Jack strummed out a few frustrated chords, then stared glumly at the pages in front of him. They stared tauntingly back up at him. Jack threw his pen against the wall in irritation, then bured his head in his hands and rubbed his eyes. This wasn't happening.
Ten months. It had been ten months since he'd written a new song. Almost a year. This was a case of writer's block par excellence. Last Tuesday he'd finally stumbled upon a pretty rocking chord progression, and he'd pieced it together with some stray lines he'd written a few weeks before into something resembling the start of a song. But Jack had been laboring over that little snatch of a song for days now, and he simply could not get it to work.
And it had been nearly four months since he'd gotten a gig. Jack knew he had talent. He had a good voice, he was a good guitar player, he'd written some great songs back in the day. Jack truly believed that if he could rally all that talent, he had the potential to make it big. He knew he wasn't going to be the next John Lennon, but maybe he could at least put out a few records on an indie label, maybe get some regional airplay. Jack would have given anything to be a professional musician. Instead, he was working the night shift at McDonald's and living with his stoner roommate.from college.
Suddenly a shrill cry broke through the apartment. Jack leapt to his feet and, once he'd carefully set his guitar on the couch, he darted down the hall to the bathroom, where the sound had come from. There he found Ned, his roommate, staring in terror at the mirror.
"That's not me," Ned said, pointing at his reflection.
"Huh?" Jack said.
"The man in the mirror," Ned said. "That's not me."
Jack blinked at Ned's reflection. He saw the same gangly figure, the same scruffy clothes, the same shaggy blonde hair and beard Ned had had as long as the two had known each other. "What are you talking about, man?" he asked his roommate.
"I'm a girl," Ned said, turning to Jack and speaking fervently. "My name is Gwen. I'm a girl. I'm seventeen years old. I'm a cheerleader. I'm a senior in high school. I want to be a lawyer. I'm going to UCLA next year. I'm a girl. I'm not..." He turned back to the mirror. "That's not me!"
Jack looked his roommate over worriedly. Ned liked to do acid sometimes on the weekends. Jack had helped Ned through more than a few bad trips. But he'd never seen anything like this. Ned seemed to have totally lost it. Jack was worried; he didn't even know what he was supposed to do in a situation like this. Did he take Ned to a hospital? To a psychiatrist? To a nuthouse? He sure wasn't doing anything that might get the police involved. He ran to the kitchen and began opening drawers at random... didn't they have a phone book around here somewhere?
Ned followed close behind Jack, monologuing as they went. "I was at cheerleading practice, and Jane and Lexy were lifting Janelle for a toss, but then they dropped her, and they all fell over and they fell into me, and then there was this weird flash of light, and next I was here, and I was in this stinky clothes and I had some kind of cigarette in my hand, but it didn't look like a cigarette. And then I looked in the mirror, and I saw a man in the mirror, and I'm not supposed to be a man."
"Calm down, Ned," Jack said. "We'll get you through this." Taking a phone book from the drawer beneath the microwave, he began looking for a listing of emergency numbers. Suddenly, though, he felt Ned throw his arms around him... and then suddenly there was a flash of light, and his kitchen disappeared from before his eyes.
Jack blinked. He was outside. Music roared behind him, while in front of him, and several feet below him, he saw a large crowd of people seated in the grass beneath a ceiling of tall trees; they were looking up at him, and some of them were dancing and others were singing. The music continued on for a moment, then one by one the various instruments of the song fell silent. The crowd's singing trailed off as well, and suddenly Jack felt hundreds of eyes staring directly at him.
He was on a stage. He was on a stage, and he had a guitar hanging from his shoulders. Jack looked down at the guitar... and then past the guitar, at his clothing. What in the world? He was wearing a dress... a short, black dress. And boots. High-heeled boots. He was dressed like a chick...
"Oh my God," he whispered. Ned... or Gwen, or whatever... he'd been telling the truth...
"Lacey?" a man behind him asked. Jack turned and saw two men and a woman behind him, instruments in their hands. "Lacey," one of the men said, "you alright?"
Jack stared at them for a moment, then turned back to the crowd. The crowd was silent for a moment... then they began chanting, "La-cey, La-cey, La-cey..."
Lacey. Lacey. Wait, Lacey? As in Lacey Bergeron? Wasn't she supposed to be headlining the spring festival in the park that weekend?
Lacey Bergeron was a musician. A famous musician. She was no Madonna, but she was pretty big in the indie scene, and she had a national... no, an international following. Like Feist maybe, or like Regina Spektor. Her music was pretty good; Jack dug it. He'd even been thinking about attending her concert, but the thought of showing his face at a cheesy town festival went against everything Jack stood for.
Jack looked down at his clothing again, then out at the crowd. Their chanting was becoming more insisten now. "La-CEY, La-CEY..."
Lacey Bergeron. Jack had become Lacey freaking Bergeron. His wish, Jack realized, had been granted, albeit in the most twisted way imaginable. He was a famous musician all right... but he was someone else. And he was a chick.
For a moment Jack toyed with the idea of continuing with Lacey's concert. But, although Jack knew Lacey's music, he didn't know it well enough to perform it. There was no way he could pull it off. So he wrapped his hand around the microphone in front of him, leaned forward, and said, "I'm sorry. I'm not feeling too good. I don't think I can finish." He spoke it in his own male voice, but at the same time, but the speakers boomed out the same words in Lacey Bergeron's feminine voice. It sounded weird.. their voices, coupled together, speaking exactly the same words at exactly the same time with exactly the same speech patterns. It was like speaking and hearing someone else's voice echoed back. Jack had never experienced anything like it.
Taking off Lacey's guitar, Jack stumbled across the stage, wobbling in Lacey's boots. It was a graceless exit, and one he guessed would get Lacey some bad press. But he could make it up for her, if he stayed in Lacey's body for a while. That thought made Jack smile; being a chick would be weird, but being a professional musician, performing for a huge, adoring audience, touring the country... even if it was only for a few days (and Jack hoped that it would only be for a few days), it was the opportunity of a lifetime, and one he didn't dare pass up. He had to get to work right away on learning Lacey's songs.
The crowd grumbled. They'd paid good money for this concert. Some of them had even come over from the next state to hear Lacey peform. They'd been jazzed, and the first half of the concert had been great. But then Lacey had decided to just... quit? They respected Lacey. They'd thought she was above that kind of language. After a confusing few minutes, as Lacey's bass player tried awlwardly to calm down the crowd, the people began filing out of their seats. They were angry, many of them to the point of rudeness, a handful of them to the verge of violence. Somewhere in the crowd, someone bumped someone else the wrong way. The other person threw a punch back in the direction he thought the bump had come from. Moments later the crowd, angry and primed, broke into a riot.
And then, suddenly, one woman, trapped in the middle of the mob, blinked out of existence for a second and was replaced by another woman. The woman was shocked to find bodies crashing into each other all around her. As some of those bodies bumped into her, a ripple of magic ran through the crowd, dancing from body to body and striking, in turn, most of the people in the crowd. Seconds later, hundreds of people from all over down were snatched from their various lives and dropped into the midst of a riot. And suddenly, the town began to wake to the strange, momentous events that were occuring in their midst.
