When Jim arrived home, a few minutes later, he ended up sitting in the car, unmoving, for several minutes. He was still in shock over how close he had come to being a woman, permanently. Glancing back in the rearview mirror, he spied one of the bags from his shopping. Crap, he thought, What am I going to do with those?
After a minute, he decided that the easiest thing to do, for now, would be to just hide them in the trunk, and hope no one noticed them.
Once he finished with that, he went inside. His hope to slip quietly up to his room was immediately dashed, however, as his mom caught him at the door, and spent several minutes upbraiding him about not being home for dinner, or letting them know he wouldn't be home. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to hide that his mind was on other things. That led to several more minutes of lecturing, but he didn't pay any more attention to that than to the previous. Finally, his mom gave up, and sent him to his room without food. He thought he might have heard something about the next day, but he missed the rest of it.
When he got to his room, he collapsed on his bed, and stared at the ceiling. Images of Kim, Beth, and Rebecca were running through his head, but he couldn't really sort them out. When he found himself in a daydream where Kim and Rebecca were having lunch with the rest of the cheerleaders, he knew he needed some distraction.
He pulled out a fantasy novel he'd bought a while ago, but hadn't gotten around to reading yet. It was doing a good job of taking his mind off of things, until he got far enough into it to be reminded that that main character was a princess pretending to be a boy to hide from the usurper king, who would kill her. That hit just a bit too close to home, so he closed the book.
With her usual, immaculate timing, his sister Katie walked in, closing the door behind her. She asked, "So, what's my little brother been up to, all day?"
He snorted. "Little brother? You might have been born an hour earlier, but I've been bigger than you for years."
"Yeah, but you're still my little brother. So why are you avoiding the question," she pressed.
"Because I'm still trying to figure out what's been happening. It's been, by far, the weirdest day of my life."
Cutting right to the heart of the matter, Katie queried, "Oh? So who is she?"
Refusing to be pressed, he asked, "Do you remember the two girls making out on the dance floor at the Spring Fling?"
"What does that have to do with anything? Wait a sec, when I mentioned those girls to you after the dance, you had no idea what I was talking about. You might be able to lie to Mom and Dad, but you can't lie to me!"
"Right. So, the redhead? That was me."
She knew he'd been there the whole time, and she could see he wasn't lying. It took her a minute to find her voice, and when she did, she found she was sitting on the floor. "Huh? What? How? And who was the asian girl?"
"Hmm... I can't tell you too many details on how; it isn't my secret to tell. Suffice it to say that magic is not completely a myth. I had no idea about that until this morning, when I found myself outside the dance. The magician then cast a spell to make me blend in with a nearby group of people. I was walking around to the back door when Mrs Moore started chasing me. She was close behind me until I ran into a group of girls, and came out looking like you saw. Beth, the asian girl, came up to me a minute after I changed, and we talked for quite a while. Eventually, she got tired of telling the guys to get lost, and dragged me out onto the dance floor.
"I didn't find out until later, but turns out that Beth was actually Rick's little sister, Rebecca. Don't let him find out, but I spent the rest of the day today with her, mostly as the redhead. I don't know how, but she knew who I was, the whole time."
She was still floored by this, but he obviously believed it, and didn't seem crazy. So she replied, "You have been busy today. Is that why you weren't home for dinner? You were with Rebecca?"
"Yep. We had a really nice dinner; she's great to talk to."
She observed, "So, she finally got your attention. Good for her."
"What? You knew?"
"That's why you're my little brother. I've known for years," she smugly stated.
He couldn't let that stand, so he got up, wrestled her to the floor, and tickled her until she apologized.
They chatted for a while longer, after that, until Jim was nearly passing out. Katie let herself out when the time seemed right, thinking to herself that she better keep her eyes on him. What he said was awfully bizarre, but he seemed to be himself.
Jim woke up a few hours later, needing to use the bathroom. Seeing the time, he realized he needed to brush his teeth as well. And when he noticed that everyone else seemed to be asleep, he decided he might as well do something about the stuff in the trunk of the car.
He snuck out, took everything, and grabbed a paper bag from the kitchen on the way back in. Once he got to his room, he put all the purchases in the plain paper bag, and hid that at the top of his closet. He then took all the bags out to the outside trash can, so no one would notice them.
Getting back in bed, he thought, That should do it, as he went back to sleep.
