Before either Grace or Nathan can speak up, Nicholas butts in.
"Oh! The park! We haven't gone to the park in like, forever!"
Rachel gives her now-mom a look; indicating extreme approval of this idea. Cassie, who had walked into the kitchen, seemed in favor of that plan as well.
Grace gives the plan the green light, and the kids head up to their rooms to get ready.
"Wait. Wait!" Rachel says, as she and her now-sister have returned to the privacy of Cassie's bedroom. "Don't we have to go to school? We're probably super late by now! What school do we even GO to now?"
Cassie shoots her a look of disappointment.
"Rachel, it's Sunday."
Rachel stares at her for a minute, frozen in place.
Cassie sighs and goes to her dresser to take a good look at what clothes she has now.
".......well... well dangit." Rachel says, going out of her way to use PG, kid-ified language to fit in character. "And I was panicking all morning, trying to find my history textbook."
"I borrowed it from you, remember? It's right over there." Cassie points to her bedside table, pulling out a selection of shorts and slacks and jeans, a few too many of which were a little more kiddy than she felt comfortable with.
"............well! Well thanks for reminding me." Rachel lets herself fall butt-first onto the carpet, defeated. She leans forward and crawls over to the table, giving the book a quick look. "...hey! The book turned into an Elementary-school history book."
"Hoh, well that's not surprising." Cassie said with passive interest as she thoroughly inspected and compared her pants options. "You can have it back now. I obviously won't need a book to handle 5th grade history. Though I guess you won't need one either, for the same reason."
"Actually, Cass, it's a 1st grade book now." Rachel holds the book out so Cassie can see it.
"Oh. Well since it's your book, it would obviously transform to fit your age, not mine." Cassie says, deciding whether-or-not she wants to wear something tight-fitting or loose-fitting. "Well... wait. If that book changed to reflect a reality where it was used by a 1st grader, then I wouldn't have needed to borrow it, so it should have teleported off of my bedside table..."
"Wait!" Rachel says, kicking her legs up onto Cassie's bed, giggles under her breath. "Are you saying in this timeline, you had to borrow my first grade history book??" Rachel's grin shines so bright it irritates Cassie even though she isn't looking directly at her.
"Ugh, I dunno." Cassie says, dropping the pants she was examining, and trying to think of a random thing she memorized for 11th grade science that weekend (in the previous timeline).
"A small, weakly electronegative atom has a small attraction to a hydrogen atom and a large, strongly electronegative atom of flourine or oxygen." Cassie barks out.
Rachel is taken aback for a second.
"Nice! So we got to keep our high school knowledge. I can definitely remember all of my homework from last night, too. So that makes me wonder even more why you borrowed a history book for a first-grader." She says, peering into the pages with a mischievous look on her face.
"Ughh." Cassie gets back to picking out clothing. "I know I suck at history, but I'll be okay now that I'm going back to fifth grade. And I definitely already know anything that would be in a first grade history book!"
"The Mycenaeans built their cities on... what?" Rachel read from a random passage, then looked up at Cassie to complete the sentence.
Cassie looked over at her.
"...u-... th..." She began to look very cross. "See this is why history is stupid!" She yells, throwing a pair of slacks as far in Rachel's direction as she can.
"Ah come on." Rachel puts the book back on the table and slides off the bed. "You don't have to be sad. This is a chance for you to catch up and never have to worry about school anymore! I mean for me especially. I have like ten whole years to study all the hard stuff, while I get to ace every 1st grade test without even trying."
Rachel was now standing only a few feet to the side of Cassie; who had finally decided to go with a pair of ruffly, loose-fitting light-purple shorts with a string-tie on the inside.
"You say that like we're gonna stay in these bodies for a long time..." Cassie says, putting her feet through the shorts and pulling them up over her diaper.
"Well, since I put the Transform or Dare on mom, and she's too old to send it back to anyone, we can't change anything now." Rachel asks, leaning against the dresser.
"Yeah... I know." Cassie ties up the string inside her pants, and starts adjusting the shorts to maximize their cuteness. "Someone out there would have to pull a Transform or Dare on one of us in order for us to get the power back, and you can't conjure the power out of nowhere, right?"
"Yep." Rachel says, leaning over and taking a look at the clothes in the dresser herself. "Not that I've ever heard of, anyway. But like, even if you don't think about that, do you think you'd want to change everything back right away even if we could? I mean you can probably do good enough at history now that mom won't be mad at you."
"I don't think that just that one little factor makes me prefer this version of my life." Cassie says, taking off her shirt, and looking over at the side of the drawer that contains shirts. Once again, Cassie is bothered by the percentage of which are extremely childish-looking.
"But really think about it!" Rachel says. "What exactly is worse about this kind of life, other than just being different and new and you have to get used to new things and stuff?"
"We have basically no independence like this. And no dignity. And I don't know if I like having this tiny, pudgy little body." Cassie pulls out a light-blue shirt and tries it on.
"Oh come on, Cass." Rachel shoots her friend-turned sister an honest look. "Do you really, really enjoy living in a teenager's body more than a kid's body, when you think about all of the factors?"
Cassie has to bite her lip mulling that one over for a second.
"Well okay, when you remind me of that, that definitely adds a bunch of points in favor of being a kid." Cassie decides the shirt doesn't match her shorts well enough and takes it off. "...wait! No, what am I thinking? THIS body, in particular, doesn't have any control over its bodily waste functions! That's... that's..."
"You were gonna say it's even more gross, but you don't really think it is, do you?" Rachel gives Cassie a smug, cheeky grin.
"Well it IS. It's definitely ten thousand trillion times more disgusting." Cassie sighs and tries to find a shirt that's more desaturated.
"But it doesn't feel as disgusting, does it? Because somebody else cleans it for you. That makes it totally different." Rachel says.
"Well ok, that's another good point. As soon as I knew someone was going to take care of my mess for me, all the weight melted off my shoulders, and I felt relaxed and content about it the rest of the time."
"Exactly! Being a kid is literally perfect! You get to do whatever you want, act like a crazy person, and people clean everything up for you!"
"There's still a lot more to it than that." Cassie says, picking out a shirt that's the perfect tone, but has a few too many garish flower graphics covering it. "I already know I'm gonna miss my adult body more and more where relationships are considered."
"Oh but come on!" Rachel exclaims, waving her arms. "You're still technically on second base with Nate!" She tries really hard to hold back emphatic giggling.
Cassie death-glares her with the fury of a thousand irritated cats.
"Ahem." Cassie says, trying to brush that comment aside, and holds the shirt out. "Do you think this shirt looks too tacky? I can't find another one that matches these shorts well."
"You should totally wear it anyway. You're a little kid, so you should pretend like you don't have a good fashion sense. I mean look at me and my silly dress."
"Well excuse me, I absolutely had a sense of fashion when I was ten." Cassie chuckles. "And this is childish looking even for that; it looks like something a kindergartner would wear, but several sizes larger."
"Maybe because you wear diapers, everyone thinks of you as being a little baby kiddie girl, and so they buy you clothes that look too young for you."
"Well that's stupid." Cassie says, resigning herself to wearing that shirt given the lack of decent alternatives. "I wouldn't let anyone buy me a shirt like this." Her voice gets partially muffled under the rustling shirt going down her face.
"Hm. Well if you wouldn't have let someone buy you that shirt, why do you have that shirt?"
"Well, because I wasn't there when they bought it, because the day this was bought never actually happened. It was simulated by the supernatural powers of Transform or Dare, and turned into a false memory that some people have in their heads. Probably my mom."
Cassie closes that dresser drawer, and opens up the smaller one at the top that contains her socks.
"But in that fake memory, wouldn't that simulation version of you, have told mom that you didn't want to buy that shirt?"
"Well maybe the simulations aren't perfect. Now get yourself ready to leave." Cassie says, slipping some socks on.
"Oh yeah!" Rachel looks around the room. "Where's my dresser? I live here now so there should be stuff for me."
"Yeah but not in this room, it looks like." Cassie stands up. "You probably share rooms with Nick."
Rachel plants her fist into her palm, nods affirmatively, and goes out the room and across the hallway to check.
~~~~
"You didn't pick matching socks." Cassie points out of Rachel as they and everyone else head out the front door.
"I was in a hurry to get ready man!" Rachel says.
Out on the driveway, the vehicles have changed as well. In the previous timeline, there would be a gray 2005 Acura RL--the general "family" car, and a red 2002 Buick LeSabre--the "secondary" car that was unofficially Cassie's vehicle. (There would also be her dad's car, when he wasn't at work--but he does often work Sundays, so he wasn't here at the moment.)
Instead, there was a gray 2010 Audi Q7--though to the uninitiated Cassie, it was just "a gray SUV with a bunch of seats". Cassie's car was still on the driveway, but as she walked by it and looked inside, she noticed that none of the items and trash was the same. In fact, based on the way it looked, it almost seemed as though it was Nathaniel's car now, instead of hers.
The five of them loaded up into the SUV and took off for the park.