Chapter 1: A New View from the Deck
The last of the sun was a faint orange smear behind the hills, and the smell of chlorine hung heavy in the humid air. I shifted on the teak lounge chair, the cushion sighing under my weight. Sabrina was mirrored in my own posture on the adjacent lounger, both of us staring not at the inky, reflecting pool, but at the dark rectangle of the back door.
“He’s late,” Sabrina said, her voice—my voice, I had to keep reminding myself—a low rumble that felt utterly foreign coming from her, from me.
“Traffic on the 405,” I replied, my own tenor comfortable in my ears. “He’ll be here.”
Sabrina stood up abruptly, the motion fluid and feminine. “I’m going to change. I can’t exactly go swimming in this.” She plucked at the fabric of her tank top stretched across her chest.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, not looking up.
She took two steps toward the guest house, and the world dissolved.
It wasn’t a spin so much as a liquid melt. The teak planks rushed upward, or I shrank downward, my perspective plummeting a full twelve inches in a sickening lurch. My vision swam, then cleared. I was staring at the worn wood of the deck, at my own large, bare feet in worn sneakers from a foot lower down.
A cool evening breeze, previously unnoticed, kissed a shocking expanse of my stomach. I looked down.
A sliver of pale, smooth skin showed between the hem of a tiny, faded black cropped tank top and the waistband of a denim skirt so short it might as well have been a belt. My heart began a frantic, birdlike thrum against my ribs. No, not my ribs. These were higher, tighter. Something was in the way.
I lifted a hand. A small, delicate hand with slender fingers, tipped in perfectly manicured, shimmering pink polish. It trembled violently. I watched, detached, as this foreign hand rose and pressed against the front of the tank top.
The contact sent a electric jolt of awareness through me. There was weight there. A soft, profound fullness that shifted and settled with the simple act of breathing. I cupped one. It filled my palm, a heavy, pert warmth encased in lace and some engineered fabric. A red push-up bra, my mind supplied, the knowledge surfacing from a distant, observational place. With every shallow breath I took, they moved. A slight, unavoidable jiggle that resonated through my whole upper body.
I tried to swallow, and my throat worked differently. Tighter. Higher. My tongue felt smaller. The flavor in my mouth was different—the lingering ghost of her iced tea, sweeter, more pronounced on these new taste buds.
“Justin?”
The voice that came out of me was not my own. It was higher, melodic, laced with a panic that made it crack. I clapped a hand over my mouth. The sensation of full, soft lips under my fingers was another small shock.
I looked up. And saw myself. My own face, crowned with my messy blonde hair, my beard, my blue eyes wide with a mirror of my own horror. It was my body standing there, but the posture was all wrong, hunched slightly, the hands held in a nervous claw.
“Sabrina?” my voice, from my mouth, on her face, asked.
“What did you do?” we said in unison, her voice from me, my voice from her.
The reality crashed down, a cold, drowning wave. We’d swapped. Not just in theory, not just in some mental exercise. Fully. Completely. I was in the guest house. In Sabrina’s body. I was wearing her clothes. I felt the thin strap of the red thong, a blatant, unwelcome line between… there. A presence, an absence. A vulnerability that made my new, weaker legs feel like water. The sandals on my feet were insubstantial, my balance precarious on the small platforms.
“I didn’t do anything! I just stood up!” Sabrina-in-my-body said, her voice rising. She took a step toward me and I instinctively shuffled back, the motion causing a chaotic, disorienting sway in my chest and another, fuller, jiggling bounce from behind. My ass. Her ass. God, it was like two separate pendulums attached to my core, moving with a life of their own. The short skirt did nothing to contain the sensation.
“Well, undo it!” I hissed, the feminine pitch of my whisper making me cringe.
“How? Do you see a switch?” She gestured wildly with my arms, the motion looking powerful and foreign. I felt a pang of loss for that strength, that reach. I was trapped in this petite, fragile shell. The breeze felt stronger, the world felt larger, every sound slightly sharper.
The crunch of gravel on the driveway was a thunderclap.
We froze. Headlights washed over the side of the main house, then cut out. A car door slammed.
“Mark,” we breathed together.
Pure, animal terror locked my new limbs. Sabrina—in me—seemed to solidify. Her expression shifted from panic to a grim, determined mask that looked bizarre on my familiar features. “We can’t tell him.”
“What? Are you insane? He’s my best friend!”
“And what would you say? ‘Hey Mark, I’m actually Justin, my soul is in my teenage cousin’s body’? He’d have you—me—committed. Or worse, he’d think this is some pathetic, creepy joke.” Her logic was icy, cutting through my panic. “We play along. Just for tonight. We figure this out ourselves. You are Sabrina. I am Justin. Nothing is wrong.”
The back door opened, and light spilled onto the patio. Mark’s huge silhouette filled the frame.
“Sorry I’m late!” he boomed, his voice easy and confident. He stepped out, a six-pack of local IPA dangling from one hand. He was in board shorts and a thin linen shirt, open at the collar. At six-four, he moved with the casual grace of a former athlete, all contained power. His gaze swept the deck, passing over my-body with a familiar nod, and then landing on me.
On Sabrina.
On me.
His step faltered, just for a microsecond. A flicker in his eyes, a quick, comprehensive scan that went from the top of my long, flowing blonde hair, down over the exposed strip of my stomach, the scandalous shortness of the skirt, to the delicate sandals, and back up to settle on my large, surely terrified blue eyes. The easy smile on his face softened, turned something warmer, more deliberate.
“Hey,” he said, and his voice had changed. It was lower, smoother, a tone I’d heard him use on dates, but never, ever directed at me. “You must be Sabrina. Justin’s told me about you.” He came forward, his hand extended.
I stared at his outstretched paw, my own small hand trembling at my side. Sabrina-in-my-body gave a sharp, subtle jerk of the head. Take it.
I lifted my hand. His engulfed it, his skin warm and rough. The shake was gentle, but the size difference was absurd. His thumb brushed over my knuckles, a passing, probably unintentional touch that sent a ripple of alien sensation up my arm.
“Nice to finally meet you,” I squeaked, the higher voice now a tool of this deceit.
“The pleasure’s all mine,” he said, and he didn’t let go of my hand immediately. His eyes held mine, a spark of genuine, unmistakable interest in their depths. “Justin didn’t mention you were…” He trailed off, finally releasing my hand with a slow smile. “Well, he understated things.”
He turned to Sabrina, clapping a hand on my-body’s shoulder. “You’re hiding a cousin this stunning and you never brought her around? Bad form, man.”
Sabrina forced a laugh, the sound emerging from my chest as a strained bark. “Yeah, well. She keeps to herself.”
“I can see why,” Mark said, but he was already turning back to me, his attention a physical weight. “Can I get you a beer, Sabrina? Or maybe something else?”
I was swimming in the sensory overload. The constriction of the bra, the eerie vacancy between my legs, the whisper of hair on my shoulders and back, the sheer, shocking exposure of so much skin to the open air—and to Mark’s appreciative gaze. My mind was screaming. This was Mark. My friend. The guy I’d known since college. And he was looking at me like I was a sunrise.
“Um. Water,” I managed. “Please.”
“Water it is.” He headed for the outdoor kitchenette, his presence dominating the space. As he bent to get a glass from the lower cabinet, his board shorts pulled tight, and I found myself staring with a kind of detached horror at the formidable, undeniable bulge that was now, suddenly, a object of terrifying scale and implication in my new reality. The earlier, clinical knowledge of his anatomy became a visceral, looming fact.
He straightened and turned, catching my eye. He didn’t smile this time, just held my gaze for a beat too long as he filled the glass from the filtered tap. The fairy lights strung on the pergola flickered, casting dancing shadows over the sharp planes of his face and the new, terrifying curves of my own body.
He walked back and held the glass out to me. Our fingers touched again during the transfer.
“So,” he said, settling onto a lounge chair that groaned under his weight, his eyes never leaving me. “Justin says you’re into video games.”
The story had begun. The trap was set. And I was going to have to find a way to speak, to move, to be, while drowning in the impossible, jiggling, exposed truth of it all.