Daryl/Zee: Letting you all know about Cary

I know the news about Cary's heart attack has been going up and down some group texts, but a lot of Inn folks lurk here to keep up with what's going on and might not find out otherwise.  I just want to let everyone know that it was mild, though they'll be keeping him in the hospital for observation for a couple of days.  We're not sure if it was triggered by the heatwave or something else.

The timing is especially lousy, not that there's ever a particularly good time for something like this, because Mackenzie is actually abroad right now.  She was down in Boston for a show while Scotland's Tartan Army was swarming the city, hit it off with a kilted fellow whose hair is an even brighter red than hers, and she said that, yeah, she thinks she's Scottish but she's adopted so she's not really in touch with that part of her heritage when asked.  Which sounds better than "under this pale exterior, I'm actually a Black woman ten or fifteen years older than I look".  He impulsively asks to let him show her Glasgow, she says yes, and Cory's cool with it because, as mentioned, the former Krystle has more than enough experience to deal with anything this guy might pull.  It does mean that she's been spending all day trying to pull together a flight back home and dealing with delays that messed with her transfer.

I'm second on his "in case of emergency" call list after Mack, so I left work, rented a car, and drove up as soon as I could.  Happily, there's been relatively little bullshit about a Black woman half his age being his girlfriend rather than a caretaker; Southern Maine can be lily-white at times but often pretty live-and-let-live, even if I've been getting some sideways glances.

Thankfully, Cary was awake for a couple hours tonight, and was in pretty good spirits, but tired.  I've taken work off through the holiday and I'll probably be sleeping in an uncomfortable chair next to him, waiting for Mack to show up.

It's hitting me kind of hard, harder than I expected.  We kept telling ourselves that our thing was kind of casual, friends with benefits and a unique shared experience, and maybe that's why it his so hard, because lovers come and go but people you've shared lives with are incredibly rare.  Elaine gets it; she's been texting me for updates ever since I called her.

Anyway, even though the doctors say he's going to be fine, spare Cary a moment if you can.

-Zee

Toby/Dunia: A Much Longer Trip Than I Expected

So... Hi.  I'm afraid that I don't have any sort of introduction where I'm just me saying what I'm doing in Maine.  I kind of didn't even realize this place had a blog attached until after I became this girl. 

It's this sort of thing common, or is it all about the curse or whatever?  I've never really traveled much, or at least not to cities.  We used to go to some of the closer National Parks when I was a kid, but Ma had to sell the camper after the cancer took Dad, and even if there had been money we were never really sure there'd be a job to come back to if we took time off.  I didn't really think about it much, though, I guess because I never had it to miss and there weren't a whole lot of kids in my high school who were going on European vacations.

There were some folks with money around, though their kids went to private schools.  I guess Lambert was one of them.  I didn't know him before I answered the ad; he must've been a couple years ahead of me anyway.  He bought a car on eBay, and since he never liked to fly, he put something in a local Facebook group looking for someone to drive to Bangor and back with him.  Beat the hell out of my real job, especially since they were cutting hours due to the market for soybeans drying up or something.  He seemed all right and I guess he figured I could be trusted with his car on the drive back, so it was a done deal pretty quick.

We stopped at the Inn the night before driving up the coast - Lambert found it online and apparently the last two-week block of the year was an especially good deal for when you didn't necessarily know when you'd be in and out.  We got there on Monday, crashed for the night, and then started for Bangor in the morning.  We spent a couple hours after lunch inspecting and test-driving the Porsche - well, I kind of stood around for that - and then I was back in the BMW for the ride back.  We got dinner at a restaurant on a boat in Portland before stopping at the Inn for the night.

I was awoken by a high-pitched scream, bolting up in bed and looking on the other side of the room where there was a topless woman holding her breasts.  It was clearly the same room we'd been in last night - Lambert's stuff was on the end table - and I was a little fuzzier from the previous night's beers than I should have been, so I asked who she was.

"I'm Lambert Allen - who the fuck are you?"

"It's me, Toby!"  That when I noticed my voice didn't sound right in my ears and my hair was long enough for some  to be in my eyes.  "Uh, at least I think I am."  Hung over enough to go check, I stood from my bed and walked across the room to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.  "How in the heck?"

As you can tell from the subject line, there was a girl in the mirror, about my age, but I was shorter.  Not like super-short - I was six-foot-two and lost about six inches or so.  It made the t-shirt I'd been wearing really loose, although I could see a vague shape of breasts and nipples under it.  I was kind of surprised my boxers hadn't fallen down, but my butt was enough to hold it up.  I guess that may go with being Latina - my skin wasn't quite black but a pretty dark brown.  I pulled the neckline out to look down and then felt inside my boxers - I was all girl.

It woke me up and I ran back into the bedroom, where Lambert was pulling a suitcase out from under his bed and opening it.  He said "you have got to be shitting me" as he lifted the flight attendant's uniform that was on top out.

I did the same, only the top layer on mine was a letter "to the new Dunia Cortes".  It described the Inn's spell, and laid out a bit about the life I was inheriting.  Shes my age, 23, from the Miami area, Cuban-American although it was her grandparents that came from Cuba as children as opposed to someone more recent.  She had just been hired as a flight attendant and was expected to shadow veteran Alicia Polawski, but wound up following her to Maine when she wouldn't cut vacation short.  She lives with her father in "Little Havana" and has a boyfriend, but Hector is in the Army and stationed overseas.  She's become a retired truck driver in Phoenix, which feels as crazy as me being her.

Lambert's letter filled in some blanks; it turns out that Alicia Polawski used to be an college professor and a guy, but he got bored and decided to move on, saying the new Alicia could keep her life or not and he didn't care (she didn't care?).  He also seemed to have invited Dunia to join him specifically because it didn't look like there were going to be 13 people to trigger everything otherwise.  This Harmon guy sounds like a piece of work. 

If there were any people who has been through this before, I didn't meet them, aside from the hot dog vendor who said the thing that freaked me out the most, that there was nobody staying at the Inn after us until spring, so our lives and identities would be in a sort of limbo until then.  He said it's not so bad, because we'd have first dibs on our room and explaining not being around is easier than fixing a mess someone else makes of your life, but that's almost right months!  What's my Ma going to do without me, to start? 

Lambert seems to be more in a daze than I am.  He thought he might go home anyway, but apparently Alicia looks a lot like his last couple stepmothers and his dad is on the prowl again.  He also really doesn't like flying, and I almost wonder if it's bad enough for him to quit Alicia's job ahead of her next shift and try to live on his credit cards until then.  I'm not going to do that - this is apparently Dunia's dream job and she seems nice enough - although there's a pretty big handbook to study in the next week or so.

(It's a lot!  It looks simple enough on TV and in the movies, but I'm already afraid of screwing up the details or having to give someone CPR in midair!)

What he is sure of is that he's not leaving his new Porsche behind.  One of the coupons in the flyer that pointed us to Cary's hot dog truck and this blog is for a place that offers long term parking and storage, but he says there's no way he's leaving his new baby in some beach town that empties out for the winter.  He suggested we just do what we had been planning to do, me driving the BMW and him driving the Porsche, just south on Route One rather than west to North Dakota, but i said that I sure as heck wasn't going to get pulled over driving someone else's car as a Latina woman, so he reluctantly decided to park that one for the winter.  It's probably a good thing we initially packed pretty light, because it's not like the little sports car has  the trunk space to handle four people's luggage if Lambert and I had packed like Dunia and Harmon/Alicia.

It's weird as heck.  I'm sitting in the passenger seat of a really expensive car, and every time I look down rather than forward, I see how dark and slender my arms and legs are, and I've definitely got a figure even if my pink t-shirt doesn't show the boobage that Lambert's top does (we were not left a lot of clean clothes, and I really struggled to pull these shorts onto my big new butt this morning).  When we do get to Miami tomorrow, some guy is going to think I'm his daughter, and then I'm going to have to start working on airplanes starting next Wednesday despite having barely been out of North Dakota before.  I'm kind of tapping this out on my phone just so that I'm not staring at my body or Lambert (he's a little older, but pretty sexy) or talking in our new voices, something to do, and maybe find out if we're doing the right thing taking our stuff along to our new homes.  What I've seen of the entries here, folks usually just leave things there, but maybe not for months.

Maybe this will be my only post because I'll be too busy soon enough.  We'll see.

-Toby/Dunia

Daryl/Zee: So, This Is Weird...

...  I mean, I've been looking at a lot of posts here lately and thinking "How can you post that when there's a good chance the other person will read it, even if they say they won't?", but here I am, apparently feeling like my position as the person with the messiest personal life on the blog has been challenged, and doubling down.

So, you all know, Cary, who was Elaine before I was, and who has been "raising" Elaine and then Krystle as Mackenzie ever since.  He's also kind of the guy who winds up as first point of contact for Inn visitors who need someone to believe them, with an ad in the little guidebook which also includes a card with login details for this here blog.  Most of the time, folks just need to be reassured that this is real, but you can handle it, no matter how extreme the change may seem, and Cary's the guy to give it to them, a friendly white guy in his 60s who seems to be running his little hot dog truck as a hobby to the point where he can close up and give folks his full attention if need be, or call in Krystle/Mackenzie.

Someone needed it bad yesterday.  I gather they'd started out a young white guy who got turned into a petite Afro-Latina girl and in less than twenty-four hours their best friend - who I guess was kind of the same to start but became a tall, muscular, black college athlete - had convinced them they might as well try sleeping together, given the situation, and then talked them into a bikini and sort of paraded them around the beach the next day.  When she got to Cary, this person was kind of shell-shocked, and with Mackenzie out of town with friends, he called me to see if I could talk to them.  I said I would, but as Cary was talking to me, they had fallen asleep in one of Carl's Adirondack chairs.  Apparently, they had never gotten to sleep the previous night.

Not having anything planned for the day, I said I'd be up as soon as I could, and looked up the nearest car rental place.  I don't drive a lot as Zee, but there aren't that many trains or buses between Boston and Portland and I'd want to be able to put Cary on speaker if he called while I was in transit.  He didn't, but when he arrived there, there was a guy like he described trying to lead a girl away by the wrist.  A few guys from the beach were trying to stop him.  I sighed and slipped off my sandals, grabbing heels and sunglasses from my bag; it wouldn't get me up to his height, but if Cary was right, he might still be intimidated by an Angry Black Woman if I sent the right signals.

I made sure the heels made a lot of noise on the sidewalk and gave my best Angela Basset "what do you think you're doing?" as I approached.  He said something like "she's with me" and I stepped in a little closer, making it clear I knew he could hurt me but that he didn't dare.  "I don't know who you really are or who you are now, but you do not want to alienate the only person who does on your first day."  Obviously not what he expected to hear, because he let go of his friend, who hurried back to the stand and Cary.  Cary said I would take them to his house and they could borrow some clothes from Mackenzie's closet, since they just had a little handbag with their new wallet and phone.

They were breathing heavily as they got into the passenger seat of the rental, and I asked if they were okay.  "No!  I'm a girl, and black, and I'm not saying those are bad things, but it's really weird for me, and I let my friend fuck me in my new pussy, and who even are you?"

Keeping my eye on the road, I reached one hand out.  "I'm Zariyah, or Zee for short.  Started out as a Daryl, been an Elaine and a Magda in between, and let me tell you, it's really easy to make bad decisions with a bunch of new hormones.  I gave up everything for a man who wound up not being worth it.  But you can get through it.  Cary, the guy at the hot dog stand, he did, got his old life back, and helps others cope besides."

They grasped my had warily, introduced their new and old identities, and seemed surprised when I stopped at Cary's house so soon.  "New England towns are pretty small."  I got them inside and found some sweats in the laundry; they seemed relieved by the shapelessness, though I said they were probably going want something else soon with it being a hot day.

Then we told each other about ourselves, and they seemed worried about how completely I'd taken to female identities, and I said it sometimes felt strange to me as well, and one of the things they'd have to do until they changed back was differentiate between rash, impulsive, and reasonable under the circumstances.

Once they'd calmed down, I drove them back to the Inn.  The "boyfriend" wasn't there, so I helped them go through their inherited luggage, explaining that it would probably be wise to pick up where their predecessor left off with their birth control pills, looking their new life up online to see what could be learned, and helping write a letter to the person taking over their old life.  They gave me some side-eye when I offered make-up tips, but I pointed out this was something they were going to be expected to know soon.  I reflected that it was kind of crazy that, outside this blog, we don't really have a support network for people who just got changed.  A lot of people text back and forth with the next folks up and down their line, but they aren't that much more experienced than newbies, and it was really striking how much someone like me who had been there before could really make these crucial first steps go a lot better.  Honestly, I wonder how many people aren't even resilient enough to fake things and wind up in situations where they go into a spiral and can't get back to their real lives.  I've kind of always assumed that the folks like me who post on this blog are the ones who got into the most bizarre situations, but what if actually being able to confront and handle it this openly is actually better than the paralysis others feel?

By mid-afternoon, my new friends was feeling hungry, so we packed their things and went up to Portland (a surprisingly good restaurant town) and found a place with Dominican food to match their new identity.  Spice is apparently something they're going to have to get used to, because it seems like they're going to be around people who really like that sort of food.  I pointed out that they didn't have to if they didn't want to, but they said they didn't want to mess up this person's life.  I nodded, saying that for as selfish as some people are, it's really surprising how many folks who come to the Inn instinctively feel this sort of responsibility to people they've never met.  They said they hoped the next people staying in the room felt the same way.

We'd taken their bags with us - they really didn't want to spend another moment with their roommate, and bought a plane ticket to their new life.  They changed in a restroom at the Jetport, opting for the most gender-neutral outfit of slacks, t-shirt, and sneakers they could find, though it still revealed their navel.  I could see them doing a sort of "I think I can do this" thing in the restroom mirror, pulling their hair back behind their ears.  I told them they didn't have to go right away, that I had a spare room, but they said they figured it was best they try and explore their new life on their own, before someone was looking over their shoulder.  I nodded, making sure my number was in their phone, and saw them to the TSA line.

It was just starting to get dark when I got back to Cory's place to return Mackenzie's clothes and his keys.  He offered me a beer and I joined him on the couch to watch the ballgame.  I asked him how many like that he saw, and he said it was only a couple a year that were real bad.  The worst was a Naval aviator on shore leave whose letter him them that his new life had been fleeing an abusive home, although couples who got sent separate ways always made him sad.

After another beer, I had taken off my sandals again and had my legs up on the couch, leaned up against him.  It may surprise a lot of guys - it surprised me - but men with Cary's body type, a solid layer of muscle built up by a lifetime of hard work but a somewhat soft exterior built up by a lifelong fondness for hot dogs and ice cream, are a lot nicer to get close to than the really ripped and defined ones, and I leaned my head on his shoulder.  He responded instinctively by wrapping his arm around me, but when his hand came to lay on my breast, he jerked it back, apologizing.  I took that hand in mine and put it back, saying it felt good.  We kept watching the game for a little bit, and then I turned my head and scootched in a little closer, so that our faces were right next to each other, and then we kissed.  There was tongue, his hands in my hair, but after I got his shirt unbuttoned and he'd done the same with my top, he carefully pushed me away.

"I'm sorry...  I shouldn't..."

I nodded a bit, but more because I understood than because I agreed.  "Cary, that was mostly me.  It's, ah, been a while since I've been in the arms of a good man, or one who knows all about me, and I don't know if they've ever overlapped."  He was buttoning his shirt, so I did the same.  "It's lonely, you know?"

He grunted.  "I know."  Realizing he could, he elaborated.  "I haven't really gone out with anybody since I was Elaine.  Tough when you're a single dad, even if the kids aren't really kids, and they probably can look after themselves, but they'd probably envy any adult relationship you had, and who wants to date a woman that's okay with letting your daughter run wild?  I thought it would get easier when Mack got older, but it just hasn't.  Maybe I'm just too old for it now.  65 next week, you know."

I shrugged.  "That's not so old, and what's age mean for us?  I've been the older woman in a relationship, and even if others talk, it's okay if you really like someone."

"I don't recall that turning out terribly well for you, if you don't mind my saying."

I spit out a laugh.  "Oh, I say that all the time!  To the folks who would understand, at least."  Feeling like the evening was done and it would just get more awkward as I stayed, I put my sandals back on and grabbed my purse off the coffee table.  "You should put yourself out there anyway, though.  You're a good guy.  And a good kisser."

He saw what I was doing and held out a hand to shake, body language clear he would step back if I moved in closer, so I grabbed it, making a little joke of giving him a firm, manly handshake.  Then I headed out to the car, punched up the nearest Dunkin that was still open - two beers doesn't really get me that buzzed as Zee, but coffee seemed like a good idea anyway - and headed south.

So, yep, made out with Cary, a white guy almost twice my age, with whom I share a past identity.  It's probably a real good thing we didn't get to three or four beers.  I've made a lot of mistakes that started out with "hey, we've got this in common!"

Or maybe not.

-Zee

Aidan/Emlia: Congratulations?

Congratulations!  You get to be Emilia H---!  I know, you're probably wondering, what's the catch, but there isn't one.  Me and my friends Monica & Katey have been upgraded to really amazing new lives (maybe I'll tell you who we are someday, although you'll understand if we choose to keep it close to the vest for right now).  But that means you and whoever is in the next room get to be us, no strings attached!

That's how the letter i found in the luggage left in my room at the Trading Post Inn starts.  The guy at the hot dog stand says that's unusual, that mostly they're apologetic or laying out what they would rather you not do, or assuring you that you'll be able to return to your real life.  But, he said, it's not unheard of; a fair number of people as young as I look now tend to be impulsive, especially if their new lives look good, so maybe don't worry about it too much unless we don't hear from them or the folks taking over our lives when next year's slots open.

Sorry for kind of starting in the middle here, but I didn't contribute to the blog when we first checked in since it looked like some sort of scam or identity theft thing.  Conventional identity theft, that is.  This just seems like the weirdest part, at least for this blog, so I wanted to put it up top and get people's attention to see if they can help.  Maybe not to reverse this in some way that cheats whatever is making the Inn do this, but because I'm not sure I've seen anything about anyone in quite our situation.

Introductions:  I'm Aidan, until a couple days ago, a man in my late 40s.  I've got two sons, 15-year-old Rusty and 16-year-old Kutter; we lost their mother about ten years ago, and I never found anyone else, although I didn't exactly spend a lot of time looking, because raising two young boys doesn't exactly give you a lot of free time.  These two weeks at Old Orchard were our first real summer vacation in a couple of years.

We'd actually packed to go home the next morning when we went to bed Wednesday night; I set my alarm for 6am.  When it went off, I bolted upright, and then noticed that it was just a little pain around my chest rather than my back punishing me for that.  I looked down, saw that my undershirt was like a tent and the neckline drooped low enough that I could see I had breasts, then ran to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror.

I'm pretty, though my hair's a mess, and my boxers are riding a bit low on my hips.  I do a quick feel inside and almost pass out.

I don't, though, and remember the flier on the desk that said something about not disturbing or looking inside any luggage stored in the closet unless I really need explanations, and that's when I find the letter Emilia left, telling me about the Inn and details of her living situation.  My head's still spinning, because first I think, well, I can't just go off and leave the boys, then worry that they're going to be attracted to me, and then it hits me that the curse is on the Inn, not the room, and I rush through the shared bathroom into their room.

There's two women in there, asleep.  I guess one is Rusty, because (s)he's thrown all the covers off the bed in her sleep the way that he does; (s)he's Asian-American (half-Korean, we'll later learn) and has a hand resting on a bare breast.  The other must be Kutter; (s)he's laying on his/her stomach, one arm dangling over the side of the bed and snoring, brown hair kind of getting in his/her mouth.

I walk over to him first, pull him hair back and give him a shake on the shoulder.  He groggily rubs his eyes with the back of his wrist, opens them, and gives a kind of confused smile.  "Do I know you?"

"All your life, kiddo.  C'mon, I'll show you."  We walk to the bathroom, I put him in front of the mirror, and his eyes go wide.  He taps the glass with a finger, pulls it back, looks over his shoulder to see Rusty feeling himself up and then over the other to see my empty room.

"Dad?  What's going on?"

"Near as i can tell, cursed hotel.  You remember the weird pamphlets on the desks and the bags in the closets."  He gives me a look like I'm planning some elaborate prank, and I shrug.  "I'm in the same boat you are, kiddo, but we'll get through it.  Now, why don't you go to my room for a second so I can help your brother?"  He nods, and I walk over to Rusty's bed.  I'm about to wake him the same way as Kutter, but decide to cover him with a sheet first.  

It lasts a second; as soon as I shake his shoulder he bolts upright, feels that he's cupping his left breast in his right hand, and looks down.  "What the f---?"  Seeing me in the room,  he uses his other hand to cover the other one, then starts thinking aloud.  "If I've got those..."  He gets what coverage he can with his right forearm and then reaches his left hand into his boxers.  "WHAT THE F---?!"

I don't scold him about language.  "Near as I can tell, the place is cursed.  I'm your Dad, and Kutter's in the other room.  Same thing happened to him.  It turned us into the last people to stay here.  I guess these two rooms were occupied by young women."

"No kidding!" He took his hand out of his shorts, looked around, and saw his clothes from the day before by the bed.  "Uh, do you mind?"  I nodded and turned around until he said it was okay.  He was blushing - he hadn't hit his growth spurt yet, and while he hadn't gotten that much taller, the shirt was tight and hiding nothing.  "I, uh, think I'm going to need some new underwear."  His eyes were also going to what was showing for me.  "I think we all are."

I nodded, and said that this is what the luggage left in the room was for, so we told Kutter he could come back in and that's when we found out that Rusty had become "Monica" and Kutter was "Katey" (I'm not going to give our new or old last names, but Rusty groaned when he saw the full name on the driver's license).  We're all 21 or 22 years old - Rusty had a good laugh at being three months older than Kutter now - graduated from the same college and sharing an apartment in Brooklyn.  All of the letters suggested they really liked their new lives and wished us good luck.

I quickly got the idea that the boys didn't want me in the room as they got changed, and I figured that was reasonable; it's not like I've got any special expertise I could offer them.  I did grumble while getting my bra on the first time, envious that maybe they could help each other out.  I must admit that I didn't really know what to do with my hair until I knocked on the door and saw that Kutter had used one of the elastic loops I thought was worn on the wrist to put his into a ponytail.  We'd all gone for t-shirts, slacks, and sneakers, with Kutter grumbling that Katey had just thrown all her clean and dirty clothes into the same parts of the suitcase and who does that?

The next few days were surreal.  We visited the hot dog stand and the guy there gave us some useful hints, mostly not to worry too much because people tend to accept the obvious reality in front of them rather than pick at something that seems wrong.  The first month of learning your body's new normal will be horrifying, but after that, it's only a big deal if you make it that way.  And almost everyone can tread water for a year.

Also, we were in a beach town, but none of us really felt like dressing for the beach.  I tried to set a good example of being comfortable by wearing shorts yesterday - it was pretty close to the last clean clothes Emilia left me - but, wow, that's a lot of leg to show and it was stubbly enough for folks to make comments that made me self-conscious despite everything.

Oh, also - we weren't in the Inn for the last few days, because our check-out time was Thursday morning and their texts were very insistent about us being out of the room, saying that the next couple weeks for the Inn were fully booked and "many people are adamant about their choice of room", leaving out the part about it being about turning back.  It turns out that it is cheaper to find a motel and fly "home" to New York today rather than try to get a flight between Friday and Sunday.

That leaves us here, at the Portland International Jetport (I know a lot of people like to use the train but it's almost as expensive to take that between Boston and New York as flying), hoping there aren't more surprises waiting for us in the big city.

-Aidan/Emilia

Andi/Andy: Back Here for Probably the Last Time

Krys was waiting for me at the train station, looking annoyed that I was late, like I controlled Amtrak (although, yeah, it was a hot day to be that close to the beach and not on it). She gave me a hug and then asked if I would please call my folks so that they would stop texting her.

"No!  They want me to stay like this!"

"Andi, no.  They want you to not become a stranger and get into something you maybe can't handle.  They want to avoid having some series of randos that they have to introduce as their son in their house!"

I pulled away and started walking toward the Inn.  "I thought you'd be on my side!  Someone took your life, too!"

"I am on your side!  I'm fucking pissed for you!  I just--"  She groaned.  "Can we please go see Cary?  He's much better at this than I am!"

I kept stomping even though I knew Krys was right.  But I figured I was, too.  "Don't you get it?  If I change into someone, Andy will have to come and get his life back, and then i can get back to normal!"

Krys was running at this point.  "And what if it doesn't work out?  Look at us, we're both living proof that this shit does not go according to fucking plan!"  She caught up and got in front of me.  "Godfuckingdammit, Andi, will you tell me what is going on so that I can maybe help?  I'm not entirely a fucking kid, you know!"

There was a bench nearby and people were starting to stare, so I reluctantly sat down and put my head in my hands.  Krys exhaled and dropped down next to me. "Thank you!  So why is Andy doing this?  He didn't get knocked up too, did he?"

"No, and even if he did, I'm pretty sure he'd get it taken care of.  That's not illegal back home yet."  I looked over at Krys and reminded myself not to talk down to her, that she is really about 30 even if she feels like she's about my age.  "It's...  I mean, you remember Andy getting sick while we were out here last year, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, he never got better.  He and I and our parents all thought that all his lack of energy and not being able to focus and stuff was depression, just the grind of living someone else's life for a couple years and finding out your best friend is a real dick to women and stuff."

"Right.  Cary and me see a lot of folks like that passing through.  And you said he was doing better since graduation."

"He was, or so we thought, but then he collapsed during a hike, so they took X-rays and..."  I took a deep breath.  "It's long covid.  He's got, like, diminished lung capacity and mild brain fog and a couple other symptoms that don't explain everything, at least if you don't know everything else that's been going on in our lives."

"Oh."  Krys went from looking at my face to the ground. "Well, shit."

"Yeah, and once he realized, he said there was no way he could give me damaged lungs and make me take medicine for my heartbeat--"

"What?"  Apparently Krys hadn't heard the full list of what Covid could do before.

"It's mild, the doctors think it'll clear up within a year.  But, yeah, Andy wasn't sticking me with that, let alone the brain fog.  I said from all we could tell, the Inn would make your brain better but not worse, but he didn't want to bet on that for me."  I pounded my first on the bench's armrest.  "Just where does he get off deciding that for me?  And Mom and Dad are acting like he's doing such a good, unselfish thing.  Which he is, but...  Ugh!"

She grabbed my other hand.  "Hey, I get it.  I get it maybe more than anybody else.  It sucks so much!  It's been like ten years since I talked to Momma or my sister, but I have to hear about how proud they are of Jonah and Moira, and sometimes I just wanna scream.  And I didn't even get along with Karla!"

"I know, and I know I'm lucky, but...  I was really looking forward to being me again!"

"Yeah, I get it."  She leaned her head on my arm.  "You're cute like this, though."

"Thanks."  I kissed the top of her head.  "I guess I've still got a girlfriend, though."  I half-chuckled.  "God, I could wind up marrying Cindi, couldn't I?"

"You sure could.  Although, I may not be the ho I once was any more, but I still wouldn't recommend tying yourself down to the first person who sleeps with you.  Like I said, you're cute.  You could have options."

I sighed.  "I guess.  And we're just starting college so I can aim this life in a different direction."

She punched my shoulder.  "That's the spirit!"  Then she seemed to get an idea.  "Hey, I've got to ask Cary, but we've got a fold-out bed, so why don't you stay with us for a couple days?"

Cary, it turned out, was all right with that.  Mom and Dad weren't particularly happy when I said I wanted to stay here for a few days, promising that I wouldn't go near the Inn, but it's been nice hanging out with Krys's friends and going to the amusement park and stuff.

I overheard Cary talking on the phone to my folks last night, though, and he said that I just needed some time away from my family because I felt betrayed, and that word stung.  So I guess it's time to go back home, although Krys and I are going to spend a day in Boston first tomorrow.  She's joking about showing me all the places new students don't learn about, although we'll probably have more time for that once I'm actually enrolled in school there.

-Andi with an I (in my heart) 

Daryl/Zee: What a Wedding!

Not mine, although I was wondering if maybe J.T. would do something romantic and get down on one knee at some point.  Not in a way that would upstage Elaine and new-Daryl, but maybe back at the hotel, so that I could show a ring off at the Inn-people-only breakfast the next morning.  You would think he'd be ready, given that we've been dating each other in multiple shapes since before the pandemic, so it's pretty clear we're compatible and can weather a lot.  But, then again, I suppose there's nothing that would stop me from proposing, considering I was the guy in this relationship when it started.  Not sure how that would work, though - do I go out, buy a ring, and then kneel to pop the question, holding out the little box so he can take it out and put it on my finger?  Maybe there's stuff about girls proposing on YouTube or something.

But, hey, this past weekend was not about me - it was Elaine and "Dareleanor", who has done pretty well with my life even without landing Elaine.  They coincidentally wound up taking contracts with the same company, Elaine asked him if he recognized her, and she explained how the original Daryl (me) lived her life for a while and they both started gushing, excited to have someone to talk to.  That Eleanor didn't even blink about staying in her new life once she realized that nobody wanted it back even though she'd been a white woman says something about just how completely they clicked, and they apparently didn't feel the need to wait once they figured that out.

I came out to Chicago a few days before J.T., in part because Dareleanor wanted some help with the more far-flung relatives that he hadn't met but whom my mother said had to be invited.  Someday I'll talk about how it wasn't just falling for J.T. that convinced me to leave my life behind - there are a lot of complicated feelings there, so Dareleanor and I decided not to try and do a "major life event lets you tell the truth" thing with them while things were going well - but he just needed a whole lot of information supplied on short notice, which I was able to help with.

He looked good in his tux, and Elaine looked amazing in her dress.  She found some time to hang out with me, although it was kind of weird:  I've been both of them, but only barely met either.  I'm important to them, because without me they would never have met, but I'm kind of like a storm that shut down the airport while they were in the bar waiting for different flights or something like that, an outside force-of-nature that you're glad happened but don't necessarily think well of.

It was also kind of fun to have some other Inn folks around as part of the wedding.  J.T. looked damn good in his tux, and he's famous enough that there were some murmurs running through the reception:  How do Elaine and Daryl know him?  Oh, they don't, he's with Zee.  Well, who is this Zee - I've never met her!  Although, they thought, maybe I did at some point, because she seems to know all our names!  I met most of them in my original life, when I was dating J.T./Elaine, and then in the brief time I was Elaine (I went to Marisa's wedding!), but none of them knew Zee.  They probably just assumed I had a better memory than average for casual acquaintances, which is actually true and helpful when you're parachuting into other people's lives.

Aside from that, Cary came with Krystle/Mackenzie (who gave me a look when I called her "Mackrystle" that suggests I not call her that to her face again), and the hug Elaine gave him must have made the actual father of the bride jealous.  She also gushed over how much Krystle had grown in the past few years and winked at what a pretty young woman she'd become, laughing when the apparent red-headed teen said it was a relief that she could pull off the dress she was wearing.  Some of my younger cousins danced with her and it was kind of funny because Krystle hasn't forgotten her first life and they were not expecting a 16-year-old white girl with freckles from Maine to have the moves she does.  There must be some fun videos where she is just this crazy white-and-red spot in the middle of all the Black teenagers.

I mentioned that to her when we all got together for a Sunday Inn Veterans brunch, and she laughed, saying she hoped nobody was watching that and asking whether she'd ever been on a pole.  Surprisingly, that was kind of the highlight of the thing, because we didn't actually have that much to talk about.  It wasn't a waste of time, because even if you've been in a life long enough to make it yours and not think about going back or worry about screwing something up, it's kind of a relief to know you won't have to come up with a weird explanation or remember a previous lie in a conversation.

J.T. and I stayed in Chicago for another couple days after the wedding, revisiting places we knew from our own time here, whether as Daryl or Elaine. which was fun if kind of surreal.  One restaurant was just as good as I remembered it, but that the owner who always knew everybody's name had never met me was sad.

Then, in a crazy coincidence, Harmon/Alisha was our flight attendant on the way back to New York!  It's not entirely surprising - (s)he's relocated there, back to crashing with the new Magda, who is apparently more willing to act the mother while asking little of her "daughter", and this is apparently a better place to be part of influencer/YouTube/Instagram culture than Oakland (on top of there not being much chance to transfer to L.A.) - but definitely a bit surreal to know that the woman with the short skirt and tight top who was assigned to making sure the folks in first class were satisfied used to be a top economist.

-Zee

Daryl/Zee: I can hardly believe this is FINALLY me

Of all the folks posting on this blog, I suspect that Jordan is the only one who really gets how nice it is to wake up in the Inn, look in the mirror, and feel like things are finally right, even if being white was easier in a lot of ways.  Two nights ago, I went to sleep as Magda for the last time, having intending to be awake to watch my body change in the mirror, but one's mid-fifties are no joke, and I eventually flopped down on the bed, only to wake up, see the sun on my darker legs, and suddenly feel energized to bounce up and run into the bathroom.

I'd seen the face already, but it was great to be able to make it smile in the mirror; this may be my fourth face, but I don't know that you ever get used to this.  It twirled my hair, thinking I'd probably braid it, because while it's not super-nappy, it's also not the fine, silky stuff they make wigs out of, so it would take a lot more combing than Magda's did for the same effect.  I said a couple test sentences, and my voice felt a little closer to right.  "Hi!  I'm Zariyah Andrews!  Call me Zee!"

Though I'd grown an inch and a half, it wasn't enough to make the shorts and tee I had slept in as Magda feel tight.  Heck, with the weight off my chest, it was probably a wash up top.  Not that I'm flat-chested now, but Magda had always been busty and had a kid besides, so being perky maybe didn't look quite so impressive, although I remembered from being Elaine that you can do a lot with the right bra.  My legs and butt looked pretty good, and a quick look inside the shorts indicated nothing unexpected.

(I feel bad about reducing this to a bunch of body parts, but apparently four years isn't quite enough not to be waking up a new woman by taking inventory of the sort of thing guys look for)

Soon after that, folks started yelling, so I threw some daytime clothes on and went to help folks out.  After that, it was the obligatory trip to Cary's hot dog truck.  I must have been smiling like an extra-special goofball or maybe nobody else orders a Chicago-style dog - or maybe both - but he sort of held it in the air for a second, considering what a fool he'd look like if asking "Daryl?" was the wrong call, before I busted out "call me Zee!" for the first real time.

He told me I looked really good, and I thanked him, and then he did me the favor of asking how dropping twenty years overnight felt because I wanted to say it was great, thank you very much, without acting like I pitied him for taking those years back after his time as Elaine.  Us having both had the same identity at different times gave us a bit more room to talk about how things were going with the original (and never being anyone else again) Elaine.  She and the guy living as me found each other and are getting married next spring, which is crazy, especially when you think that neither of them were using those names the last time "Daryl & Elaine" was a thing.

Anyway, he seemed genuinely happy that this had finally worked out for me.  I was planning to take over this life a year ago, but then the original Zee's father died, and even if it didn't mean much to the last person living that life, being in it meant responsibilities she couldn't get out of without feeling awful, so we put everything off a year.  I haven't posted about it because I didn't want to jinx this time, which feels stupid but I can't exactly say that there's no chance of jinxes being real, can I?

I spent most of yesterday afternoon making sure that new-Magda would be in good shape - doing laundry, buying a couple new underwear sets, finding a spot where you could print things out so that she had a bunch of maps and diagrams (and making sure they were all stored in her phone), attaching names to a bunch of people at the airport.

There was also a big section in the binder on Harmon/Alicia, more than I might have expected a year ago, but fake family's fake family, and maybe the new Magda would want to spend more time with him.  We never really got on, but ever since I got my own place in Flushing in preparation for this whole switch a year ago, he's kind of made himself at home there whenever his schedule takes him to New York, because after all, Magda wouldn't expect her daughter to stay in a hotel or crash pad, would she?  We aren't actually roommates that often - I still stayed over at J.T.'s a lot - but, we do go through the motions of playing mother and daughter more than we used to.

In fact, she was there when I got into town this morning, and you'll pardon if I switch pronouns up, but you would have to look very hard to see a man eligible to collect social security in the 27-year-old woman sitting on my couch in a miniskirt and a top that was little more than a bra, feet on my coffee table in high-heeled knee-high boots, hair back in a ponytail, barely looking up at me from her phone (where she was probably looking to see if anybody had tagged photos of her from the night before) as I came in using a spare key.  There's something about her that I don't like, maybe because I feel like it's a reflection of me switching lives for my own ends and not looking back.

That and the dismissive compliments, like "yes, I guess that's at least a lateral move" upon looking at me, which probably wasn't actually racist, but sort of felt that way, like being younger and taller and tighter maybe didn't entirely compensate for not being white anymore (I'm not proud that I've worried about that myself).  I shrugged it off and said I was going to take a shower and a nap, because I'd wound up taking the train after a flight or two was canceled.

It hit me as I saw myself in the bathroom mirror that my new face didn't match what I was expecting in this place - by now I expect the Inn to be random, I guess - and I started thinking about what I'd like to keep from this apartment/phase of my life to bring into the next one.  Should I want to bring more mementos, or physical things, than I was planning?  Given that J.T. and I figure to pick right back up where we left off it doesn't seem like I should be leaving as clean of a slate.

Of course, to do that, he's got to "meet" Zee, which is why I've spent an hour or so after getting up from my hap working on my hair and make-up and making sure I chose just the right outfit so that nobody would be surprised when this "tourist" catches his eye at the bar tonight.

It's funny - I've been with him for longer than I have been with any girl, but we've switched our shapes so often that it doesn't necessarily feel like that.  Heck, I almost wonder if we'll start joking about it if we hit a rut in a couple of years.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves - tonight, I'm seeing a play and finding out what these taste buds think of gin!

-Zariyaryl (Hmm, maybe not)

Andi/Andy: "Vacation" Cut Short

Getting back home after Andy's positive test was an odd experience.  We wound up staying in the same hotel suite but different rooms, me running errands as quickly as I could but not interacting directly,trying not to get me infected.  Mom and Dad did what they cold to try and see if we could add some more time at the Inn, but apparently our room was booked for the "block" after our stay.  Much as I hoped we might be able to fit another change into the time we had, it was dead quiet when Krys and I went to check it out Tuesday evening.  I guess it's usually that way - when people get changed, they're "behind" in their new lives by a couple of weeks, they're suddenly under pressure to jump into their new life rather than lose someone their job or whatever.  It strikes me that if all thirteen folks at the Inn got together and decided to stay for the rest of their booking, they'd be able to get back to their lives a fair chunk of the time, even if the curse needs a few days to "reset", but either it doesn't occur to them, or there's someone who was trying to game the system like us to get their real life back.

That pretty much clinches that we're going to be stuck like this until we can get three changes lined up at some point, which doesn't seem likely this summer.  That's when Mom and Dad start making plans and making a comment about how it would be a lot easier if we were both sick.  As it works out, Mom is the one who is able to get off work and drive up to Maine to pick Andy up.  It takes a day or two, and she gives me a big hug when she arrives, saying she knows I'm disappointed, but it's better not to take chances.  I try to say the right things - that I'm actually more worried about Andy, because none of the folks we know who have tested positive really got sick like he has - and I do mean them, but trying to be the good sister or brother just makes it worse.

Mom recognizes that, because I've apparently got a tendency to let my brain run away with things compared to Andy.  Like, I'm good at math because I can focus on an immediate problem, while Andy does a better job of stepping back and figuring out what he can and can't deal with.  That's why he's good in history class and enjoys sports even when he's not very good at it, while I really only get that sort of focus in Drama Club and stuff like that.  It's why I'm the one blogging even though he's actually a better writer and is dealing with way more crap as a girl than I am as a guy.  He's just better at taking a deep breath and dealing with things, and I've apparently still got enough of my brain to react like myself, for better or worse.

Anyway, the plan our parents hatched was that Mom would drive Andy back home, and so long as I was still testing negative, I could fly back on my own, to try and minimize exposure.  It probably sounds like we're being over-cautious, but Dad's a doctor and Mom manages a restaurant, so they both take Covid really seriously.  The timing was weird - I think Mom would have liked to wait until I got on the train for Boston to leave, but between flights and the reduced Amtrak schedule, that would have meant them staying an extra night, so they left me to check out on my own the next morning.

I didn't get too down that night, though - Krys's "dad" Cary took us out for dinner, which made Mom feel better, and even if he makes a living selling hot dogs, he knows a couple good restaurants in Portland, and I had some really good swordfish.  He could see I was down and did a pretty good job of saying it was going to be okay; he got his old life back, as did his friend Elaine, and they were better for the experience, and it would be like that for me and Andy, too.  They meet a lot of people who go through the Inn, and a lot more make their way back home than you'd think from the blog, and even those that don't eventually make peace with where they wind up.

He dropped me off at the hotel and told Krys to try and be home by midnight, leaving her bike there.  We walked over to the beach and sat there as it got dark.

"So...  Wanna try out that dick of yours?"

I recoiled, shocked.  "What?  No!  Wait - have you..."

She laughed.  "No, not as Mackenzie, but I figured we might as well.  I can reset my expectations and you can have your first time - or at least your first time as a guy - be without judgment.  I mean, you don't think you're going to get through senior year without losing Andy's virginity, do you?"

"Yeah, I mean, I made it through junior year, and, you know..."

She laughed, but it was a little off.  "Hey, your choice.  But, uh, you like me, don't you?  Like, I thought I felt something, but maybe I'm so out of practice.  I mean, I was really looking forward to being hot again, but it's weird, especially when I feel like I've still got a little girl's ass and all the guys I know will suddenly start talking about English class.  I mean, you do too, but we've got that other connection, so I at least don't entirely feel like I'm being a creep."  She hugged her legs.  "Do you see me as a creep?  A grown-up hitting on kids?  Because, when am I not going to be that?  Senior year?  College?  When I'm 30 and he's 50?"  From her face, that sounded pretty gross.

"No, I like you!  I feel that sort of connection, it's just...  I mean, you have no idea how long I'll hold it to put off using that thing to pee!"

She laughed, and laughed big, big enough that it was easy to believe there was a Black woman in there, if that's not too big a stereotype.  "Okay, that's fair.  I remember that feeling, although I got over it!"  She stuck out a pinky.  "But if we're both single when your senior prom rolls around, I get to be your date, okay?"

I twisted my finger around hers, suddenly kind of wary just how much taller and less streamlined I am even at that extreme.  "Deal.  Mark it on your calendar."

"I dunno, girl - that Cindi girl is hot and sounds like she doesn't give up easily!"

We laughed and got up.  Her phone buzzed and she gave it a quick look.  "Okay, I'm gonna head home - I'm not getting in trouble if you miss your train!" She hugged me and then stood on tiptoe to give me a quick peck on the cheek.  "You're a good dude, Andrea, and a great gal.  Remember that, and have fun with the next year."

I said I would, and then went back to the hotel room, set the alarm on my phone, and stared at the ceiling for a while, not realizing I'd fallen asleep when it woke me up.  Then I checked out, got to the train station, took the Downeaster to Boston, managed that subway which has way too many transfers before you get to the airport from North Station, and got on the plane for home.

Despite the nearly day-long head start, I got to the airport well before Mom and Andy arrived home, and Dad was waiting.  He gave me an awkward hug - they'd all been awkward since puberty and the last year had made it worse - and seemed a little surprised when I hugged him tight, patting me on the back.

"I'm so sorry, kid."

"Me too, Dad."  I paused.  "Andy's going to be okay, right?"

"I'm sure he will.  You guys are young and it sounds like he wasn't carrying enough of a load to spread it to you.  Besides, from what he tells me, it hit him the same time as, well, you know.  Just a double whammy, that's all."

I smiled a bit.  "Can't say I've missed the cramps."

He skipped the opportunity to make a joke about going through menopause last year.  "I bet you haven't."

I loaded my bag in the trunk of the car without asking him to help.  "So...  Mom and Andy aren't going to be back until late.  What do fathers and sons do?"

He chuckled.  "You want to go fishing?  Because I don't fish.  Or maybe play some golf?"

"Sure!"  I made a big grin.  "Then finish the day off by grilling a couple big ol' steaks."

He looked at me, not quite sure what to make of what I was suggesting, then shrugged.  "Okay by me; I've got the rest of the afternoon, and..."  He was about to say something but didn't, instead getting in the driver's seat and asking the phone for directions to the country club.

The golf - well, I kind of sucked.  The steaks were good, though, and when Mom and Andy got back, they looked tired, but there was color in Andy's face - my face - and he generally looked like Dad was right, and it was more my period than Covid that had him feeling awful.

I'm not really looking forward to another year as Andy.  But maybe it won't be as bad as I feared.

-Andi-with-an-i

Cary: Shh! It's her birthday

Just saw Jonah's post about celebrating Krys's birthday and wondered if maybe people might be a bit curious about how it was going on the other side.  It was, as you might expect, kind of a low-key event.  I took her into Portland for a nice meal just like last year, but it got a bit uncomfortable; the distanced tables and relatively quiet room has a way of letting you know you're doing something wrong.  Not that it really bothers Krys - as much as she kind of enjoyed the initial harder lockdown because it meant very little time pretending to be 13, she pushes hard against people who tell her what to do almost by reflex, and sometimes I've got to be the dad and remind her that it's not the world trying to make her feel like a powerless kid.  You can imagine how that goes.

That said, she's in a better place right now than she has been in a while.  You've probably never seen a young girl so happy to find her body changing - she whooped when she had her first period, she's grown fairly tall for her age, not quite the girl who's a head-and-a-half taller than every boy in her class but not far off, and she is already wanting to know when she'll outgrow her first training bra, only half-kidding when she says she's been researching which brands of chicken use the most growth hormones and to please buy that.  I tell her that her genes make it unlikely she'll ever get near what she had before, and she grumbles about stupid white-girl genes and how it's bad enough that she needs insane amounts of sunblock to go to the beach, and I generally avoid pointing out that they are also responsible for her red hair, which she kind of loves:  It's straight, long, curls easy, and makes her the center of attention wherever she goes.  I apparently got off very light in terms of black-woman hair care as Elaine, both by having her around and having it be fairly straight.

Aside from that, though, she's also reached a point in school where she's starting to find herself challenged, a bit.  You don't necessarily get amazed that someone who previously graduated high school finds themselves no longer able to coast when returning to junior high some fifteen years later, because the world moves and changes so fast these days, but it's been interesting to watch Krys grapple with it.  She's not really one for regrets, but she's smart enough to know that a lot of things could have gone differently for her.  I don't really know what her high school years were like at all, but I'm thinking she got the idea that she'd be able to get by on sex appeal early, and never really had someone make a case for other things being just as exciting.  You gather she also notices that even now, there aren't that many people like the real her in the books she's assigned to read, although it's getting better.

We're still trying to find something she really loves, though.  She took piano lessons for long enough to learn to play well enough that she can tap something out, and sometimes you'll see her fingers moving when listening to music (not that she listens to a lot of stuff with keyboards, so far as I can tell), but her teacher stopped giving lessons in the spring because of the virus and Krys hasn't been interested in picking them back up.  She doesn't think she'll wind up doing it for a living, so why should she spend so much time practicing?

You don't really have an easy time finding an answer for that.  She doesn't really want me to be her dad beyond making appearances, so I can't really use myself as an example and say that I became a jack of all trades and master of none, because she seems to think I'm doing pretty well.  You try asking if she'd liked dancing or if she just did it for money (not a comfortable conversation with someone who looks 13), and she starts talking about maybe doing cheerleading, which kind of seems like a path back to trying to count on being pretty.

It's hard to know what to do so much of time time.  With Elaine, the job was just to help her do the things people wouldn't let her do for herself, letting her look like a kid and helping her escape when being an adult in a kid's body made her uncomfortable.  That's all Krys says she wants from me, most of the time, but I also know that she doesn't want to make the same decisions as before, which means starting over as a kid, and kids need parents, and I don't know if I can be that for her someone who may be half my age but is still 28.

-Cary

Cary: Bored Girl Makes for a Busy Dad

I knew back in August that Krystle was going to be a different sort of Mackenzie than Elaine was, and I probably shouldn't compare them much.  It wouldn't be fair or helpful to Krystle, it wouldn't do me much good, and it probably wouldn't help my friendship with Elaine to thinking of her as a pre-teen.  So I'm trying not to do it, especially since they've supposedly got different goals - Elaine was always looking to return to her real life, while Krystle, not seeing that as possible, is trying to start from scratch.

(And what of the original Mackenzie Mahoney?  I gather she gained a few years, and when her parents realized they would change back but she wouldn't, some sort of arrangement was made for new identities, which apparently involved a clean-enough break that we'll never hear from the Mahoney family again.  Makes me kind of paranoid sometimes, because it's sort of suspiciously convenient.)

Starting from scratch is a heck of a difficult thing if you don't have to, though, and Krystle can't help but be very aware that her old life is going on just a hundred miles away, and the magic hotel that can make her not a kid is only a few miles down the road.  And while being a kid again sounds like fun, the loss of freedom can be a tough pill to swallow, especially when you consider that just a few months ago, Krystle was traveling the world on her own, and while there were certainly parts where she was looked at with some suspicion for being a young black man, being 11 puts a lot of other bounds on her, from where she can ride her bike to what music she can have on her phone when she's around real kids, and that was before school started.

And that's where things got tricky, because it turns out Krystle is pretty bright.  As much as I received a first-person lesson in how people underestimate you when you're black, a woman, or both, I still let myself judge her a bit by my first impression, although I also think she doesn't necessarily know her own capabilities.  She didn't pay much attention at school her first time around, I guess, and she still doesn't seem to really like reading that much, although she doesn't have much trouble with anything she's given at school.  From what she tells me, the fact that she was pretty decent at math during Jonah's senior year of high school is what had her thinking that if she went through school again, she could get into college and maybe do something with numbers when she's an adult again.

But she's bored, which is not a good combination with being used to more freedom and not exactly being able to connect with her supposed peers.  She hasn't exactly gotten in trouble yet - no detentions or me being called to pick her up from school - but her teacher told me she was starting to be kind of disruptive.  Good marks, and often had an interesting perspective during discussions, although she can be kind of pushy with them, but one student with a lousy attitude can derail an entire class.

Folks, it is not easy to have a talk with a 26-year-old woman to encourage her to behave better in the sixth grade.  She wasn't expecting anything like it when I got back, in part because Elaine told her that I more or less just showed up to maintain cover, and just looking at her, I have to guard against the 11-year-old I see dictate how I speak, even after two-plus years of knowing there was an adult in there.  When I said her teachers were worried about her attitude, she kind of laughed at first.

"Don't do that, Krystle.  I've seen bad reputations hang onto people for a long time."

"I know, it's just, when does this get worth the time?  I'm tryna pay attention, but it's so boring!  How did Elaine manage it?"

I told her that Elaine found things easier to accept when she had plans in place to return to her old life and could treat the year as a sort of learning experience, and that she also made a project out of helping me with the hot dog truck.  "Maybe you should just not worry about beyond this year; growing up again is quite a commitment."

She grunted, saying she would try harder, but looked kind of defeated the next few days.  I racked my brains trying to figure some way to help out, until I saw something on the bulletin board at the supermarket and dropped a card in front of her during dinner.  "What do you think of this?"

She read it and gave me a look.  "Piano lessons?  Ain't I little-white-girl enough for you?"

I'd actually looked up Alicia Keys' name to drop, but it didn't seem to much impress her.  "I just figured it was something you could start now that didn't involve other kids, and maybe give you something to look forward to.  I dunno, I'm trying to figure out what I'd do in your position.  Maybe try it for a week and if you don't like it, we'll try and find something else. "

She was skeptical, but she was kind of sick of going straight home after school and not really doing much until it was time to catch the bus in the morning.  I don't want to say she loves it, but she's at least busier now, and has something to look forward to a couple times a week.

It costs a bit, though, not just in terms of money, but time - it's a little bit too far to ride her bike, especially now that the days are getting shorter, and there's no buses or trains here.  So I've got to build my day around getting her to and from, which I can do.  The money's a bit trickier - Elaine and J.T. had an arrangement about her dipping into her bank account when she needed some cash, but Krystle doesn't have that with Jonah.  She has a bit of a college fund from selling someone the chance to be the new Jonah, but we haven't really figured out rules about dipping into that.

So I'm paying for this, and the new keyboard, and maybe a nicer one if she sticks with this through Christmas, but if I don't find a way to earn more money than usual this off-season, things could get tight.

I guess, in some respects, I'm going to have to be more of a parent than I figured on.

-Cary

Daryl/Magda: One Hot Mama

I'm a relatively new Inn Person, so I haven't talked with many in the community, but it feels like what I am trying to do right now - changing and then immediately trying to start my own new life on my own terms - it's pretty rare.  That's natural - most people, upon having their identity torn from them, aren't going to say "what would I do with a clean slate?" even if their new face didn't come with a letter asking them not to mess things up.  But a life's got inertia to it, too, and just picking up and starting over isn't easy even when you can.

And I didn't know if that was going to be the case when I got back to the Inn.  The room hadn't changed since I left it but I was acutely aware that there was no leftover bag in the room to tell me what I had in store.  I tried to be chill about it - like, okay, if these are going to be my last days as a woman, try a few things, like having a spa day or putting on a kind of sexy dress and doing some light flirting at a bar, not looking to get picked up, but just to see what it's like to be on the other end of some guy's game, maybe be more empathetic later.  Don't get me wrong, I brought along pepper spray, but thankfully didn't need it.

Still, it was a nerve-wracking week or so, knowing that I was going to come out of it as neither myself nor Elaine, but I could be pretty much anyone else.  It was a relief when I finally felt the tingle other folks talked about, although I couldn't stay up for the change; it had been a long day that ended with a few drinks.

I didn't really feel different when I woke up until I saw that my arm was white.  And not just Caucasian-white, but "Eastern European girl who hasn't been out of the house all winter" white.  I knew that was the way to bet - Jonah becoming Krystle probably used up all the odds of one black person becoming another by random chance in this place, given how white Maine is - but, man, that is a hell of a thing to be confronted with.  I felt like I'd lost something profound in that moment, even more so than when I watched Elaine's breasts grow out of my chest.

And speaking of breasts, yeah, as soon as I'd examined my hand enough to think about how weird it was that the designs on my nails were now kind of off-center, I sat up in bed and let the sheet drop away from my chest.  I could already feel just from sitting up that I was still a woman, but sometimes you need to see it.  My breasts had grown a bit and sagged a bit overnight, and the darker space around my nipples was a bit bigger.  They're not bad at all, and when I copied them in my hands they felt pretty solid, but not as close to perky as is been as Elaine.

The rest of my body was like that too - a bit softer around the waist, a bit more spread to my butt, more in the thighs.  I did feel weirdly guilty about the shape I'd left my bush in for Elaine when I saw how nearly trimmed I was down there (I was kind of skittish with the razor). After I'd seen all I could from that angle, I went to the mirror.

Not a bad new face.  Some lines around the eyes and dimples that tried to make up for the fact that it didn't seem to smile quite as wide, brown hair that was thinner than Elaine's but not really thin, decent lips.  I pegged myself at about forty or so, which was disappointing, but doable.

There was noise outside the room, so I figured it was time to find out how things had shaken out.  Elaine's clothes mostly fit, although I wouldn't recommend going up a bra size or two overnight (the amazing cleavage doesn't really make up for the straps digging into your skin), so I want like the guy in a way-too-small bathrobe trying to figure out what had happened.  It was a weird scene, 'cause by the time July rolls around most of the "reversal chains" have broken and it's just people who don't know what they're in for.  I explained what little I knew about the situation five times while asking if anybody had a suitcase that looked like it belonged to a middle-aged white woman in their room. 

Nobody did, but someone was able to get into one connected by an adjoining bathroom, and I found my new identity.  My eyes went kind of wide at the driver's license I pulled from the purse, because on the one hand, damn, Magda Polawski, you're doing pretty darn all right for almost 48, but on the other, that's almost two full decades lost on my part.  Then I got to the letter which Lindsey had left me, which spent a lot of time filling me in on Harmon but kind of soft-sold that Magda's life was mine, free and clear, should I want it.

None of the people at the Inn, looking at a year of trying to live someone else's life, really wanted to hear me talk about how that's some monkey's paw shit, but Cary and Elaine at least put on a good show of being sympathetic.  I mean, yeah, I want to make things work with J.T., but 47-year-old white woman isn't exactly easy mode.

But you've gotta try, right?  Lucky for me, Lindsey left me notes about how to "deadhead" on a flight, so I got to fly to New York for free.  I watched a bunch of YouTube videos about making yourself look younger via makeup before flying out and then got my hair done as soon as I landed.  Lindsey, not knowing who was going to become Magda, had traveled to Maine with a bunch of different clothing options, but probably didn't figure on someone like me being grateful for a little black dress and matching four-inch heels.

Heck, it was surreal to me as I changed in a food court restroom and then did what I could with the makeup, texting with J.T. about dinner reservations and how, no, I wasn't going to send a selfie so he could recognize me.  But I was kind of riding high on the idea that somehow the universe was arranging things so that two people who would never have been paired two years ago could be together, kind of excited about Act III.  I must have spent a half hour on the makeup, staying completely over twice and just being real timid, but eventually I decided I didn't look too bad.

J.T. had reserved us a table at a nice restaurant, and I managed to get in and sit across from him quietly enough to make him jump.  The dress showed plenty of cleavage, so his eyes were drawn there before my face.  "Wow.  You're, uh--"

"Older?"

"I was thinking 'not Elaine', but I guess that's part of it.  You look good, though.  Really good..."  I briefly felt ashamed for how easily we guys let boobs distract us.

We spent the meal making small talk, about sports and how cute real-Elaine being excited about getting her life back was.  He mentioned that he'd had an audition the other day, well off Broadway, because he was getting excited about digging into and creating character histories again after the Inn.

It was delicious, and we took a can back to his place, as I mentioned I had no place of my own in New York, and it was too late to spring all this on Pete.  We drank some wine, and then made hilariously flimsy excuses for heading toward the bed.  It felt really good for him to unzip my dress and then undo my bra, supporting my breasts with his hands while kissing my neck.  It felt good being a little softer in his hands, and we played around a lot before I was on my back his face right above mine, him entering me, both of us excited but kind of terrified about what might come next.

About that, let's just say that the over-sharing ladies at a previous job were maybe onto something when they told us embarrassed millennials that a woman's body doesn't really figure out how to princely orgasm right away.  I was like, well, shit, that part works when we got done.

Of course, I couldn't just stay there right away - Magda had a job, a lease, and a biological daughter on the other side of the country, and I couldn't just abandon them without causing trouble.  So, just a day later, I was flying "back" there to figure out how I could easily get myself back in that bed on a permanent basis.

Naturally, Harmon and I met when I was going through Magda's closet, trying to figure out which clothes to keep and which to give away.  As much as I had fun pushing my boobs into J.T.'s face that first night, there was some stuff theft which had either been there a long time or which probably was the result of Magda still seeing a younger woman in the mirror.  I may look somewhere halfway between my real age and what my new passport says, but I kind of think Magda was still stuck in an even younger mindset, not quite competing with Alicia but thinking she was still that girl.

And I can see how she thinks that - there's a box of Polaroids in her closet, and young Magda had a lot of what her daughter does.  And Alicia is hot as fuck, just everything I am now but tighter and smoother.  I don't feel desire when I look at her, but I probably feel a little more appreciation than someone who currently shares half my DNA with her probably should.  On top of that, she's got this attitude to her where she knows exactly what she's got and she won't barter access to it, or even her attention, cheaply.  I've dated enough girls like that to know it gets exhausting fairly quickly, but even though I know how insanely inappropriate the thought is and how uninterested Harmon is in being someone's girlfriend, I notice.  And, yes, I couldn't help but think of the roughly twenty-five extra years I might have gained if Harmon had come to the Inn.

That he didn't pay me much mind is kind of useful,  though - if he doesn't want to play family, that's a load off me.  I can decide some stuff is going to go and just email the original Magda and Alicia about it rather than finding time to schedule talks with him.  I can ask the airline about a transfer to New York and feel confident that the option to quit is in my back pocket, because he's not attached to working with "Mom".  I can get all the way to "hey, either sign this or don't" and only feel a little bad about how losing the apartment is going to mess with his life.

That got him upset, although he really had no right; was he sure that every future Magda was going to look after him like Lindsey?  Quite honestly, I kind of think she should have put her foot down earlier, but then again, I'm not exactly the posted child for letting pay relationships go after visiting the Inn.

Still, I'm looking forward to really making a new start in New York next week.  It's crazy how much I miss J.T. already.

-Magdaryl

Cary: They Grow Up So Fast

You aren't necessarily tremendously comfortable showing your emotions when you're a man my age.  Is just not how you were brought up, and when you've spent most of your life working on conduction or on boats or just otherwise with other men raised the same way, you don't so much keep everything bottled up as you try not to do anything that throws you off the even keel, or at least that was my experience.  You might think that spending a year as a woman would disabuse me of that, but it sometimes pushed me the other way, like most emotions were fake things you did to fit in, with the only ones that were real the unease of sharing an apartment with the person who should be in your place or the fear that you would screw everything up.

I don't know that it hurt me any, in general, most of the time, but it left me utterly unprepared for the roller coaster that was Elaine getting on her bike as Mckenzie every night to ride to the Inn, staying up until three in the morning to get the test message that she was still eleven years old, and both feeling sad for her and grateful to have another day with her.  I think it was somewhat the same for her, because she would bike back to my apartment in the morning, get changed into one of the business's t-shirts we had made in her size, and set off with me for wherever the truck was to set up that day.

Folks would look at us and talk about how the little girl helping her dad was cute, and she'd smile in a way that was maybe a little knowing but maybe not, and she didn't roll her eyes the way either her 11-year-old classmates or a young woman amused by the irony would be.  She just said thank you, collected their money, and commented on how this racket was pretty good for the tip jar when everyone was gone.  Then she'd get out the laptop, search for places we'd been mentioned on social media, and drill me on liking, re-tweeting, updating the location, and how to update the truck's website like it was two years ago and she was going to make sure I didn't stumble in her high heels during a job interview.

It's been a weird couple years for both of us.  Her, mostly, over the past year, especially once school started.  She'd spent the previous year pretending she wasn't a kid, no matter how many times she fell asleep on the couch or got a look as she looked at the menu in a restaurant, but once the state said I was looking after her, and she had a schedule to keep, she fell into it.  Oh, teachers praised how incredibly organized she was for a fifth-grader, and what a quick reader she was, but at first they said she seemed antisocial.  Only to be expected, given that she was abandoned by her parents and forced to start over in a new town, but it was something they were watching.

Then she stopped just short of giving a bloody nose to some boy who didn't expect the quiet redhead to take such umbrage to him taunting the class's one black kid about him not being able to swim or some such.  She was horrified when she got home, because it didn't matter whether he was bigger or that he thought she was ten, she'd almost hit a kid.  But the next day, for all the kids who have "psycho girl" a hard time, there were a few who admired her, and soon they were sitting with her at lunch, asking to hang out after school (jealous that I almost always said yes and not knowing we had a code word for when she needed me to say no), wondering where she'd learned hip-hop dance and starting to do it together.  It was weird having ten- and eleven-year-olds as friends, she said, but she also kind of enjoyed knowing where she stood all the time.

And while you might think having a kid who is basically a small adult makes for easy parenting, you still have to change your life, and not just because social workers are looking over your shoulder every once in a while.  There's got to be food in the house, so the grocery store becomes a routine rather than a place you stop when something runs out.  When plans fall apart, you've got to be there to pick her up.  You've got to make a show of doing things she can do herself.  Heck, you don't just bring her the doctor and dentist, but you figure out how to have better insurance because she'll be in trouble if you get sick.  It sounds like a hassle, but it feels pretty good, believe it or not.

So when the phone's runtime jolted me awake at 2:48am, I felt an initial bit of sadness when I got the text saying "ME AGAIN! !!", but smiled when I saw the selfie of her with a big grin, her child's t-shirt held in front of her in a full-size version.  Then she said she was going to get some sleep and met me at the truck later.

She wasn't wearing the t-shirt when she did, but a nice blue sundress.  "Looks like Daryl left you something nice to wear."

"Oh, please!  I've been shopping.  You boys tried your hardest, but none of you really had my taste.  I mean, c'mon--" she lifted a foot clad in a sandal that had obviously fake stones on the leather strap that ran from her toes to her ankle.  "-- none of you ever went for anything this sparkly!"

I laughed.  "I guess we didn't.  Looks good on you, though."

"Thank you."  She did a little half bow and then saw my gaze lingering.  "You aren't gonna come on to me, are you?  Because aside from how it's going to take more than a few hours for me to not be grossed out by guys thinking of me as sexy, or how three of the four men living my life decided that they just HAD to take my vagina out for a spin - assuming you didn't do anything in a supply closet you didn't tell me about--"

"No!  I'm just looking at you all put together for the first time.  I've seen all this in the mirror and on Max, J.T., and Daryl, and I've gotten to know you pretty well, but this is just, you know, right."

She hugged me then, burying her face into my chest.  "You have no idea how good it is to hear you say that.  After a couple years, you wonder if you're just not that person any more, especially when you hear about all the others that don't go back the first chance they get..."  She wiped her nose and pulled back.  "You make a pretty good dad, you know."

"Nah, I just showed up when you needed someone to show up."

"Which puts you ahead of a lot of fathers.  As does telling a girl they can get through something when she really needs to hear that."

I shrugged.  "You got a dad for that."

"I do, and I think I'd really like to see him.  And Mom.  And even Whitney, though she's got a ton to answer for!"

We laughed, and I told her I would be quite happy with just being her friend from then on.  She said she'd like that, kissed me on the cheek, and then offered to get me dinner, but I told her to go see her family and friends and wouldn't take no for an answer.

* * *

Of course, that's not the end, as I got home this evening to find "Mackenzie Mahoney" sitting on the couch, feet up on the coffee table, asking what was for dinner.  I said I wasn't rightly sure, but some introductions were probably in order first.

She shrugged.  "Fine.  I'm Mackenzie.  I used to be Krystle Kamen, but the n---- in my life got knocked up and now he all about bein' a mom.  Ain't gonna live my life as him or any man - don't get me wrong, it's got its perks, but it ain't for me - so I figure this is the freshest start I can get.  We cool?"

"Sure, although your teachers won't be if you show up at school dropping the n-word and using that grammar.  Elaine--"

"Let's get one thing straight - just because we're both black females underneath this skin don't mean we're the same.  You and I, we're both starting over, and I don't care what kind of Mackenzie Elaine was - this is my life now."

You could tell this was going to be different already.  When I showed up in Elaine's life, she took charge, but it made sense.  When she showed up in mine, we knew we were going to be partners.  This seemed different, like Krystle wants my help but certainly doesn't want me to be her father.

"Look, we're going to have to work together on this, and part of that means you've got to trust me on some things.  You show up to middle school talking like that, they're going to wonder what happened over the summer.  Maybe the state figures I was the problem and places you with someone who won't believe who you are and take it into consideration.  Do you want that?"

She stared at me for a second, sizing me up.  "You a bit more ready for me than I thought from how nice Elaine said you were, ain't ya?  Fine, I'll talk like a little white girl, at least around other people.  How's this?  'Can we have pasketti for supper, daddy, pweeeeeease?'"

I can't say I'm sure I agree with being ready for her - it's really just starting to hit me now that this thing I signed up for to help Elaine for a year potentially has another seven until "Mackenzie" graduates high school.  I'll be collecting Social Security by then, and who knows what else could change?

I don't mind helping - Krystle has kind of gotten a raw deal herself, after all - but I'm not sure what a gal like that trying to be pre-teen is going to be like as a roommate compared to Elaine just hiding out.

-Cary

Lindsey: Just Me

It's a good thing that the Inn have us this extra day on our stay so that we could watch the fireworks and not be checking out on the Fourth of July, because it looks like I might not have changed back otherwise and who knows how many other people's plans would have also gone awry, but it also led me to hold out hope for one more day that Harmon would do the right thing.  But he hasn't, and now I just feel like the last few years of my life were a waste of time and I'm a damn fool.

Still, I'm me again, without a lot of fuss in managing it.  One of the nice things about Magda having worked for the same airline for over twenty years is that even though she doesn't actually get paid time off because she's hourly rather than salaried, she can still request a fair-sized chunk of vacation - say, enough to go to the Inn, fall off the map, and then return with a new person behind her face - and her employer will grumble but the job will still be waiting for her when she gets back.  That new Magda probably won't have much flexibility to take any sort of non-Inn vacation for another year, but that's how it works.  I even got to fly out here for almost nothing.

Harmon doesn't really have that luxury as Alicia; he was able to negotiate a schedule that had him working flights to and from Boston with some days off on that end, but there were a few days early in our stay when he would be SOL if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In retrospect, I'm kind of surprised he didn't just quit and let the new Alicia fend for herself, but I figured he was trying to do the same thing as I was, leaving things in good shape for the next people living these lives.

(Which won't be Magda and Alicia Polawski; they like Austin, the cupcake business, being sisters, and the guys that the people who originated their new lives became.  I'm not sure how far back along the line people are happy with how things worked out, but they're not coming back.)

It made the first few days in Maine pretty relaxing; Old Orchard is a cute little town, and I hope every Inn visitor eventually gets to know Cary - the guy is just there and quietly helpful when he can be.  I kind of enjoyed his flirting with me - he's picked up on more of what it feels good for a woman to hear than he claims, although the idea that he's scared that the next person to become Mckenzie might need a strong female role model isn't necessarily the best sales pitch.  Elaine is cool too, and really looking forward to being grown up again.

It felt good and according-to-plan enough that I didn't really fret when Harmon didn't show up on the first day he was supposed to.  I texted, he mentioned a flu bug taking down a whole flight crew, meaning he was assigned to another for that day, and that made sense.  When he didn't show up three days later, halfway through our booking, I called and asked what was going on.

He didn't even have the decency to sigh or hesitate.  "I am not returning to the Inn this year."

"WHAT?"  I poked my head out of the doorway to see if anybody else at the Inn heard me yelling.  "That's ridiculous - you HATE being Alicia, and I do your laundry - I know you're not pregnant!"

"It is not ideal, no, and I hope to upgrade to a better situation next summer, but given that Cooper had damaged my reputation and I would soon be facing retirement and irrelevance, and absent any moral imperative to return Alicia's life to her--"

I cut the oncoming lecture off.  "What about your other moral imperatives?  Like, to me?"

"I had hoped to avoid a confrontation, but how could or relationship not be broken?  After the past year, I doubt you would ever see me fully as a man again, having fallen so easily into taking a maternal role."

"Uh-uh.  No, you do not get to blame me.  You think that we could no longer be together, fine, but that's on you.  I'm sure you could find another student to make you feel admired and desired; I'd totally understand if you felt you didn't need me specifically.  Our are you afraid you can't any more?  Did seeing Coop using a cane freak you out that much?"

"I would not describe myself as 'freaked out', though it did gone me the impetus to examine what might offer me the most going forward, and there are noteworthy issues related to my old life's physical decline that, when balanced against a the average result of re-visiting the Inn, or even Miss Polawski's situation, certainly suggest that abandoning the identity of Harmon Keller is my best option using the present moment as a starting point."

I just started into the phone for a second.  "How can you be so casual about that?  I mean, you're taking decades off someone else's life!  Maybe not someone at the Inn now, but sooner or later, that's going to catch up with someone!"

He sounded annoyed.  "Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  If it bothers you so much, you know what to do."  There was a pause not quite long enough for me to think of a response.  "I guess this is farewell, then, Lindsey."  And then he hung up.

I just sat there after that, finding ways to blame myself.  Did I push him into trying to enjoy his circumstances enough that he decided he could stand being Alicia?  Did I play the mom too much and make that life comfortable?  Or did I do something to anger him, with Harmon deciding that this was the best way to get back at me?  I felt so bad that I slept on Coop's side of the room that night, so that if the change hit, it would make me into the new Harmon.

Elaine was pissed to hear me say that - she's got some pretty strong opinions on beating yourself up because of what a man does on his damn own.  She's got even stronger ones on making a martyr of oneself, suggesting I make myself available for future Magdas and Harmons who are going to be dropped into the Middle of this, but telling me it is not up to me to take responsibility for a man in his sixties.

She's right, even if it's hard not to feel guilty.  I mean, I woke up feeling GOOD this morning, every ache and pain I had as Magda gone, and Best Possible Person to Live Your Life Debbie Cooper may have spent the last month in the gym before getting me a bikini wax and a cute new Louise Brooks haircut.  And of course she left me some new panties and such.  And that's just gaining about twenty years back; Harmon got nearly twice that.  I can see that being hard to let go of.

That's pretty cold comfort to the poor teenager who got stuck as Harmon, though.  Just graduated high school, having a last vacation with his folks, and, wham, forty years.  Sweet kid, but he's not hugely thrilled with being on the same flight as me, or knowing that I'm going to be the best one to help him navigate Harmon's life for a bit.  As he shouldn't be.

I hope that I'll find something valuable in this experience someday.  I was ready to say I would just a couple weeks ago, but this lady bit of selfishness by Harmon really puts a damper on it, and I really wish I'd seen this in him the same way all my friends did.

-Lindsey Curtis

Daryl/Elaine: Surprise Visit

You folks who have been reading the blog for a while can probably figure out the basics from the subject line alone - I'm Daryl Jackson, the guy who thought he was dating Elaine Preston, but it turned out to be some white guy who had been turned into her, and now the Inn has turned me into her.  It's messed up, and I'm staying to wonder if Whitney Preston just had it in for her sister or something.  Was Elaine always the successful one when they were growing up and now Whitney just keeps doing what she can to mess with her life, even though Elaine trusts her?

Or is that me extrapolating from what J.T. told me and acting like that's the dynamic with Elaine?  I suppose that from another perspective, Whitney is doing the right thing, cluing me in on the impossible situation I've found myself in by making it possible for me too believe it.

From what the real Elaine says, the original plan was that J.T. would go to the Inn and become himself again, then Whitney would follow, becoming Elaine; then her boyfriend becomes Whitney; he stays an extra two-week block to turn back; Whitney comes back and returns to normal; then, finally, at what's apparently the first chance for "Mackenzie" to vanish for a couple of weeks without getting Cary in trouble, Elaine gets her own form back.  It's an elaborate plan that's got to be coating her and Cary a chunk of change, but given that I'm just the latest in a parade of men to take on Elaine's form despite her best efforts, you can't blame her.

Maybe I'd really like that meticulous nature if she came back in August and I was none the wiser that the Elaine I'd been seeing had been replaced, I'd appreciate it.  Instead, I shrugged off her mentioning that she had an out-of-town contact for the next two or three months - we said we'd email, as you do - but after a week or so, I got the idea of surprising her for the long Memorial Day weekend.  I hadn't lined up a new gig yet but had a little money to travel, so I figured why not?  I shoot Whitney a message asking if she thinks it's practical; she says that, believe it or not, she was going to be visiting but she was sure Elaine would rather see me than her.  I offer to pay for the plane ticket and hotel reservation, but she says Elaine already had, and it was just a matter of transferring the ticket, since everything at the Inn is done with reservation numbers.  She warns me that Elaine is busy, and It might be a few days before she gets free and I see her at the Inn, even with the holiday weekend.  Tight deadlines, enough to include weekends, so don't expect her before sunset.

Having done my share of cramming both in school and at work, I respect that, so I spend much of Friday and Saturday poking around town, trying some seafood, texting back and forth with Elaine (the real one, it turns out) asking what she's up to, thinking she might drop a hint as to where she is, but no dice.  Sometime around ten, I open up my laptop and check to see who's online, and by two-ish I've switched to Fortnite, and that's when stuff starts to get weird.  I'm into it enough that as it starts, I mostly just think the lobster roll doesn't agree with me, which is also how I explain my voice sounding weird to everyone.  At some point, though, the controller slips in my hand (which has gotten smaller) and when I reach up to adjust my headset, I feel hair.  That's screwy enough for me to realize that something is really wrong, and it's like by realizing that I'm suddenly much more aware of how my whole body feels strange.  I tell everybody that I'm not feeling well and have to drop off, and I guess I hadn't spoken in long enough that I hear someone ask who the chick is before logging out.

I run to the bathroom, figuring I'm gonna have to puke or crap or something, and I don't get why it kind of hurts in the chest before seeing my reflection.  I'm, like, three-quarters of the way to Elaine, so I don't quite see it yet, but I'm clearly more woman than guy.  I reach into my pants to find that I'm a fraction of the man I'm supposed to be.  I'm starting to take off my shirt to see if I've really got tits now too, and that's when I notice the scar.  Elaine's appendectomy scar is kind of unusual - there's a little nick in it, like the surgeon was a little careless with the scalpel or something - and I've suddenly got the same one, although it looks more faded.  Or, as I suddenly realize, it's not all there yet.

Then I realize what I'm seeing in the mirror, and I already look even more like her.  I run back to the bedroom, grab my phone, and some instinct has me dial Elaine rather than the police.  I get voice mail, of course, and say random stuff about how it's Daryl and I'm turning into her and is she all right because this is really freaking me out.  Eventually there's a beep because you can only record a message that's so long.  I start to head back to the bathroom, but my feet get snagged by my laptop's power cord and I go down.  I bang my head on something, but it doesn't knock me out.  I don't get up, though I'm not sure whether it's from being dazed or just tired.

I wake up the next morning to a little white girl shaking me.  I groan, and she starts wiping some dried blood off my forehead.  "You better not have damaged my face."

The early morning hours haven't quite come back to me.  "What?"

"I'm the real Elaine Preston, and you are not my sister.  You're Daryl, right?"

I say yes, and that's when I get filled in on everything.

"Has everybody here changed?"

"Yeah, but this early in the season, they're pretty much all expecting it and expecting to go home."

"But I can stay here, get changed back in the next wave...?"

She looks sheepish.  "I did have J.T. RSVP to a wedding, a friend from college."

Oh, right.  I remembered.

Anyway, long story short, I didn't quite get Elaine Preston boot camp, but I can put on a bra and not fall over in high heels now.  I actually learned a lot of it from Cary, since Elaine was busy with sixth grade for the week after Memorial Day.

I flew back home earlier this week in order to get what Elaine calls a bit of practice "being", with Cary assuring me that in some ways it's not nearly as hard as it looks, that even without the powers of a curse, people will just assume the thing that makes sense when something doesn't seem right - that you had a bad morning, are on your period, or just screwed up.  And it's true.  I had a couple legs up on Cary and J.T. in that I had actually met Elaine's friends before and that it's almost certainly easier for a black man to know what to expect in a group of black women than a white one.  I can't speak for other transformees, but I suspect going from straight white man into the life of a black woman like they did must be among the most nerve-wracking, going from being pretty certain of your authority but expected not to throw it around to being low on the totem pole and knowing you can't give an inch.

I did okay, although I did have a couple early-morning freakouts.  I'm just hoping that the wedding tomorrow is like seeing old high school friends when you both happen to be home for the holidays - nodding, talking vaguely about what you've been up to going back home.

-Daryl