Sarah froze, all her usual confidence and bluster on hold. She wasn't sure what she was going to do. This sort of thing didn't happen to her—it didn't happen to anyone. People didn't just transform overnight.
"Savannah....did you hear me?" the voice called. She could hear footsteps outside the door, getting closer.
"Yeah!" Sarah—or, apparently, Savannah now—yelled back, not wanting to even see another human face quite yet.
"OK, make sure you don't miss the bus!" the woman replied. Savannah realized she had no choice but to get a move on. She wasn't sure how much time she had, so she decided to focus on getting dressed. She opened the closet door and found that the wardrobe was really feminine—maybe more than she wanted in that moment. She wound up in a cheap-feeling purple top with a gray skirt. A pair of gray sneakers, which had been near the door, were the easiest to grab, and a purple backpack with school supplies hung on the bag. If she'd had more time, she'd have tried makeup, but there just wasn't time.
A familiar problem with unfamiliar answers gave way when she opened the bedroom door to an unfamiliar dwelling. She discovered she was in an apartment. It was a clean one, but not exactly the sort of place she was used to. It looked to have two bedrooms and one bathroom.
Standing at the door was a Black woman....no surprise there, looking at her. "What's wrong?" she asked. "You look like someone stole your puppy or something."
Savannah didn't quite know what to say. This woman—her mother?—didn't seem to think anything was out of the ordinary about her. Or thought she was someone else. "I...didn't sleep well."
"Well, you can rest after school. Git." The woman started walking, and Savannah followed her toward a small living room and kitchen. The woman handed her an already-cooked toaster waffle and two eggs. "Eat quickly...maybe if you got up earlier, you could actually sit down. I'm setting your alarm clock back 30 minutes for tomorrow."
As Savannah looked at her plate, she was relieved that at least someone in this place had their act together. It was not exactly like having a maid. Her mom—not Savannah's mom—couldn't cook water. She took a few bites of the waffle, not realizing how hungry she was, and ended up eating most of the plate.
"Well, now that you've eaten, get downstairs. The bus comes in five." Downstairs? Savannah thought before remembering this was an apartment building. "Bye!" she said, unsure what even to call her, and bolted out the door into another unfamiliar corridor. Her first goal was just to get out of here and on the bus and then to figure out what the heck had happened. She looked right and left at the dull halls lined with doors, her head spinning, but eventually she found the stairs and made her way down just as a yellow bus—the most familiar sight she'd had all morning—pulled up to the front entrance of what looked to be a large apartment complex.
The crowd of students that had already waited filed in, and Savannah took an empty row toward the back. Realizing she didn't even have a clue where she was going once she got to school, she pulled out her cell phone—not as nice as the one Sarah had, but it'd do for now—and unlocked it, thankful that at least the PIN was the same.
She first opened her Contacts app to pull up information about herself. Apparently her name was Savannah Woods. She looked through the contacts, recognizing nearly nothing about the names in her phone. Her message threads weren't very enlightening, except they all had messages to the effect of "good luck with your move" and "gonna miss you!". It looked like she had just moved from somewhere—apparently, at the beginning of the semester, only a few weeks prior.
She hunted through her bag and found her school ID. Whereas Sarah's had been beaten up over a few years, Savannah's was almost in mint condition. Aside from a different name and photo, something else caught her eye. Instead of listing "Grade 11" as Sarah's did, Savannah's said "Grade 9".
It hit like a ton of bricks.
I'm a freshman!?
