Congratulations! You get to be Emilia H---! I know, you're probably wondering, what's the catch, but there isn't one. Me and my friends Monica & Katey have been upgraded to really amazing new lives (maybe I'll tell you who we are someday, although you'll understand if we choose to keep it close to the vest for right now). But that means you and whoever is in the next room get to be us, no strings attached!
That's how the letter i found in the luggage left in my room at the Trading Post Inn starts. The guy at the hot dog stand says that's unusual, that mostly they're apologetic or laying out what they would rather you not do, or assuring you that you'll be able to return to your real life. But, he said, it's not unheard of; a fair number of people as young as I look now tend to be impulsive, especially if their new lives look good, so maybe don't worry about it too much unless we don't hear from them or the folks taking over our lives when next year's slots open.
Sorry for kind of starting in the middle here, but I didn't contribute to the blog when we first checked in since it looked like some sort of scam or identity theft thing. Conventional identity theft, that is. This just seems like the weirdest part, at least for this blog, so I wanted to put it up top and get people's attention to see if they can help. Maybe not to reverse this in some way that cheats whatever is making the Inn do this, but because I'm not sure I've seen anything about anyone in quite our situation.
Introductions: I'm Aidan, until a couple days ago, a man in my late 40s. I've got two sons, 15-year-old Rusty and 16-year-old Kutter; we lost their mother about ten years ago, and I never found anyone else, although I didn't exactly spend a lot of time looking, because raising two young boys doesn't exactly give you a lot of free time. These two weeks at Old Orchard were our first real summer vacation in a couple of years.
We'd actually packed to go home the next morning when we went to bed Wednesday night; I set my alarm for 6am. When it went off, I bolted upright, and then noticed that it was just a little pain around my chest rather than my back punishing me for that. I looked down, saw that my undershirt was like a tent and the neckline drooped low enough that I could see I had breasts, then ran to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror.
I'm pretty, though my hair's a mess, and my boxers are riding a bit low on my hips. I do a quick feel inside and almost pass out.
I don't, though, and remember the flier on the desk that said something about not disturbing or looking inside any luggage stored in the closet unless I really need explanations, and that's when I find the letter Emilia left, telling me about the Inn and details of her living situation. My head's still spinning, because first I think, well, I can't just go off and leave the boys, then worry that they're going to be attracted to me, and then it hits me that the curse is on the Inn, not the room, and I rush through the shared bathroom into their room.
There's two women in there, asleep. I guess one is Rusty, because (s)he's thrown all the covers off the bed in her sleep the way that he does; (s)he's Asian-American (half-Korean, we'll later learn) and has a hand resting on a bare breast. The other must be Kutter; (s)he's laying on his/her stomach, one arm dangling over the side of the bed and snoring, brown hair kind of getting in his/her mouth.
I walk over to him first, pull him hair back and give him a shake on the shoulder. He groggily rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist, opens them, and gives a kind of confused smile. "Do I know you?"
"All your life, kiddo. C'mon, I'll show you." We walk to the bathroom, I put him in front of the mirror, and his eyes go wide. He taps the glass with a finger, pulls it back, looks over his shoulder to see Rusty feeling himself up and then over the other to see my empty room.
"Dad? What's going on?"
"Near as i can tell, cursed hotel. You remember the weird pamphlets on the desks and the bags in the closets." He gives me a look like I'm planning some elaborate prank, and I shrug. "I'm in the same boat you are, kiddo, but we'll get through it. Now, why don't you go to my room for a second so I can help your brother?" He nods, and I walk over to Rusty's bed. I'm about to wake him the same way as Kutter, but decide to cover him with a sheet first.
It lasts a second; as soon as I shake his shoulder he bolts upright, feels that he's cupping his left breast in his right hand, and looks down. "What the f---?" Seeing me in the room, he uses his other hand to cover the other one, then starts thinking aloud. "If I've got those..." He gets what coverage he can with his right forearm and then reaches his left hand into his boxers. "WHAT THE F---?!"
I don't scold him about language. "Near as I can tell, the place is cursed. I'm your Dad, and Kutter's in the other room. Same thing happened to him. It turned us into the last people to stay here. I guess these two rooms were occupied by young women."
"No kidding!" He took his hand out of his shorts, looked around, and saw his clothes from the day before by the bed. "Uh, do you mind?" I nodded and turned around until he said it was okay. He was blushing - he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, and while he hadn't gotten that much taller, the shirt was tight and hiding nothing. "I, uh, think I'm going to need some new underwear." His eyes were also going to what was showing for me. "I think we all are."
I nodded, and said that this is what the luggage left in the room was for, so we told Kutter he could come back in and that's when we found out that Rusty had become "Monica" and Kutter was "Katey" (I'm not going to give our new or old last names, but Rusty groaned when he saw the full name on the driver's license). We're all 21 or 22 years old - Rusty had a good laugh at being three months older than Kutter now - graduated from the same college and sharing an apartment in Brooklyn. All of the letters suggested they really liked their new lives and wished us good luck.
I quickly got the idea that the boys didn't want me in the room as they got changed, and I figured that was reasonable; it's not like I've got any special expertise I could offer them. I did grumble while getting my bra on the first time, envious that maybe they could help each other out. I must admit that I didn't really know what to do with my hair until I knocked on the door and saw that Kutter had used one of the elastic loops I thought was worn on the wrist to put his into a ponytail. We'd all gone for t-shirts, slacks, and sneakers, with Kutter grumbling that Katey had just thrown all her clean and dirty clothes into the same parts of the suitcase and who does that?
The next few days were surreal. We visited the hot dog stand and the guy there gave us some useful hints, mostly not to worry too much because people tend to accept the obvious reality in front of them rather than pick at something that seems wrong. The first month of learning your body's new normal will be horrifying, but after that, it's only a big deal if you make it that way. And almost everyone can tread water for a year.
Also, we were in a beach town, but none of us really felt like dressing for the beach. I tried to set a good example of being comfortable by wearing shorts yesterday - it was pretty close to the last clean clothes Emilia left me - but, wow, that's a lot of leg to show and it was stubbly enough for folks to make comments that made me self-conscious despite everything.
Oh, also - we weren't in the Inn for the last few days, because our check-out time was Thursday morning and their texts were very insistent about us being out of the room, saying that the next couple weeks for the Inn were fully booked and "many people are adamant about their choice of room", leaving out the part about it being about turning back. It turns out that it is cheaper to find a motel and fly "home" to New York today rather than try to get a flight between Friday and Sunday.
That leaves us here, at the Portland International Jetport (I know a lot of people like to use the train but it's almost as expensive to take that between Boston and New York as flying), hoping there aren't more surprises waiting for us in the big city.
-Aidan/Emilia
No comments:
Post a Comment