Chapter 2: Chapter 2
The hotel elevator doors slid shut, enclosing them in mirrored silence. Finn felt every shift of weight, a sickening, independent sway deep in his chest as the car began its descent. He gripped the brass handrail, his knuckles whitening under Billie’s black polish. Each stop jerked the compartment, a fresh, intimate bounce that made his face burn. On the eighth floor, the doors whispered open. A man in a crisp suit stepped in, nodding curtly at Maggie before his gaze landed on Finn. It was a slow, deliberate crawl—from the green roots of Billie’s hair, down to the pronounced curve of the hoodie over her chest, and back up. Finn stared straight ahead at his own panicked reflection in Billie’s eyes, feeling the man’s stare like a physical touch on his new skin. “Going up?” the man asked, his voice too smooth. Before Finn could process the question in Billie’s unfamiliar register, the doors opened at the lobby. A girl, no older than fourteen, gasped. “Oh my god! Billie!” She shoved a napkin and a pen toward Finn’s face. “I love your hair! Can you…?” Finn froze, his sister’s lungs seizing. He managed a stiff nod, taking the pen with Billie’s slender fingers. The fan watched, rapt, as he scrawled a shaky ‘Billie’ that looked nothing like her signature. “Thank you!” the girl beamed, oblivious, before skipping away. The staring man exited with a final, lingering glance. The doors closed, leaving them in a crushing, silent vacuum.
The doors closed, leaving them in a crushing, silent vacuum. The elevator’s gentle ascent felt like a violation, every micro-adjustment magnified beneath Finn’s borrowed skin. He instinctively tried to fold in on himself, to make his new form smaller and less obvious. He crossed his arms, finding Billie’s big tits obstructing his attempt; his forearms slammed into a soft, unyielding barrier that shoved upward, making him gasp. Billie snickered, the sound foreign in her brother’s deeper voice. “Not as easy as I made it look, eh, Finn?”
“Shut up,” he mumbled, dropping his arms as if burned.
“Here, you have to go over,” Billie said, her tone shifting from teasing to practical. She reached out with Finn’s larger hands, guiding his arms into a new position. Her fingers, his fingers, brushed against the side of his new breast, encountering the shocking warmth and give of the flesh beneath the hoodie. Finn flinched at the contact, a shudder running through him. “See? You cross them higher, almost under,” she instructed, maneuvering his forearms to rest beneath the curve.
He complied, the pose feeling awkward and defensive. His thoughts churned; seeing them from this angle, attached to him, they seemed obscenely larger, a gravity-defying weight he now understood viscerally. In his mind, the word ‘jugs’ echoed, crude and terrifying. Billie watched, a strange detachment coloring her own thoughts; on him, her breasts looked like cartoonish exaggerations, a bizarre theft of her own physical burden. The elevator dinged, signaling their approach to the penthouse. Maggie watched them, her eyes filled with a quiet, desperate grief. “Once we’re inside,” she whispered, “we figure this out.”
The penthouse suite doors clicked shut, sealing them in a jarring silence of plush carpets and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Finn stood rigid in the entryway, the overwhelming normalcy of the room somehow making everything worse. He became aware, suddenly, of a dozen tiny, dissonant sensations. The weight on his chest was a constant, nagging presence, but now he felt the subtle, swaying counterbalance of a new center of gravity lower in his hips. His—her—buttocks felt impossibly full, shifting with every minute adjustment of his stance.
He brought a hand up, and the extended fingernails—her black claws—scraped against the skin of his own cheek. The sensation was sharp, alien. He ran the pad of his thumb over his lower lip; it felt swollen, softer. He tasted a faint, unfamiliar tang of yesterday’s lip balm, something floral and unnervingly sweet. “My lips taste funny,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. Billie, already prowling the room with his long-limbed stride, snorted. “That’s the Burt’s Bees. Pomegranate. You’ll get used to it.” She stopped before a massive mirror, staring at her brother’s reflection with a grim fascination. “God, I look tired.”
“Stop looking at my face like that,” Finn said, his voice tight. He took a tentative step forward, and his new hips rolled in a way that made his stomach lurch. The independent bounce was everywhere—front and back—a chaotic, jiggling physics he did not command. Maggie dropped her bag onto a cream-colored sofa, the sound a dull thud in the expansive quiet. “Okay. Ground rules. No one leaves. No calls to anyone outside this room.” She turned, her gaze landing on the blackened ‘18’ candle she’d clutched since the bus, now placed carefully on the glass coffee table. “We need to understand the mechanism. A wish made on a birthday candle. How do we break it?”
"We wish again," Billie said with a giggle that sounded weird from her brother's mouth. She flopped onto the sofa, spreading Finn’s long legs in a way he never would. Finn, still standing rigidly, kept his arms crossed high over Billie's chest. "Mom, tell him to leave his boobs alone," Billie said, the humor not reaching her borrowed eyes. "But they're just so... there," Finn breathed, his voice strained. "How do you handle them? It’s like they have their own heartbeat."
Maggie pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaustion etching deeper lines around her eyes. "You get a good sports bra, Finn. And you stop poking at them." She walked to the minibar, pouring a small bottle of whiskey into a glass with a trembling hand. "Besides," she added, the ice clinking, "you didn't inherit those from me." Finn’s head, crowned with Billie’s green-tipped hair, snapped toward her. Billie, on the couch, went very still, her—his—face slack with sudden understanding. A heavy silence filled the room, thicker than the hotel’s plush carpet.
Finn’s hands, which had been nervously tracing the curve under his sweater, fell to his sides. He looked down at the pronounced swell of his new chest, then at his mother’s modest frame, and finally at his sister’s guilty, knowing expression in the mirror of his own face. "Whose are they, then?" he asked, the question dropping into the quiet like a stone. Billie looked away, studying the city lights beyond the glass as if they held an answer.
Billie finally turned from the window, her brother’s face etched with a grimace of resigned guilt. “They’re Aunt Susan’s,” she said flatly, her voice low in Finn’s register. “From dad’s side.”
Finn’s gaze dropped slowly to the prominent curve beneath the sweatshirt fabric. A bitter, disbelieving laugh choked out of him. "Thanks a lot, Dad..." Finn said, staring at his new chest with a mix of horror and dark amusement. He could almost feel the ghost of his father’s genetics, a strange, unwanted inheritance now physically weighing him down. “So I’m literally carrying around dad’s side of the family.” His hands, her hands, hovered over the fabric as if touching a cursed heirloom. “Great.”
The silence that followed was profound. Maggie looked pained, her earlier sharpness melting into a deep maternal sorrow. Billie shifted uncomfortably on the couch, Finn’s long legs stretching before her.
“You always hated them,” Finn continued, his voice quiet now. He wasn’t looking at Billie anymore; he was studying the sheer, biological truth of it. “You wished them away, and I got stuck with the damn family heirlooms.”
A fresh, more intimate horror dawned on him then. His eyes widened. He took a sharp, panicked breath. "Oh my god," he whispered, his face pale.
His hands flew from his chest to his hips, then hung in the air, trembling. “If I got… these,” he choked out, “then what did you get?” His eyes, wide and frantic in Billie’s face, locked onto her. Billie stiffened on the couch, Finn’s long legs instinctively clamping together. A slow, deep heat flooded her—his—cheeks. The reality, a more intimate theft, crashed over her with nauseating clarity. “It’s… fine,” she lied, her voice tight. Finn saw right through it, his sister’s face betraying a panic he now mirrored. “It’s not fine!” he shouted, the sound shrill in the quiet suite. “What’s down there, Billie?” Maggie stepped forward, her hands raised. “Finn, stop. This isn’t helping.” But he was already moving, a desperate momentum carrying Billie’s body toward the hall bathroom. “I need to see,” he insisted, voice breaking. “I need to know what’s missing.” The bathroom door slammed shut, the lock clicking with finality. From inside, a muffled thud echoed, followed by a raw, shattered sound that was neither a scream nor a sob. Billie stood frozen, staring at the door, feeling a phantom ache where something fundamental used to be.
Billie stood frozen, staring at the door, feeling a phantom ache where something fundamental used to be. A choked whimper escaped the bathroom, followed by the frantic rustle of clothing and a low, continuous moan of pure horror. Maggie was already moving, her face set in grim resolve as she marched to the bathroom door.
“Finn, open this door right now,” she commanded, her voice brooking no argument. Only ragged breathing answered her. She tried the handle, found it locked, and slapped her palm against the wood. “Finneas! Open it!”
The silence that followed was worse than the noise. It was a silence filled with mute, unraveling terror. Maggie looked back at Billie, her eyes wide with a shared dread, then turned and knocked again, softer now. “Sweetheart, please. Let me in.” The lock clicked. Maggie pushed the door open slowly. Finn was backed against the marble vanity, his face—Billie’s face—drenched in tears and utterly blank.
He was staring vacantly at the mirror, his hands hanging limp at his sides. “It’s gone,” he whispered, the words hollow. “Everything is just… smooth. Wrong.” A violent shudder wracked his shoulders. His breathing hitched, accelerating into sharp, shallow gasps that seemed to offer no air. “I can’t—I can’t breathe in this skin,” he rasped, his hands starting to flutter at his throat.
Maggie crossed the room in two swift strides. She framed his tear-streaked face with her hands, forcing his glazed eyes to meet hers. “Look at me. You are here. You are Finn.” He shook his head, a frantic, twitching motion. “I’m not. I’m not anything.” His voice climbed, fracturing. Maggie’s open hand connected with his cheek in a crisp, soundless slap. It wasn’t hard, but it was sharp, a deliberate crack of reality in the muffled panic.
Finn’s head snapped sideways from the impact, the sting a bright, clarifying flare against his cheek. He blinked, his sister’s wet lashes sticking together. The frantic gasping stopped, replaced by a stunned, shaky inhalation.
Before he could process it, Billie—his own body moving with a fluid, angry grace he never possessed—stepped forward and slapped him too.
Her palm connected with the exact same spot on his other cheek, a mirror of their mother’s strike. The sound was a sharper, meaner crack in the tiled room. Finn staggered back, his shoulder blades hitting the cold marble vanity.
He stared at her, at his own furious face, his mouth agape. “Wha—”
“You hate my body, Finn,” Billie spat, her voice trembling with a venom that was entirely her own. She shoved him, his own hands flat against his new, softer chest, and he stumbled. “You keep grabbing at it, staring at it like it’s some disgusting alien bug you’re trapped inside.” Her eyes, his eyes, were blazing. “You think I don’t feel the same way?” She gestured wildly at her own form, at his form. “You think looking in the mirror and seeing your face isn’t making me want to peel my own skin off?”
Finn stared at her, his sister’s cheek burning from her slap. His breath hitched, a ragged, wounded sound in the quiet bathroom. “You don’t get it,” he whispered, his voice breaking. Then it erupted, raw and anguished. “I got what you lost!” she screamed, the words tearing from Billie’s throat. “I feel it hanging there where my pussy should be!” She clutched at the front of his borrowed sweatpants, his face a mask of revulsion and terror. “And my lovely curves are gone, replaced by your bony, thin body!” His shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him, leaving only a hollow despair. Billie stumbled back as if punched, Finn’s face paling. She looked down at her own flat, angular frame, a cold understanding dawning. The phantom absence she felt was his palpable, foreign presence. A choked sob escaped her borrowed vocal cords.
She turned from his shattered expression, from her own body’s betrayal, and lurched toward her mother. She began to cry, burying her male head on her mom’s shoulders. Maggie caught her, her hands gripping Finn’s narrow back. “Shhh,” Maggie whispered into his short hair, her eyes closed tight against their shared nightmare. Finn slid down the vanity to the floor, curling into himself. He hugged Billie’s knees to his big boobs, silent tears tracking through her mascara. The room held only the sound of their fractured breathing, a symphony of wrongness in the sterile, silent suite.
The room held only the sound of their fractured breathing, a symphony of wrongness in the sterile, silent suite. Maggie’s arms tightened around Billie’s shoulders, feeling the unfamiliar ridge of Finn’s scapula under her palms. On the floor, Finn uncurled slightly, his gaze fixed on the grout lines between the tiles as if they held a code.
A sharp, three-knock pattern sliced through the muffled air from the suite’s main door. All three bodies jerked, a synchronized spasm of guilt and alarm. “Room service,” a cheerful voice called through the wood, “with a complimentary dessert!”
Maggie peeled herself away from Billie, wiping her own eyes with the back of her hand. She moved to the door, peered through the peephole, and saw a wheeled cart topped with a dome. “We didn’t order anything,” she said, her voice strained to normalcy as she opened the door a crack.
The waiter beamed, pushing the cart forward. “From management, for the unfortunate cancellation—a chocolate decadence cake.” He lifted the silver dome, revealing a sleek, dark cake adorned with a single, unlit candle. The sight of it—the gloss of frosting, the promise of sweetness—felt like a physical blow.
Billie stared from across the room, her brother’s throat working as she swallowed a surge of bile. Finn pushed himself up, using the vanity for support, his new center of gravity tilting him forward. “Get out,” he whispered, then louder, “Get the fuck out of here,” Finn told the waiter.
Maggie fumbled for a tip, her hands shaking, as the waiter’s smile faltered. Once the door shut, she leaned against it, staring at the cake as if it were a coiled snake. The candle, a plain white one, mocked them from its creamy bed of frosting.
“The birthday cake arrived,” Billie said flatly, her words hanging in the air like an indictment. Finn took a step toward it, his hand reaching out not for a slice, but for that candle, his fingers hovering just above the wick.
Finn snatched the candle, its wax still cool and untouched. He held it between Billie’s slender fingers, staring at the pristine wick as if it were a live wire. “The last one was burned. This one isn’t.”
“Put that down, Finn,” Maggie warned, her voice low and fraying at the edges. He didn’t listen, his gaze fixed on the slim white pillar.
He turned toward Billie, her own face stark with apprehension. “A wish did this,” he said, his words measured and cold. “So another wish should undo it.” The logic was childlike, desperate, and hung in the air with terrifying weight. “Who makes the wish? He asks.” The question wasn’t directed at anyone, just thrown into the center of the room.
Billie’s borrowed throat went dry. She looked from the candle in her brother’s hand to her mother’s horrified face, then down at the unfamiliar landscape of her own flat chest. The memory of her birthday wish—the searing, secret longing for her body to be different—curdled in her gut. She had been the architect of this. Her knuckles ached where she’d slapped her own cheek.
Finn took a shuddering breath, the movement causing a disorienting shift of flesh beneath his borrowed sweater. “Maybe it has to be you,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “You made the first one.”
The candle felt brittle between her fingers, a cold and mocking symmetry. “I can’t just wish it back,” she whispered, her voice hollow in Finn’s throat. “What if I make it worse?”
Finn’s borrowed face tightened, a mask of fraying resolve. “What’s worse than this?” The raw silence that followed was answer enough. He stepped closer, the space between them charged with a sick intimacy. “You wanted to be free of your body.” His hand gestured vaguely at his own chest. “I’m paying the price.”
He took another step, close enough for her to smell her own shampoo in her green hair. “So wish us back.” The cake sat between them, a sickly-sweet altar. Billie’s hands trembled, the unlit candle a tiny, terrifying spear. Maggie moved to intervene, her mouth opening to form a word that never came.
Billie closed her eyes, shutting out her brother’s anguished face in the mirror of her own. She thought of the weight that used to pull at her shoulders, the specific ache in her spine she’d traded for this hollow, angular absence. She thought of Finn’s scream in the bathroom. Her knuckles ached from the slap. She focused every atom of her being on the feel of her own skin, the cadence of her own laugh, the private geography she had cursed.
“I wish,” she breathed, the words barely a vibration, “for my body to be mine again.” She leaned forward, her brother’s lungs filling with the scent of sugar, and blew. The flame died instantly, a thin plume of smoke rising to stain the air. Nothing happened.