Chapter 1: A Stranger's Body
The steering wheel was wrong.
My hands—small, slender, fingers tipped with chipped pink polish—clutched it too tightly. The vinyl was warm and sticky. I blinked, trying to clear the fog in my head, but the view through the windshield didn’t change. A dumpster, overflowing with black bags. A flickering neon sign for a gas station. The car, a Toyota, smelled of ancient french fries and something cloyingly sweet, like dollar-store perfume.
I moved to rub my beard, a habit when confused.
My chin was smooth. My face felt… different. Lighter.
A cold, sickening dread began to drip down my spine. I turned my head, and a heavy curtain of blonde hair followed the motion, brushing against my cheek and neck. It felt alien. I looked down.
The denim of the cut-off shorts was frayed against my thighs. My legs were bare, tanned, too thin. A cropped tank top clung to a torso that was all wrong. There was a weight on my chest, a foreign, soft pressure. I didn’t want to look, but my eyes dragged downwards.
Two distinct curves strained against the thin cotton. I breathed in, and they rose. I saw the lace edge of something red peeking out.
“No.”
The word came out in a voice that wasn’t mine. It was higher, melodic even in its panic. A girl’s voice.
I fumbled for the rearview mirror, my movements jerky and uncoordinated. My arms felt weak, like the muscles were just for show. The mirror tilted, and a stranger stared back.
Huge, scared blue eyes set in a youthful, heart-shaped face. Full, glossed lips parted in shock. Flawless skin, high cheekbones, and a cascade of tousled blonde hair. I was pretty. Beautiful, even. And I was eighteen.
A sound escaped the plush lips—a choked gasp that was half-sob. This wasn’t a dream. The details were too sharp, too vile. The press of the red lace bra against my ribs. The subtle, constant ache in my lower back, a new center of gravity. The way the thin strap of the thong bisected a part of my body that felt profoundly absent, replaced by a confusing, vulnerable blank space.
My mind screamed Justin Zygurski, thirty-six, software architect, five-foot-eleven, one-ninety. My body whispered Sabrina, young, female, fragile.
The purse on the passenger seat was a cracked leather thing. I grabbed it, my new fingers struggling with the clasp. I dumped the contents. A tube of lip gloss, a tampon still in its wrapper, a few crumpled bills, and a wallet. I flipped it open.
A Delaware driver’s license. Sabrina Marie Parker. Five-foot even. One-oh-five pounds. DOB: Making her eighteen. The photo was the face in the mirror, smirking slightly, wearing more eyeliner.
The world tilted. I shoved the license back, my hands trembling. I needed an anchor. I needed Mark. Mark would know I’d gone insane, he’d call the guys in white coats, and that would be better than this. This silent, screaming wrongness inhabiting my every cell.
Getting out of the car was a revelation in humiliation. My center of balance was in my hips. When I stood, the world seemed farther away. I was eye-level with the door handle. My new body felt insubstantial, like a strong wind could knock me over. I took a step, and a jiggling sensation on my chest and another, more pronounced one behind me, made me freeze. Everything moved. Everything.
I fell back into the driver’s seat, slamming the door. The key was already in the ignition. My size-five boot—a ridiculous thing with a thick sole—fumbled for the pedals. They were too far. I yanked the seat forward, my breasts pressing against the steering wheel. The engine coughed to life.
Driving was a nightmare of new proportions. I was lower, the sightlines all wrong. My thighs brushed together as I worked the pedals. Every pothole sent a ripple through me. I kept glancing in the mirror, expecting to see my own face—my beard, my receding hairline, my tired eyes—but it was always her. Sabrina. Panic made her features pale and stark.
Mark’s mansion was in an exclusive enclave north of the city. The guard at the gate gave me a long, appraising look that crawled over my skin like insects. He knew the car didn’t belong. He saw a blonde in a tank top, and his face shifted into a bland, knowing smile.
“Name?”
“Justin Zygurski,” I said, my too-high voice cracking.
He chuckled. “Right. And I’m the Queen of England. Who are you here to see, sweetheart?”
“Mark Mooers. Tell him it’s Justin. It’s an emergency.”
Something in the shrill desperation must have registered. He eyed me again, less lecherously, more cautiously, and made the call. A minute later, the ornate iron gates swung open.
Mark was waiting on the portico, a towering silhouette against the massive oak door. He wore sweatpants and a faded college tee, his arms crossed over his broad chest. He frowned as I lurched the Camry to a stop, its bumper kissing the curb of his circular driveway.
I fell out of the car. The four-inch drop to the pavement was more significant than it should have been. I stumbled, catching myself on the hot hood. My tiny hands splayed against the metal.
“Whoa, easy there,” Mark said, his voice deep and familiar, a lifeline. He took a step forward, then stopped, his eyes narrowing. He was looking for me. He saw a disheveled, hyperventilating teenage girl.
I looked up at him. I had to crane my neck. He was a giant from this perspective, his shoulders blocking the sun. The familiar scar above his eyebrow, the stubble on his jaw—they were comforting landmarks in a world that had melted.
“Mark,” I breathed. “Mark, it’s me.”
His brow furrowed. “Do I know you? How did you get my home address?”
“It’s Justin,” I hissed, stepping closer. The scent of his cologne, the same one he’d worn for years, hit me and almost brought tears to my new, easily-watering eyes. “You dumbass. You gave me that stupid Nick Offerman biography for my birthday. We got wasted on single malt and watched Blade Runner last Tuesday. You still owe me eighty bucks from the Eagles game.”
His expression shifted from wary caution to stunned disbelief. His eyes, sharp and intelligent, scanned every detail of the face before him—the blue eyes, the blonde hair, the trembling lips.
“No way,” he whispered.
“Yes way.” I wrapped my arms around myself, a futile gesture. The feel of my own slim biceps under my palms was terrifying. “I woke up like this. In that car. At a gas station. I don’t… I don’t know what happened.”
He was silent for a long moment, just staring. Then, without a word, he turned and pushed the front door open wider. “Get inside. Now.”
The cool, conditioned air of his foyer did nothing to stop my shaking. The marble floor echoed under my clumsy boots. I felt exposed under the high ceiling, a tiny, ridiculous creature in this monument to male success. Mark closed the door and leaned against it, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Start from the beginning. The last thing you remember.”
I talked. My voice sounded hysterical in my own ears. I told him about finishing the quarterly reports, ordering Chinese, going to bed in my apartment. Waking up in the driver’s seat with these… these things on my chest. The ID. The smell of the car. As I spoke, I paced, and with every step, the soft, relentless bounce on my chest and the shift of my hips were a physical echo of my words.
He listened, truly listened, without interruption. That was Mark. He processed the impossible with terrifying calm.
“Okay,” he said finally, pushing off the door. “Okay. First, we establish ground rules. You are not Justin Zygurski to anyone but me. You can’t be. They’d lock you up or worse.”
“So what am I?” The question was a plea.
“You’re Sabrina Parker, according to the state of Delaware. But for my purposes, you’re my girlfriend.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“Think about it,” he said, his voice low and practical. “You need a place to stay. You can’t go home. You look like a runaway. If you’re my girlfriend, you have a reason to be here. In my house. Using my resources. It keeps you off the streets and it keeps her at bay.”
“Her?”
“Jasmine Rodriguez. From the charity board. She’s been… persistent. A live-in girlfriend is the most effective deterrent known to man.”
The absurdity of it crashed over me. I was a thirty-six-year-old man trapped in a teenage girl’s body, and my best friend’s solution was to fake-date him. I started to laugh, a high, unstable sound that bordered on crying. “Your girlfriend. Mark, look at me!”
“I am,” he said, and for the first time, I saw a flicker of profound discomfort in his eyes. He was looking at his best friend, but his best friend was standing there in a cropped top and daisy dukes. “It’s weird for me, too. But it’s the only play that makes sense. You stay here. We figure this out. Together.”
He walked toward the kitchen, his gait easy and powerful. I followed, my steps short and quick to keep up. The sheer physical disparity was a constant humiliation. He pulled two glasses from a cabinet, filled them with water from the fridge door. His hands enveloped the glass. When he handed one to me, our fingers brushed. His were warm, rough, enormous. Mine were pale, delicate, the pink polish a grotesque flourish.
I took a sip. The water tasted different. Cleaner, maybe. Were my taste buds different too?
“The body,” I said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “It’s… it’s all wrong. Everything jiggles. I feel hollow and weak. My feet are so small I’m surprised I can stand. And…” I trailed off, the final humiliation too great.
“And the plumbing’s different,” he finished, his voice gentler. He leaned against the granite counter, looking at the ceiling. “Yeah. I can’t even imagine. But you’re still you in there, right? The annoying, pedantic bastard who corrects my movie quotes.”
A feeble spark of my old self flickered. “You mean the accurate bastard.”
He smiled, just a little. “See?”
For a moment, it was almost normal. Then I shifted my weight, and the unfamiliar squeeze of the lace thong, the constant, low-level awareness of a new biological reality between my legs, brought it all crashing back. I was a guest in this flesh. A prisoner in it.
“What do we do first?” I asked, my new voice small.
“First,” Mark said, pushing himself upright, “we get you some clothes that don’t look like they were chosen by a horny teenager for a night she’d regret. Then, we research. We find out who Sabrina Parker is. And we try to find a way to get my friend back.”
He said it with such conviction. But as I stood there, holding a glass of water in a hand that wasn’t mine, feeling the alien sway of a body I didn’t understand, the path forward seemed impossibly dark. The only light was the steadfast belief in my best friend’s eyes, and the terrifying, fragile hope that he could see me behind the sea of blonde hair and the huge, frightened blue eyes.