I want to be a better person. I can be a better person. I have to be a better person. For me. For Sara. For my child.”

“Sara,” he asked.

“A friend,” I said. “And maybe something more.”

“That’s … interesting,” he said.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” I said, “but I’d rather not do it here. Can we go out somewhere?”

“Sure,” he said. “I do still have the limo all day, and there’s this place in Hollywood that has a peanut butter cheesecake you’ll die for.”

“You know,” I said, a smile forming on my face for the first time since I’d landed. “I have been craving peanut butter cheesecake.”

We shared a laugh as I slipped on a pair of heels and we walked out the door.

*****

The cheesecake lived up to Aiden’s sell and was easily the best thing I’d tasted in the time I’d been Alana, and after that we took the limo up to Malibu and sat on the beach, just letting the sun shine down on us and enjoying the sounds of the waves.

We returned to the limo, which Aiden had rented as part of a plan for this whole romantic day starting with the grand gesture of the audition and ending with a moonlit dinner in the Hollywood Hills, but obviously that all went out the window with our break up. So we just ended up doing friend things. Bakery, beach, and finally bar – even though I couldn’t drink.

He even took care of re-booking my flight, getting me a seat on the red-eye back to the east coast. As much as we were getting along on this impromptu friendly afternoon, I knew things would get awkward the longer I stayed out here.

It was still early evening as we sat down at a corner table in this upscale bar in West Hollywood. I wasn’t really dressed for the atmosphere, but then again the atmosphere wouldn’t really be arriving for a few more hours, so I felt okay about it.

“Here you go,” Aiden said, handing me my sparkling cider in a champagne glass as he placed his beer down on the table. “One non-alcoholic beverage for the mommy to be.”

“Eww, don’t call me ‘mommy,’” I said. “That just sounds so weird.”

He laughed as he sat down and took a sip of his beer.

“Well, that’s what you’re gonna be,” he said, still laughing at my misfortune a little bit.

“I don’t even want to think about that,” I said. “I mean, it’s obviously going to happen down the line, but it still seems so far away.”

Part of me was still hoping that I’d find a way back to my normal life and being pregnant would be nothing but a weird, distant memory. But I was still scared do even try to do anything about it until I knew what it meant for the baby, for the real Alana, and for everyone else around us.

Aiden and I stayed at the bar for a couple hours, talking mainly about his acting career, which was just getting off the ground out here. I think he liked talking about what was going well for him, because it helped him take his mind off the fact that he was sharing a table with his now ex-girlfriend.

Eventually we ran out of things to talk about that weren’t about our relationship and why it didn’t work – the one subject I said was 100% off limits – and we got up to leave.

“Oh, Alana, I’m so glad I found you before you left town,” said a woman who was walking into the bar. I didn’t recognize her at first, and was worried that it might be someone I was expected to know from Alana’s past, but then I realized it was the woman from the audition earlier today.

“Oh, hi,” I said, extending my hand to give her a polite handshake. “I’m so sorry about this morning. I was in no state to be auditioning.”

“Sorry,” she asked, “There’s no need to apologize. Your voice, the raw emotion, it was an incredible performance.”

“So, are you saying I got the part,” I asked, apprehensively.

“Oh, God no,” she said. “You’re totally wrong for this part, but I have to work with someone as talented as you. I need to be in the Alana Carlysle business. No matter what it takes.”

Before I could even respond, she started giving me the hard sell.

“I’ve got a role in this upcoming project that would be perfect for you,” she said. “You’d play this bitchy queen bee that has a sensitive side that comes out when she meets this guy who turns her whole world upside down.”

“Well, that sounds amazing,” I said, “but there’s just one problem. I’m pregnant. So I’m kind of going to be out of commission for a while.”

“Well the timing might not work on that, but I’m sure there’s something else we can find for you,” she said. “You’re too talented to just stay at home and raise a family while Aiden goes to work.”

“Oh, we’re not together,” Aiden said, trying to make the most of an incredibly awkward situation.

“You’re not,” she asked. “But I thought…”

“It’s complicated,” I said, interrupting. “But it was a pleasure to meet you…”

“Rebecca,” she said, finishing my sentence and finally formally introducing herself. “Rebecca Forrester.”

“Nice to meet you Rebecca,” I said. “Maybe in a different world, we could’ve worked together.”

“Don’t close that door yet,” she said, as she reached into her purse to give me her business card. “Pregnant or not, I still think we can make something work. The world needs to meet you.”

“Well, maybe they will, someday,” I said as I took the card. “But for now I just need to weigh my options.”

Rebecca shook hands with both Aiden and I, and then we headed outside and back into the limo.

“So, I guess we should head back to the apartment,” he said.

“Aiden,” I said, “you’ve been so great to me all day. I can’t even imagine how hard this has been for.”

“Ali, don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what,” I asked.

“Don’t act like this hasn’t been hard for you too,” he said as the limo began to pull away. “You always put on this big front, like nothing bothers you, but I saw you open up on that stage. That, for once, was the real you.”

I had to stifle a laugh, since nothing about me could’ve been further from the “real” Alana. Still, he was right about one thing – the performance of that stage was me opening up in some way. Ever since that moment, I felt like I could be more honest, both with myself and others, and told myself that when I got home I’d tell my entire family about the pregnancy, and I’d tell Monica about Bryce, consequences be damned. Just thinking about opening up brought a smile to my face.

“What are you smiling about,” Aiden asked.

“You know,” I said, “we might not work as a couple, but you’re just about the best friend a girl could ask for.”

*****

DAY SEVEN

“What are you doing here?”

The woman sitting at my vanity with her back to me didn’t turn around, even as I started talking to her. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in my room, and I didn’t recognize this woman, so I was a bit confused.

“Excuse me,” I said, forcefully but politely, “but you’re in my room.”

“No,” she said, spinning around in my chair, “you’re in my room.”

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was me. Or rather, Alana, though her hair was longer and redder. She was wearing a blue satin cocktail dress with matching heels. She had dark eyeliner, heavy blue eye shadow and dark red lips that matched her pristinely done – and significantly longer – nails.

“Alana,” I asked, my jaw agape upon seeing, well, me sitting there.

“Please, call me Ali,” she said. “Now, we need to have a serious talk about what you’ve been up to.”

“What?”

“I mean, first of all, that outfit,” she said, as she stood up and ran her finger up and down my body. “What is that?”

I was wearing a pair of light brown slacks and a polka dot blouse over a black tank top, which I thought was reasonably stylish if a tad casual, but apparently didn’t live up to Alana’s high standards.

“Let’s fix this,” she said. Then, in an instant, I was dressed and made up exactly like she was, only with my mid-length black hair still in place.

“What’s happening,” I asked, as I ran my hands down the soft satin of my new dress.

“What’s happening,” she said as she sprayed some sweet-smelling perfume on both of us, “is that I’m taking back my life.”

“But why,” I asked, still confused about what was happening – and how.

“Don’t you get it,” she said. “You had a chance at a new exciting life, and instead you’re doing the same old boring things you always did. Being friends with Mark. Pining for Sara. Those are lame Andrew things. Ali is fun and wild. She fucks her best friend’s boyfriend behind her own boyfriend’s back and doesn’t give a crap what anyone thinks about it. She flies across the country to have hot beach sex with her actual boyfriend and leaves him wanting more and feeling desperate for her from 3,000 miles away. She doesn’t just tell her sister that a guy is interested in her – she teaches him how to wrap him around her finger and make him her willing slave.

“Basically,” she continued as she walked around our room. “Ali is everything you’re not, and I’m sick of sitting back and watching you ruin everything I’ve made her into.”

“A person you can’t even stand to be,” I answered.

“What,” she asked, quickly snapping around and getting up in my face.

“You can’t stand you,” I said. “I felt it when I was with Aiden.”

“That’s not true,” she said, as the confidence in her voice began to waver.

“It is,” I said. “I’m certain of it now. You didn’t do the things you did because they were fun. You did them to push people away. You hated everything about your life. You hated Monica, you hated Bryce, and you particularly hated dancing. You just stuck with it because you were good at it, but you never wanted to be a dancer.”

“Stop it,” she said quietly, as she was on the verge of tears.

“That’s why you left New York,” I said. “You were running away from a life you’d built for yourself that you didn’t want to live. And you didn’t go with Aiden because he was a reminder of that life. It’s all coming into focus now.”

“SHUT UP,” she yelled. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, ruining her pristine makeup job. “You think you can be a better Ali than me?”

“I don’t want to be a better Ali,” I said. “I want to be Alana, the woman you could never be.”

“Fine, see if you get any more help from me,” she said.

“I don’t need your help,” I said. “I need your memories, to remind me where I came from and where I can’t go back.”

“Going back,” she said as she dried her tears. “That gives me an idea…”

Then a mischievous smile appeared on her face as she faded from view.

“Wait,” I said, reaching out. But I couldn’t touch her as she and the room both got further and further away. “Don’t go. Not yet.”

But she was gone.

“Excuse me, miss,” I heard a voice say coming from behind me.

“Miss,” said the voice again. I opened my eyes to see that I was still sitting on the plane for my flight back to Connecticut. “You need to push your seat and tray table up.”

“Sorry,” I said, quietly, as I adjusted my seat and slowly started to wake up, since I’d slept for most of the flight. I pushed my tray table back into the upright position and shook off my dream.

But was it a dream?

I mean, I know I didn’t physically meet Ali in my room – especially not while I was in mid-air above Connecticut – but that whole thing felt like way more than a random dream.

I closed my eyes again and tried to gather my thoughts, but out of nowhere I remembered something – it was Ali, opening her acceptance letter to grad school. She saw that she got in and put on a happy face for her family, but inside she felt trapped.

While the symbolism certainly wasn’t lost on me, what caught my attention more was the fact that I remembered something about Ali’s life without slipping into “Ali mode.” I started thinking more about her past, and more things started coming to mind. I remembered her first day at college, her first date, all the way back to her first dance recital.

In an instant, it was like this part of her mind that had been locked off to me for the past week was now open. It was a bit overwhelming and kind of confusing considering I remembered my whole life as Andrew as well – and I wasn’t sure which life I was supposed to be living. Not just because of the additional set of memories, but because of the things I’d experienced in the past week.

Unlike when I arrived in Los Angeles, when the plane landed back in Connecticut, I lingered. I was the last person to get off the plane, and didn’t even head straight down to the taxi line. Instead I just wandered around the terminal a bit, before heading to the bar. I so badly wanted a drink but even if I wouldn’t be the one having this baby – and yes, that was still the plan – I didn’t want to do anything that could hurt it either. So I settled for having a Coke and sipping it slowly as I watched travelers go to and from their destinations, and put off having to deal with the realities of Alana’s life.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before I had to be honest about everything to everyone, and I just had no idea where to start. If I told Monica the truth about Alana and Bryce, then she’d have no reason to keep the pregnancy secret and she might make that news public before I had the chance to tell my family. If I told my family about the pregnancy first, they’d inevitably assume the father was Aiden, and I’d have to tell them about the breakup, and probably about Bryce as well, and I couldn’t imagine that conversation going smoothly.

Then there was the whole Sara wrench in all of this. She was the one person I’d been as close to completely honest with about everything – sans the whole “I’m actually Andrew” bit – but she also represented probably the biggest complication in everything.

So, of course, I had to start there.

I called Sara and asked her to pick me up at the airport, then finally went downstairs. After a few minutes of waiting outside, a car pulled up right next to me, but it wasn’t Sara.

It was Cash.

“Hi,” I said to him as he rolled down the window. “What are you doing here?”

“Sara was tied up at work, so she asked me to swing by and pick you up.”

“Don’t you have work,” I asked, while loading my bag into his trunk.

“I do,” he said. “But I’m on break. Besides, I think Ron will understand if I’m a little late getting back, considering the other option was leaving his step-daughter stranded at the airport.”

“I’m pretty sure someone would’ve come along to get me eventually,” I said.

“Like your boyfriend,” he asked.

“You know he’s in L.A.,” I said, as we got in the car and he pulled away from the airport.

The first few minutes of the ride were nothing but awkward silence – he didn’t even turn the radio on – before I finally said something.

“We broke up.”

“Who,” he asked in response.

“Me and my boyfriend,” I said. “Well, ex-boyfriend now. That’s why I flew back early.”

“So,” he said, hesitantly. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”

“Not anymore,” I said. “I think it’s for the best. There was no way Aiden and I were ever going to work out.”

I could’ve sworn I heard him say something under his breath, but I wasn’t certain and when I asked, he said he didn’t. Then he turned the radio on and we listened to music the rest of the way back to my house, with things somehow seeming more awkward than when we were sitting in silence.

Eventually he pulled into my driveway, and I got out and headed to the trunk to get my bag. I pulled it out and set it down, and as I turned around, Cash was standing right in front of me.

Then, out of nowhere, he kissed me.

I was so stunned by it that I let the kiss linger a couple of seconds longer than I should have, but I finally came to my senses and pushed him away.

“Dude,” I said. “I am SO sorry if I sent the wrong signal there, but that’s not what I meant when I said I didn’t have a boyfriend. Didn’t Sara talk to you?”

“What does Sara have to do with this,” he asked.

“We’re… well, I don’t know what we are exactly,” I said. “But I think I’m in love with her. And I’m pretty sure she feels the same way about me.”

“Sara,” Cash asked, confused. “My sister Sara? Red hair, about yay high, has never in her life shown a single lesbian tendency Sara?”

“Well, after what happened between us Sunday night, I’m pretty sure that last part isn’t true,” I said.

“Okay, I didn’t need to hear that,” he said.

“What,” I said, playfully. “It’s not like I told you about how I caressed her…”

“LA LA LA NOT LISTENING,” he said, putting his fingers in his ears.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “But seriously, Sara didn’t say anything to you at all about us?”

“Well, she did say she met someone new,” he said, “but I kind of assumed that someone was, well… a someone who didn’t have boobs.”

“I barely have boobs,” I said, playfully grabbing my undersized chest.

Cash laughed, which broke some of the weird tension between us. He gave me a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Just be good to my sister,” he said.

“I will,” I said, as pulled my suitcase on to my deck and watched him pull away. I quickly fired off a text to Sara asking her to call me as soon as she got off of work, and then headed inside, where I discovered there was a welcoming committee waiting for me. My mom, dad, Alexis and Ryan – the guy who I’d connected her with last week – were all standing there in the kitchen, apparently waiting for me to arrive.

They just kind of looked at me, making it clear that it was on me to start spilling.

“Hi dad,” I said, trying to change the subject before they even brought it up. “Surprised to see you here. Where’s Ron?”

“So who’s Sara,” my mom asked, not biting on my bait at all.

“Her new girlfriend,” said Alexis, chiming in where I really didn’t want her to.

“Girlfriend,” my mom asked, very surprised. “What does the father of your baby think of that?”

“Baby?!”

Gee, thanks mom. That’s exactly how I wanted to break that news to everyone here, including the guy I barely knew.

“Umm, Ryan, is it,” I said to the tall teen with his arm around my sister. “Could you maybe give us a moment? I need to talk to my family about … some … things.”

“Sure,” he said. It seemed like he was just as interested as extracting himself from this uncomfortable situation as I was in not having to go through it at all. He gave Alexis a kiss on the cheek and said “I’ll call you tonight” as he left.

We all watched him walk out the door and I turned back around toward my family, who were waiting for answers from me.

“So… LA was nice,” I said, jokingly.

“You’re having a BABY,” Alexis asked again, with a hint of anger in her voice.

“Yes, I’m pregnant,” I said. “I didn’t plan this, it just kind of happened, but I’m gonna roll with it, because I don’t really have another choice.”

“And what does Aiden think about this,” my mom asked.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, nervously. “It’s… it’s not his.”

Everyone’s eyes got really wide with that news.

“So…” my dad said, as he was the only one not shocked enough to actually say something, “whose is it?”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “He’s not part of my life, and I don’t want him to be. Besides, he wouldn’t make much of a father.”

“And this Sara,” my mom asked, leaving it at that.

“She’s someone I’ve known for a while, but it wasn’t until recently that we talked about our feelings.”

“Does she know?”

“Know what,” I asked my mom, who was being very calm about all this, while Alexis was seething. I wasn’t quite sure what she was angry about, but I could tell she was angry.

“Does Sara know about the baby?”

“She does.”

“SHE DOES?!” Alexis yelled.

“Yes, Sara knows. So do Monica and Gwen. And Aiden now. But they’re the only people I told.”

“You told Monica before you told me,” Alexis said. “That’s… I can’t believe I was the last to know.”

“Lexi,” I said, trying to comfort her, “I didn’t plan on telling Monica, it just sort of happened. I really didn’t want to tell anyone before I talked to Aiden, but I was always going to tell you as soon as I got back, I swear.”

“I thought we shared everything with each other,” she said, still angry. “I bet you wouldn’t have even told me about Sara if I hadn’t caught you guys making out in your room the other night.”

“Wait,” my mom said, interrupting Lexi’s line of thought. “You were doing what?”

“Mom,” I said, “I’m 25. I’m mature enough to have someone in my bedroom.”

“Are you,” she asked. “I mean, you ended up pregnant by someone who isn’t your boyfriend – someone you won’t even tell us about – and you don’t even have a job or a plan for where you’re going to live. That doesn’t exactly scream mature to me.”

“Mom, please,” I said, “I’ll work all that out. For now I just need to know that you’ll support any decision I do make.”

“You know I will honey, but you’ve been acting kind of reckless lately. Leaving New York, breaking up with Aiden, it just doesn’t seem like you.”

“Maybe it’s not me,” I said. “Maybe being me is what got me pregnant in the first place and maybe I realized I needed to get away from New York and make some big changes in my life, baby or not.”

“Changes like keeping secrets from me,” Lexi said.

“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “And I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us, I promise.”

But even as I was saying it, I knew that was a promise I couldn’t keep. I mean, on the small scale, I wasn’t planning on telling them about Bryce. And way bigger than that, I wasn’t planning on telling them about me being Andrew. Like, ever. If I was stuck in this life, then I was just going to accept it as my life, and there was no reason my family ever needed to know that it was ever not the case. That’s one secret that I’d take with me to the grave.

I could tell that Alexis wasn’t convinced by my half-hearted promise and she started to walk out.

“Whatever,” she said. “I’m gonna go catch up with Ryan. Call me when you decide to be my sister again and not this bitch you turned into.”

“Hey, that’s no way to talk to your sister,” my dad said in the most “dad” way possible, practically ignoring all the drama that had just transpired to fixate on my language. But Alexis just waved him off and walked out the door.

“She’s right,” I said. “If I’d been a good sister, she would’ve been the first person I told. Having a baby should be happy news, but I turned it into this whole big mess.”

“Do you want me to talk to her,” my mom asked.

“No, I said. “I’ll talk to her when she calms down. But are we okay?”

“You know I’ll always love you no matter what you do,” my mom said. “But at some point we need to have a serious talk about your future. You need to have a plan.”

“I know,” I said, “and I will. But first I need to unpack, unwind, and maybe go for a walk.”

“Let me help you with that,” my dad said, taking my suitcase from me.

“I’m fine,” I said, taking it right back. “I’m not even showing, so I’m pretty sure I can take my own suitcase upstairs.”

He backed off and I headed up to my room to get changed into more workout-friendly clothes. I wasn’t going to let this pregnancy give me an excuse to get fat again, and getting outside to clear my head seemed like a really good idea right now.

*****

“Oh shit.”

I was about two miles into my run, when I felt the raindrops start to come down. I knew I’d have to cut things short and head back home if I didn’t want to get completely soaked. As it was, cutting things short didn’t seem like such a bad idea, because going on a run to clear my head hadn’t worked at all. I wanted to just let myself drift and feel free, but instead I kept fixating on Alexis and making things right with her.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was far from the only one I needed to have an honest conversation with. Monica, Mark, Bryce … even Sara. We hadn’t really talked about what we were, what we meant to each other, and it seemed too early to have that talk, but at the same time my being pregnant was kind of accelerating the timetable.

All these thoughts swirling in my head made this run completely unenjoyable, which was actually a familiar feeling for me. Back when I’d been a football player, I’d hated running. I was easily the slowest guy on our team – even slower than the 350-pound nose tackle who barely got off the bench – and I constantly argued with the coaches about the need to do distance running. I mean, my job as an offensive lineman was basically to stand in people’s way. Running was something I only did when Mark threw an interception, and to solve that I basically told Mark “don’t throw interceptions.”

What? It was a valid strategy.

But my ingrained distaste for running aside, I’d actually been enjoying it in my short time as Alana. It certainly helped that I didn’t get winded 10 steps into a run like I used to, but being Alana had made me embrace the therapeutic benefits of running. Only today’s run hadn’t been therapeutic at all. In fact, it’d just made me feel worse, both mentally and physically. And then, as sky opened up with a total downpour, it happened again.

I threw up, right on the side of the road.

Well, vomiting during a run was nothing new either, but this was probably a combination of jetlag and morning sickness, not being too fat to run a mile.

Rather than stand out in the rain and make myself more sick, I ducked into a nearby store to wait out the passing storm. However, already being wet, and wearing nothing more than a pink sports bra and black booty shorts was drawing a bit more attention than I wanted. So I pulled out my phone to call someone to pick me up. But before I could even scroll to my contacts list, someone called me.

It was Mark.

“Hello,” I asked as I answered the phone, trying to act like I didn’t immediately recognize his number.

“Hey Ali, it’s Mark,” he said. “I was wondering if we could talk. I wanted to make sure everything was all right after the other day.”

I’m not sure Mark would’ve been the person I chose to start the “Alana Makes Things Right” tour with, but with fate seemingly intervening, I figured it was as good a place as any.

“Yeah,” I said. “We should definitely talk. Would you mind picking me up? I went out for a run and kinda don’t want to get drenched on the way back.”

“Sure thing,” he said. “I’ll be right there.

A few minutes later, I saw Mark pull up and ran out to his car, trying my best to not get soaked.

“Wow, it’s really coming down,” I said.

“Here,” he said, handing me a towel from the back seat. “I figured you might need this.”

“Thanks,” I said as I got to work on drying off my hair. The more time I spent as Alana, the more I realized how inconvenient having long hair was. It took forever to dry in the morning, and people expected it to be styled, and I mostly didn’t care about any of that.

I continued to dry myself off as Mark started driving.

“So,” he said, hesitantly, “I thought you were going to be in L.A. for a few days.”

“I was,” I said, rubbing the towel on my face, getting rid of what little makeup I had been wearing. “But it didn’t make sense to stick around after I broke things off with Aiden.”

“You what,” he asked, caught completely off guard. “What happened?”

“Well, let’s see,” I said, as I began to tick off the reasons I left Aiden. “I kinda cheated on him when we were together. A lot. I’m kinda in love with someone else. And I’m kinda pregnant with a baby that isn’t his.”

Mark slammed on the breaks, nearly sending me flying into the dashboard.

“You’re WHAT?!”

“Yeah,” I said, bashfully, as I adjusted the now too-tight seatbelt that was digging into my breasts. “I’m gonna have a baby.”

Mark pulled over, so he wasn’t at a complete stop in the middle of the road.

“Wow,” he said, very much in shock. “That’s huge.”

“Is that a fat joke,” I said, very much joking to try and lighten the mood a bit.

“No… I just… I mean … you’re.”

“I’m kidding, Mark. Calm down.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head as he put the car into park and rubbed his face with his hands.

“Are you okay,” I asked.

“I guess a part of me always thought that if you were gonna have a kid, it’d be with me,” he said. That hit me kind of hard – especially because I knew from her memories that Alana really did love Mark and at one point saw herself having a family with him. But to me, Mark would always be my best friend, and that’s what I wanted back, whether in this life or my own.

“Mark,” I said, unsure of what to say to comfort him. “I… I never really thought about having a family. This just kind of … happened.”

“So, this guy you’re in love with,” he said, bringing up the third reason I broke up with Aiden, “is he the father.”

“I never said it was a guy,” I said.

“Well, it kind of has to be.”

“The father? Yeah, that’s definitely a guy,” I said, as I started to nervously fidget in my seat. “But the person I’m in love with. She’s not.”

“She,” he asked, caught completely off guard.

“Yeah, she,” I said. “Her name is Sara. And she makes me happier than I ever thought I could be.

“Wow,” he said. “So I guess that rules out a future for us.”

“I hope not,” I said. “I want us to be friends. I want you to be part of my life.”

I paused and looked down at my stomach.

“Of our lives.”

“Friends,” he asked.

“Yeah, friends.”

“How would we even do that?”

“Just like any other friends. We’d talk about our lives. Things we like and dislike. We’d hang out with other friends.”

“We have a lot of history, Alana. I don’t know if I can just forget that.”

“I don’t want you to,” I said. “That history … the good parts of it … that’s what’s going to let us to be such great friends. I know it.”

But I didn’t know it. I hoped it. If I was going to be stuck as Alana, I had to have Mark in my life, but I didn’t know if he’d want to be part of mine. He let out a big sigh, and then finally said something.

“Ok… friend … see any good movies lately?”

I chuckled a bit at his attempt to break the friend ice, especially him awkwardly addressing me as “friend.”

“Well, ‘friend,’” I said, emphasizing the word friend to point out his own awkwardness to him. “I saw ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ last week.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “You did not.”

“I did,” I said. “I swear. I even kinda liked it.”

“You, Alana Carlysle, Miss ‘Comic Books are the Dumbest Thing Ever’, liked ‘Amazing Spider-Man,” he asked, incredulously.

“I did,” I said. “I thought Garfield was a pretty decent Spidey, Emma Stone was super cute as Gwen, and they had really good chemistry.”

“You know,” he said. “I always thought you’d make a good Gwen. I mean, obviously not with that black hair. But put a blonde wig on and you could pull it off.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I said. “Maybe if I go back to NYCC this year, I’ll go as Gwen.”

“Wait,” he said. “Go back? When did you go in the first place?”

“Last year,” I said, getting excited that Mark and I were having a conversation about something we’d always talked about. “Wait, you gotta see the pictures.”

I pulled out my phone and opened up Facebook and quickly scrolled to the NYCC album with the photos of me as Phoenix and handed it to him. He scrolled through them, his eyes getting wider with each swipe.

“This is you,” he asked, his eyes still on the phone.

“It is,” I said. “I got hired by some company to model for their booth, and I really enjoyed it and started getting into the whole scene. I’m thinking of going back this year with my own costumes.”

Then I looked down at my stomach again, realizing that soon it’d be in no shape for spandex.

“Or, at least, I was,” I said. “Before, well, you know.”

“You could always go as like a pregnant Sue Storm or something. Or Jessica Jones, if you wanted to keep the black hair.”

I chuckled again and a huge smile came over my face, as I broke into a full laugh.

“What’s so funny,” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just … I realized we’re having a conversation as friends. Like real, honest-to-god friends, and I’m so happy. This… this is exactly what I wanted.”

“Well,” he said, “I’d be lying if I said it was exactly what I wanted, but I think I can roll with it.”

“I’m glad,” I said.

We both looked at each other, smiling, as the rain slowly stopped and the sun shined through.

*****

DAY EIGHT

“Not this again.”

I woke up and immediately hustled to the bathroom to vomit, making it to the toilet just in time. As I vacated the admittedly-light contents of my stomach again, I began to contemplate going through the next few months like this. I’d done some reading last night about pregnancy, and morning sickness in particular. It seemed funny to me at the time that so-called “morning” sickness could strike at any time of day, but I was less amused by the fact that my body seemed to be taking the name literally.

Truthfully, I was getting sick of getting sick, and was starting to realize that I might be one of those women who got hit with a much harder pregnancy than most. Which was insane, since it was only a week ago that I became a woman, period.

I brushed my teeth to try and wash out the vomit smell, then walked back to my room to try and get a little more sleep. I got back in bed and rolled onto my side, looking at the clock as I went to close my eyes. That gold, double-bell alarm clock was one of the first things I’d seen when I became Alana, and now as I was looking at it, I wished there was a way I could get it to go backwards and reverse it.

Sure, so much of what had happened to me as Alana was good, but there was plenty of bad too. And my future held far more things I wasn’t remotely prepared for. I got out of bed and grabbed the alarm clock, then sat down at the end of the bed and just looked at it. I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I think I weirdly thought that if I stared at it long enough, the hands would start moving in the opposite direction and take me back to being Andrew.

Instead, it just kept moving forward, moving me toward a fate in which I’d have to give birth and become a mother, and find a way to put a dance degree to use and with each passing tick of the clock, I could feel the weight of my fate overwhelming me.

I thought back to that first day as Alana a week ago, trying not to cry and having that little voice in the back of my head tell me to let it out. Now it was reversed – the little voice was telling me to keep it together, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry until everything was right again.

I started sobbing, but it wasn’t helping. A week ago, crying made me feel a little bit better, but with each tear today, I felt a little bit worse. Then I heard a knock on my open door.

“Hey, you okay?”

It was Alexis.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to wipe the tears from my face. “Did I wake you up?”

“What’s wrong,” she said, completely avoiding my question.

“Nothing,” I said. “No, wait, that’s a lie. Everything. Everything’s wrong.”

Alexis sat down next to me at the end of my bed, and put her arm around me.

“Hey, I’m sorry I freaked out on you yesterday,” she said.

“No, don’t do that,” I said, cutting her off. “You don’t need to apologize to me. I need to apologize to you. You were right; I haven’t been the best sister I could be. I’ve been a shitty sister, and it makes me worry that I’m gonna be a shitty mother too.”

I started crying again and Alexis gave me a hug.

“Don’t say that,” she said. “You’re gonna be a great mom.”

“Lexi, I have no idea what I’m doing,” I said. “Like, in anything. It’s like everything I ever learned in life was completely wrong and I’m totally lost now.”

Lexi sat there silently, unsure of what to say, and I couldn’t blame her.

“God, Lexi, I’m so sorry,” I said through my tears. “I really messed up bad. I don’t think I can do anything right.”

“Well, you got me and Ryan together,” she said. “That’s something right.”

“I guess,” I said.

“Hey, seriously,” she said. “What’s wrong? This isn’t like you at all.”

“I know,” I said. “I just… can I tell you something? But you have to promise not to tell anyone.”

“Of course,” she said, sliding on the floor to move in front of me rather than next to me. “We’re sisters, you can tell me anything.”

“Even if it means you’ll lose all respect for me?”

“That would never happen.”

“Lexi,” I said, trying to compose myself before continuing, “I’m serious. This is bad. Real bad.”

“Ali, you’re scaring me,” she said. “What is it?”

“OK, so remember the other day when Bryce came over? And he said we’d been sleeping together?”

“Yeah,” Alexis said, hesitantly.

“He wasn’t lying,” I said. “I was.”

I could see the shock on her face.

“He’s the father,” I said.

“Do you… do you love him,” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want him in my life. I don’t even know why I was sleeping with him. But I was, and now I have to deal with the consequences, in more ways than one.”

“So Monica,” Alexis asked, trailing off.

“She doesn’t know yet,” I said. “And I have no idea how I’m going to break it to her. She’s gonna hate me, and she has every right to. Hell, I hate me.”

With that, I started to cry again. And then my crying got Alexis to start crying, which just made me feel worse.

“Oh, god, Lexi, I’m sorry,” I said between my tears. “Don’t cry.”

“You’re gonna leave again, aren’t you,” she said.

“What?”

“This is like when you ran away after dumping Mark, and I won’t see you for like a year.”

I wiped my eyes again and tried my best to compose myself.

“Lexi, I promise that’s not going to happen,” I said. “I’m not gonna abandon you.”

With each sentence I said, I got more confident. I could feel the fear and sadness going away, like the fading clouds on a bright summer day.

“I want you to be a part of this baby’s life,” I said. “I want my baby to know his Aunt Lexi.”

“His,” Alexis asked as she slowly stopped crying. “You’re having a boy?”

“I … I don’t know,” I said, not realizing I’d assigned a sex to my unborn child, who couldn’t possibly have one at this point in the development cycle. “I think… maybe… just a feeling.”

“Don’t run away again,” Alexis said. She wasn’t quite pleading with me, but she wasn’t ordering it either. She said it in a way that seemed like she was trying to make it true just by saying it.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said. “I just have to face the truth here. And that means talking to Monica.”

I put down the alarm clock I’d been clutching, got up and grabbed my phone off the counter to text Monica.

“Need to talk to you. Lunch? Plan B? 11?”

There was no response at first.

“Really important.”

Alexis and I sat staring at the phone for a few minutes. Still no response.

“She might not be up yet,” Alexis said.

I just kept staring at the phone.

“Or maybe she’s in the shower,” she added.

“Or maybe she found out, and she’s not talking to me.”

I needed to make sure that hadn’t happened, so I quickly called Bryce.

“Sup slut,” he said, answering the phone in his most delightful fashion.

“Okay I know you can’t see me right now, but I just need you to know how hard I’m rolling my eyes at you,” I said. “And I need you to just shut up and listen to me. Monica and I are in a really delicate place right now. I’m meeting her for lunch today, and I’ll talk to her then and I need to make absolutely sure you don’t fuck it up.”

“C’mon, babe, you know…”

“No,” I said, cutting him off. “The only thing I know is that you’ll find some way to fuck this up.”

“I’d like to fuck you up,” he said in the slimiest way possible.

God, I didn’t think I could hate this asshole more, but every time he opened his mouth he said something so detestable that I literally feared for my future child, who almost definitely shared DNA with him.

“Whatever, asshole,” I said. “Just don’t fucking do anything. Or anyone.”

I hung up before he could even respond, and saw Alexis giving me a look of disappointment.

“No, I don’t know why I ever slept with him either,” I said, predicting what she wanted to say to me. “But it’s my problem to deal with now, and I’m going to deal with it.”

I texted Monica one more time.

“Can do breakfast if it works better for you.”

Finally I saw those little response bubbles pop up on my screen. I never knew three little dots could make me so happy.

“Lunch is fine,” she texted back. “See you at 11 :-)”

I let out another deep breath. I’d gotten so riled up talking to Bryce that I really just needed to try and calm down again, without getting so down that I started crying again.

“So, what’d she say,” Alexis asked.

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I need to tell her this in person.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not an idiot. Is she gonna meet you.”

“Oh, yeah, she said we’re on for 11.”

“What are you going to do until then?”

I looked over at the clock and saw it was barely after 8. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. Despite still being in the purple tank top and shorts I slept in the night before and not wearing any makeup, I actually looked pretty good. Well, except for my hair, which was a wild mess.

“I think I might do something about my hair.”

*****

“WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?!”

As I walked up to Plan B, I’d hoped to spot Monica before she spotted me, but she was sitting at a table on the patio and happened to be facing the exact direction I was coming from. She yelled at me while I was still half a block away, drawing the attention of just about the entire restaurant. Even a couple people who were seated inside poked their heads out to see what the commotion was about.

“YOUR HAIR. IT’S GONE!”

Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. After getting dressed in a pink halter top and pair of jeans that felt a bit too tight – though I wasn’t sure if it was the pregnancy or just not being used to wearing jeans that wore more like a second skin – I went to a nearby salon to get a haircut. At first when I sat down, I considered asking them to just buzz it down to a crew cut, but figured that’d be too extreme even if it was what I’d always done with my own hair. Instead I settled for a pixie cut with sweeping bangs, which really drew the eye to the dark eye shadow I’d managed to put on myself.

“Do you like it,” I said, finally sitting down at the table across from Monica.

“Like it? I love it,” she said. “It’s so different, but you look amazing! What made you cut it?”

“I needed a change,” I said. “I need a lot of changes. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“So does this mean you’re sticking with the black,” she asked.

“I dunno,” I said. “I thought I read something somewhere that you’re not supposed to dye your hair when you’re pregnant, so I might just let it go back to red.”

A day ago, I wouldn’t have even known what my natural hair color was without asking, since I’d seen so many pictures of Alana with so many different hair colors, but now that I shared her memories, I knew it was red – though she hadn’t worn her natural shade of red in about eight years.

“I always thought the blonde looked best on you,” Monica said.

Then, before I could say something, a voice came from behind.

“So did I.”

I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was.

“Bryce,” I said, with utter disdain dripping from my voice.

“Hey sexy,” he said, leaning over and giving me a kiss on the cheek. I quickly spun around and slapped him in the face as hard as I could. His face snapped back and I could already see a red mark forming, and I didn’t even feel remotely bad about it.

“Damn girl, I know you like it rough, but save it for the bedroom,” he said. I was mortified. I hadn’t even had a chance to break the truth to Monica gently, and here he was actively trying to ruin things for me. Even with access to Alana’s memories I couldn’t begin to fathom what she’d ever seen in him. She didn’t even think he was good in bed, but she kept sleeping with him anyway. She really did hate herself. It made me sad, but I couldn’t even let myself fall into that emotion, because right now Bryce was here actively making me mad.

“Oh, please,” Monica said. “Like she’d ever sleep with an asshole like you.”

“You’re just mad because she was a better lay then you ever were,” Bryce said, a laugh in his voice.

Monica looked at me as I turned back at her with a look of total guilt on my face. I had no idea what to say here. I even started to open my mouth, but nothing came out. Then, after a few seconds of looking at me disappointingly, Monica did the most unexpected thing.

She started laughing.

“Umm, he’s … he’s not joking,” I said.

“I know,” Monica said between her laughs. “That’s what’s so funny. Oh, god. You’re… and he… “

She couldn’t even get full sentences out. She just kept laughing and pointing back and forth at the two of us.

“This isn’t funny,” I said. “I really messed up.”

“Yeah you did,” she said, laughing even harder. “This asshole is gonna be… oh god… I can’t even say it.”

“He’s gonna be out of our lives forever,” I said, trying to finish Monica’s sentence and keep Bryce in the dark about the whole baby situation.

“But, baby, you said…”

“STOP. FUCKING. CALLING. ME. BABY.”

My outburst immediately got Monica to stop laughing. She had every right to be pissed at me, and yet somehow I was the one that was more angry about this situation.

“Woah, calm down, Ali,” Bryce said.

“No, I will not calm down, or chill or just roll with it, or do anything you tell me to do, because you’re a disgusting pig, and I hate everything about you.”

Then I looked at him again before continuing.

“Everything except your shoes, which make me even angrier because those are fucking classics and you don’t even deserve to wear them.”

“Seriously, Ali, what the fuck is up with you,” he said. “You always said once it was over with Monica we could finally be together for real.”

“I lied,” I said. “Okay, is that what you want to hear? I lied because I thought that was the only way you’d ever let Monica go, because she deserves way better than you. And I deserve to be alone.”

I picked up my purse and started to walk away when Monica stopped me.

“Ali wait,” she said. “You should stay. He can go.”

“What,” Bryce asked, angrily.

“You heard her,” Monica said. “She doesn’t want you. I don’t want you. No one wants you. Get out of here, get out of our lives and don’t even think about talking to either of us again.”

“Man, fuck both y’all,” he said.

“You already did,” Monica said in retort. “And now we’re closed for business.”

Then she got up, threw her drink in his face – something I’d learned in the past few days she was surprisingly good at – and sat back down, signaling over to the waitress as he did. She came over and handed Bryce a towel as she politely directed him toward the sidewalk, then turned toward us.

“Hi, yes,” Monica said, getting right back into her routine. “She’ll have the Guiltless Greek Burger with a side of organic mixed greens, and I’ll have the Chop Salad with Chicken.”

“And for drinks?”

“Actually,” I said, interrupting, “Can I get the Bacon Cheeseburger, no onions, with a side of tater tots? And we’ll both just have water.”

“Sure thing,” she said, as she turned back inside.

“Pregnancy craving,” I said to Monica, lying my ass off. I knew I was going to have to watch my figure, but I was kind of enjoying the possibility of being able to eat stuff Alana would never eat and chalk it up to “cravings.”

“So,” I said, getting back to the point of why we were meeting. “Are we okay?”

Monica paused, closed her eyes for a second, let out a deep breath, then opened her eyes and looked right at me.

“We are,” she said. “I mean, I should be mad at you. Hell, forget mad, I should be furious. But I guess I’m just relieved that Bryce isn’t part of our lives anymore, even if it took something awful to make that happen.

“And besides,” she added. “You’re the one that has to deal with the lifelong consequences of what you did.”

I looked down at my stomach again, realizing exactly what Monica was talking about.

“I do,” I said. “But I want you to be there for me every step of the way.”

“What about a father,” she asked. “I mean, I know Bryce isn’t an option, but you’re not just gonna raise the kid on your own, are you?”

“I’m not,” I said. “At least I hope not. But I’m also not looking for a man in my life either.”

The waitress came back with our waters, and I immediately started sipping mine with a smirk on my face. Monica looked at me confused. Then her eyes got really wide.

“You don’t mean…”

“I do.”

“Look, Ali, I’m flattered, but that kiss was just a kiss,” she said. “I love you, but I don’t love you love you.”

I had to stop myself from spitting out my water, nearly choking on it in the process. I finally composed myself and let out a quick laugh before explaining.

“Oh, god, no, I didn’t mean you,” I said.

“Well now I’m kind of offended,” she said, jokingly. “Am I not hot enough for you? Any lesbian would be lucky to date me.”

“I’m sure you’d make some confused experimenting college student very happy,” I said. “But I’m kinda in love with this girl Sara.”

“Wait,” Monica said, “Panera Sara?”

“The one and the same.”

“Wow. She’s hot,” Monica said, as she put her water down on the table and leaned back in her chair. “Not bad, Ali. Way to trade up.”

“We’re going on our first real date tonight,” I said.

“Real date?”

“Well,” I said, trying to explain without oversharing, “we kinda got a little physical at the reservoir the other night. Then again in my bedroom.”

“Wait, before or after you broke up with Aiden,” Monica asked.

“Umm… before,” I said, as I snuck another quick sip of water. “But after I’d decided to break up with him, so it’s not like I was cheating on him or anything, so it’s fine right.”

“You little skank,” Monica said, with a huge smile on her face. “I love it.”

My face started to turn red with embarrassment as Monica just kept smiling and looking at me.

“So what are you ladies doing tonight,” she asked. “Anything PG-13, or are you just gonna skip straight to the Skinemax action?”

“We’re going out,” I said, trying to keep my composure and not die of embarrassment. “Dinner, then a movie. Or maybe a movie, then dinner. We haven’t really decided on the order yet.”

“Maybe you can start with dessert,” she said, playfully twirling her straw. “A little cherries jubilee.”

“You are having WAY too much fun with this,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But, seriously, if this is what makes you happy, then I’m happy for you. Plus, it means I don’t have to worry about you sleeping with any of my future boyfriends.”

“Ok, I deserved that,” I said.

“You did,” she said. “And don’t think that’s the last time I mention it. Which, by the way, you’re paying for lunch. Think of it as a ‘you slept with my boyfriend’ tax.”

“Fine,” I said, as the waitress arrived with our food. “But you’re throwing me the best baby shower ever.”

“Obviously,” she said.

“And this better be the best burger ever.”

I took one bite. It was divine.

“OK, fine,” I said my mouth full of medium-rare beef, melted cheese and crispy bacon. “This is amazing. I’m paying.”

Monica laughed and started eating her salad, and for a moment, everything seemed all right.

*****

“This isn’t right.”

I kept pulling dresses out of my closet, trying to find the exact one to impress Sara the most for our date, but nothing felt right. We were only going to Grant’s, which was kind of dressy, but not super formal, so I wanted to look nice, but I also wanted to be comfortable in the movie, which we’d finally decided to do first.

“Hand me the blue one again.”

Alexis went into the pile of discarded dresses next to my closet and dug out a blue deep v-neck dress with a high waist and short hemline. It was super revealing, both front and back, and I kept thinking it might be too much, but my eye kept coming back to it.

“It’s too much, right,” I asked Alexis as I held it up to my body.

“Or not enough,” she said, her eyes rolling. “I think I have purses with more fabric than that dress.”

“OK, MOM,” I said, sarcastically. “What do you want me to wear?”

“How about this,” she said, handing me a BCBG empire waist mini-dress with a metallic top and animal-print skirt. It was just the right balance between sexy and fun.

“With some black tights and booties,” she said, digging in my closet for the right pair of shoes to go with it, “it’d be perfect.”

“What would I do without you,” I asked, as I took my halter top off and started sliding off my jeans.

“Oh, umm…” I said, realizing Alexis was obviously still in the room. “Can I get some privacy?”

“Sure,” she said, handing me the short, velvet boots with the two-inch heel she’d picked out. “You should probably start getting ready.”

“Hey, Lexi,” I said. “Thanks. For everything.”

A few hours passed before I headed out to pick up Sara at her place, in an apartment building a few blocks away. I thought about how crazy it was that we’d been living so close to each other and working in the same mall, but likely never would have connected if not for this massive change in my life.

I parked out front and she exited her apartment building wearing a low-cut green halter top and black skirt, with her red hair pulled up. All I could do was stare at her incredible breasts as she came right up to me and gave me a kiss.

“I love what you did with your hair,” she said as she ran her hands through my shortened cut.

“I love what you did with your… everything,” I said, trying not to sound cheesy, but failing miserably.

“Please,” she said. “You look twice as good as I do. Your makeup is amazing.”

I couldn’t deny I’d done a great job with it. Having access to Alana’s memories made it so much easier, and I could get daring with my looks without risking losing control of myself to a trance state. My eyes were smoky, my lips were pouty and my cheeks were perfectly contoured. I basically had made myself look like the kind of woman I’d want to be with, hoping that it would make Sara want to be with me even more.

“Thanks,” I said. “So, what are we seeing? I was thinking maybe that Katy Perry movie. Or ‘Magic Mike?’”

I had no interest in seeing either of those, but I wanted to suggest something that Alana would normally suggest and that Sara might want to see too. But out of nowhere, she surprised me.

“How about that new Spider-Man movie,” she said. “I love Emma Stone.”

“I thought I was the only girl you loved,” I said, jokingly.

“Oh, don’t worry, you are,” she said. And as if to emphasize it, she gave me a kiss – a deep, long, wet kiss – and even grabbed my ass as she did.

“OK,” I said. “Spider-Man it is. And pretty much anything else you want if it gets me more of that.”

“You’re easy,” she said, as she slid into my car. “I like it.”

We chatted about our day as we drove to the movie, and I filled in Sara on the drama with Monica and Bryce. She was surprisingly cool with the fact that I’d cheated on my previous boyfriend with my best friend’s boyfriend, or at least she didn’t make as big a deal of it as I’d expected. Either she really truly cared about me or she understood that it wasn’t something I wanted to continually rehash, which I was fine with either way.

I was also fine with her idea of “seeing” a movie, which was basically sitting in the back row and making for long stretches. We probably actually “saw” only half the movie, which was fine since I’d already seen it – and I was much more interested in seeing Sara’s breasts than a mediocre rehash of Spidey’s origin story. And yes, at one point she did take off her top, but quickly put it back on when she realized we were drawing just a bit too much attention. Her hair never did quite make it back into that nice up-do she’d had at the beginning of the night, and was tellingly messy as we walked out of the auditorium with the credits starting to roll.

“Don’t you want to stick around to see if there’s an after-credits scene,” she asked, her arm around my waist.

“No,” I said. “I already saw it. It’s pretty lame.”

“Wait, you already saw it?”

“Oh, um, yeah,” I said, catching myself. “The after-credits scene. Someone posted it on Facebook.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. She didn’t seem entirely convinced. “So you wanna grab dinner?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m pretty hungry. All that ‘movie watching’ took a lot out of me.”

She playfully hit me on the shoulder, and then gave me a quick kiss on the cheek as we walked out of the movie theater.

It was already getting late when we arrived at the restaurant and there was about a 30-minute wait before we got seated. We made some small talk in the waiting area – and made out some more – and finally got a table around 10:30. Our dinner was amazing – and not just because I devoured a double cheeseburger and fries. We talked about our lives, our hopes for the future, and connected on a level like I’d never connected with anyone before. The whole time I couldn’t believe I was here on a date with the woman of my dreams, and couldn’t imagine anything better.

Then, in an instant, I screwed it up.

We’d just gotten our desserts – crème brulee for her, white chocolate cheesecake for me – when she casually asked me what I’d thought of the movie.

“It was okay, I guess,” I said. “I think I liked it better the second time.”

“Second time,” she asked as she took a bite of her dessert.

“Yeah,” I said, still not thinking. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones messing me up or maybe it was this divine cheesecake, which was the best thing I’d tasted since becoming Alana, but I stupidly slipped up and continued, “I saw it opening night with Mark.”

“Mark,” she said, confused. “Your ex Mark?”

Oh shit.

“Umm, what I meant was…”

“Don’t lie to me,” she said, cutting me off. “I could tell at the theater you weren’t being honest with me and I can tell now you’re not telling me the whole truth.”

The whole truth. That was a complicated mess. I let out a big sigh and started rubbing my forehead. I was starting to regret having cut my hair, because I really wanted to start twirling my finger in it – a nervous habit I’d picked up from Alana – but there wasn’t enough hair to twirl.

“Look, you don’t have to hide things from me,” she said. “I know you were engaged to a man, and I know he’s still someone important to you. I can handle that.”

“It’s not that,” I said.

“Then what,” she said. “Why’d you lie to me?”

I looked deep in her eyes. I wanted to spill everything to her, but first I just wanted to look at her, to form a picture of her and burn it into my brain. Because I knew, deep down, that if I told her everything – and I mean EVERYTHING – then there was a good chance she’d never speak to me again.

“Can I be honest with you,” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, with a look on her face that was a mix of happiness and concern. “That’s all I want. One hundred percent honesty. From both of us.”

“OK, then I need to tell you something crazy,” I said, “and I know you’re not going to believe me, but I need to tell you anyway.”

“So tell me,” she said. “I can handle it.”

I looked around the restaurant. It was late, so it wasn’t as crowded as it had been when we arrived, but there were still a lot of people here – more people than I felt comfortable possibly overhearing anything I told Sara.

“Not here,” I said.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go back to my place.”

I nodded and we quickly finished our desserts in silence, then paid the bill and left. The drive to her apartment was tense as well, though we at least put on her demo CD and listened to the music to fill the silence. Sara tried to get me to open up while we were driving, but I told her I wanted to wait until we were off the road. I could see that she was concerned, but I couldn’t tell if it was concern for me or about me.

Either way, it would all be over soon.

*****

DAY NINE

“I’m not the person you think I am.”

I didn’t know exactly where to start with telling Sara the truth. I sat on the blue loveseat in the living room of her one-bedroom apartment and she sat on the recliner in the corner of the room. I was perched on the edge of the loveseat, leaning forward with my head in my hands, practically covering my mouth as I spoke.

Sara sat back silently on the couch, letting me tell my whole story. I started at the beginning – literally – with being born Andrew Steven Carlysle. I told her about my childhood growing up, playing football, becoming friends with Mark, my rocky relationship with my sister, my failed attempt at college, my shitty retail job, my parents’ pending divorce and my mom kicking me out of the house.

It took a while, and Sara stayed quiet the whole time, but eventually I reached the point in my life story where everything changed. I tried to explain as best I could what happened, even though I still didn’t really know how it happened. How I woke up one morning as Alana, seemingly stuck in a life I’d never lived, and tried to make the most of it even as the world continued to throw surprises at me.

“And me,” she asked. “Was I a part of this other life?”

“Well,” I said, hesitating.

“Remember,” she said. “One hundred percent honesty.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to hold back tears. “You … you were just the girl who worked at Panera Bread. The girl I dreamed of. The one I wanted to tell how I felt, but never said anything other than a lunch order to. You were so beautiful it scared me.”

“Why,” she asked.

“Because a girl like you never would’ve been with a guy like I was,” I said.

“You don’t know that,” she said, as she got up from the recliner and joined me on the loveseat. She put her arm around me and leaned her head against my shoulder. “You never even gave us a chance.”

“So,” I asked, choking back tears, “you believe me?”

“I’m not sure what to believe,” she said. “It all sounds so impossible, but you don’t seem crazy. And it sure would explain how different you are now.”

“Different,” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “The Alana I knew in school was cold. She could put on like she cared, but really all she cared about was herself. I mean, she was the kind of girl who bailed on her family and friends when she ran out on her fiancé. I mean, sure, she inspired me musically, because she was so damn good at what she did, but she wasn’t a friend, and I’m not sure she would have been.

“I guess what I’m saying,” she continued, as she turned toward me, “is I’m not in love with Alana. I’m in love with you.”

Then she kissed me. It was far from the first time she’d done so – we’d literally just spent half a movie making out – but it felt like the first time she was kissing me.

“But you said you loved her from the moment you first saw her,” I said as I broke away from the kiss.

“And you loved me – or the other version of me – even though you didn’t even know my name,” she said. “That kind of love, the physical ‘love at first sight’ kind, that’s superficial. What we have… what we could have… this is real.”

I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer, only they weren’t tears of unhappiness or frustration. They were tears of joy. I still had no idea why this had happened to me, but I finally knew for sure that I never wanted to go back.

Sara wiped the tears from my eyes, and gave me another kiss. Then she got a mischievous grin on her face.

“What’s that look for,” I asked.

“If what you’re telling me is true, you’ve only be a woman for, what, like a week,” she asked.

“Eight days,” I said, as I looked at the clock, showing it was now close to 1:30 a.m. “I guess today is my ninth day.”

“So you’ve never had sex as a woman,” she asked.

“I have not,” I said, sheepishly. “I mean, I’ve had sex – as Andrew – and I remember all the times Alana had sex. And she had sex a lot, but no, I haven’t done anything down there.

“Hell,” I continued. “I haven’t even masturbated. I guess once you find out you’re having a baby, you stop being turned on by a new set of sex organs.”

“So you’re kind of like a virgin,” Sara said, as she ran her perfectly-manicured finger down from my chin to right in between my breasts.

“I mean, if you want to put it like that,” I said, “sure.”

“Well then,” she said as she got up from the loveseat and pulled me up by my arm, “I think we’re going to have to do something about that.”

She led me into her bedroom, where we stood by the foot of the bed. She slowly, seductively slid her top off. Then she followed by unhooking her bra, letting it drop to the floor.

“Wow,” I said, instinctively.

“You’re looking at me like these are the first breasts you’ve ever seen,” she said.

“First in a while that weren’t mine,” I said. “And yours look way better.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said as she spun me around and unzipped my dress. It fell to the floor, and Sara spun me back around and pushed me back onto the bed.

She climbed on top of me, straddling my body, running her finger up and down my naked torso.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I’ll be gentle.”

She began by kissing me as she caressed my breasts, working her tongue in my mouth in a way I’d never experienced before. As she pressed her body closer to mine, it was like we became one, moving together in perfect harmony.

I felt an intense sexual satisfaction like I never had before as she moved down my torso and slid my panties off my legs. Her tongue penetrated my wet, tight vagina, and I shuddered with a wave of bliss like I’d never experienced. She continued to go down on me, as my soft, gentle moans turned into loud, sharp screams of pleasure.

Sara knew exactly how to touch my body to get it to respond, using everything in her erotic arsenal to turn me on.

“OH GOD YES,” I screamed, grabbing on to the sides of the bed as hard as I could. Sara didn’t say anything, continuing instead to do magical things with her mouth. I’d had sex before, but it never felt like this. Nothing I’d ever felt in my life felt like this. I was never much of a religious person, but I had to imagine this is what heaven was like.

It didn’t take much longer before Sara brought me to my breaking point. As her tongue rubbed against the lips of my soft slit, I arched my back, nearly levitating off the bed. I experienced the most powerful orgasm of my life, letting out a scream that easily could’ve woken anyone in the building.

I flopped back down onto Sara’s now-soiled pink, satin sheets and looked straight up at the ceiling, breathing as hard as if I’d just run a marathon. Sara lay down on her side next to me, putting her arm right under my breasts.

“So,” she said, “was I good?”

I was still too blown away to even begin to form words, so I just giggled as a huge smile came across my face. I rolled to my left and put my own arm around Sara, and we just got lost in each other’s eyes, eventually falling asleep in a warm embrace.

*****

Daytime arrived, and Sara was already in the shower when I woke up, still in a state of blissful shock over what had happened just a few hours earlier. I looked over at my phone at was stunned to see it was already after 10 a.m., and my mother had texted me multiple times asking where I was.

I texted her back assuring her I was fine and that I’d be home later, then got out of bed and started putting on my dress from the night before.

“No you don’t,” Sara said, emerging from the bathroom in a light blue satin bathrobe with a towel wrapped around her head. “I’m not letting you do a walk of shame out of here.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, “but I kinda don’t have anything else to wear.”

“Just borrow something from my closet,” she said. “I’m sure we can find something that’ll be a decent fit.”

So the dress went back on the floor and I stood nude next to Sara as she began going through her wardrobe to find something suitable for me.

“Oh, you’d look amazing in this,” she said, handing me a faux leather jacket with a half-zip front.

“Don’t I still need a shirt,” I asked.

“No, you wear it like a top,” she said. “Plus, it’s thick enough that it won’t matter that you’re not wearing a bra. Because, well, I can’t really lend you one of those.”

She playfully patted my small but surprisingly firm breasts, drawing a smile from me as she turned back to the closet. It was significantly more organized than mine, though Sara’s wardrobe was admittedly far less extensive than my own. She pulled out a pair of skinny jeans to go with the jacket.

“These will work,” she said. “Why don’t you hop in the shower while I track down a belt?”

“You sure you don’t want to join me,” I said, stroking the back of my hand against her cheek.

“If we start that, we’ll never make it to lunch,” she said. “Now you shower, I’ll get dressed and we can meet your friends at the mall.”

Oh, right, I’d totally forgotten I told Monica and Gwen that I’d introduce them to Sara today. Well, then I guess it was really time for me to get ready.

It only took me about an hour to shower, get dressed and do my makeup, which was a solid improvement over the times when I’d slipped into Alana trance mode. Sara was putting the finishing touches on her hair as I looked myself over in the bedroom mirror.

“You know you’re not getting this jacket back, right,” I said as I admired my outfit. It felt strange to be so obsessed with how I looked, but I’d never looked this good in my life, and I was enjoying it.

“It looks better on you anyway,” she said, giving her hair one last brush and turning off the bathroom light. “You ready to go?”

“You look great,” I said.

“You too,” she said. “Now let’s go make your friends super jealous.”

I drove us to the mall, and we listened to more of Sara’s demo on the way over. I really enjoyed her songs, but she said she still wasn’t sure she wanted to be a singer. I thought she had the talent to do it, but I also had to admit that I wasn’t entirely objective when it came to anything about her.

We met Monica and Gwen, who’d already grabbed a table at P.F. Chang’s and were happily chatting away when we arrived.

“Monica, Gwen,” I said, nervously. “This is Sara… my girlfriend.”

“Hi Monica,” Sara said, extending her hand. “I think we’ve met. At the store.”

“Yeah,” Monica said. “You’re the only one who ever gets my order right.”

“And, Gwen, is it,” Sara asked.

“Yep,” she said. “Nice to meet the girl who got Ali to switch teams.”

“Ohmigod, Gwen,” I said, blushing.

“I mean, I knew that kiss with Monica the other night was hot, but I didn’t think you’d go all the way.”

“Kiss,” Sara asked. “With Monica?”

“It was nothing,” Monica said. “Just girls being silly to make a guy jealous.”

“Looked like it turned into something,” Gwen said.

“You’re just mad because you’re the only one at this table that hasn’t gotten to kiss me,” I said, jokingly.

“Is that an offer,” Gwen fired back.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sara said, though I couldn’t be quite sure if she was saying it to me or to Gwen. Either way, Sara was making it clear that I was hers, and I kind of liked it.

One person who wouldn’t like it, without a doubt, was Bryce, who was calling me again. It was no less than the fourth time he’d called me this morning, and I’d let it go to voicemail each time. But his persistence was both getting on my nerves and getting harder to ignore.

“Who is it,” Sara asked. She’d seen me look at the phone and put it back away each time, and was growing concerned for me.

“It’s just Bryce,” I said. “I don’t want to talk to him. Like, ever.”

“Just ignore him and eventually he’ll get the hint,” Gwen said.

“No,” Monica said. “He won’t. He’s an idiot, and a stubborn idiot at that.”

Monica was right. Simply ignoring this problem wasn’t going to make it go away, and I wasn’t going to be happy getting 20 voicemails a day that I didn’t want to listen to. I needed to cut this off, and the first step to doing that was blocking Bryce’s number.

Now, the reality was that thanks to my life as Andrew, I knew perfectly well how to block a number on an iPhone, and I knew that it in no way required the actual services of anyone at the Apple Store. But the Alana in me was never one to pass up an opportunity for deviousness, and I quickly realized that I could both solve my short-term Bryce problem and try and smooth things over with Monica and Mark at the same time.

“Well,” I said, trying not to give away my intentions, “I could block his number. But I’m not even sure how to do that.”

“Just call AT&T and they can probably do it for you,” Monica said.

“Or…” I said, putting my plan into motion, “We could go up and see Mark. I bet he’d be able to do it in a second.”

“Oh no,” Monica said. “You’re not seeing Mark.”

“Why not,” I asked. “I mean, it’s not like we’re going to be anything more than friends.” Then, as if to emphasize my point, I put my arm on Sara’s leg and started rubbing her thigh. She gave me a quick slap on the hand.

“Don’t you start,” she said with a big grin on her face. “Unless you plan on paying me back for this morning.”

“This morning,” Monica asked, her eyebrows arched even more than her makeup job suggested.

“A lady never kisses and tells,” I said, much in the same manner I had when Monica, Gwen and I went out to The Cloud last week.

“So, again, there was kissing,” Gwen immediately followed up with.

“Not on the lips,” Sara said, before closing her lips – the ones on her face – and pretending to lock them and throw away the key. Both Monica and Gwen just stared at the two of us with the same vacant, shocked look on their face.

“You see why seeing Mark won’t be a problem,” I said to them, trying to get back to the point of this increasingly embarrassing conversation. I didn’t know if girls always talked this openly about this kind of stuff or if this was just a case of Monica, Gwen and I having a particularly close relationship, but clearly this was something I was going to have to get comfortable with if I was going to live this life convincingly.

“Fine,” Monica said. “But then I want details. Juicy details.”

“Oh, there were juices,” Sara said. My face turned redder than my natural hair color, as I buried my head in my hands. At that moment, my phone started buzzing again, and I was never happier to see Bryce’s contact information pop up.

“Seriously,” I said, showing the phone to everyone else. “We need to get this taken care of. Now.”

Everyone agreed, and we made our way as a group up to the Apple Store, where I’d worked side-by-side with Mark for years in another life. But now walking in there didn’t have the same familiar feel it used to. Because of the scene that had happened between Mark and me last week, it felt like – well, it wouldn’t be quite accurate to say I wasn’t welcome there, but there was this uncertainty in the air, like I shouldn’t be there. But I knew this time I could just get in there, have Mark quickly block the number on the phone, and maybe have the whole thing go off without Mark and Monica at each other’s throats, hopefully laying the groundwork for a friendship, or at least a detente, between the two of them.

Simple, right?

Of course, if there was any lesson I should have learned from the past nine days, it was that nothing is ever simple.

I flagged down Mark, who was with a customer, and he let me know that he’d help me out as soon as he was done, even though I didn’t have an appointment. I felt a little bad taking advantage of him like this so soon into our rekindled friendship, but I needed him and Monica to be friendly with each other if I was going to maintain a friendship with both of them. Honestly, over the past couple days, I’d frequently considered what I would do if forced to choose between them. On the one hand, Mark and I – the I that I truly was – were best friends. I was as close to him as I was to anyone outside my own family, and probably closer than most of my family. But in the life I was living now, that was Monica’s place – and now that I had all those memories, I knew why.

It wasn’t quite Sophie’s choice, but I knew if I had to choose I’d be hurting one of the people closest to me, which is why I was so dead set on getting them together. No, wait, not “together,” though the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I should take it that far. I mean, to be fair, the Mark and Monica I knew a week ago were dating and nearly engaged.

For now, I’d settle for “talking to each other without getting in a fight.”

I looked to the back of the store to see that Mark was just about finished up when my phone buzzed with Bryce’s number again. I quickly hit “decline” then heard a voice behind me, sending a shiver through my spine.

“So that’s how it is, huh?”

I didn’t know how, but Bryce had tracked me down, and was now standing right behind me.

“Are you stalking me,” I said as I turned around to see him to hopefully end this conversation with a swiftness.

“When the hell were you gonna tell me you were pregnant,” he asked loudly, not quite shouting, but forceful enough that I got scared about what his intentions were.

That caught the attention of Monica, Gwen and Sara, who’d scattered around the store but now quickly rushed to my side.

“How did you find out,” I asked.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “Is it true?”

“It is,” I said, sheepishly. For all the people I’d accidentally or reluctantly told the news to, Bryce was the first person I absolutely didn’t want to tell. But I knew I couldn’t lie to his face, especially if he already found out.

“So what are you gonna do about it,” he asked.

“Do about… it?”

“Yeah, I’m not ready to be a dad,” he said, as if that was the issue at hand here.

“Obviously not,” I said, “but that doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to be.”

“So you’re gonna take care of it then,” he asked. Well, no, he didn’t really ask. He more said it, like it was a statement of fact, and he was relieved about it. And that really pissed me off.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying,” I asked, my annoyance clearly coming through in my voice. Sara wrapped her arm around mine, partly to support me, but also partly to hold me back in case I did something I’d regret.

“What’s so hard to understand,” he said.

“Say it. Say the fucking word.”

“Abortion,” he said, raising his voice. “I want you to have an abortion.”

I closed my eyes to gather my thoughts, because I knew if I just reacted to what he’d just said, I’d fly off the handle. I couldn’t remember being this angry at any point in my life – whether as Andrew or Alana – and with each passing microsecond, the anger was only building. It was like every bit of rage I’d felt at my failures in my life before the switch and everything I’d had to deal with after it was being channeled into this exact moment, and Bryce had, with his completely insensitive declaration, become the perfect outlet for it.

“FUCK. YOU.”

I didn’t scream it, though I’d certainly wanted to. I just said it loudly, firmly, and as confidently as I could, fighting the rollercoaster of emotions I was experiencing at the moment. Sara clutched my arm a little tighter, while Monica, startled by an anger she’d never seen from me, took a step back.

“It’s my body,” I said, “and I’m the only one who gets to decide what to do with it.”

As I said the words, the enormity of what I was saying hit me. It’s my body. Not Alana’s. Not a body I’m in by accident that I’m going to try to get out of. This was me now, and it was the only me I wanted to be. And I wanted to have this baby, regardless of the shitty circumstances that led to its conception. As crazy as it would’ve sounded to me last week, I wanted to be a mother.

But right now, all I wanted was for Bryce to leave. Leave the store. Leave my life. Forever.

“It’s our baby,” he said.

“No, it’s MY baby,” I said in quick return. “You don’t get to throw the abortion card out there then act like you give a shit about it. I want you out of here. Now.”

Just then, a voice chimed in from behind me.

“You should listen to her.”

It was Mark, who’d finally emerged from behind the Genius Bar to help deal with this escalating situation. Only, looking at his face, I feared he would just escalate it more. Or, maybe, more accurately, I hoped he would. I knew that in my new body I couldn’t quite do as much damage to Bryce as I would’ve liked, so I kind of hoped Mark would do it for me.

“I don’t know you,” Mark continued, “but I know Ali wants you gone, so you need to leave.”

“Make me, asshole,” Bryce said, stepping toward all of us. Mark stepped in front of me and got right up in Bryce’s face. Bryce was probably an inch or two taller than Mark, but the Mark I knew was never intimidated by anyone, whether on the football field or in life, and it was clear this Mark was much the same in that manner.

“You don’t want me to do that,” Mark said, trying to be calm and de-escalate the situation. But things were quickly spiraling out of control.

“Like you could,” Bryce said, firing back dismissively. “It’s obvious why Ali left you. You clearly weren’t enough man for her. I guess I was just too much for her to handle.”

“Leave,” Mark said, his nostrils flaring. “Now.”

I tried to put my arm – the one Sara wasn’t already holding back – around Mark’s arm, but he shrugged me off and took another step toward Bryce. They were now nose-to-nose, and I could tell this wasn’t going to end well. Bryce took a step back and put his hands up facing out, as if to signal that he was backing off. He continued to step back slowly and Mark turned toward me and started to ask if I was OK.

But before Mark could say a word, Bryce charged and threw a wild punch. Years of protecting Mark’s blind side caused my protective instincts to kick in and I pushed him aside. I looked up and the last thing I saw was Bryce’s fist as it made solid contact with the side of my face.

In an instant, everything went black.

*****

DAY TEN

“Andrew, get your lazy ass out of bed!”

My head was pounding as I heard my mother’s scream reverberate throughout the house. The last thing I’d remembered was Bryce’s punch landing solidly against my head, so I had no idea how I got home.

I sat up in bed and started rubbing my temples to shake off this headache, and thought maybe I’d misheard my mother, but then she stormed into my room with a basket of laundry and dumped it on the floor.

“Dammit, Andrew,” she said as she shook the last pieces of clothing out of the basket. “I asked you to get your laundry out of the dryer last night and you couldn’t even do that. What are you gonna do when I’m not there to clean up after you?”

I looked at her confused. It was clearly my mother, but she wasn’t talking to me like I was her daughter. She was talking to me like I was … oh, shit.

I sprung up from bed and ran to the floor-length mirror in the corner of my room, only there was no mirror there.

“What the hell is wrong with you,” my mom asked, growing increasingly agitated by my behavior.

“Everything,” I said. “Everything’s wrong.”

“Well, we finally can agree on something,” she said, as she picked up a shirt off the floor and tossed it at me. “Now get dressed. I’m taking you to look at apartments in an hour.”

She stormed out, still clearly upset with my inability to do a basic chore and I was left alone to try and piece together what had happened. For the second time in a little more than a week, I’d woken up in a different life from the day before.

As I looked around the room, everything started to come into focus. This was my room – the room as I’d left it when I was Andrew. It had the same queen mattress and box spring stacked on the floor, the same MacBook Pro on the desk, the same dirty T-shirts strewn about – not even accounting for the pile of clothes my mother had just left me to put away – and even the same Super Bowl poster on the wall. This was Andrew’s room.

And, once again, I was Andrew.

The T-shirt my mother had tossed me was another clue – it was a New England Patriots shirt, identical to the one I’d been wearing when I fell asleep before waking up as Alana. I slipped it on, and though it was soft and baggy, it felt like a cage. I’d spent my first few days as Alana trying to get back to this life, and just when I’d finally become comfortable in my new life, I had it ripped away from me in an instant.

Being back to my far more familiar gender was hardly a consolation, because I was more confused than ever. Had everything I’d been through as Alana been nothing more than a dream?

No.

I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew in my core that it wasn’t a dream. It was real. It was more real than anything I’d ever experienced before. I asked for a reboot, I got it, and it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Now I just needed to get it back.

Looking around the room for some kind of answer, I spotted my computer again. As crazy as it still sounded to me, wiping it clean and starting over had started this whole process, so it was worth trying again. I booted up the computer and discovered that it was still basically freshly wiped, almost as I’d left it 10 days ago. That certainly made the process easier, as I navigated to the utilities folder to start the re-install process.

As the computer ran through the initial set-up steps, I got dressed, wearing a plain black T-shirt, baggy jeans, and my Air Jordan 11s – the same ones I’d gotten so pissed to see on Bryce’s feet. I should’ve been comfortable in these clothes, but instead they felt terribly unfamiliar. I wanted to put on a dress, but looking at myself in the mirror I quickly realized how horrible that would look on me. The mental image of my 6-foot-3, 300+ pound frame in a cocktail dress made me laugh, which was the first time all morning I’d felt remotely happy about anything.

My mother was downstairs in the kitchen making some coffee when I went down to get some breakfast. She seemed more stressed than usual, which wasn’t a total surprise, given what she was going through with the divorce.

I went into the fridge and looked past the bottles of soda and beer, taking a bottle of water instead.

“Are you hung over again,” my mother asked.

“God, I just wanted a bottle of water,” I said, a little more snippy than I should have. I took a sip, and then apologized to my mother.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what,” she asked, as if she was completely caught off guard by me apologizing for anything.

“For snapping at you just now,” I said.

She just looked at me, with that look that mothers give you when they know you’re not telling them everything, but they also know you won’t tell them if they ask. And dammit if that look didn’t work every time. I had to remember it if I ever got back to being Alana, so I could use it on my future child.

“I guess,” I continued, “for not being more supportive, more helpful, while you’re going through a tough time. I mean, it’s not like I should be picking sides between you and dad…”

“I’d never ask you to do that,” she interjected.

“I know,” I said, “but it doesn’t have to be just about picking sides. I mean, I’m 25. I should be living my own life. But here I am still at home, still making things hard on you, when you should be focusing on yourself and Ali.”

I took another sip of water and a deep breath before continuing.

“I guess what I’m saying is, I need to get my life together, and thank you for showing me that, even if it wasn’t want I wanted to hear.”

“Who are you,” my mom asked.

“I’m… I’m Andrew,” I said. “I think.”

“You can’t be my son,” she said. “My son would never say something that smart.”

“I’m trying to change,” I said, meaning it in more ways than one.

“Look,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee, “I don’t know if this is some kind of trick or something, but I’m not really in the mood to take you apartment hunting and it seems like you’re at least willing to try it yourself.”

She reached into one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out my car keys.

“Just promise me you’ll really try today,” she said.

“I will,” I said. “I just have to take care of one thing first.”

She reluctantly handed the keys over to me and continued drinking her coffee as I walked out the back door. It was strange to see my backyard sans pool again, but refreshing to see my black Dodge Charger sitting in the driveway. I went to plug my phone into the USB port, but as I started the car, the radio came on and a Taylor Swift song started playing. A few days ago I might not have even recognized it other than to know I didn’t like it, but rather than put on my own music, I left it playing. It made me feel somewhat connected to my life as Alana.

The song was “You Belong With Me,” which felt fitting, because that’s what I was going to tell Sara. I didn’t know if she’d recognize me or even know who I was, but I had to take the chance that if I was going to be stuck like this that I could at least be stuck like this with the woman I loved.

Eventually the Taylor Swift song ended and I put on my own music as I got closer to the mall, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how much my time as Alana had affected me. I’d been Andrew for 25 years and Alana for 10 days, and yet sitting in this car at this moment, I felt more like Alana than Andrew. For all her faults and mistakes, she was the best version of me, the me I was meant to be. And a large part of that was being with Sara.

I pulled into the mall parking lot and turned off my car, but just sat there for a few minutes, trying to gather my thoughts. I had no memory of Andrew’s last 10 days, but given what I knew of my life before the change I found it highly unlikely that I’d said anything to Sara about my feelings for her in the time I spent as Alana. I started to think about being stuck in this life, but more specifically being stuck in a life without Sara. I’d dated as Andrew, and I’d been in relatively serious relationships – though certainly not in a long time – but I’d never felt the way I felt about Sara with anyone else. Not even close. And the more I sat in my car and dwelled on my current reality, the more I became concerned that I’d never get to feel that way ever again.

But just sitting here dwelling on things wasn’t getting me any closer to anything I wanted, so I finally mustered up the courage to go inside and try and talk to her. Walking into Panera Bread, I saw her standing behind the counter pouring a drink for a customer, but she didn’t notice me. I wouldn’t have expected her to, but part of me was hoping she would. That she’d see me standing in the entrance way, drop the cup and run to me, and we’d kiss and everything would be perfect again. But this wasn’t a movie. Life didn’t work like that. So she just kept on working, and I just kept standing there like a big fat idiot.

Eventually I made my way up to the counter, where I was standing face to face – or as close as I could, given my renewed height – with Sara. She looked up at me in line, and I looked into her eyes, hoping to see a glimmer of recognition, but there was nothing there.

“Can I help you,” she asked in a flat tone that suggested I was just another in an endless line of customers she’d have to help in a mindless job that had no relation to what she wanted to do with her life.

“You…” I started to say, hesitating, unsure if I should even bring anything up. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

“Oh, hey,” she said, perking up a bit. It gave me a brief moment of hope, but then in an instant it was ripped away. “Smokehouse Turkey Panini guy, right? Sorry, I didn’t recognize you without your Apple shirt.”

“I’m Ahhh…” I caught myself before I finished accidentally introduced myself as Alana, which would’ve been incredibly difficult to explain.

“Andrew,” I said, continuing, trying to play it off as if I hadn’t nearly messed up my own name. “You can call me Andrew.”

“Hey, Andrew,” she said. “So, can I get you the usual?”

“Actually, Sara, I kind of wanted to talk to you,” I said, as I fidgeted in place. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d been this nervous. Not even before my final football game against our crosstown rival which I was pretty certain would be the last time I stepped on a football field as a player.

“You,” she said, confused, “you know… do we know each other?”

“That’s kind of a complicated question,” I said. “Is there somewhere we can go and talk?”

“Well, I’m kind of stuck here for the next few hours,” she said. I could sense her hesitance. She clearly had no idea who I was and now I was just some random creeper who somehow knew her name and I was freaking her out.

So, for some idiotic reason, my brain – rather than telling me to back away and salvage my dignity – decided to go all in with the freak out.

“Look, Sara, you’re probably not going to believe this, but we do know each other,” I said. “Or we did. It’s hard to explain. But I know you, even if you don’t know me or remember that you do.”

She just looked at me with a look on her face that was half confused and half scared.

“You’re a songwriter,” I said, trying to prove that I knew her from somewhere other than our brief encounters across the Panera Bread counter. “A good one. I’ve heard your music. It’s incredible.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “You must be thinking of someone else. I don’t do anything with music. I just work here. For two years now.”

I didn’t know if she was lying to me because she was scared of me or if she really didn’t write music in this reality, but either way I knew this wasn’t the Sara I knew.

“This was a mistake,” I said, as I started to back away, with my heart sinking in my chest. She didn’t say anything to me as I turned toward the door. Then, just before I was out the door, she yelled out.

“Wait,” I heard her say. I turned around hopeful. Was this it? Was this the big Hollywood moment where she said she remembered everything and we kissed with the music swelling and the sun breaking through the clouds and shining down on us and then smash cut to our perfect wedding?

Of course not.

“You forgot your phone,” she said, holding it up and waving it so I’d see. I reached in my pockets, as if to confirm that in fact I didn’t have my phone, and made the embarrassing walk back to her, silently putting my hand out to take my phone from her.

“Here you go Andrew,” she said as she handed it to me. “It was nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” I said, flatly, trying to hide my emotional disappointment. She gave me a half-hearted smile as I turned and left the restaurant. Deep down I wondered if I ended up stuck in this life, would this be the last time I ever saw Sara? I’d never dealt with awkward situations very well in the past – not that anyone does, otherwise they wouldn’t be awkward – and it’d be easy for me to just stop coming in here for lunch. It’d probably hurt to not see her every day, but I think it’d hurt more to see her and see the way she looked at me like she just had.

I trudged down the hall and rode the escalator up to the second floor to drop in on Mark at the store. With our regular schedules, I knew he’d be working today, and he’d be on back-of-house duty, which meant we could talk without having to worry about customers interrupting us.

It was early, but the store was already busy and packed with customers, the angriest of whom had congregated around the Genius Bar. One of my co-workers tried to signal to me, probably to ask if I could help out, or even punch in on my day off, but I blew right past them and straight into the back, where I saw Mark sitting at one of the repair benches filling out some paperwork.

“Hey,” he said, not even looking up. “I didn’t think you were coming in today.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, “but I needed to talk to you.”

“What’s up,” he said, as he put down the papers and spun his chair around toward me. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to say next. I didn’t want to tell him about everything I’d been through as Alana – especially not the whole kissing him thing, because that’d open up a whole crazy can of worms – but I couldn’t just stand here and act like nothing had changed. Because no matter what life I ended up in, I knew my life was never going to be the same.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, before hesitating.

“That’s never good,” he said, half-jokingly.

“I’m serious,” I said. I decided to sit down at the bench opposite him, to try and get more comfortable for what was going to be an uncomfortable conversation. “I need to make some changes in my life.”

“Is this about your mom kicking you out,” he asked.

“It is,” I said, “But it’s not just that. I mean, is this really the life I’m supposed to be living? I’m 25 years old, I live at home, I have a dead-end job, no girlfriend, no … just nothing.”

Looking over at Mark, I could tell he was getting bummed out by my pity party, so I decided to shift the conversation – if not in tone, then in time.

“Man, look, I shouldn’t be hitting you with all this at work,” I said. “Why don’t we get a drink tonight?”

“I can’t,” he said, as he began to shuffle through the papers again, clearly trying to avoid a touchy subject.

“Why not,” I asked, trying to be gentle about prodding, but coming across more defensive than I would have liked.

“It’s Monica,” he said. He put the papers back down and leaned back in his seat, looking up at the ceiling.

Great, so in every reality, Monica wants to keep me and Mark apart, only here it’s me who’s the problem. At least as Alana, I had Monica’s trust and could help re-build a bridge between me and Mark, eventually getting her to cross it. But here? There wasn’t going to be any changing of Monica’s mind, at least not without a miracle. And I’d already gotten my fair share of those for a lifetime. Multiple lifetimes, in fact.

“I know she doesn’t like me,” I said, “but I just don’t get why.”

“It’s not that she doesn’t like you,” Mark said, trying to soften the truth. But he was a terrible liar. At least that was consistent in every reality. “She just doesn’t know you like I do.

“But it’s not even about that,” he continued.

“So what is it about,” I asked. This time I wasn’t even trying to be diplomatic. I just said it, angrily, because I could tell Mark was avoiding something with me, and I wasn’t in the mood for games.

“She’s pregnant,” he said.

I expected my jaw to drop, but a different reflex kicked in instead: I started biting my lower lip. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it at first, but then I felt a tear well up in my left eye. This wasn’t the reaction of a friend who just found out his best friend was about to become a father. This was the reaction of a woman who was hearing about someone else’s baby for the first time and just now realizing that her baby was gone. No, not her baby. My baby.

Twenty-four hours ago I was ready to tell the world about my pregnancy, and now I was back in this life where a child wouldn’t remotely be part of my future. It was killing me inside, and compounding that pain was the fact I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold back the tears much longer, and it’d be hard to explain to Mark why I was sobbing if I started crying in front of him, so I just quickly got up and headed to the door as quickly as I could.

“Dude, is everything okay,” Mark asked.

“Congratulations,” I said, my voice cracking. “I just… I gotta go.”

Mark, clearly confused by my sudden shift in behavior, got up, but I continued down the hall and out the door to the sales floor as quickly as I could, then used the sea of customers to run interference as I left the store and ran into one of the public bathrooms down the hall. I just sat in a stall for a couple minutes crying, thinking about the baby I might have lost, before composing myself with a renewed resolve to return to my life as Alana by any means necessary. And I knew the next best place to start.

By talking to Alana.

I drove home as fast as I could without risking getting pulled over, and rushed upstairs, only to find that my sister wasn’t even home. As I looked in at her empty room, I saw the telltale signs of the sister I thought I’d left behind when I became Alana – stealing her name in the process. The ash tray on her counter, the cracked mirror with the leather jacket draped over it, the discarded boxers peeking out from under the bed that belonged to a guy who was probably at least five years older than her, these were all things Alexis never would’ve had in her room, and in her life.

Rather than wait around and have Alana find me rummaging through her room, I went back to mine, where my computer was prompting me to reboot to complete the installation process. I wanted to wait to try and talk to my sister, but I also wanted to get back to being Alana as quickly as possible, so I closed my eyes, hit enter and braced myself. I took a deep breath and waiting, hoping when I opened my eyes I’d be back in my life as Alana, but instead after about 30 seconds I heard the telltale tune of a Mac starting up with a fresh operating system for the first time. The reboot hadn’t changed anything.

I sat on the floor by the end of my bed, despondent. I really believed for some crazy reason that this software reboot thing would reboot my life again, and couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong this time – or what I’d done right the time before to make it happen in the first place. I was banging the back of my head against my mattress in a futile effort to re-induce the head trauma that had snapped me back into my life as Andrew when I heard a knock at my open door.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I looked up to see my sister standing in the doorway. I’d still been holding out hope that I’d see Alexis, or something similar, but of course I had no such luck. This was the same Alana I’d left behind 10 days ago, the one with the dyed-black hair and the nose and lip rings and the smell of cigarettes wafting off her skin.

“Let me guess,” she continued. “You fell down and you’re too fat to get up on your own.”

“Why do you hate me so much,” I asked.

“Because there’s so much of you to hate,” she responded bitingly. OK, I walked into that one. But I seriously wanted to talk to her about this – not because I thought she’d have any answers on how to fix my situation, but because I needed to know if there was anything I could’ve done as Andrew to have a relationship with Alana like the one Alana had with Alexis.

“Is that it,” I asked. “You just hate me because I’m fat?”

I expected another joke from Alana, but she hesitated in her answer. “Well, no,” she eventually said, trying to avoid eye contact with me.

“So what is it,” I asked, pressing the issue. “What is it about me that makes you hate me so much.”

“I don’t… I mean… It’s not…” she said, fumbling for what to say. Then, out of nowhere, there was a shift in the tone of her voice. “Why do you think I hate you?”

The way she said it, she almost reminded me of Alexis – which shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise since technically they were the same person, just very different in the lives they’d lived. She seemed almost hurt by the accusation that she hated me.

“I mean, isn’t it obvious,” I said. “The fat jokes, the vagina jokes, the way you mock me and cut me down every chance you get.”

“That’s just stupid sibling stuff,” she said. “I never mean anything by it. And besides, it never seemed to bug you before.”

“Oh, it always did,” I said, “but I guess maybe now I’m just growing – save your fat joke – and I don’t want our relationship to be like this. I know we’ll always be brother and sister, but I want us to be friends too.”

Again, I braced myself for the mocking that was sure to come from my sister, but instead she sat down next to me on the floor. I instinctively recoiled a bit from the smell of cigarette smoke, but tried not to let her see that. This was the first time in years she’d been anything but cold and mean toward me, and I didn’t want to ruin it just because she didn’t smell like the lilac perfume Alexis had been wearing the past few days.

“You think mom and dad are getting divorced because of us, don’t you,” she said.

Admittedly, the thought crossed my mind, even before I became Alana, but I knew deep down that while we hadn’t helped the situation, there’s no way my parents were getting divorced solely because my sister and I didn’t get along.

“No,” I said, “it’s not our fault. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to get along better. Even if just for our sake.”

“Well, it’ll probably be easier when you move out,” she said. “I mean, we won’t be up in each other’s business all day, so maybe that’ll help, right?”

“I guess,” I said. “But it’s also possible that we just end up drifting further apart and never talking to each other at all. And I don’t want that to happen.”

“Neither do I,” she said. “Sure, I give you shit all the time … like ALL the time … but you’re still my brother. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“It’d be better,” I said reflexively, without even thinking about it.

“You don’t know that,” she said, trying to cheer me up.

“I guarantee you that your life would be better if you had an older sister instead of me,” I said. Alana probably thought I was speaking hypothetically, but I knew better. I knew she deserved the sister she’d had in my other life – and the only way to give her that was to get back to that life. I could’ve taken everything I’d learned as Alana and applied it to being a better sibling, but it wouldn’t undo the damage that was already done.

“Maybe,” she said, “but I don’t have an older sister. I have you. And I need to be better about appreciating that.”

“Thanks,” I said. Then I gave her a hug.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “And you’re still fat.”

“And you still stink like cigarettes.”

We laughed and continued to embrace, when my mom walked in.

“Who are you,” she asked.

“What,” my sister said to her, as we stopped hugging.

“You look like my children,” my mom said, “but you can’t be. You’re not being mean to each other.”

“About that,” I started to say to my mom, as Alana and I both got up from sitting on the floor.

“We’re gonna try to be better,” she said, finishing my thought.

“Yeah,” I said. “We know things are hard on you right now, and you don’t need us making them harder.”

My mom seemed genuinely surprised by our sudden change of heart, though I’d imagine if she knew what I’d lived through over the past 10 days, she’d get it.

“Wow, that’s really sweet,” she said. Then she turned directly toward me and added “but don’t think this is buying you any more time here. I still want you in your own place by the end of the month.”

“I know,” I said. “In fact, I’m going out to look at a place later this afternoon.”

“That’s great,” she said. “Maybe your sister can use her newfound understanding toward you to help you pack.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Alana said as she blew past us and headed into her room. My mother just gave me a shrug as if to say “I don’t get her either” then went back downstairs to continue whatever she’d been doing before finding us up in my room.

Meanwhile, I went back to my computer to try anything I could think of to try and reboot myself back into my life as Alana. I did software updates and rebooted. I removed software and rebooted. I forced a hard reboot. None of it did anything. Eventually the afternoon turned into evening, and I was growing more and more frustrated with every passing failed attempt. I was just about ready to give up when I decided to try one last thing: restoring my data from backup, the only thing I hadn’t done the first time I restored my computer last week.

That was another process that was going to take a while, so rather than sit here and wait for it, all the while getting increasingly impatient, I went out to get a drink.

There were plenty of places in town I could’ve gone, but somehow I found myself at Plan B, where I’d had my awkward encounter with Bryce and Monica. And yet this was more awkward – I was sitting alone at the end of the bar, by myself, with no one within three seats of me. And yet it seemed like the rest of the bar was full of people. It was like I’d created a bubble of sadness around me, and no one dared to come close to penetrating it.

I sipped the last of my vodka martini – a drink I’d ordered to try and seem cooler than I was – and looked around the room to see if there was anyone I knew, who I might be able to go talk to and make this whole situation less depressing. But the only familiar face I saw, strangely enough, was Gwen. She was at a corner table happily chatting away with a few other girls, completely oblivious to my presence. I thought about going up to them and saying hi, but given what had happened with Sara earlier today, I figured that wouldn’t end well.

The night went on and I had a couple more drinks, all the while saying nothing to no one. I was about to call it a night and head home when I turned to the door and saw the last person I ever expected to see that night: Sara.

She walked up to the bar and waited to place an order. I tried not to look over too much, but couldn’t help but notice that not only was she wearing the same leather jacket she’d given to me just a day ago, but around her neck was a black string necklace with an ankh pendant, remarkably similar to the one I’d worn when I saw her perform a week ago. Had I been more optimistic – or still Alana – I would have taken it as a sign that the universe was trying to bring us together. Instead, I took a swig of my martini and tried to signal to the bartender that I wanted to close out my tab before she saw that I was there.

My attempts to get the bartender’s attention were failing about as miserably as everything else in my life, when I heard a loud, obnoxious voice break through the din of white noise that was the conversation in this bar.

“Hey baby,” he said, not talking to me, but talking near enough to me that I could hear every slimy word perfectly clearly. And each word was like nails on a chalkboard, if that chalkboard was next to a megaphone. “That jacket looks great on you. I bet it looks even better off you.”

I swiveled in my chair hoping my instincts were wrong and this was just some random asshole I didn’t know. Of course, given how my day had gone, I should have known I’d have no such luck. I let out a deep sigh as I saw Bryce with his arm on the bar, leaning up against Sara, who was doing whatever she could to wriggle her way out of this situation – literally.

She tried being polite, but Bryce wasn’t getting the message, and even in this reality Sara wasn’t the type of girl who would throw a drink in a guy’s face. So, against my better instincts, I decided to intervene.

“I don’t think you’re her type,” I said, causing Bryce to turn his head with a dismissive look.

“Oh, what, and you are, fatso,” he said. It wasn’t remotely the cleverest putdown he could have come up with, but I didn’t really expect witty banter from him.

I stood up and got right in his face, staring him down – and as much as I’d struggled to adjust to my change back to being Andrew, being able to literally look down on someone in this moment was certainly helpful. He didn’t back away, but took his arm off the bar to square up to me.

“This is none of your business, big guy, so why don’t you just sit back down and stuff another burger in your face before I fill it with a knuckle sandwich,” Bryce said, trying to sound tougher than he was. That said I knew from experience that he wouldn’t hesitate to throw a punch, and as much as I wanted to hit him back, getting in a bar fight was probably the last thing I needed right now, so I tried to take the situation in a different direction.

“I’m just trying to help you out, bro,” I said in my own “bro-iest” voice possible. “I know this chick and she’s a real bitch. You’re just wasting your time and money with her. You want to score, check out the hotties in the booth over there.”

I pointed in Gwen’s direction. I felt mildly bad pawning Bryce off on her, but she was there with at least three other girls as far as I could tell, and it seemed more likely that the group of them could deal with his bullshit much more easily than Sara could by herself.

“For real,” Bryce asked.

“You know it, bro,” I said.

“Yo, good lookin’ out, bro,” Bryce said.

He started to walk away, then turned back to Sara and said, “enjoy drinking alone, bitch.”

As soon as Bryce had completely turned away, I rolled my eyes hard. After that awful conversation, I wanted to vomit. Where was my morning sickness when I needed it?

“I’m sorry about that,” I said to Sara as I took my seat again at the end of the bar. “I just know that guy is a total asshole and I figured you didn’t need to deal with that tonight.”

“Thanks, I think,” she said hesitantly. “Oh, hey, it’s Andrew, right?”

“Yeah, you’re Sara, right,” I said, trying to play it off as if I wasn’t madly in love with her. “What are you drinking?”

“I’ll have a vodka tonic,” she said to the bartender, who’d come over when it looked like Bryce and I might start throwing punches and breaking things.

“And I’ll have a Macallan, neat. Put them both on my tab,” I quickly added.

“You really don’t need to do that,” she said, but the bartender had already started to make the drinks.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Besides, I owe you after calling you a bitch and being all weird at the store today.”

“Well, I know you didn’t mean the bitch thing,” she said. “And, weirdly, I’ve been thinking about you ever since I saw you this afternoon.”

“Well if some creepy guy I’d never met came up to me at work and pretended he knew me, I’m not sure I could stop thinking about it all day either.”

I didn’t know what to say about this whole messed-up situation, so falling back on self-deprecating humor seemed to be my best option. Or at least the one I was most comfortable with.

“No, it was something you said.”

Looking at her, I expected her to be nervous about sitting next to me, but she seemed at ease, much more so than she’d been at the store. It was almost like I was looking at the Sara I’d come to know over the past few days, rather than the one who barely knew me at all.

“How’d you know I wrote music,” she asked.

I didn’t have a good answer for her, at least not one that didn’t make me seem insane. And while telling Sara the truth about my dual life had gone well – incredibly well – when I was Alana, I didn’t think it was worth pressing my luck again. So I fumbled for an answer that would sound at least somewhat reasonable.

“I thought someone had told me something like that, but I guess they were thinking about someone else,” I said.

“That’s the thing, though,” she said as the bartender put her drink down in front of her. She took a sip – okay, it was more like a swig – then continued. “I did write music. Or at least I tried to. But it never went anywhere, and I never told anyone about it.”

“Well, obviously you told someone,” I said.

“Unless you know my freshman year History of Music teacher, then I doubt that’s how you found out,” she said. “But you knew. And you said my music was good. That’s not something you’d say just because someone told you.”

“It was good,” I said.

“But how,” she asked. “I mean, I seriously never did anything with the songs I wrote, and I’ve never seen you outside of the mall.”

“I can’t explain it,” I said. Then, without thinking about it, I started reciting lyrics from one of the songs I’d heard on Sara’s demo tape.

“Your eyes were dangerous but they shined like stars/and I knew that I shouldn’t but I couldn’t help but like it when we made out in your car…”

She gasped, stunned to hear her words coming out of my mouth. Then, in the softest, sweetest voice, she picked up the song and started singing.

“And I was Rachel and you were Ryan and we were meant to be/I didn’t think that you’d end up disappointing me…”

“It’s great,” I said. “Just perfect, really.”

Her eyes were wide as she stared at my face, unable to grasp any explanation for what was happening. And maybe what was happening defied explanation. Maybe it was just that we were meant to be, across dimensions, across lives, and this was our connection.

She reached out and touched my cheek, rubbing her finger along my three-day-old stubble.

“You remind me,” she started to say. She was barely speaking above a whisper, but I could hear her clearly, as if the rest of the noise in the bar was being muted my some unseen force. “I think I met you in a dream once. But you were different.”

She couldn’t possibly be remembering when I was Alana, could she?

“Does the name Alana mean anything to you,” I asked. I could feel the hope swelling inside me. I wanted to push it back down – a wise man once said in a movie, “hope is a dangerous thing.” But with every passing moment, I could feel us getting closer to a connection.

“I think,” she said. I could see her struggling to remember. It was like that moment right when you wake up, and you think you remember exactly what you were dreaming about, but the more you try to focus on the details the further away they seem, until it’s all just a cloudy fog of forgotten memories.

I didn’t want to be Sara’s forgotten dream. I wanted to be her future.

I grabbed the whiskey in front of me, my last drink of the night, and poured it down my throat as quickly as possible.

“Screw it,” I said, as I went for it. I pulled Sara in and kissed her. I expected her to recoil, or push away, and at first she did put her hand on my chest as if that’s exactly what she wanted to do. But then she slid her hand around to my back, and it wasn’t just that I was kissing her – instead we were kissing. And we kept kissing, and as we did, I closed my eyes. And, again, in an instant, everything went black.

*****

DAY ELEVEN

“Hey, I think she’s waking up.”

She’s?! Did this mean I was back?

I looked down at myself and saw Alana. Me. I was Alana again. And unlike the first time it happened, I couldn’t have been happier about it.

Sara and Mark were standing in my room looking over me as I began to feel more awake. My head was still buzzing with a killer headache, and the side of my face was sore as all hell. I reached up to feel where the pain was and quickly pulled my hand back, as it hurt to touch.

“It’s starting to look a little better,” Sara said of the bruise just below my eye. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” I said. “How’d I get here?”

Mark explained that after Bryce knocked me out, they wanted to take me to the hospital, in part because I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. But every time I was awake and coherent – which apparently hadn’t been often – I just kept saying that I wanted to go home. So they brought me here, and Sara and Mark stuck around to keep an eye on me.

I took my time getting up from bed, since I was still in quite a bit of pain, and nearly as much shock. It’d seemed like a matter of minutes ago that I was worried about possibly never living the life I felt like I was meant to live, and now I was back here and had the two people most important to me right by my side. I walked up to the standing mirror in the corner of my room and took a good look at the large bruise on my face – my beautiful, familiar female face.

“I’m sure it’ll look better in a few days,” Sara said.

“It looks perfect,” I said, as tears started to well up in my eyes.

“Are you okay,” Mark asked.

“I’m fine,” I said, wiping my eyes dry.

“We really should take you to the hospital,” Mark said. “At least to check for a concussion and make sure there’s nothing broken.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I said, as I continued to examine my reflection in the mirror. I was just so happy to be Alana again, and I knew I was completely ready to leave Andrew in my past. Not only was this the person I was, but it was the person I wanted to be. I wanted to be Mark’s friend and ex-fiancée, I wanted to be Sara’s girlfriend, I wanted to be Lexi’s sister, and – most importantly – I wanted to be a mother to the child I was carrying.

“I want to check on the baby too,” I added.

“That’s a good idea,” Sara said. She stood next to me, putting one arm around my waist and another on my bare stomach. I realized I’d been standing there wearing nothing more than a bra and some workout shorts – which might’ve concerned me had it been anyone other than Mark and Sara in the room.

Sara handed me a T-shirt and some yoga pants so I’d be comfortable on the trip to the hospital and I quickly threw them on. Before we left my room, I scrambled back to my vanity and started rifling through the drawers. Sara and Mark weren’t sure what I was doing, but then I pulled out the ankh necklace and slipped it on.

“Is now really the time to be accessorizing,” Mark asked. I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and thanked him for worrying about me, and assured him I’d be all right. He headed off to work and Sara and I headed to the local urgent care center, where they were a little concerned that I hadn’t been more urgent in my attempts to receive care. I couldn’t exactly explain to them that I’d been somehow transported to another life – hell, I could barely explain it to myself – so I made up some story about not being sure about my insurance status, even though I knew that in just about every reality imaginable I was still covered by my parents’ policy.

Once I was there, they did some x-rays, confirming that fortunately nothing in my face or head was broken, which was nice to know. I figured I’d be in much more pain if anything was, but getting it officially checked out still brought a sense of relief.

Much more concerning was the state of the child growing in the womb that I was still getting used to having. The punch left the obvious mark on my face, but I’d hit the floor pretty hard too – at least from what my friends had told me – and been slipping in and out of consciousness for an entire day. They brought me into a private room and had me take my shirt off as I lay back on the examination bed. I was nervous, and Sara could sense that, so she came over to my bedside and held my hand.

“Everything’s going to be all right,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “Because you’re here.”

She kissed my hand then held it against her chest.

“You feel that,” she said. “It’s my heart. It’s yours.”

“Stop,” I said as the emotions swelled up inside me and threatened to burst out like some kind of alien monster. “You’re gonna make me cry before the nurse even gets in here.”

“Well we don’t want that,” she said with a smile on your face. “Even if you’re really cute when you cry.”

“I’m still getting used to being called cute,” I said sheepishly. It was true. Even before I’d gotten fat – which happened when I was pretty young – I wasn’t what you would’ve called a good-looking person, and it never really mattered to me. Now I was beautiful, and having someone I cared about point it out made me feel good.

“Well, you are,” she said. Then she jokingly added, “I mean, you’re not as cute as me, but you’ve got some nice features.”

We shared a laugh, which felt incredibly good. Then I got serious.

“You saved me, you know,” I said to her.

“I know,” she said, with a grin on her face.

“No, I mean it,” I said. I then explained to her what had happened over the previous day, telling Sara how I found her as Andrew, then she found me in the bar when I was ready to give up, and how her kiss woke me up and brought me back to this life. I knew she was the only person who’d believe me about any of that, and I loved that I had someone to share this craziness with.

“Just call me Prince Charming,” Sara said, still grinning mischievously.

“I think if anyone’s the prince in this scenario, it’s me,” I said with a bit of a nervous laugh. I couldn’t tell for certain, but it seemed like Sara knew more than she was letting on. I was just about to ask her about it when the nurse walked in, and her appearance shifted the mood suddenly and drastically. In an instant, I remembered why I was there, and got scared again thinking of all the bad things that could be happening with my baby.

My nerves were shook, and my body was shaking as the nurse wheeled in the portable ultrasound device. I couldn’t shake this sinking feeling that something was horribly wrong, and as she lifted up my shirt and started prepping my stomach for the exam, I wanted to scream out in fear and run away. Then, just when I needed it most, Sara took my hand and pulled her chair right up next to my bed.

“Are you ready to see your baby,” the nurse asked.

“We are,” Sara said, before I could even respond.

I looked over at her with a smile on my face. We hadn’t talked much about what we’d do when the baby arrived, but it was clear she wanted to be part of our lives, and I wanted that just as much. I knew we were moving fast, but I also knew this felt completely right.

What didn’t feel right was the cold gel on my stomach. Well, I guess it felt right – I mean I had no idea what it was supposed to feel like, having never been pregnant or a woman before – but it startled me. I was taking short, stilted breaths as the nurse began to rub the ultrasound device over my body. I held Sara’s hand tighter, and she put our hands into her other hand, caressing me gently as the nurse did her thing.

Aside from the sounds of the machine itself, the room was silent, and every passing second felt like an hour. It seemed like days before the nurse finally spoke up.

“Everything looks good,” she said, almost matter-of-factly, like she hadn’t expected anything else. For me, it was exactly what I needed to hear. I let out a huge sigh of relief. It felt like an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulder, and I was ready again for an equally enormous – and non-metaphorical – weight to be added to my belly. I stared at the monitor as the nurse continued to work.

“Is that,” I began to ask, hesitantly, “is that the heartbeat?”

“Yep,” she said. “And it looks healthy. Looks like your uterus held up a little better than your eye.”

“So can you tell how far along I am,” I asked.

“It looks like about 7 weeks, give or take a day or two,” she said. “Normally we wouldn’t do an ultrasound this early, but given what happened with your fall, it couldn’t hurt to check.”

She kept talking, but I zoned out, staring at the monitor where I could see my baby. It didn’t even look like a person at this point, being so early in the pregnancy, but it captivated me nonetheless. I couldn’t believe this was happening, and it all felt so amazing. There was a life growing inside of me, and I was going to be a mother. Sometime next February, I’d give birth to a child; I’d get to name it, and raise it, and shape everything about its life. And for the first time in my life, I finally felt like I knew exactly what I needed to do – no, what I was meant to do.

Tears of joy began to well up in my eyes.

“Are you okay,” Sara asked.

“I’ve never been happier,” I said. And it was true. And somehow that happiness had sparked an incredible idea in my mind.

The nurse left to give us some privacy, and I sprung my crazy plan on Sara.

“Hey, I was thinking,” I said. “You write incredible songs.”

“OK,” Sara said, with a hint of confusion in her voice. “I appreciate the compliment, but I don’t see what that has to do with your baby.”

“It’s about us,” I said. “Our future.”

“Yeah, I don’t think singing is in my future,” she said. “I’m just not a performer.”

“But I am,” I said. “Or, at least, Alana was, and I can be. I know I can. You can write the songs and I can sing them. We could be a team.”

“Sure, that sounds great,” she said. She let go of my hand, then got up from her chair and started pacing around the room. “But it’s not like we can just record an album and sell it and have it be a hit and live off that money. It doesn’t work like that. We need people behind us, production people, A&R, a band… hell, I can barely get people to listen to me at an open mic night and you’re talking about being a singer overnight. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“As crazy as a man magically turning into a woman and having a baby and falling in love with the girl of his-slash-her dreams?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

“Just sit down,” I said. And she did, and this time I took her hands in mine.

“You told me this was going to go fine, and it did,” I said. “Now I’m telling you we’re going to be fine. I know it doesn’t seem like I’ve thought this through, and maybe I don’t have all the details hammered out, but I have an idea, and I know who to talk to about it. But before I make this call, I need to know one thing.”

This time Sara took my hand and held it against my own chest, where again I could feel my heart ready to burst from my chest as I prepared to ask her the question that could change everything — again.

But then, in that moment, I realized I no longer cared about the answer. Maybe Sara did have something to do with everything that happened to me, or maybe I was just being paranoid because of everything that had happened between us over the past 48 hours, but either way, I was happy where I was, and I didn’t want to screw that up. So instead of asking her if she was responsible for my life reboot, I asked this.

“Are you happy,” I said.

Before Sara could respond, the nurse came back into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I thought you’d want this.”

She handed me a sonogram from the ultrasound: the first picture of my baby. I held it in my hands, staring at it with a huge smile on my face. I didn’t even want to blink, for fear of closing my eyes for a single microsecond and discovering that this was all just a dream I was having.

“It’s beautiful,” Sara said. I laughed.

“It’s a weird-looking black-and-white blob,” I said, “but somehow it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. And I can’t imagine raising it with anyone but you.”

“So making music and raising a kid?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Are you up for it?”

“I think I am,” she said. “So, do you want to get out of here?”

I nodded my head and the nurse helped me out of the hospital bed and left us to gather our stuff before heading back to my place. I texted Mark to let him know everything, including the baby, was okay, and he told me he went ahead and blocked Bryce’s number on my phone, which I was eminently grateful for. I caught up with Monica and Gwen on the ride home too, filling them in on how Sara took care of me and the baby situation.

It was a strange feeling having so many people who cared about me in my life. Even Aiden reached out to make sure I was doing okay. I was honestly stunned to hear from him – I figured he’d want space after everything that went down between us, even if we left off in a relatively good place, but as it turned out, he was really serious about that whole “staying friends” thing.

As a courtesy, I texted him to let him know I’d be reaching out to Rebecca Forester, regarding pursuing a career in music. It seemed only fair, since he was the one that had connected the two of us, and if I had a chance of working with her, it’d be possible that we would cross paths professionally. Not only did he say to go for it, but he said if I needed anything from him to just ask. I told him I appreciated it, but it was me who owed him a favor, and so much more. Though I knew it wasn’t actually me who’d cheated on him, I still had the memories of doing so, and unlike the Alana who’d existed before, I actually wanted to make it up to him.

Sara looked over after I finally put my phone away.

“Is everything good,” she asked.

“Everything is great,” I said. I leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek.

At home, my mom and sister were waiting for me, and I quickly assured them I was doing fine. Of course, they were more interested in the baby – both that it was okay and seeing the sonogram. I showed it to them and both their faces lit up. I knew in that moment that I never could have made either of them that happy as Andrew. It still felt crazy, but motherhood really seemed like my purpose in life, and I never would’ve gotten to experience it as Andrew.

Ron, who had been in the living room, joined the scrum in the kitchen and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek – the kind I would have rolled my eyes at before, but really appreciated now. Sara was leaning against the kitchen counter, away from the family madness, when I waved her over. She shook her head at first, but I urged her to join us and finally she gave in.

“This seemed like kind of a family moment,” she said quietly in my ear.

“You’re family now,” I said, before giving her a kiss of her own.

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” my mom said, leaving the sonogram on the counter and nudging the rest of the family into the living room.

With a moment of privacy, Sara and I started making out again, but after about a minute, she pushed me back.

“As much as I’d love to do this all day,” she said, “don’t you have a phone call you need to make?”

“You’re right,” I said. “I totally need to order a pepperoni pizza.”

“Alana,” Sara said, in that tone that mothers used to express disappointment and urge their kids to do the right thing. I had to remember that tone to use both on my future kids and on her.

“You’re right,” I said. “I just love you so much sometimes the rest of the world just fades away.”

“I love you too,” she said, “but love isn’t going to pay our bills.”

“Cher disagrees,” I said.

“Cher is rich,” she said, firing back quickly.

“And one day we will be too,” I said as I pulled out my phone. “And it all starts with this call.”

Sara looked at me with anticipation in her eyes and hope in her heart as I called Rebecca, hoping that her expressed desire to work with me in some way wasn’t just being polite. After a couple rings, I heard a voice.

“This is Bex,” she said.

“Rebecca,” I asked hesitantly. “Rebecca Forester?”

“Yes,” she said, in a tone that conveyed annoyance at being bothered.

“Hi, I don’t know if you remember me, it’s Alana Carlysle,” I said. “I auditioned for you the other day.”

“Oh my God, Alana,” she said, “JUST who I needed to talk to.”

“Really,” I asked, confused. I mean, sure, she’d been excited about working with me, but this excited?

“Remember that role I told you about,” she asked. “The bitchy queen bee? The date on that project got moved up. We need to cast someone like yesterday.”

“Well, I mean, I’d love to help you,” I said, “but I’m still kind of pregnant.”

“How pregnant,” she asked.

“Seven weeks,” I said.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” she said. “We start shooting in August, we’ll be wrapped by mid-September, you won’t even be showing. And even if there’s a tiny baby bump, we can take that out in post.”

“You can,” I asked.

“You’d be surprised what we can do with CG these days,” she said. “So are you in?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I was kind of calling you about something else.”

“What was that,” she asked.

“Well, I know this girl out here who’s this incredible songwriter, but she doesn’t want to be a performer, and we were thinking we could be a music duo,” I said. “She writes the songs, I sing them, together we take the music world by storm – you know, ideally… if everything worked out.”

“OK,” Rebecca said, hesitantly, as if she was processing the information. “Gimme a taste.”

“A taste?”

“Sing something for me,” she said. “One of her songs.”

I looked at Sara, who was giving me a look of encouragement. I thought back to last night and sang the same song that had reconnected me with her. I’d barely gotten through the first verse when Rebecca cut me off.

“OK, stop right there,” Rebecca said, interrupting me. “I need you. I need that song. You’re gonna star in this movie, you’re gonna lead the soundtrack and we’re going to make you the next big thing.”

“You, you mean it?”

“Alana,” she said, “I’ve never been more sure of someone’s star power than I have been of yours. You do this movie for me and I’ll make sure your album happens.”

“So… I guess we start shooting in August,” I said, unsure of exactly what I was getting myself into.

“Great,” she said. “I’ll have my assistant text you with all the details and we’ll get a script overnighted to you. Seriously, Alana, you will not regret this decision.”

And before I could say anything, she hung up, and within seconds of doing that, I had a text message on my phone from what I could only assume was Rebecca’s assistant starting to pepper me with info and ask me for some of my own.

“Shooting,” Sara asked, understandably confused. “What just happened?”

“I think I’m starring in a movie,” I said as a shrugged my shoulders. “And your song is going to be on the soundtrack.”

A huge smile came across Sara’s face as she let out a giggle and then ran over to give me a huge hug. I embraced her and kissed her on the side of the neck.

“I am,” she said.

“You are,” I said. “How crazy is that? Just a few days ago you were playing a random open mic night and now you’re going to have a song in a movie.”

“No,” she said, rubbing my back as we embraced. “I meant about earlier. You asked me a question and I never got a chance to answer. So I’m telling you now, I am.”

“You are,” I asked hesitantly, thinking she was confessing something huge to me.

“Of course,” she said, “Why wouldn’t I be happy?”

Oh, right, I hadn’t actually asked her the responsibility question. But she’s happy, and I’m happy, and holy crap I’m gonna be in a movie. What is my life?

“Well, I hope it’s not because of where you live,” I said. “Because I think we’re going back to New York.”

*****

DAY THIRTY-ONE

“Are you sure that’s all you need?”

My mom looked at the small pile of boxes packed into the back of Sara’s silver Jeep Grand Cherokee.

“Yes, mom,” I said as I closed the back door. “Most of my stuff was clothes, and most of those aren’t going to fit me soon, so I’m just taking the basics. And Cash and Ron already took the furniture down in the van to get us set up. Besides, the shoot is only eight weeks. After that I’ll come back for the rest of my things.”

“Like your car,” she asked.

“Actually, about that,” I said, as I fumbled in the pocket of my short pink denim shorts for the keys. I’d become increasingly comfortable wearing shorts and skirts that showed off my lithe legs, and today was topping them with a beige crop-top that bared my soon-to-be growing belly.

“Hey, Lexi,” I yelled to my sister, who was sitting up by the pool. She scampered down the stairs, wearing that same black swimsuit I’d picked for her to impress Ryan – and it appeared to have worked, as they’d been exclusively dating for a couple of weeks now.

I tossed the car keys to her, and she caught them and a confused look came over her face as she stared at the key with my ballet slipper keychain.

“I’m not gonna need a car in New York, so why don’t you take it,” I said.

“You mean it,” she asked, as her eyes got wide, and she tensed her legs to prevent herself from jumping up and down with joy.

“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “It’s not exactly a Mercedes.”

“But it’s a car,” she said. “And it’s mine.

Lexi dangled the keys in front of her face, like she was looking at a crystal or an expensive piece of jewelry, and my mom quickly snatched them out of her hand.

“We’ll have to set some ground rules, before you can hold on to these.”

“Ugh, MOM,” Lexi said, protesting.

“Listen to mom, Lexi,” I said. “And try not to give her too hard of a time while I’m gone.”

“So when can we come visit you on set,” Lexi asked me, approaching the car to say her final goodbyes.

“Why don’t you let Ali and Sara get settled first and then we can make plans to visit, OK,” my mom said. She hung back on the deck, trying to give us physical space to mimic the metaphorical space she was letting me take by leaving home again.

“It’s fine, Mrs. C,” Sara said as she came around the car from the other side. “We’d love to have Lexi visit any time. And we’ll be sure to get her home from the bars by no later than 2 a.m.”

My mom shot Sara that dagger-eye look that every mom gets – I kinda couldn’t wait for the first time I got to use that look as a mom – and Sara just started laughing.

“Trust me, mom,” I said, “When Lexi visits we aren’t going to any bars.” I then pointed to my bare belly, which still thankfully wasn’t showing.

“You’re not,” she said, emphasizing my current state. “I just want to make sure she’s not either.”

“We’ll be perfectly proper hosts,” Sara said. “We won’t even have sex while she’s there.”

My face turned bright red and I slapped Sara on the arm as she just started laughing again.

“OK, well, I should go inside and check on… the thing… that’s not this,” my mom said, looking for any excuse to extract herself from this situation. But before she did, she came over and gave me a big hug.

“Be safe,” she said.

“I will,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But I have to say it anyway. I’m your mother.”

“I know,” I said.

“And you’ll always be my beautiful little girl.”

“I know,” I said. Being called a girl, or a woman, or anything like that didn’t even faze me anymore. It’d been almost a month since what I’d started to think of as my rebirth, and I’d fully accepted everything about my life as it was right now.

With my mom back inside, Lexi came over to me and gave me an even bigger hug than my mom had. I thought for a minute that she might not let me go – and thought for a second that I might not want her to.

“Promise you’ll text me every day,” she said as she released her surprisingly-strong embrace.

“I promise,” I said. “No matter where I am, or who I’m with, you’ll always be my best friend.”

“Oh really,” said a voice from down the driveway. Lexi, Sara and I all turned our heads to see Monica, impeccably dressed and carrying an equally-impeccably wrapped tower of gift boxes that were wobbling in her hands.

“Umm, you need a hand there Mon,” I asked as I scurried down the driveway to help her. Sara quickly followed me and we took the unwieldy stack from Monica, who walked the rest of the way up to the car, her stilettos clacking against the asphalt of the driveway with every step. I’d known this version of Monica for a month – and had memories of her from a lifetime that I was finally regarding as mine – and I knew that if she was dressed up like this, it meant something crazy was about to go down.

“So…” I started to ask, hesitantly, as Sara and I put the box down next to Sara’s car, “what’s all this?”

“Oh, something for you and some stuff for the baby from her Auntie Monica,” said Monica with a huge smile on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was up to something or was genuinely happy for my future child.

“You know,” I said, picking up on her casual hinting, “I don’t even know the gender of the baby yet.”

“Oh, it’s a girl. The best friend,” she said, emphasizing those words while looking over at Lexi, “always knows.”

Lexi rolled her eyes hard, as I leaned over the stack of boxes and tried to figure out which one was mine. Sara offered to run inside and get scissors to cut through the ribbon barely holding the stack together. I glanced at Monica, to see if that was something we should do, and she nodded yes.

“Well I happen to think it’s a boy,” Lexi said. “You know, in our entire extended family, Ali is the only first-born cousin who’s a girl. All the rest: boys.”

“Really,” Monica said, seeming genuinely surprised by this, before turning to me. “So why aren’t you a boy?”

The question caught me off guard at first, mostly because in the past couple weeks I’d stopped thinking of my former life as my life. I remembered everything I’d been through as Andrew, but I really felt like Alana now, and didn’t care to dwell on how I’d been so lucky as to get a second chance at life. In fact, Monica’s question had been the first time in days that I’d even thought about it.

And apparently I’d been thinking about it for too long without saying anything, as Sara returned with a knife to open up the boxes – and cut through the awkward silence.

“Was it something I said,” Sara said, jokingly, as Lexi and Monica stood in anticipation of my answer to what seemed to them to be an innocent question.

“We were just asking Alana why she isn’t a boy,” Monica said with a flippant dismissal of the topic in her voice. Sara’s jaw dropped a bit and her muscles tensed, but she tried not to give anything away with her body language. As I looked at her, I couldn’t be certain if I was looking at someone who was protecting my secret or one of her own. Either way, she clearly didn’t know how to proceed, and neither did I. Thankfully, Lexi broke what was becoming an increasingly-awkward silence.

“We’re just being silly,” she said, lightening the mood considerably in an instant. “I couldn’t even imagine having a brother.”

“Yeah,” I said, nervously. “We’d probably hate each other.”

Sara gave me a knowing look — and I could have sworn she winked at me too — then handed me the knife to start opening these boxes Monica had dropped on us at the very last minute.

“Now,” I said, as I put the knife to the box, “I’m not gonna open this and have Gwen pop out and hit me with a cake or anything, am I?”

“What,” Monica asked, even more confused than when I was being silent. “No, of course not. How would that even work? Just open your presents.”

The box on top was the smallest and was labeled “For Baby.” After I snipped the ribbon to free the boxes, I began to open that one, but Monica quickly intervened and slid out a box from near the bottom of the pile, imploring me to open that one first.

“You’re being really weird about this, Monica,” I said as I started to open the box. “Can’t you just tell me what’s in it?”

“What,” she asked. “And ruin the surprise?”

Her mischievous grin grew wider than the Cheshire Cat’s, to the point I thought I would overtake her entire face until there was nothing standing there but a giant anthropomorphic smile. I discarded the wrapping on the box, revealing a simple white shirt-sized box. I opened the top to reveal more wrapping paper, which was concealing a purple garment of some kind. As I opened the paper, I discovered a Kobe Bryant Lakers women’s jersey, which I took out and held against my body with a bit of a confused look on my face.

“OK Monica, this is nice, but… like, I’m not even really a basketball fan,” I said.

“I just wanted you to have something to wear … when you visit me … IN LOS ANGELES!”

She screamed the last part while jumping up and down like someone who just heard her name called on “The Price is Right”, while Sara, Lexi and I all stood there waiting for her to explain in more detail.

“L.A.,” I asked, hoping to coax a complete, non-screaming answer out of her.

“I got the job,” she said. “I’m gonna be working for the studio.”

“Oh my god, that’s so great,” I said as I ran over and gave Monica a big hug.

“There’s one for Sara and one for the baby too,” Monica said as I squeezed her and held the jersey in my hand behind her back. “So you can all come visit and coordinate.”

“You’re the best,” I said to her.

“Best friend,” she asked, and as she did, Lexi said something under her breath.

“Don’t worry Lexi,” I said. “Your place is safe. Now get in here for a group hug.”

She obliged.

“Besides,” she said with a huge dose of snark in her voice, “your real best friend knows purple isn’t even your color.”

I let out a brief laugh, then slipped the jersey on over the clothes I was wearing.

“I dunno,” I said, stepping back from the embrace. “I think I can make this work.”

“I think I like it better off you,” Sara said, as she began to pull it over my head.

“OK Lexi, I think that’s our cue to leave,” Monica said as she nudged my sister in the arm.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “We can keep our hands to ourselves for a little longer.”

I took over the process of taking the jersey off from Sara and put it back in the box. Sara loaded the boxes into what little space we had left in the car as I said my goodbyes to Monica and my sister – emphasizing with Lexi that this wasn’t “goodbye,” just “goodbye for now.” We hugged for a long time – a REAL long time – and finally let go as each of us had tears welling up in our eyes. I wiped a tear away from Lexi’s eye and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Sara gave her a hug too and she went inside with a smile on her face, knowing that unlike last time Alana left for New York, it wouldn’t be a year before we saw each other again.

“You ready to go, babe,” Sara asked as we saw Monica drive off.

“I’ve got one more thing to do,” I said. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and started walking down the driveway. Sara wished me luck and hung back, knowing that this was something I had to do on my own.

As I reached the end of the driveway, I looked to my right and could see Mark sitting on the steps in the front of his house. I had promised him that I’d stop by before I left, but – even from this distance – I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t really expecting me to show. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. An instant later, mine started buzzing.

It took four rings for me to walk the distance between our houses, and he was so engrossed in his phone that he didn’t even notice me standing right in front of him, which gave me an incredible opportunity for mischief.

I stepped behind him and leaned right up to his ear and whispered, “Hi there.”

He was so caught off guard that he fumbled and dropped his phone. I almost felt bad for a second, before he picked it back up and it was clear that there was no damage.

“Dammit, Ali,” he said, wiping some of the stray dirt off the phone. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“I was just messing with you,” I said. I gave him a hug, and said, “You thought I wasn’t going to show, didn’t you.”

“It had crossed my mind,” he said. “But I’m glad I was wrong.”

He pulled our embrace tighter as he said the last part, then let go and picked up a bag that had been sitting on the stoop – one that I somehow completely missed. I guess while Mark was being engrossed by his phone I was equally engrossed by Mark which made me oblivious to our surroundings. But that was no surprise given how important Mark was to me. He’d always been a best friend to me and at times more to Alana, and over the past few weeks we’d rekindled a friendship in a meaningful way. I think in a lot of ways, that had helped him move past whatever lingering resentment he was still holding onto from the way Alana left all those years ago, and he seemed genuinely happy now – something that definitely wasn’t the case a month ago.

Now he was at a place where he was comfortable enough to get me a gift. At least, that’s what I assumed was happening here.

“You always did suck at gift wrap,” I said as he held the gift bag out in front of me.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Just open it up.”

“’Just open it up’,” I said, mocking his voice. “How romantic. I hope it’s diamonds.”

“If you’re gonna be like that I can always take it back,” he said, slowly inching the bag away from me. I quickly snatched it away from him and held it close against my chest.

“No, I want it,” I said.

“Go ahead and open it up,” he said.

“This isn’t gonna be a shirt that has a message that tells me you’re moving across the country, is it,” I asked, thinking back to what had just happened with Monica. Mark gave me a confused look and I told him not to worry about it as I opened up the bag. As it turned out, I was half-right. It was a shirt. A small white T-shirt with a Spider-Man logo in the shape of a heart on the front.

“Oh em gee, it’s perfect,” I said, squee-ing with glee. “It’s just like the one MJ wears.”

“Well, I did always prefer you as a redhead,” Mark said, trying to be coy but failing miserably. With the shirt in my left hand, I ran my right hand through my hair. It had started to grow out a bit in the weeks since I’d gotten it cut, and my natural red roots were starting to show again.

“The red is coming back in,” I said, pointing out the two-toned area near the edge of my scalp. “I think I’ll leave it alone this time.”

“You should,” he said.

“You mind if I put it on now,” I said of the shirt. I wasn’t really asking and didn’t wait for a response from Mark before I slid it over the crop top I was wearing, then took that off from underneath – a nifty little trick Alana had mastered long before I arrived and I’d found useful in my new life.

“It’s a perfect fit,” I said.

“You should wear it to NYCC this year,” Mark said, “even if it won’t be as much of a perfect fit by then.”

“I will,” I said, “but only if you come with me.”

“I wouldn’t want to go with anyone else,” he said. We hugged again. It was kind of becoming a thing with us.

“It’s a date,” I said. “A friend date… if that’s a thing… it’s not, is it? Well, then like a friend outing.”

“I think you can just say ‘it’s a date’ without meaning ‘a date’ date, ya know,” Mark said, trying to make me feel better about babbling. I still had a tendency to do that when I got nervous, and I still got nervous around him. I recognized this nervous energy. It was the same feeling I felt that night Mark was in my bedroom after I hurt my ankle. And though I definitely thought of Mark as a friend and not a lover, I still was overcome with an urge to release that nervous energy.

So I kissed him.

It was quick, and I didn’t slip him any tongue or even open my lips, but our lips touched. If anything, it was the kind of kiss a girl gives a boy in kindergarten after he lets her have the swing. But for me it meant something more. It meant, in a strange way, that our friendship had come full circle. He’d never quite be the Mark I knew as Andrew – instead he was something more, and more special, and I liked that.

“I gotta get going,” I said, trying not to make a big deal of such a small kiss, “but I hope I’ll get to see you soon.”

“I promise you will,” he said. “And I won’t even tell Sara about that kiss.”

“Oh, what, that,” I said, playing it off. “That was a friendly peck.”

“Maybe next time we just stick to the hug.”

“You got it,” I said, immediately taking him up on the suggestion and giving him a hug. We didn’t hold this one nearly as long, and we even did that tap on the back thing that friends do when they hug. We said our final goodbyes and I made my way down the steps in front of his house to head back to my place, where I could see Sara had moved the car to the edge of the driveway. Mark wished me luck on the movie, then, just before I turned to head up the street, he yelled out one last time.

“Hey. Go get ‘em, Tiger.”

*****

EPILOGUE

“Oh my God, I love you.”

I signed the CD and handed it back to the young girl, then happily obliged as we took a selfie together. It surprised me that a girl her age still even bought CDs, but it still felt really amazing to sign one of my own.

It’d been nearly two years since I started on this journey and I still remember waking up in a life that wasn’t my own like it was yesterday. But now it’s my life, and what a life it’s been.

The movie that I starred in wasn’t much to write home about. It did decent at the box office and critical reception was mixed, leaning toward positive, but it did help launch my career forward in large part thanks to Sara’s song. That single ended up cracking the top 10 of the Billboard charts, getting certified gold, and leading to me signing a three-album contract.

My first album came out last summer and the first three singles – all written by Sara – reached the top 40. My second album came out earlier this week, and the lead single from it is already in the top 10. The label desperately wanted me to go out and promote it around the country this week, but I had a couple slightly more important things to attend to.

And that’s how I ended up here, signing the occasional CD for a person in the audience at my sister’s high school graduation. Given all the publicity around me, I considered skipping the actual graduation and just going to the family party we’re having later tonight, but Lexi really wanted me here and I really wanted to see her give her valedictorian speech, so I came and for the most part people have respected boundaries.

After signing a couple more CDs, I sat down next to Sara, who was trying to get Andrew to sit down in his stroller. Yes, I had a boy and yes I named him after my old name – though Sara and I are still the only ones that know about that connection. Being a mother has been amazing, but I never could have done it without Sara, who has been my rock throughout all the trials and tribulations of launching my career.

She got Andrew settled and then leaned over to give me a kiss.

“Will you be okay with him if I run to the bathroom real quick,” she asked. I told her we’d be fine, and she hustled out of the auditorium. I got out of my seat and kneeled down to get Andrew a snack from under the stroller when I felt someone tap on my shoulder.

“I’m happy to sign something or take a picture with you, just give me one second,” I said as politely as I could.

“Actually, I just wanted to talk.”

I thought I recognized the voice, but then thought there was no way possible that it was him. So I turned around slowly and much to my surprise, it was exactly who I thought it was standing there.

It was Bryce.

“Umm, hi,” I said, taken completely aback by his presence. I’d love to tell you that I thought all about what I’d say to him if I’d ever seen him again, but truthfully I hadn’t thought of him much at all since that day he hit me in the face. He hadn’t tried at all to contact me since then, not even when Andrew was born, so I was stunned to see him here now.

“Is this your son,” he said, pointing toward Andrew.

“It is,” I said. It surprised me that Bryce hadn’t referred to Andrew as “our son” or done something else to call attention to his status as the biological father.

“He looks nice,” Bryce said, still being weirdly calm and non-Bryce-like. “I’d ask how you’ve been but it seems like all I have to do to find that out is get on the internet.”

“Yeah, all this publicity is kind of crazy,” I said.

“You deserve it,” he said. “You’re doing amazing things.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So what’s new with you?”

It felt weird making small talk with Bryce, but he was perfectly nice. He told me about his new job and this girl he’d started dating, and even credited me for turning around his life. As Sara got back, he got ready to head back to his own seat, but said one last thing before he left.

“If you ever decide you want me to be a part of his life, I’m ready for that, and if you decide you never want me to see him, I’m fine with that too,” he said, as he looked at Andrew. “I’ve changed. I’ve grown. I’m a different person now, and I hope you think I’m a better person too.”

I expected him to lean in for a friendly hug or kiss, but instead he just put his hand out for a handshake. I took it and thanked him for saying hi, and just like that, he was out of my life again. Sara sat down and asked me if I was okay, and I told her everything that had just happened.

“A different, better person, you say,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “And it’s funny, because you could say the same thing about me from the time I was with him to now. I’m definitely a different person, and I’m pretty sure I’m better too.”

“Oh, you definitely are,” Sara said. “I wouldn’t be marrying you if you weren’t.”

Oh, yeah, that.

Remember when I said I had a couple things that prevented me from going on a promotional tour for the album. One was obviously Lexi’s graduation. The other? Yeah, my wedding. Sara and I officially got engaged four months ago – she proposed to me on Valentine’s Day, with a song – and we’re getting married next week.

Cash is flying back out to walk his sister down the aisle. He moved out to California about a year ago to take a job with Google. When he left, Sara and I were bummed out, both because she’d be farther away from her brother and because we were losing a great babysitter. After we brought Andrew home, Cash came down to New York every weekend to help us out, and give us some time to get out of the apartment, which was incredible. It’s part of the reason why we ended up making him the baby’s godfather, with Lexi taking the godmother role.

That wasn’t the only big role in Lexi’s life — she was also going to be my maid of honor. Gwen was happy to serve as one of my bridesmaids, flying up from Florida where she’d moved with Darnell, who clearly turned out to be a thing, despite Gwen’s early protestations. I also enlisted Victoria, one of my dance friends from NYU who’d done some choreography on a couple music videos of mine. My last bridesmaid is a bit of surprise — the rest of my wedding party hasn’t even met her yet — but we became friends when collaborating on some songs for my second album. I was reluctant to ask her to be a part of this since, she’s such a big name and has so many famous friends — friends way more famous than even I’d become — but she turned out to be happy to do it. It’s funny to think back to those early days when I became Alana how much time I spent hating on her music. Well, she never, ever, ever, had to know about that.

I wish I could tell you that everything for my wedding was going exactly how I imagined it, or at least how I’d begun to imagine it since I started living life as Alana, but there was one big piece missing.

About a month after I moved to New York, Monica and I got into a huge fight. She finally blew up at me about the Bryce thing in a way that I’d been bracing for since my first day as Alana, when I found out the truth about Ali and Bryce. Things were thrown, windows were broken … at one point the police had to be called to check on the situation, and I really couldn’t blame Monica for any of it. She had every right to be pissed at me about it, even though it wasn’t me who actually did any of that stuff. But I’d accepted all the benefits of being Alana, so I had to accept the disadvantages too, and this was probably the biggest one.

We went about six months without even talking to each other, until out of the blue she called me as both a friend and in an official role for the studio, where she worked as an assistant casting director. As it turned out, she’d become close with Aiden — they bonded over their mutual experience of having been screwed over by me — and he asked her out on a date, but she didn’t think it was right to go out with him without asking me first. I happily gave her my blessing, which made the next part easier for her as well. The studio wanted me to audition for a lead in a new movie starring opposite Aiden. I happily accepted that as well and got the part. I’d hoped working so closely with Monica would mend our friendship, but while we were cordial with each other while I was out in LA, there was nothing like the connection I knew from Alana’s memories, or even from my first few days as Alana.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been more honest with Monica from the moment I arrived as Alana if we’d still be best friends right now, with her serving as the maid of honor. I started to imagine the crazy bachelorette party she’d have cooked up for me, the fun we’d have and the trouble we’d get into. Instead, we just texted every once in awhile — mostly about work-related stuff — and she never even bothered to return the RSVP card for the wedding.

That was one of two disappointments I had about my pending nuptials. The other was that I couldn’t find a way to involve Mark in any official capacity – that’s the kind of problem you end up with when you have two brides with two sets of bridesmaids and no groomsmen. While Monica and I had drifted apart, Mark and I had become even closer friends over the past two years, growing nearly as inseparable as Sara and I after he moved to New York.

He managed to land a job with Marvel Comics, which made our trips to New York Comic Con even more exciting. We went a few months after I moved there while I was still pregnant, then again the following year. That one was much more fun, because I cosplayed every day of the show – partially because I enjoyed doing it and partially because it made me slightly less recognizable to the crowds, since trying to enjoy a convention as a fan while you’re a recognizable singer and actress is a bit of a tricky balancing act.

But in the end, that’s what my life is – a balancing act. A balance between singer and actress. Between mother and wife. Between friends and family, and even between my secret past and my unknown future.

Sara tapped me on the shoulder.

“Hey,” she said. “Where are you?”

It was her way of asking what was on my mind, since I had this tendency to just drift off mentally and become completely oblivious to everything around me. This time, I had to admit, I was thinking back to my last day as Andrew — not the one after I got punched by Bryce, but the one before that, before I ever became Alana. I was so consumed by this idea of rebooting my life, focusing on all the things that I wanted to change. Now I was in a place where there was so little to change that the idea of a reboot seemed silly. I wanted nothing but endless sequels.

“I’m right where I’m supposed to be,” I said.

Sara leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, then whispered two words in my ears that simultaneously made me shiver and grin.

“You’re welcome.”