Earlier in the day...
"Oh hey there, Nessa," Buffie said as he opened the door. "Hope you don't mind my hair still being in curls," he chuckled.
"I don't, actually. Nice to get out of the house."
"Yeah, I bet," Buffie replied, thinking of his friend's predicament. "How has your day been?"
"More of me dealing with this family, really..." He sighed and set down his backpack on the table. "If they didn't know you and trust you, I'd be so lonely right about now."
"I bet. You've said they've been a big adjustment." Buffie looked at Nessa as he rummaged through his own bag for his math notebook.
"What's been giving you trouble in math class?" Nessa asked.
"Complex numbers. Though lately, I've been forced to question what's real and what's imaginary," Buffie riffed.
"So have I. I recognize some people who I remember and they have something in common with...my reality," Nessa explained. "I am not one of those people."
"So...who were you, anyway?"
"A white boy named Shane Carlson. I did some skateboarding and was in the Ultimate Frisbee club."
"Sounds like a couple girls I know," Buffie admitted. "Though obviously you seem to also be struggling with a totally different home life." He looked at his homework with a bit of a blank face. "Just like I'm struggling with multiplying these complex numbers."
"Well, you know FOIL? Like for multiplying binomials?"
"Yeah."
"Do that, and then when you multiply i by itself, it's negative 1."
"That actually...makes some sense. But I can't imagine you as a skateboarder."
"Well, that's what I was until Tuesday." Nessa looked down at his body. "Dunno if I could do that now. My parents certainly wouldn't approve."
"You're...probably right on that. Let me go and take my hair out of these curls. Wanna come with me?"
"Why not," Nessa agreed. "Can't help you if you're not there." He followed Buffie up to his room and kept talking.
"So, I was wondering. What the heck is your world like? What I saw at the mall the other day was just weird. I never thought people could look like freakin' werewolves. And you mean to tell me that was fashionable for some people?"
Nessa nodded. "That was facial hair," he explained. "Guys there either grew it out, leading to what you saw, or shaved it. Much like we shave our legs." Another adjustment, he thought.
"So basically boys were girls and girls were boys."
"You can put it that way, with a few differences. Men are more limited here than women were there. For instance, women played many of the same sports as men back..." Nessa hesitated for a moment, realizing he couldn't quite call it "home" any longer. "...Back there."
"That sounds strange, but then again, everything your world was is strange to me. Just as I'm sure everything has been strange for you here." He thought about the other world again, or at least what he knew through what Nessa was saying. "Who was I over there?"
"Well," Nessa explained as Buffie finished taking the curlers out of his hair, "you were kind of a jerk. You were a football player named Biff Meadows. You also weren't mixed-race, either, so the changes definitely go back a generation or two in your family. I doubt you'd have liked him much."
"Makes me think of a Shan Jackson type," he said disapprovingly. "Did he have a...girlfriend?" Buffie added, trying to imagine Biff as basically a girl.
"He did, actually, this annoying cheerleader named Sarah McMillan."
"You mean Sarrah?" Buffie raised an eyebrow.
"Well, it's said differently here, but yeah, same person."
"Knowing cheerleaders here, she had to be... I can't even imagine her in that crowd. I don't know when I've ever seen her not wearing, like, a black T-shirt." He sighed in disgust. "She's...depressing, really."
"Well, in her defense, I never imagined five days ago I'd be speaking fluent Korean. That's actually kind of cool."
"So then... What was your family like before all of this?" Buffie said while he quickly made his way through the homework.
"They at least let me do things," Nessa grumbled. "I dunno if they just don't trust me as much here because I'm a boy, or if it's their parenting style... Honestly, it's probably both."
"I think I'm done," Buffie declared as he set his math notebook on the table. "Wanna sit on the couch, see what's on TV?"
"Sure, why not!" Nessa reacted positively to the idea. He took a seat and was quickly joined by his best friend, who sat close to him. "What's on?"
Buffie paged through the program guide. "Say Yes to the Dress! Now that's what I call good TV," he chirped. "I don't imagine you've ever seen it?"
"Well, I've heard of it, but it wasn't something I'd ever consider watching before," Nessa responded.
"Watch it! I think you'd like it." Nessa, somewhat reluctantly, paid attention. A man was getting ready to be the groom at his wedding and really needed a good dress. The show's hosts and experts were helping him through the process. "Yikes, that first one he just tried on was a hot mess," Buffie sighed.
