Whitney awoke. She groaned, pulled herself to a sitting position, and looked around her room. She got up and did a slow circle of the room. It was all unfamiliar to her from more than the last few days and she had only been coming to her senses gradually... her memories of the past few days were still vague and she couldn't recall anything from before.
Her mother threw open the door. "Whitney, honey, are you okay?" she said. "Do you remember anything?"
"I don't know, Mom," she said. "Not really. I can remember a little bit of the accident. I hit my head hard."
"Oh, I'm so sorry..." said her mother.
"Please, Mom. I'll be okay. I want to go to school, like I was going to. Maybe it'll help me remember."
"The doctors didn't know if you'd ever remember anything...."
"Mom, I have to do this for myself!"
"A-- all right, dear. Can you make it on your own?"
"Of course I can, Mom. I can walk. Mom, I need to take a shower and get dressed."
Whitney took her shower. She knew how to take a shower, but she could hardly remember having ever showered before, at least except in her memories of the past few days. Her body seemed strange to her, but she ignored that. Obviously it was an effect of the amnesia. She wondered if she could even remember how to perform cheerleading, given all that had happened to her. When she imagined herself doing it, it seemed strange and out of place, but it was just a feeling. She should still be able to do it, she hoped. If she knew how to take a shower, she should know cheerleading, right? Let's see, jump like this and follow this cue... It seemed like she knew how to do everything that everyone expected Whitney to do.
Whitney wrapped a towel around herself, covering between her legs and just enough of her breasts to keep from exposing herself. Then she returned to her room. She didn't want to ask her mother to pick clothes. She wanted to do it herself.
Again, she seemed to know how to do it, just like she knew how to shower or cheer. She still felt strange. She knew how to pick clothes, what goes with what, what looks nice, just like she must have been doing forever. She got her bra and panties, then selected a pink blouse and some white pants and began to put them on. Then she hesitated. Why would she wear those things? They didn't feel right. They would go together, but the idea of wearing them felt alien.
Like a boy in a girl's body? She thought. Looking around she saw a teen magazine that her mother had helpfully put on her desk when she was in bed. The boy on it looked pretty cute. But even then, it felt wrong. Like she never had been attracted to boys before and she had only gotten her hormones yesterday. But she did have a boyfriend, Steve Farber. At least she had read her old diary when she recuperating, and read about it. She was delirious for much of that time and couldn't remember it all clearly, but she knew that much.
Whitney put on the clothes even though some effect of (she assumed) the accident made her feel like it wasn't the thing she would normally do. She just needed to overcome the feeling. She felt a little self-conscious from wearing the clothes--she didn't know why--as she came downstairs to eat breakfast. Then she would be going to school....
