Isaac/Ainsley: Historical Texts

Does anyone else reread their old texts? And I don't only mean for especially emotionally charged nostalgia and/or regret about a couple moments. I mean for everything.

I do that, a lot. It's probably not healthy and it definitely fucks up how I perceive the past, but it's been a habit of mine since I was old enough to get a phone. In some ways conversations I've had over text feel more real in my memory than ones actually spoken in person. One lasts forever, the other fades away. I honestly kind of prefer having important conversations over text because of this, though I'm not so broken that talking in real life doesn't feel better in the moment. Charitably you can say this is what I do instead of keeping a journal. Sometimes I'll talk to someone and reference a conversation that happened a long time ago, and they'll go, what the hell are you talking about?

I gave that up when I surrendered my phone to the Inn. I'm now cut off from my past as well as my present. Ironically this makes me relate to my past more normally, but now I have a different past which I can reference.

So yes, I've been reading Ainsley's old texts. Call it an invasion of privacy unnecessary even by Inn standards, but I'm already doing enough to weird out The Girls without changing up Ainsley's texting style. Not really in any particular order besides scrolling up a bit in the most recent conversations, I'll just search a particular term that's come up in conversation or my own thoughts and see if I can get any insight out of it.

You searched: sugarbunny
MELISSA: hey idk
MELISSA: theyre both cute as heck!!
YOU: I was so set on sugar
YOU: Always wanted to name a dog that lol
YOU: But when I saw him at the rescue and fell in love like that he kept
YOU: Hopping around and barking
YOU: And it was the most adorable thing I've ever seen 😭😭
YOU: And bunny popped into my head it just works too perfectly haha
MELISSA: so i have an idea

Yeah, that's how.

Melissa comes up a lot in these. Ainsley was her maid of honor last year (and thank God I didn't come to the Inn a year earlier) and I've had to fend off a good amount of texts from her since I got here. I'm going to have to see her at some point, she's already wondering why I keep turning down her offers to get lunch. Actually it's kind of amazing I've managed to go this long without having to interact in person with someone who knows Ainsley.

You searched: sara
MELISSA: ssssssssshhhhshshhshshhsh
MELISSA: you can get through this ains
MELISSA: youre unstoppable
MELISSA: need me to come over?
YOU: No that won't work either!!
YOU: I can tell sara's happy that he won't be around constantly anymore
YOU: Might as well give her some more fucking peace and quiet
YOU: I'm already being a total disaster right now and she doesn't need to hear any more of it
YOU: Uuugh and she pisses me off every time I look at her lately
YOU: Even though she hasn't done anything wrong and I feel bad about it
YOU: Stupid weed smell distracting me from my crying

Apparently Ainsley and Sara aren't that close, despite having traveled cross-country together for a vacation. I started to get that impression once I saw how most of their texts are about household stuff. Eventually I dug up a mention that they went to high school together. It surprises me that out of the many girls in The Girls, Ainsley isn't rooming with any of them.

You searched: maine
YOU: Hey cmon I'm just sayin
YOU: Now or never!! Cancellation window for the tickets ends in a few hours
YOU: Come to Maine with me and have some real fun 🤪
SARA: okay. ill do it.
SARA: you have to answer something first though.
YOU: YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT
SARA: be honest. did jaysen mess you up so bad that youd rather be stuck with me for two weeks than be alone?
YOU: I mean
YOU: It's obvious Sara
YOU: I know you could hear me sobbing
SARA: oh i knew the answer i just wanted to hear you say it.

Ainsley originally planned to go to the Inn with this Jaycen guy, but they had an acrimonious breakup a couple of months beforehand. I don't know all details since scrolling through endless texts of clearly overcompensating lovey-dovey talk that spiral into shouting matches is where I draw the line. Seeing "you" attached to all this is bad enough! Yet another reminder that my past is gone. I am the body I've slowly, barely become more comfortable looking at in the mirror. I'm Ainsley Thomas in every way that matters except to a very small number of people. Everything I do, is her.

Of course, by that standard I was only Isaac Strauss to a very small number of people before I went to the Inn, too. Nothing makes you reflect on your life more than having to live someone else's.

You searched: ainsley
YOU: hey can you do me a favor
YOU: i need you to let me know if anyone comes to our door while i'm out
SARA: Ok ❔❔❔
SARA: You gotta tell me why though
SARA: You expecting anyone? Ainsley's ex getting creepy?
YOU: god no
YOU: ainsley's girls are getting increasingly concerned for her well-being and i'm starting to think their talk about an intervention isn't just a joke
YOU: they might camp outside and wait until the dog forces me out and then they drag me to brunch or something where i have to explain why "i'm" being so weird
SARA: HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA XDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXD
SARA: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
SARA: Lol
YOU: look can you help me out here
SARA: Tough shit kiddo!!
SARA: I know it's hard on you but you're gonna have to rip off the bandaid 🩹 if you ever wanna go to her job before you get her fired
YOU: ugh i KNEW you'd react like that
YOU: but it was worth a shot anyway
SARA: I've been chilling with Sara's friends and it's not that hard
YOU: sara's friends are too high half the time to notice anything's wrong
SARA: True XD
SARA: But the other half still counts
SARA: You gotta have some confidence, bub
SARA: I've never seen you be confident and I don't know if you know how
SARA: So prove me wrong
SARA: Being cool really isn't that hard
SARA: I was pretty cool back in the day 😎
SARA: I saw Nirvana live did I tell you that?
YOU: i am ending this conversation

Rusty/Monica: What should I call Dad's (potential) boyfriend?

I know that what I'll call this guy if things get serious won't matter for a while, but for some reason I can't stop thinking about it.  Nothing may wind up coming of this date they're on, because she's Dad and not really sure this is a good idea, but this feels a bit different than Katey & Omar, in part because she had to be talked into it. 

And also because the guy hit on me first, although that's mostly because Dad didn't want to come to Annette's little get-together.  There's not a standing thing where all the Inn People who have settled in New York get together like in Boston, but she tries to make sure there's one before the place opens for the season and one after the end, plus this one so that the folks who are coming here for school or the like know there's people who will have their back on a weird situation.  I'm always down to meet new folks like us, although Dad is really trying to focus on being Emilia rather than hanging onto her old life, and Katey and Omar had something else to do, so I went on my own, which meant I didn't really know anybody there.  There were a couple dozen of us, which seemed like a lot to be in one place, but New York City is huge, and I seldom remember how huge until something like this.  Most of them were cool, although the guy who just walked away when he found out I hadn't actually been to college can get bent.   The lady who owns a café in Brooklyn wanted to know why I never got around to selling her energy drinks, but I wound up spending most of my time hanging around with Ryan, who is 24, gay, and funny, especially when he does something dorky and jokes about it being a hangover from spending last summer as a suburban dad. 

I was saying something to him about how great it was to get to know people like this without there being any sort of pressure to pair up when someone tried to hook up.  A good-looking guy, tall, black, mid-twenties or so.  He said his name was "Jonah", or "Junah" if you wanted to get cute, on account of how he used to be a lady named "June".  He'd spent his first few years after visiting the Inn going to college in the city, thought the first girl he dated was The One, which was probably some sort of reaction to how his ex-husband had used the Inn to abandon her, and now she was coming back for grad school once that fell apart, because he really wanted to do something this time around rather than just being a housewife.

He asked about me, but as soon as I got to my age was like "Oh, you're young-young!", then apologized, though I said it wasn't a big deal.  I was in the middle of some story when I remembered I had pictures on my phone.  He had me stop at a beach one, like who's that?, and I snickered, saying it was my Dad.  He nodded and said Dad was hot, and was she seeing anyone?  Ryan jumped in and said I should totally set them up, because it would be a perfect yin-and-yang thing. 

I figured what the heck, had Jonah pose for a picture, and sent it to her, saying he'd like to meet her.  He texted that he wasn't ready to date, and for some reason I said that he might be a good place to start, since he used to be an older woman, so he'd understand when she was nervous and they wouldn't have to pretend. She didn't respond right away, so I had Jonah give me his number, and mostly hung out with Ryan for the rest of the evening. 

A couple days later, though, Dad asked if I still had his number.  Katey was spending Labor Day Weekend with Omar on Cape Cod, which was nice for her but has both of us like, holy shit, this is serious, and with a lot of guys hitting on her in the bar that night, I guess she figured she ought to take matters into her own hands rather than wait for someone to bowl her over like I am, especially since she figures matches that fit this well weren't going to come along that often. 

Katey and I kind of figured Dad would get cold feet by the time they were both free this afternoon, but it seems to be the opposite - they've apparently been texting all week, and while Dad is dressed pretty casual, it's the sort of casual where she spends an hour trying to figure out which pleated miniskirt and babydoll t-shirt look best together and trying every shade of lipstick the original Emilia left her to find one which wasn't too much. 

She apologized for all the fuss, because she still really didn't like doing all this girl stuff, and kind of hated that she was setting an example about being so worried about what some man thinks about your appearance, which is funny, because Katey and I are way ahead of her in girl stuff and haven't had problems with that.

Anyway, at some point Katey made a joke about whether Jonah is going to want us to call him "Mom", and it's really sticking with me.  Like, we appear to be about the same age, but Jonah isn't just Dad's real age, but old enough to be his mother, so our grandmother, and, I dunno, that feels like it deserves a Mister or Grandma or something, right?  Especially when it's just us and we don't have to pretend we were all born within a few years of each other.

I'm definitely overthinking this. I know.  But if Jonah winds up being around more, it's something to think about, right?

-Rusty/Monica

Arthur/Penny/Millie: Lessons

It probably sounds like a silly "Gen X vs Millennials/Zoomers/Alpha" thing, but I didn't really have a lot of scheduled time when I was a kid and have attempted to raise Millie that way, but ran into a bit of a buzzsaw on that:  There aren't many years between my real age and Ray, but they appear to include the line between "mom and dad said to be back before midnight" and "mom and dad wanted to know where we were at all times".  Plus, and as somebody who hates making generalizations as much you might expect from having been four different people, he's Korean-American, and so are his parents, and there is a lot more early focused pressure there.  It's pragmatic, in a lot of senses; there's this real stew of having left your homeland to achieve, needing to be better to overcome prejudices, and imported focus on developing the ability to work one's way up a ladder that is more rigidly defined than we imagine it to be in America.  Add on that Penelope Lincoln grew up being on three lacrosse teams and swimming competitively during the off-season, and I kind of didn't have a leg to stand on.

On top of that, to get back to what started this whole thing, Millie is Penelope Lincoln's kid, genetically.  I may not have been in a lot of clubs as a kid or teenager and never made varsity in school sports - I had hobbies and collections and such, but was kind of low-key about it - but I'm not in a position to pass that on, at least on a biological level.  She's competitive in a way I often find intimidating, quite frankly, and when she decides she wants to get good at something, she wants to spend time learning from experts.  Plus, all her friends at school and in the neighborhood are kids with busy schedules, so that's how she's going to spend time with them.

Which means I spent the one-week anniversary of being Millie at a tennis lesson.  But let's start with the week in between.  

It was late Saturday when Ray and I got home, after an incredibly awkward train ride.  We both dropped our things in the living room, maybe subconsciously not wanting to face putting them away in different rooms yet, then decided to go out to eat and see a movie rather than sit around.  It was fun, and we mostly laughed away the comments we probably weren't supposed to hear about daddy-daughter dates because it's his weekend with custody, or the ones about what kind of parent brings his tween to a horror movie.  That's what people are going to see, right?

Still, when I got home, I felt very strange picking up Millie's backpack and standing in front of her bedroom door.  I was the sort of parent that respects their daughter's privacy, right?  So I dithered a bit, putting the Penny clothes I'd worn in Maine in the hamper, seeing of there was a ballgame on TV, going into my home office and seeing of any ARCs that a publisher wanted me to blurb caught my eye.  Not that night. Ray slipped into the bathroom to shower, brush his teeth, etc., then walked out shirtless.  I bit my lip, because, well, turning into your daughter doesn't completely suppress all the memories and associations that he's still kind of hot.  He read my face quickly enough and found the top that goes with those pajama pants. 

I raided my own closet for a night shirt to wear, and grabbed at some of the supplies we'd bought at CVS and Marshall's earlier.  A change at the Inn means you buy a new toothbrush, underpants, etc.  It's been almost rent years since the last time, but it's just automatic from the second on. 

Trying to fall asleep in Millie's room was beyond strange, because, on the one hand, I know it well: Millie isn't the sort of kid who keeps a Keep Out! sign on the door or objects to her parents ever coming in, even to collect laundry or find something she left behind.  Lying on the bed looking up, I tried to think of it as just an Airbnb, but it's not a stranger's place, it's somewhere familiar, but in the absolute wrong context.  On top of that, I could practically feel my husband in the next room, and I wanted to go there, but, no, we weren't going to give each other any chance to talk ourselves into anything. 

Sunday was errand-running day, and while i don't really need to train Ray on what the family's grocery needs are or anything, we spent the day double-checking to make sure there wasn't anything that he didn't know about keeping the household going that would trip us up when a new Penny showed up.  Happily, we're a good team; there wasn't anything that he didn't think he needed to know as the husband. 

Then he went off to work for the week and I stayed going crazy. 

It's not that I wasn't busy; there was a bunch to plan for the new school year where I got away with having some convenient Covid that took my voice, a book to write and another to edit, and about a million texts from Millie's friends per day.  There's no boyfriend, thank God, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to tell them when I start school next week.  I've been holding them off by claiming to be grounded for what I pulled last week and that is fill them in on that later, but Ray and I really haven't come up with a cover story yet. 

The thing about saying you're grounded, of course, is that you're stuck inside, and the extra energy I have as Millie versus Penny is making the fiction of being grounded very hard to maintain!  Was i like this as a teenager?  I thought i would be able to concentrate on work, but that really isn't happening.  I sleep in, try to have a coffee when I get up, spit it out because while it doesn't really taste different now, the taste buds that respond to it are clearly not connected to the pleasure center of my brain (yet), grab a Monster from the fridge and hate that I'm okay with it despite it making me too jittery to focus on writing or copy edits very well.

And then, last Saturday, I went to my first tennis lesson as Millie. 

As Penny, I'm not really bad at tennis.  My drivers license says I'm in my 40s but Penelope was an athlete and I inherited all the under-the-skin infrastructure to turn carbs into muscle that's suitable for lacrosse, and it's pretty transferable - lots of running and swinging a stick to create leverage that sends a ball flying, although the elbow is more involved.  I've aged well enough that I don't get tired that quickly, and I honestly seldom lose to anyone consistently except Millie, and she's only gotten that good recently. 

And now I see why.  The coach spent the first lesson blowing her whistle at me a lot, pointing out that Billie Jean or Serena or Venus (obviously, not their real names) had left the opposite baseline wide open, or asking why I was trying to hit the ball as hard as I could when I could drop it just on the other side of the net since they were at the back.  I was apparently bad enough at that to wind up doing drills, trying to build up the muscle memory to hit that spot, which Millie already has.

I wasn't really mad or frustrated about it, but it did remind me a bit that I kind of take all the ways I've done this for other things for granted, and how frustrated I was at being a woman the first time, and now it's second nature.  But having this sort of intensive training is something else; I felt like I was thrown into the deep end when I woke up as Liz, but now I wonder what diving into the deep end would be like, with intensive training, and whether I'd be able to handle it.  As I mentioned, I was a kind of laid-back kid, and kind of picked up on being Liz and then Penny because I had to, which means I did okay but you can still see I'm my old self in a lot of ways.  Penelope probably wouldn't have become a novelist left to her own devices, but I bent her life hard in that direction to make it easier for myself, and as I found myself getting a little better at this game just after my first lesson, I kind of wondered how malleable I might be.

Still, it was uncomfortably intensive.  I've spent most of my time since this last trip to the Inn with Ray, and we're both really reluctant to touch or do anything that might possibly look or feel inappropriate, which is not a problem my coach has - she'll get right in there, standing directly behind me and pushing and pulling at my joints and butt to get me into the right stance or demonstrate how to move.  It was really unnerving, because although I've had people handle me like that at the gym on occasion - even male trainers, once in a while - knowing that she thinks I'm just a kid and doesn't expect any pushback from Millie makes it weird.  I know it's just about training, and Ray and I vetted her before we signed Millie up, but it still felt really uncomfortable.

Though not as uncomfortable as "hit the showers" did.  I went into the locker room just like after any other workout but as soon as I saw Billie Jean take her sport bra off I turned right around, grabbed Millie's gym backpack from her locker, and bolted straight for the T.  It was honestly like I'd just been a man a month ago and was suddenly seeing things I was not supposed to, and I'd be headed for jail if I didn't get out of there right away.  As soon as I was on the T, I was texting Jessica, asking how one manages to not feel like a creep 24/7 when reverted to this age, and she says that it took her three years to feel like she was okay, at which point she was going through puberty and just feeling like a regular tween, and since I wasn't going to be Millie that long, I was just going to have to live with it.

Great.

Still, once I'd broken that seal, I was able to meet up with "Serena" a couple times during the week to practice, and it was kind of fun to get out and play, even though I knew this is pretty serious for the girls, who have pro ambitions, including Millie, I'm kind of just enjoying getting into the flow state for a few seconds at a time.  Not for long - these girls are destroying me - but I'm pretty sure I'm going to greatly appreciate any moment where I feel like I know what to do and don't have to think about my body a lot from now on.

The second lesson at least went a little better, and I was able to just sort of stare fixedly ahead in the shower and call upon how I sort of taught myself not to look around like I did in my first weeks of being Liz afterward.  Not exactly something I want to be calling on again, but here we are.

-Arthur/Penny/Millie

Isaac/Ainsley: Dog Person

There's too much to write about, so I write nothing.

And it's not like I'm that short on free time! For now, anyway. I feel like Heather's been more productive than me in her free time though she's already started at Sara's office. But every little detail of somehow cramming my self into the hole left behind by Ainsley Thomas could be its own post. I can't write one of these every single day, and it just piles up uncontrollably. The same type of deferred maintenance happens when a person disappears from their life for nearly a month.

Take Ainsley's dog. That was the first thing she asked me about when I finally texted her the day after we landed, and she successfully guilted me into heading for the kennel as my first chore the next day. I left while I was still too groggy to worry about going out in public. For my courage I was rewarded with death glares from some very unhappy kennel workers, a late fee I have no idea whether Ainsley's checking account can handle, and a large golden retriever who pounced on me before I could react.

His name is SugarBunny. Seriously, what kind of person names a dog that? It's got a capital letter in the middle of the word! And it's not a bunny!! Should I start calling my pothos vines Venus flytraps?? The dog's not even white! I can't even type SugarBunny without grimacing a little bit. I hope Ainsley doesn't read the blog, she's clearly struggling a lot with leaving him behind and it'd be better if she doesn't know I just don't have it in me to dote on a pet the way she does. I'm a plant guy.

The dog is actually fairly well-trained, and he deserves having a caretaker who doesn't get on edge every time a dog walks in begging for food and/or pets. But he will make clear if I've forgotten to take him on one of his two daily walks, which isn't compatible with my plan to be a complete shut-in. So I have to put on clothes and be out in the world at his whim-- which especially sucks because dogs are magnets for attention! Every dog he comes across has to go through this elaborate butt-sniffing ritual that for sure doesn't last as long as it feels, and I'm held hostage to make small talk with the owner. They all want to know his name (just as painful to say as it is to type), how old he is (I need to remember to ask Ainsley that), whether they can pet him, his birthday, how many littermates he had, his social security number, and if they're a guy roughly my age (or not!) if they can set up a doggy play-date. Yeah, I bet you'd like one, wouldn't you. And that's still not as bad as when I meet someone who knows Ainsley and SugarBunny and they're wondering why I'm suddenly way less enthusiastic about chatting them up. I don't think she's friends with any of these people, she's just that kind of person. There's all sorts of pictures of local dogs in her phone. Look, I can fake being a marketer but there's some lines I won't cross.

Heather looks at me like I'm a psychopath when I tell her all this, naturally, but whenever I ask if she'd rather walk the dog, most of the time she'll just fire back that it's not her problem. I mean, sure, it isn't, but she doesn't have the right to complain about that. Only I do!

Of course, I could have it worse. I'd rather Ainsley have a dog than a boyfriend. And the real Ainsley and Sara have some caretaking of their own to do, as the mother and father of a toddler whose grandparents were politely furious about being stuck with her unplanned for an extra two weeks.

If there's one good thing about SugarBunny it's that he can't verbally question why his owner's acting so weird and provides an excuse to avoid anyone who can. Ainsley's been practically inseparable from some of the girls in her messages since they were her sorority sisters back in college, and I'm running out of bigger excuses. Ainsley had me end the "digital detox" before too long and now the reason I'm not showing up for brunch or Girls Night is that "I" "have" "Covid", but I can't keep this up indefinitely. Especially because Ainsley's supposed to be a bridesmaid at some point this fall, and I'm going to have to show up for stuff like dress fittings and the bachelorette party and I just, do not understand how to act like or talk to any of these people. I've been avoiding people like Ainsley and her friends since high school, not because of any way they've wronged me, just that I don't find them relatable in any way. And it terrifies me that I might ruin someone's life just because I unavoidably come across like someone who locks themself in a box full of plants. It's like the dog thing. My whole life I've felt apart from most people, like I'm defective somehow, and I... Bluh. I hate how easily this body starts crying. I don't know if it's the trauma from having my life uprooted or if Ainsley's just like this.

But I'm not gonna cry over spending all day today keeping up with Taylor/Travis engagement memes enough to look like Ainsley isn't dead. That's more comprehensible to me than Love Island, even if I can't name more than a handful of Taylor Swift songs. I'll write up some more about these people once I get a better handle on them.

That's all I have for now. Oh, and I talked to the guy in my body, but he's apparently a mid-thirties guy and he hasn't said anything too concerning yet. I'll take that as a good sign.

Isaac/Ainsley: This City Should Not Exist

Peggy Hill was right about this place. The instant we set foot outside the airport in Phoenix, Heather and I got kicked in the stomach with an unending onslaught of hundred-and-five-degree heat magnified by all the concrete and asphalt. I get why a lot of the girls my age around here wear basically nothing, especially if they're forced to go out in the afternoon, but that's not enough to get me to partake and neither was Heather making fun of me when she saw me digging out an old ASU sweater from Ainsley's closet. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Clearly, I made it to Phoenix without totally collapsing into a pit of self-pity and anxiety, or at least not a bad enough one to cave and find a non-cursed motel to shut myself in until my bank account runs dry. But before that, I had to deal with the homework the Inn gives to all its guests, which I'd put off like the rest of the homework I've done in my life.

Sitting in my Inn room very early last Wednesday morning, after being up all night freaking out about the impending flight, I had two obligations to choose from: Turn on Ainsley's phone, or write my letter. Contacting Ainsley could wait a little longer, but I'd have to leave my phone behind at the Inn for my body's future occupant and despite my trepidation with truly entering Ainsley's world I'm still too phone-addicted to go without one for too long. I needed it for my boarding pass regardless. After staring at the thing for too long, only at the backside (floral case up) to avoid having to confront my reflection for any unnecessary second, I pressed the side button, felt the vibration and slid that thing under the bed as if it were a grenade about to go off in my hand. Not now, Ainsley. It was time to distract myself from a problem by solving another one.

The actual content of the letter was the easy part. My life is not complicated (before now, anyway). That's sort of the problem-- my life might be kind of barren, but that'll only help someone slip into it. And I'm young, even if I'm not exactly a gym rat I'm still certain that twenty is much younger than the average age of an Inn guest. Is it that crazy to be paranoid about someone stealing my life? Is that what everyone around my age who goes to the Inn thinks? If anything I got off easy only gaining an extra five years-- maybe this is the luck Heather was talking about. Regardless, I hate thinking about somebody else walking around in my skin, and that's only made worse knowing that somebody got my body two days ago. Much sooner than I expected, by the way. Heather and I haven't heard anything (and yeah, I know, I have no right to criticize with how long it took me). I might ask Penny if she saw anything but I'm assuming she was understandably distracted.

All those thoughts made the solid five minutes of constant vibrating from under the bed slightly more ignorable. It took way longer than that to agonize over my two-paragraph letter, but the second I finished I grabbed the phone before I could let myself overthink it, in a fit of rage about how I'd cowardiced myself out of getting to sleep that night. My bravery rewarded me with a lock screen full of hundreds of missed texts, calls, group chats (at least one of which had a conversation going even at this hour), and some very concerning emails from some kind of kennel. Any courage I had quickly evaporated and I was like, screw it. Ainsley's left these people hanging for two weeks, they can wait a little longer.

Heather came to drag me out of the room before I could beat myself up too much. Since our blowup at the diner we've had an unspoken agreement to pretend it didn't happen, which is good enough for me. Or maybe not, since if she was pissed at me she wouldn't have spent the entire ride up to the Portland airport talking my ear off. Hell, maybe that was her revenge. It's the kind of thing she'd do.

"And around when Violet came along– that would've been when I was 31 by the way, so she's the same age as we are right now, gosh that's fun– that's when it all went to shit. Not 'cause of Violet, love the girl, wish I could see her more but she moved out to LA, she's the best. But I think it happened because Dave finally got into his head that having more kids wasn't gonna fix the marriage. And it took him three to realize that! Come on! So his heart wasn't in it anymore. And yeah, I started seeing Kenneth who was a VP at the school I was working at at the time, and I know it was cheating– I didn't know Dave had already been actually cheating on me at the time, but I knew he was emotionally cheating on me, so. You get it. Anyway it all blew up around when Jack was finishing middle school and I had to move to the next county over and it's, it's a complete mess. And I thought it would've been better once I finally got back to the dating game, but no, there was this guy at the bar, Jack, and yeah I know it's the same name as my oldest so that was weird but at that point I hardly ever saw him–"

You get the idea. I wonder if she does that to everyone or if it's only because I appear to be a woman the same age as her. By the time we boarded our first plane I knew far more than I ever wanted to about Heather Flynn and her life, even accounting for how I didn't retain more than a quarter of it. And so did our very confused and admirably silent rideshare driver.

Throughout all this I managed to go out into the world as a woman without having a visible panic attack. Mostly I just spent the whole trip staring at the ground and trying to avoid eye contact with anyone, which is a more extreme version of how I'd already been spending my vacation before any of this happened. But that's harder than it sounds in settings like air travel where you're constantly up in other people's personal space. Like the middle seat, for instance. Heather and I naturally ended up with two middle seats about ten rows away, with how late we booked the tickets. I could already notice people looking at me differently– some with lust, probably, but considering my baggy clothes and disastrous appearance not nearly as much as there could be. Instead people seemed to look kinder at me? Maybe? Like they think I'm harmless. That could just be me reading too hard into reactions I only see for a split second before turning away, but it'd explain the old man in the window seat who spent much of the second leg from Philly to Phoenix trying to tell me about his grandkids. There went the one good thing about being seated apart from Heather.

But I made it to that curb outside baggage claim where I doubled over from the heat. At some point, I had no choice but to just ignore other people, put my head down, and try to make it to my next point of relative safety with as little disruption as possible. The psychology changes from procrastinating entering the public world for as long as possible, to charging ahead at full speed just to get things over with. The sink-or-swim metaphor is a cliché because it's true.

That didn't stop me from collapsing on the couch and crying a little bit the moment Heather and I got into the apartment. I shut out everything: the last three days, the feeling of my chest against the cushions, the walls covered in tacky tapestries, Heather talking about how those girls are better decorators than she was at their age, everything. Ainsley's friends wondering when she'll come back from her "digital detox vacation" and arguing about whether Pedro Pascal is actually a good actor. The real Ainsley, who I was still failing. Figuring out how I'm going to be Ainsley, which I still hadn't really done at that point. Even the ominously empty dog crate and the fur lingering on the couch.

I've dealt with most of those things in the last week, but reliving the trip over here has me almost as drained as I was then. I'll keep you guys updated with my harrowing adventures. Hopefully before I start with Ainsley's job, but she managed to work out a pretty generous emergency leave deal so I've still got a little while. (I suspect nudging people to be lenient with employees disappearing from work for several weeks is part of the "nobody believes you" aspect of the Inn's curse-- you'd think way more of us would've lost our jobs!)

Arthur/Penny: Substitute Millie

I haven't had a reason to come back to Old Orchard Beach since I became Penelope after Jermy decided he was talking my life, and I can't remember if I liked it the first time around.  I was a young man and probably cynical about vacation/tourist spots, figuring they're not real or authentic, but between being older and having home on vacations with Millie, I think I understand their appeal a bit more.  These places have a goal and a function that I can probably appreciate anywhere else, but being sick in one when you are not happy, and feel like you have to guard against any attempt of the place to make you happy, is a certain sort of Hell.

I spent the whole week doing things I know are bad for me.  Eating at the worst fast good restaurants so I don't have any fond memories of the trip, holding my phone in my hands all the time just in case Millie decided to call, even though it's terrible for your mental health.  I texted and left messages to everybody in my Inn network, but was kind of curt with everyone, even Ray, mad he wasn't there to help even though I'm the one who said to hold the fort at home.

It could have gotten expensive, too, but Cary knew a guy who knew a guy, and I was able to hunker down in a little cottage that had been rented by a Canadian man who wasn't coming to the U.S. this year.  I didn't get a whole lot of work on the new book, being in no mental state to edit, especially when I took a deck chair and moved to the Trading Post's porch ahead of the new groups arriving on Thursday.  I wanted to at least have a look at the folks who would be in Room 4.

They didn't show up until late Friday, a couple of tattooed twenty-somethings who just absolutely could not keep their hands off each other, digging right into the fronts of each other's pants right in the off-street parking and yelling an enthusiastic "fuck off" to anyone who looked at them cross-wise.  I could immediately see into the future and what the school administration and coaches were going to be calling me about, especially if the guy wound up as Millie.  And there wasn't much time, because, sitting on the porch, I'd felt the tingle.

A lot of Inn people don't actually believe in the tingle; they either never registered it, figure those who claim to have felt something the afternoon before the change are retroactively drawing a connection, or just kind of dismiss the idea that magic can reach back in time, because cause precedes effect no matter what.  Despite being affected by something otherworldly, Inn folks as a group do not really believe in fate, more likely to see the place as something chaotic even if we settle into a new life and like it.  I figure there's no reason magic can't send ripples up and down the timeline, even if it does lead to me doing something I hadn't really considered before I felt it, although it seemed to make complete sense once it occurred to me.

So when I saw they had Room 4, I offered them the place I was staying in exchange.  It just made so much sense, even though I hadn't really considered it before doing it.  I'd been reaching out to people I know who might agree to be Millie until next year (Ashlyn actually might have done it if she and her boyfriend weren't on a cruise) and making plans for how to deal with someone who decides it might be a decent life, but when it comes right down to it, who else can I really trust? 

They thought I was nuts, but went along with it.  I let them drive me to the house, grabbed my luggage, and made my way back with the key.

Then I took a deep breath as I opened the door.  The room was still set up with a queen bed, Millie's backpack on one side and this other woman's suitcase on the other, and I took the bedding off to form a little next on the floor next to Millie's backpack.  I recognized that I was gambling at this point - first, it would be logical that they placed their bags on the sides of the room that corresponded to where they slept, but not certain, because folks don't necessarily figure out the minimal distance thing after just one trip to the Inn.  Honestly, there's still some holes in the theory - like, if things work out that there are ten people right on top of where the last person was in the center of the building, but the rooms on the ends have 1 and 2, but in different arrangements in separate visits, will one person change into someone all the way on the other side, or does whatever this force is go for the shortest total distance?  Also, by doing this, was I potentially closer to someone on the other side of the wall than where Millie had been?  Still, it was the best I could do.

Having a plan felt good, and I decided to indulge myself a bit, taking a cab into Portland, dropping a c-note on a nice dinner (including what I figured would be the last drinks I'd be having for the better part of a year), and coming back to the Inn full and buzzed and thinking that the person who wakes up as Penny in a couple weeks or so was going to have a stomachache and a hangover, and I should probably apologize for it in the letter.  I'd stopped at a 7-11 to get some of the energy drinks Millie likes that I usually find gross and popped one open so that I'd be awake for the change.

Around 2am, I set my phone up and started recording, figuring that if someone younger than me wound up becoming Penny, they might appreciate video over text, and assurances that there wasn't multiple layers of deception going on among the people with whom they'd soon be sharing a home.  It meant I got to watch myself change, and changing into one's daughter is a trip - it feels less like your face is turning into someone else's than you're noticing how much you have in common, right up until the moment when something she has that you don't shows up.  I noticed that my hair hadn't been that long in a while or that dark since I was Liz before any almond shape to my eyelids showed up, and then I pulled my knee up to my chin and, yeah, I keep in shape and have nice legs, but skinny 13-year-old legs are something else.  My pajamas were feeling a bit loose all around, and when I stood I could tell that the top and bottom overlapped a little more than they did before, although at the rate Millie's been growing, I'll probably be shrinking again in spring.

I stood up to take a proper look in the mirror, and immediately recognized that even if the alcohol in my body hadn't vanished with the change (and I honestly don't know whether it did or not; it's another thing you get different accounts of), I still bounced to my feet with ease.  Nell had been a college and (briefly) professional athlete, and I spend a fair amount of time in the gym to not waste what I had inherited, but it felt downright rude of the Inn to remind me that there is indeed a big difference between how a 40-something woman making her best effort looks and feels and how a sporty 13-year-old girl looks and feels.  I took a good look at Millie's face in the mirror, though as someone who has been through this I wasn't sure what I was expecting to find.  A beauty mark that hadn't changed?  Something missing?  Lines that didn't completely vanish?  Whatever it was, I suddenly felt like the caffeine was out of my system, and I flopped down on the bed immediately.

By the time I woke up the next morning - Millie can sleep in! - most of the screaming was done, and a note had been slipped under the door asking if there was an extra bag in my room.  I resolved to knock on the next door, but had to go to the bathroom first.  It all seemed normal enough until I was about to wipe and suddenly had a flashback to when I first became Liz and felt like this was a huge invasion of privacy, that I was now going to have to interact with someone else's private parts - a child! my child! - every day for months.  I gritted my teeth and told myself it was better than the alternative, but I still opted to hit myself with some spray deodorant rather than hit the shower, and practically looked away from examining myself in the mirror.  I knew from experience that I couldn't avoid this forever, but felt like putting it off.

There was a text from Ray saying that he was on the train when I checked my phone, and I replied saying it happened last night and I'd meet him at the station.  Then I gave the woman next door her new clothes and phone and wallet - she looked askance at the opened letter but and then her jaw dropped when I explained the very good reason and extracted a promise to call me as soon as she heard from the person whose life she was taking over, especially if they mentioned Millie - and then headed out.  I had a couple hours before the train arrived, and I needed to make a Dunkin' run (apparent teenagers buying breakfast sandwiches and coffee on a Saturday apparently not that unusual) and buy a change of clothes.  

Once i'd changed into them, eyes closed as much as possible, I made my way to the train station.  It was a little late, as is the Downeaster's wont, but I spotted Ray right away and jumped up, waving my hand in the air.  He saw me and started running toward me like he thought I was really Millie and was going to jump into his arms, before realizing that wasn't the case and stopping a little short, and awkwardly extending a hand.  "Hey, I guess we're going to be seeing a lot of each other.  I guess you must recognize me from the photos on Millie's phone, but where's Penny?  I was under the impression you'd met your mother for the duration."

"Uh, I'm right here, hon."  It suddenly seemed to dawn on us both that my messages had sort of said all the things I had done over the past few days but hadn't exactly put them together.  We started for a couple of seconds and then he pulled me into a hug.  "My God, Penny, what have you done?"

I started crying.  "The only thing I could think of to do!  I mean, who else are we going to trust with Millie's life?  Maybe Ashlyn if she were around, but--"

"But she's on that cruise, and it would be so much to ask of her."  I could feel the sigh that moved his entire body before he pulled back to give me a kiss, but froze when he saw my new face, hugging me close again.  "I wish you'd explained everything yesterday, so I could help."

I shrugged.  "How?  You'd just try to stay in the room with me, to increase the odds that one of us became Millie, only then we'd probably wind up separated and with all sorts of mess to deal with when it came to change back!  The next ten months or so are going to have enough moving parts as it is, and I kind of need you steady."  I paused as he gave me a strange look.  "Not that I was planning this, mind you, I was just kind of careless in my texting, but this is still probably the best case situation."

"And it sucks."

"It sucks so much!  I thought I'd be able to handle it but I've freaked out at least three times since 2am, and I've got no idea whether she'll thank me for this or never forgive me.  And now, she's not going to have, you know."

He didn't for a second, but then it clicked.  "It could still happen."

I shook my head.  "Maybe, but you know they were talking about preparing for menopause and how dangerous 'geriatric pregnancies' can be at my last physical.  And we're not going to try and sell the new me on the idea - you've talked to Jonah-slash-Krystle, and maybe you can say her situation's unique, but you know changing this much does weird things to your head, and even someone who said they would just act as an unconventional surrogate--"

He put his finger on my lips, which took me aback; it was something he would occasionally do with Millie when she was motor-mouthing off on a tangent, but not with me, and, again, he seemed to realize it after half a second.  "Hey, let's just worry about the kid we've got and not some hypothetical other one, okay?"  I nodded.  "Have you heard anything?"

I shook my head.  "No, but I'm pretty sure my neighbor will work on her predecessor.  Millie might be stubborn, but this other woman's a mom, and she'll get it."

"Absolutely."  He looked around.  "So, do you want to hang around here at all, or just get on the next train south?"

"Oh, next train south, absolutely!  Although..."  I took out my phone and checked the time.  "We've got a couple hours to decide what's staying in the room and what's coming with us - I'm going to need my writing laptop, for example - and maybe grab some hot dogs and let Cary and Krys know the latest and see if they can watch out for anything."  I tried to grin.  "Maybe he'll have some advice for you about what to do with a tween who thinks she knows everything because she's really an adult!"

He quarter-laughed - it was only half a joke but neither of us really felt like joking - and then we started walking toward the Inn.

-Arthur/Liz/Penny/Millie

Marc/Dustin: Early Risers

As days passed, we started to develop our routine, inasmuch as eight or nine people (there's one guy drifting around named Garrison and I'm not entirely sure where he fits in) can have a routine. Naturally, John, Mary and I stick by one another, which I don't think is all that eyebrow-raising for the others, especially with Dustin and Dakota being an item. They were close enough to go on vacation together, and beyond "Wow, didn't you get enough of each other already" between the "girls," there's clearly a dynamic there that people are free to interpret. What are they doing having sleepovers in the basement every night? That's nobody's business - it's 2025, after all, right?

I found out early on that Dustin is an early riser. All my previous bodies had the sort of sleep cycles you would expect -- as Ryan I sometimes stayed out late but would end up sleeping in equally late. But Dustin seems to have an ability to wake up at 5:00 AM no matter how late he was up the night before, and still be brimming with energy. It's been borderline supernatural (well, I guess it's literally supernatural.)

At first I resisted this -- I really do like sleep -- but when it became obvious I wasn't going to get any more sleep and my body was ready to start the day, I decided to do something, so I went for a walk, which seemed the most sensible way to burn off energy without disturbing the rest of the house. Then as I was walking I thought why don't I see what it would be like to run? So I started to run, and I ran and I ran and I ran, and my legs just kept carrying me, without even thinking about how soon should I turn around in case I get out of breath. I ran as far as the local athletic center, really only a few blocks away, which I reached without tiring. I returned home and saw that, sure enough, I had a membership card. 

So the next day, I decided to go in. It's not hard to imagine this being Dustin's routine, running to the gym, spending twenty minutes on the rowing machine or the elliptical, lifting some weights, and then running back. Only then did I feel somewhat spent. This body is something else.

After a few days of that, I returned to the house today to see Mary sitting on the porch. She was waiting for me with a mug of coffee for each of us.

"A tablespoon of milk, a bt of sugar," she said.

"Wow," I nodded, "That's just how I take it." I sipped and told her it was right on.

She smiled. "I like to notice things about people who are important to me."

That made me blush a little bit. "Oh, am I...?" I stammered.

"Of course," she sipped her own coffee, "You and John and I share this secret. You've been... a stabilizing influence. And you're a nice person. Even when we disagree on things."

"I do what I can," I muttered, trying to downplay whatever goodness she sees in me. "Are you always up this early?' It was not yet 7 AM.

"I like to be," she said, "I'm trying to get on a better sleep schedule, but it's tough. This body is resisting my efforts. Have you noticed these garden plots here? They've got a lot of potential, but nobody's tending them. I thought that could be my project."

"I'm no green thumb, but isn't it a bit late in the season?"

She sipped and shrugged. Maybe she knew better than I did, or maybe she had other reasons for wanting to be up early and the garden was just an excuse.

"How's John?" I asked. Of course I had seen plenty of him that week, but we hadn't had a lot of private time lately -- nor would I have wanted to.

"John's... John," she said, then laughed musically because of course, John isn't John, to the world. John is the John that he is when he's Dakota, and do we really know what that means yet? In fact, given all that John hides from Mary, do we really know who John is?

"Things are all right between you two?" I asked, hopefully, but trying not to pry.

She looked down into her cup and smirked bashfully. "Next question, please."

"Okay, so tell me about Mary," I said. It occurred to me that I know strangely little about the woman in her own words.

"I'm going to be 48 on September 1," she said, "Where does the time go? Married for 18 years. Together for 24." She got a faraway look as she seemed to contemplate how that was half her life.

"Kids?" I asked. "I don't mean to pry." John had once said something about a daughter, but the topic hadn't come up with Mary.

"John does, from his previous marriage. They don't speak." Mary didn't let on how she felt about that. She abruptly changed the subject. "I would love to ask Cassandra what possessed her to get all these tattoos. Look at this."

She held out her left forearm and there written in script -- amidst colorful butterflies and birds and flowers that comprised that sleeve -- were the words "BE YOU TO A T."

"Isn't that funny?" she snickered. "I keep staring at it, since it's been etched in my arm without my permission. What a thing to see when you are being someone else."

"To thine own self be true," I said, "I think that's Shakespeare."

"Polonius from Hamlet," she nodded. "Of course, he was a windbag. Among the Bard's best jokes."

"I didn't know you were an expert," I said.

"I was studying literature when I met John," she said, and got that faraway look again. "A lifetime ago."

"Multiple, some would say."

"I haven't lived a lifetime as Cassie... yet," she snickered.

We both sipped, letting that remark hang in the air. Soon after that I heard a rustle at the door and Ifena joined us and we had to get into character.

-Marc/Dustin

Rusty/Monica: Is it weird to celebrate the anniversary of the Inn changing you?

Dad and Katey and I are already celebrating two birthdays each, and while I don't really look at the blog much beyond seeing if anyone commented on my posts, I do see that the folks who change at this time of year don't exactly seem happy about it, so maybe last night's thing was in kind of bad taste?

The really weird thing is that it was Dad's idea.  I don't think he's really become happier to be Emilia in the last couple months, even now that she's not scared of what's between her legs, but she really wants me and Katey to be reassured that she's not mad at us for wanting to stay like this, so I think she kid of overdoes it sometimes.

Sometimes I think she's kind of screwing with us.  Like, she apparently likes the beach now?  I mean, she says she liked going to the beach back when she was a teenager and loved spring break in college - she was in a fraternity! - but do you suddenly just wake up and decide you like walking around in a bikini, even when it's ninety degrees out?  Especially since I don't think that she's going to Coney Island or Fort Tilden or other places with friends from work or book club or the like - just me and Katey, and sometimes Omar, and I don't know that asking us to put lotion on her back is meant to make us feel uncomfortable because the girl who just undid the back of her top is our dad, but...

(Also: I never thought of New York as a place with beaches, but then again, it is all on islands except the Bronx)

I do kind of appreciate that she did this; I was kind of nervous about being on display at the beach even if I don't have any problem with workout clothes that just cover what's necessary and sexy outfits generally.  but apparently I'm okay if it's just a way to hang out with my family and friends, get in the water, get some sun (with appropriately slathered on sunblock, because apparently Dad doesn't sunburn despite being a natural blonde while I sure do) and not, like "here's my whole ass, come and get it!"

Last night, though, was kind of crazy; Dad had bought us matching outfits, like whole matching outfits with shoes and handbags, brought us to the sort of club that was usually not her thing, and did a champagne toast before hitting the dance floor.  We mostly danced with each other, but she didn't often say no when a guy bought her a drink or asked her to dance.  Around 1am, she was starting to stumble in her heels and didn't really look like she was having fun any more, so we loaded ourselves into a cab.  She insisted on getting an ice cream cake saying "Happy Inn-iversary" on it out of the freezer and making sure we each got a piece before going to bed.

She was really hung over this morning, and Katey and I told her she didn't have to do stuff like that or pretend she was really into taking up how the original Emilia was apparently kind of a party girl, and she swore up and down that she just wanted to mark the occasion and that she wasn't doing anything she didn't want to do.  "I'm an adult woman who used to be an adult man, and I know what i'm doing," she says.

I didn't believe her this morning, but now I'm kind of wondering after writing this if the reason this all seems in bad taste is that celebrating one year doesn't just mean celebrating how Katey and I have done well as grown-up women, but also that Dad is kind of no longer Dad, that he's becoming someone different that likes guys and treats us like friends or sisters rather than her kids and that maybe we won't be able to turn to her to know what we should be doing.  Katey doesn't seem too worried about it, and neither does Dad, so maybe it's just me.

-Rusty/Monica

Marc/Dustin: Crowded House

I want to preface this by saying I have been piecing it together over the last few days but I am aware that some crazy stuff is going on in Maine and playing out on the blog. I reached out to Ryan to see if he crossed paths with Millie and he did have information about a person that seems to have been relevant -- I've connected him with Arthur/Penny through available channels for whatever that's worth, and hopefully that helps.

All this to say, I know the experiences and tribulations of my little crew seems like the proverbial hill of beans, but in case you could use a change of pace, some of us are just out here attempting to live "our" lives. To the rest, good luck!

--

Six bedrooms. Eight bodies. Two bathrooms. Welcome back to your twenties.

Dustin, Dakota and Cassie live not far from their alma mater in a house that was built sometime between the wars, the kind of creaky, musty place without natural light and with substandard wiring that you settle for when you've finished undergrad and just need to drop your bags somewhere. There are four bedrooms up top, including Dustin & Dakota's. Cassie's is one of two in the basement. Common areas include a cramped kitchen, a front porch (mostly occupied by the cannabis users in the house) and a back deck that probably needs a few boards replaced but is otherwise quite good.

As we pulled up, I saw Mary eyeing the place. "Why do I have a feeling... I'm going to be doing a lot of sweeping and scrubbing?"

"Don't be negative, Mare," John chided.

"No, she's got a point," I said, "We're adults, used to certain standards of living. These kids are just out of school. There's a good chance we're going to feel like their parents."

"Thank you, Marc," Mary said. "I knew I liked you."

"I guess it's Dustin now," I said, "Once we open these car doors, we'll be within earshot of people who think they know us."

I could see Mary's hesitance. I certainly couldn't blame her. I do have a tendency to forget that others haven't lived with this as long as I have, aren't accustomed to going from life to life the way I've become. I wonder if it's becoming harder for me to relate to other people ... not that I ever had a really easy time with that to begin with.

"So what do we do?" Mary asked.

"We just... be," John shrugged, not doing a very good job seeming like this is new to him. "It'll be fun. It'll be like Big Brother."

Mary smiled and rubbed John's shoulder, then leaned forward from the backseat to kiss him on the cheek. I can always detect an improvement in Mary's mood when John plays optimistic -- seeing her "husband" who has become a girl adapt so quickly inspires her to be confident. If she knew the truth, perhaps that wouldn't quite be the case.

Then the doors opened and I popped the trunk. We each took our bags up the porch and -- forcing myself to pretend like I/we belong here -- I took the knob and pushed through.

We lingered a moment in the front hallway. Mary stuck her head around to the available rooms. "Not bad, not bad," she muttered to herself. The place wasn't exactly an IKEA Showroom, but it was reasonably tidy.

"What's not bad?" asked one of the girls who lives there -- from the description Dakota left, I deduced this was Ifena, a first-generation daughter of Nigerian immigrants.

"The place, it's... looking good," she stammered, obviously not accustomed to lying to a person's face like this.

"Yeah, it's because you three weren't here," Ifena smirked. "You know how PJ is."

"Right, PJ," Mary nodded. PJ, we learned from the girls' notes, is the other occupant of the basement. They are gender non-binary, which I guess kind of gives us something in common since I've spent time as both, not to mention going back and forth on my sexual orientation. But I gather that they and Dustin are not exactly close.

My sense overall is that the house mostly represents Dakota's social circle -- it's mostly girls after all -- and that Dustin is sort of an add-on, as the boyfriend.

Next to come thumping down the stairs was Jaspal, whose room with his girlfriend Madison is next to Dustin and Dakota's. He immediately slapped me a handshake and told me in bro-language about some accomplishment in some video game and I nodded like I understood.

Not long after that was the arrival of Charly, shorter than Dakota with curly red hair, who had some bags of groceries in tow. "Oh, you guys are back," she said breathlessly. I rushed over to help with one of the heavier bags, and John followed suit by making a grab at the water jug for the communal cooler -- which he immediately regretted as he was unable to heave the damn thing.

"So much for chivalry," he muttered to me after, clearly feeling embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it," I shrugged, heaving the thing over my shoulder with ease. "I don't think anyone was expecting Dakota to be able to lift that."

"Maybe not," he sighed under his breath so only I could hear, "But it was a reality check for this guy."

I wanted to point out that he wasn't exactly a heavyweight when he was Cayden, but of course Mary was within earshot and discussing our past experience was out of bounds. I guess what he was saying that he feels like as an adult he should be a certain level of strength or whatever, and was disappointed that in some ways this body has more in common with a 10-year-old's than his grown self.

Mary rubbed John's shoulders again in comfort, and I wondered whether the others would take note of the way they were hovering near one another in a more-than-friendly way.

Those of us who were present made a communal dinner and the three of us pretty much just kept our mouths shut and observed, unless directly addressed. There weren't really questions about where we'd been -- I guess when you're twenty-two and unemployed and you want to take an extra two weeks on your beach vacation, nobody bats an eyelash, even if Cassie ended up leaving her service job over it.

--

Afterwards, I went upstairs to unpack and found "our" room -- very much a girl's room, with furniture that had probably been following Dakota for years, and Dustin more or less fitting all of his stuff into the closet. As I contemplated what-goes-where, I heard the door close behind me -- John had slipped in. Dakota can be very light on her toes.

"So..." I started to say, observing the double bed that sure did look... cozy.

"You can unclench," John said, "I'm going to sleep with Mary... for now. Cassie's bed is plenty big for two, as long as one of them is Dakota," he smiled and waved his hand over his slender figure.

We agreed that it wasn't necessary for John and I to share a bedroom to "keep up appearances" -- Dustin and Dakota are twenty-two-year-olds dating, not an old married couple. There's leeway there, we think, and if questions are raised, they could have answers that are not 'we were magically transformed into other people and it's very complicated beyond that.'

"How do you think that will go?" I asked.

"It's a win-win," John shrugged, "Cassie's quite attractive, don't you think?"

"I guess so," I nodded hesitantly -- it's clear to anyone with eyes to see, as long as you don't mind a lot of ink, but in the moment I certainly wasn't going to push the point hard.

"And she keeps telling me how cute I am, you know, when she brushes my hair and helps me pick out an outfit. Perhaps there are some sparks there."

"I'm happy for you, if so," I said coolly -- I'm not entirely sure it will play out that way, but it's not for me to know.

John turned toward the full-length mirror and examined himself, his posture, his stance. He stands up straight and he's Dakota, he slouches and he's John again. "It's taking a lot of getting used to, you know. Looking like this. Being looked at like this. Come here."

I stood behind him. He guided my hands to his hips, which caused me to freeze briefly before pulling away in embarrassment.

"I just wanted to see," he tittered. "They do make a nice couple."

"Go to your wife, John," I sat on the bed, exasperated.

"After I finish putting away what few clean pairs of underwear I have left, Dustin," he snickered wickedly at me.

I laid on the bed and stared up at the ceiling while he worked away. A moment later, he said, "You know, if it doesn't work out in Mary's bed, I could always just camp out."

"Huh?" I sat up.

"Sure," he said with a grin, "Looks like plenty of room in tent you're pitching."

I looked down and sure enough, Little Dustin was making his presence known -- I had thought it was a little more inconspicuous. I rolled over and buried my head in the pillow, saying a muffled, "You can leave now!"

"I couldn't help myself," he said with a cackle as he left, closing the door behind. I kept my face buried and tried to clear my mind. This was a little different to what I've been used to... even as Ryan, it took a lot more to rev me up. I haven't had sex with a woman in years (since the very night of my first transformation, as it happens) and between Dustin's young body and my psyche, something got very excited about such a minor touch. Part of me -- I'm a bit ashamed to say -- was glad to be back as a "straight guy," in such a clear and decisive fashion. 

Now if only there were an appropriate way to channel that... besides the obvious.

-Marc/Dustin

Isaac/Ainsley: Public

I hadn't eaten just under forty-eight hours.

I understand, abstractly, that I have no choice but to fly to Phoenix and live as Ainsley Thomas, not unless I want to be living out of hotels until I run out of money. I can see, logically, that I will wear Ainsley's clothes, attempt to not entirely destroy her career, and somehow navigate whatever her social life is like. I will generally exist in public as this woman with the expectation to act like this is completely normal and my entire life hasn't just been run over by an entire cavalcade of eighteen-wheelers. In the near future, I will actually bother to reach out to her about any of this instead of leaving her hanging about whoever's now apparently in charge of her life.

But that future, no matter how little choice I have, feels an unimaginable gulf away from the present. Since I met Heather the day before I left my room exactly once: rushing to the lobby to grab one of the bagels they put out, and then getting the hell out of there. That's hard enough despite knowing everyone in the Inn understands my situation, meaning social standards are meaningless. Going out in public is... different. Every fear I already had about making the general public uncomfortable feels ten times more justified now. I feel like everyone can tell I'm not supposed to look like this, even though reading the blog tells me not only that it's not true, but the Inn's magic actively works to prevent this. But sure, I can look like a woman, and nobody's going to believe I turned into one two days ago, but I can't walk or talk or act like one! And that's what randoms would notice. Clearly, Inn guests have managed to thread the needle, but probably by not thinking too hard about it. So it's too bad for me that I was put on this planet to overthink. I'm going to be an accountant, that's good in my line of work!

I was in the middle of doing exactly that when I heard another bang on the door from the only person it could've been. "Isaac! Hey. We need to talk about flights. They're not getting any cheaper and I haven't seen you all day. Wanna get dinner?"

"I'm good." Anything to prolong the inevitable a little more. "We can talk in here if you want, it's no big--"

"You haven't eaten at all today, have you?"

"I--" I'm a horrible liar sometimes. "You're not my mom!"

"Look buddy, I'm somebody's mom! And I don't know who you really are, but I know what it's like to deal with a scared teenager who won't leave the house because they got a pimple--"

"I'm twenty."

"Oh, wow, twenty, that's a huge difference. But you know what? You're right, I'm not your mom. I'm your roommate. And that means I don't wanna have to mom a roommate who won't leave the apartment, loses their job, and won't pay their half of the rent, okay?"

My sense of shame didn't quite outweigh the crippling social anxiety just yet. "Go eat. We can talk flights when you get back, in here."

"If you wanna starve, suit yourself. But I'm gonna say-- you're going to have to leave the Inn before you know it. We've got two nights left before they kick us out. Do you want your first time out in public as this girl to be going through TSA? Sitting next to a couple strangers in the middle seat of a transcontinental flight? Or, maybe you'd rather chicken out, stiff me with the rent, and stay put. You'd have to go out there and find someplace to stay. Talk to hotel staff and beg for a room. Or... you can come get dinner with me, in a town where nobody gives a crap about who you are. Your choice."

There it is. There's that shame.

---

"Can you quit looking over your shoulder every five seconds?" Heather whined as we walked past the pier towards a diner she'd picked out, too slowly for my tastes. I like to walk so fast sometimes people tell me it's scary. "I'm telling you, nobody cares. It just makes you stick out even more if you look to the whole world like you're hiding from the cops."

I fiddled a bit with my shirt. Most of Ainsley's vacation wardrobe was fairly... minimal, but she fortunately had some dirty jeans and a baggy T-shirt reading DELTA PANCAKEFEST '19 with some graphics of pancakes and a list of participating sororities. And, terrifyingly yet most mercifully of all, a sports bra. Good enough for me, I'll probably wear the same thing on the flight over.

"You talked me out of that room, okay?" I muttered, as if there were some reason everyone walking by would find it strange that someone appearing to be a young woman sounds like a young woman. "Don't push your luck."

Heather rolled her eyes. "You're gonna have to get used to people looking at you even if you're not doing it wrong. 'S how it is for girls our age."

We finally made into the diner before I could reflect too hard on that. I grimaced a bit when the hostess referred to us as ladies, but at least she sat us down a relatively out-of-the-way booth, as if she could tell I'm a wreck who can't handle the slightest bit of eye contact right now.

"So," I broke the silence once we'd ordered. "I have to ask. How are you handling this so well?" I spoke quietly, wary of any normies listening inn, despite knowing full well this can't possibly be the first Inn-related conversation to be had in that diner. "Seriously. You act like I'm the weird one for freaking out. What about this situation isn't freakout-able? Is this not your first time through the Inn?"

"Oh honey, I work in a high school," Heather smirked, her volume indicating her clear disregard for anyone who might hear. "You don't get through seventeen years of that by freaking out, I'll tell you. So yeah, this is my first time at the Inn. Ever had to talk to twenty angry parents at once who can't believe their previous little babies ran a cheating ring? This ain't nothin'. Also helps that Sara's a pretty little thing. Could be worse."

I decided to ignore that last part. "Yeah, well. I would've thought you'd be nicer if you're a teacher."

Heather just laughed. "What, you never had an asshole teacher? You'd be surprised." A waitress came by to take our order before she continued. "But I never said I'm a teacher. I'm an administrator, and that means I'm a meat shield the principal uses whenever she can't be damned to break it to a parent that their kid's a little hellraiser. You gotta be mean sometimes, and you need thick skin in a job like that. Thick skin, Ainsley."

"Do you have to call me that?"

"You're gonna have to get used to it," she said as she glanced at her phone. "She's not happy you haven't talked to her, y'know."

"You've been talking to Ainsley!?" I raised my voice for the first time all day. Somehow, it felt like a breach of privacy even though that doesn't make any sense.

"I've been talking to Sara since yesterday. Ainsley's the one who needs to play telephone with her about getting a word out to you. Seems like she's got a lot going on she'd rather talk to you about than put in that letter. Gonna need to talk before we hit Phoenix, y'know."

I went back to staring at the table and sighed. "I'll get around to it."

For the first time, Heather looked more genuinely angry than condescending. "You and your procra-- You know? God, what do you want whoever's stuck with your life to act like? Y-you want radio silence while you wait to find out if they might not completely ruin you? You don't want to know if it's an infant, or an old man with dementia, or some complete basket case who--"

That, for all my worries about taking over a strange woman's life and appearing as her in public, was the one thing I'd avoided thinking about the hardest. I do not want to confront what could happen to my life-- I still haven't written my letter. It's the single most bone-chillingly mortifying thing imaginable. "What is your problem?!" An uncomfortably shrill voice rose from the diner table. "Thick skin, thick skin-- can you just get off my back for one goddamn second! Why does how I am handling the single most insane and least like thing that's ever happened to me affect you in any way? I know I don't have a choice but to figure it out, okay? You think I'm not reminded of that every time I see my reflection? If you're not my mom, then treat me like a fucking adult who can handle his own problems."

Too late, I realized that, no matter how stress-inducing she is, talking to Heather was distracting me from my paranoia of being stared at. Now there were more than a few stares, stares at that girl who'd just bitched out in front of her friend and interrupted the meal of every poor, innocent tourist.

What a freak I am. I gasped, shrank in my seat, and went back to staring at the table.

"You don't understand how lucky we are," Heather muttered. Neither of us said a word for the next ten minutes before we finally got around to talking about flights.

I can see, logically, that Heather and I will eventually reach an acceptable mutual tolerance as roommates. I understand, abstractly, that I have no choice but to stop being such a coward.

But not today.

Isaac/Ainsley: Roommate

 "Ainsley? Ainsley, you in there?" Another few knocks on the door. I dutifully ignored them before remembering I look like an Ainsley and getting run over by another anxiety spike.

"Look, if you're listening this is the only room where nobody's come out yet," continued a young woman's voice. She knocked again. "I'm Sara, if that means anything to you yet. Or, I look like her, but you get what I'm saying." Another, louder knock. "Tell me you're not a runner. That poor woman said her daughter ran off and I can't--"

Yet again, I couldn't take it anymore. Paralysis gave way to the irresistible restless urge to do something, anything to change the situation. It's a cold comfort that this new body hasn't changed my habit of caving in the most awkward way possible. "I'm here-- oh!" My hand shot up to my mouth as it hit me that I hadn't actually spoken since yesterday. I sound like an auto dealership owner's daughter, the kind they'd occasionally put on crappy local TV commercials I used to see as a kid. That's oddly specific, but it's what came to mind.

I opened the door once I'd shook myself out of it and threw on my now-oddly clingy T-shirt from yesterday, greeted by a short, stick-thin woman about my age (real or apparent) with shoulder-length straight, light brown hair. "Sorry if I--"

"Oh, yup, about this girl's age. Gotta be her." "Sara" crossed her arms over her chest and tried her hardest to look down at me, despite being shorter. "You read your letter yet?"

I looked at the floor, away from this woman's intimidating gaze, and realized I'm probably the only one left who still hasn't. Kind of embarrassing, even though it really shouldn't be. "I, uh. Haven't gotten around to it."

"Well, c'mon then. We're reading it now." As if she owned the place, Sara slipped right past me through the doorframe and found the luggage in the closet. "We've got some stuff we need to talk about and it'll be good for you to hear most of it from Ainsley herself. But I'll just say, you're my new roommate, and we need to figure out flights to Phoenix before they kick us out of the Inn again."

Phoenix? We couldn't even get somewhere in the Northeast like seemingly three-quarters of the Inn's guests? I only let out the barest complaint at the girl digging through "my" crap. She produced a floral-cased iPhone and some dirty laundry, not having to go to deep to find an envelope. Honestly I'm still not sure which of those items scares me the most.

Sara held out the envelope. "You want it, or am I gonna have to read it for you?" I opted to save the last shreds of my dignity and opened the letter.

It was actually fairly tame, all things considered, though she didn't write very much. Ainsley Thomas, 25, of Phoenix, Arizona. Works a laptop job for a marketing firm currently contracting with a hotel chain-- not a completely impossible job to fake, even if I'm still wincing at the thought of having to spend all day surrounded by the types from the other half of B-school whom I'm all too familiar with. Lots of addresses and passwords. More ominously, the letter ended with instructions to text her as soon as possible, because "you'll need my help keeping track of everyone" and I'm not looking forward to learning what that means. At least it didn't say she's dating anyone, that counts for something.

I didn't notice Sara reading over my shoulder until I finished the letter. I gave her a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look. "Do you mind?"

"Hon, this whole thing is the biggest privacy violation you can imagine. It's not even possible to get more intimate with someone than, y'know. This. There's no secrets anymore."

"It's not like I asked for this." I really didn't like how she sat next to me on the bed, as if she was planning on being there for a while. "There's not anything crazy in the letter, so. Whatever. But for all you know there could've been!"

"Are you always this paranoid?" Sara just cackled. "My real name's Heather, by the way. You?"

I blushed. "Isaac."

Heather wolf-whistled. "Ouch. Guess it's fifty-fifty, but, gotta say, I'm not jealous of the sex change. Good luck with that, bud."

My eyes narrowed-- I didn't need the reminder. "I'm trying not to think about it," I added, suddenly hyperaware of my nipples chafing against my shirt.

Heather looked like she was about to say something but was interrupted by the phone in her hand going off with some unidentifiable 90s-sounding grunge song. (I'm not a fan.) Her eyes widened once she saw the caller ID. "She picks now to-- You're kidding me," she muttered. "Hey, I gotta go figure out how to take this. Talk to you later." And as just quickly as Heather had barged into my room, she mercifully vanished from my life. For now.

What an irritating person. Do you ever remember being a kid going out shopping with your mom, and your mom ran into someone she knows and she'd talk to them for what to a child feels like an eternity? Heather is that friend of your mom's.

Well, I've had worse roommates.

Arthur/Penny: She's Gone

It looks like my fears from Saturday night were right: After tennis practice Saturday morning, my daughter Millie told her friend that she needed to head home, but instead went to North Station and bought a ticket for Old Orchard Beach.  She's tall enough that folks occasionally take her for being further into her teens than she is, and it's not like it's a federal crime to ride Amtrak as an unaccompanied minor.  Or if it is, it doesn't seem to have been enforced.

From there, I gather, she went to the Inn and started looking in windows, asking if there was anything weird about the place, and it didn't dawn on her until after the last train south left that there were likely no hotel rooms open in this beach town and the debit card onto which Ray and I deposit her allowance probably wouldn't be enough to check into one even if it was.  She was apparently sitting on the Inn's front porch when someone asked what was up and said she could stay in her room for the night.

She was lucky number thirteen, and the changes happened that night.

I know this because I decided to head north on Sunday morning, with Ray handling the search in Boston, knocking on all the doors, asking if anyone had seen Millie.  My heart sank when I saw there was a lot of confusion from post-transformation morning.  I explained what was happening to a lot of people - this late in the season, there aren't a lot of Inn veterans there, as chains from the people who were able to switch back in May break - and a couple my apparent age said that they saw her with the talking with their neighbor.  Nobody responded to my knocking, but they shared a bathroom which was unlocked.

I found Millie's backpack in the room.  She had already left.

Trembling, I opened the bag and found a letter on top.  I knew it wasn't for me, but I opened it anyway.

Dear Whoever Opens This:

My name is Millicent Anne Lee, Millie for short.  I came to the Trading Post Inn wondering what my parents meant when they said they weren't entirely my parents, and now I know.  My mom, and maybe my dad, used to be someone else, and now I get a chance to find out what that's like.

Their numbers are in my phone, so you can call them and tell them to pick you up.  They can tell you anything that you need to know about being me until we get a chance to come back, and you can tell them not to worry:  The lady who let me stay in her room last night is going to be with me and will help me out.  I'm a little older now, but not that much, and I think I can handle this situation.

I don't know if I'm ready to tell you or them who I am now yet, though.  I'm still kind of mad that they didn't tell me this.  I'm not running away for good, though, and I'm going to want to be me again as soon as I can.

Please don't do anything weird with my life,

Millie

I sat down on the bed and just cried for a while.  The people from the next room came in and asked if I was all right, and I said no, I wasn't, my daughter was somewhere out there in the world and I didn't know where or who she was.  I allowed that she was smart and mostly responsible, and that Ray and I had tried to raise her to look out for herself and solve problems, but she was still a kid and mad enough at me that she might not ask for help out of spite.

They didn't seem to know what to say, but said they'd be around for the next few hours if I needed to get back in that room.

I nodded, and they went back to their room to give me some privacy.

Obviously, the first thing to do was call Raymond.  He wasn't sure whether to be relieved to know what happened or panicked that this was something much bigger than Millie not checking in before staying over at a friend's house.  He started trying to remember everything he could about teen runaways, saying that most of them came home pretty quickly, and not just because they didn't get very far and realize they've got no resources pretty quickly.  Millie, though, may have the resources of an adult, and who knows what sort of adult?

I immediately realized that someone else might know, and ran across the room to see the bag beside the other bed, opening it up to find the letter they had left for the people in their lives.  It didn't tell me much - she was a woman in her mid-fifties, from somewhere in the Midwest, where she worked in the local town hall.  I looked her name up online, and she seems pretty trustworthy - a relatively young widow, one grown son, involved in her community.  Not much social media, but gently pushes back when conspiracy-minded friends get weird in the comments on Facebook.  You can't really know about people from their online profiles, especially now, but she seems okay.  Unfortunately, she also seems reluctant to disclose her new identity.

Still, the very fact that I have the equipment to give birth to a daughter means that there is an awful lot about this situation that shouldn't be taken for granted.  I've left a note of my own on the desk in the room, although I don't know if it will still be there when the next guests arrive - whoever cleans the Inn has been leaving lost luggage in rooms for at least twenty years, but will they throw that away?

I guess that I'll have to set up shop on the Inn's front porch, if I want to vet who is going to be filling in for Millie.  Ray's offered to join me, but he's got more time in courtrooms than usual this week, so I probably won't see him until Saturday.

What a terrifying and absurd sentence to write.  This isn't my first time in crisis mode as a mom, but I'll bet you can count on one hand the number who have tried to deal with this specific crisis.

-Penny

Isaac/???: Stranger

So I assume that if you're a regular reader of this blog you know what just happened to me and I'm gonna spend my time writing in here instead of doing anything requiring me to actually accept that this all happened to me and SHIT.

I was asleep, for better or worse. Probably better. When I'm out of school or work I'm a night owl to the point of regularly staying up past 4 AM doing absolutely nothing but this whole town kind of bores me to sleep. (I'd give anything to be bored right now.) I still went to bed pretty late though and my first thought on waking up was annoyance with the loud commotion in the hallway interrupting my sleep. I think I actually dozed off again for a little while after that, and I would've had another few hours of blissful ignorance if I didn't roll onto my stomach and notice something wrong with my chest.

Unfamiliar straight blonde hair (a far cry from my Jew-fro) blocked my vision while I fumbled my way out from under the covers. Sitting up only made it more obvious that there's something attached to my chest. It dawned on me what might be happening, but it still took me what felt like far longer than it actually was to psych myself up and pat my crotch. Or even do anything besides lie back on the bed and look at the ceiling, really. Because that's what I do when I get bad news I can't do anything about: I ignore it. I put myself in a hermetic seal until I can't stand it anymore.

Lying on the bed and doing literally nothing, as it turns out, doesn't shut myself off from sensation. There's obviously weight on my chest but the sheer newness of every sensation was enough to make zoning out impossible. The nothingness between my legs is so conspicuous. Hair brushed my shoulders and entangled itself against the pillow... Even the sheets, the colors, the light, the ambient nature of my mind felt different, somehow. Maybe you can chalk that last one up to the barely suppressed freakout but I swear, it's implacably different. The world, turned strange.

Once I couldn't take it anymore I said fuck this and reached for my phone, hitting me with the triple indignity of arms too short for the nightstand, hands too small for the phone (that one really hurts) and my browser opened to this blog. I tried reading a bit through the archives but once it became clear that I'm probably gonna have to live this woman's life I stopped. That's too much. I'm a horrible actor, and I've always prided myself in, if nothing else, knowing who I am and staying true to it. I refuse to think about it.

I also refused thinking more about what I look like now until I had to go to the bathroom (how's that for making it real...). I won't tell you about that part, but I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and couldn't hold back my curiosity anymore. Staring back at me I saw the kind of girl I'd hurriedly walk past if I saw her on campus because she's handing out pamphlets for why I should join her particular bible study group out of the approximately fifty billion we have at UVA. She's about 5'5", I'd say, and since I'm not (I wasn't?) a particularly tall guy I only lost a few inches. Kind of thickly built but not what I'd call chubby. About my age, maybe a little older?

I stared involuntarily into unfamiliar eyes for I don't even know how long until something snapped and I ran back to the bed and just sobbed. I felt a heat behind my eyes that hadn't been there since I was a kid... I'm not like this! Why do I have to be like this!? I can't be this woman...

So I didn't be this woman. For now. I haven't left the room in hours even though I'm fucking starving because there's still people around here and I don't want to face being seen as, whatever I am. If I go through that doorway, or look inside the suitcase I found in the closet, this all becomes real and, I'd like to avoid that for as long as I'm able. That's why I'm blogposting when I have way more important things to worry about right now. Is that why all you people do it?

Also, someone knocked on my door just now, right as I was finishing writing all this. Guess we'll see if that means anything... later.

Arthur/Penny: Emergency Post - Has Anyone Seen My Daughter?

This especially goes out to anybody in Old Orchard right now!  I haven't seen Millie all day, and while that's not entirely unusual - she's pretty free-range, and she'd stayed over with a friend last night because they had tennis practice in the morning - but she's usually a lot better about texting me where she's at and if plans changed.  Still, she's 13, and can get forgetful or let her phone die, so we weren't really worried until the afternoon, and even then, we just figured it was normal tween girl stuff and didn't start calling folks until dinner time.

Which is when we found out she actually popped in late to grab her tennis racket,  Normally, she'd call out, even if we hadn't been kind of at odds all week because Ray and I were asking her to choose between tennis and cross-country skiing (there has been a lot of talk about how this wasn't fair because Grandma and Grandpa Lincoln didn't make "me" choose between lacrosse and swimming when I was her age).  Last night, though, it is entirely possible that she came in while one of us was saying that raising a girl like Millie would be difficult even if she was a hundred percent mine, but that's the Trading Post Inn for you.

A lot of kids might have burst into the living room at that, wanting to know what the hell we were saying, but as much as she has inherited Nell's athleticism from me (or at least, the DNA I inherited from her), she's also got a lot of the traits that make Ray a pretty decent lawyer, and that includes not giving people who may have lied to her the chance to lie to her again.  She once confronted us with a voice recorder that I use for interviews that she'd left out to capture us constructing presents from "Santa".

So, it's possible that we've fucked up really badly here.  It's also possible that this is just something that happens when your kids start getting independent, but better safe than sorry!

-Penny

Isaac: Low Beam

Am I insane? Be honest with me.

I ask myself that question a lot these days, but right now it's because I chose to travel hundreds of miles to spend two weeks I won't get back at the cheapest bed and breakfast in Old Orchard Beach, by myself. (And the "breakfast" part is being generous.) Granted, I wasn't supposed to be alone; the plan was to make the arduous trek up here with my best friend. My girl best friend, who told me to get a room with one bed. You do the math. Of course that doesn't give me a pass for getting a nonrefundable reservation for a room with someone prone to depressive episodes when she's especially stressed, even if New England and the beach were her idea to begin with.

And you know, I get it. Alice has a lot going on in her life, with swordfighting tournaments (yeah, really), parties with Viking LARPers (not my crowd), invoking whatever dark magic rituals make her so unflappably cool half the time (don't ask me) and dealing with major lifelong mental health issues. And, you know, school and work on top of all that. Her life changes so much, she gets caught up in it, and one day after one of those tournaments I run into her and she's just dead inside. Going to New England would be too much for her, and ultimately I can't blame her. Like I said, she's got a lot going on.

But I don't. The most interesting thing I've done since finals ended is get a new fern for my room. That's how I treat myself, you know. I like to think of myself as a gardener, but I hate working outdoors so I've got a bunch of plants competing for sunlight around the one window in my tiny single dorm room. Some people's majors turn into their hobbies, but that's hard to do when you're an accounting major. So the thought of giving up the one actual plan I'd made for this summer didn't sit right with me. Which is why in a fit of impulsive contrarianism I embarked on twelve hours of solo driving up from Charlottesville, VA, fueled only by spite, to the world's only bed and breakfast with its own blog.

I realize I've kind of been trashing the good name of the Trading Post Inn but, to give it some credit, I've spent a lot of time in here since I got into town. Sure, I've walked around town, paced around the beach for a while and checked out the pier, and I've done all that at least a couple times a day for over a week now. But there's really not much to this place, and I hate sticking around in one spot for too long when I'm by myself in public. Going around on my own, surrounded by all these couples, friends, families out having fun doing things together and genuinely living their lives... Especially the ones my age. It just makes me feel like I'm a fraud, like at any moment somebody's going to turn around and say, ha, look at that creep! What's he doing here? And then I get mad at myself, not only for weirding out entirely hypothetical people, but also for being that paranoid in the first place. I hate sounding to myself like some kind of incel, and it all makes for a vicious cycle of negative thoughts. And I signed up for two weeks of this!

All this means I've spent a lot of time lying around in bed, just a different bed from usual, one from which I can't easily keep an eye on my plants. Or hanging around the Inn, where I can take comfort in the fact that I'm far from the weirdest person here-- I saw a kid who couldn't be older than ten yelling at someone over the phone about a mortgage. I mean, damn, did her parents give her a script or something? It feels like half the BnB is always whispering something to each other whenever I happen to walk by. Which I'm fine with, I don't need to involve myself in random people's problems.

Anyway, that's why I'm bored enough to rant at a blog just barely younger than me which somebody wrote down the link to in the lobby. I wasn't going to overshare this much, but I saw a post on the sidebar with a title about someone wondering if she's supposed to be horny. And if that's the standard I'm working with, I'm not about to stick out very much. (No clue why so many of you keep posting months or even years after your stay, but even I'm not desperate enough to read any more of this thing!)

So, I'll be around the Trading Post Inn for a good while longer. On the off-chance someone who's actually here right now reads this far, and they're similarly bored, you know where to find me.

And maybe you can tell me whether I'm insane for coming here!