The Way You Got Me Holdin' Your Door / I Can't Do My Homework Anymore
“Love is the best school, but the tuition is high, and the homework can be physically painful.”
Ackerman, Diane. (2014). The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us. W. W. Norton & Company
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“Get that homework done and done right, missy!” bellowed the stern voice of Mrs. Johnson from the other side of the Kaitlyn's bedroom door.
“I will!” shrieked Jacob, terrified that any other answer would result in the woman barging in here and … what?
Finding Jacob dressed in Kaitlyn's clothes? That was what Jacob himself perceived. But if the full-length mirror on the door was any indication, there was some sort of fantastic mirage at work here that camouflaged Jacob perfectly as the spitting image of Emily's obnoxious kid sister. He guessed that was what Mrs. Johnson would've observed had she opened the door. Nonetheless, Jacob wasn't eager to take any risks. A naturally timid, fearful wallflower, he'd been pushed even further into nonconfrontational reticence by the supernatural events of the past few minutes. Just a few heartbearts earlier, Jacob was standing outside having a chat with Emily – the girl-next-door he had an unreciprocated crush on. And now, he found himself wearing the clothes of Emily's sister while accepting a dressing down from her mother. It was too much, and the instinctively passive Jacob simply withdrew to the path of least resistance, which in this instance meant doing Kaitlyn's middle school math assignment.
“At least it should be easier than that crap Mrs. Williams makes us do at the high school level,” he grumbled to himself.
Sitting down at the cramped, wooden study desk in Kaitlyn's bedroom, Jacob inspected the messy stack of college-ruled paper in front of him. It was a virtually inscrutable palimpsest of wrong answers scribbled out and “corrected” with incorrect guesses that had been subsequently half-erased and written over again with erroneous miscalculations. With a frustrated sigh, Jacob began re-erasing the almost illegible cuneiforms that had been Kaitlyn's response to problem number one.
“Sheesh, Kaitlyn is worse at math than I am,” grumbled Jacob. In truth he wasn't bad at math. He'd always been pretty talented at it, in fact. The trouble was that Jacob was lazy; he failed to study for test, complete assignments on-time, and ultimately had accepted the half-truth that he was just no good at math.
But Kaitlyn was a couple grades younger than Jacob, so (theoretically) he ought to be able to easily complete her homework … right?
“Well, the first question is pretty easy,” he said to himself, pausing to work through most of the calculation in his head before committing anything to paper. Certain he had the right mathematical process in mind, he began writing out his thought process, step-by-step, knowing the fanatically fetishistic devotion math teachers everywhere had for the philosophy of “Show Your Work.”
The first problem successfully out of the way, Jacob smiled and admired his handiwork. And that's when it hit him: he'd easily answered the first question with the dexterous fluency of an older, more experienced mind … but he'd written out everything in the careless, loopy handwriting of a thirteen-year girl!
He erased the last part of the equation and re-wrote it.
Same thing: it all came out with the sloppy, girlish penmanship of Kaitlyn Johnson. Whatever he wrote proved to be a perfect match with the rest of the largely indecipherable chicken scratchings she'd already left on the paper.
“Shit!” he muttered. “I have Kaitlyn's reflection and her handwriting?! What the hell is going on.”
Fearing he had no other options, Jacob simply cursed once again at his recent string of bizarrely bad luck, and continued the process of doing Kaitlyn's middle school math assignment.
After what seemed an eternity of torture, Jacob finally reached the bottom of the stack of papers. A little more, and he'd actually be done. The real Kaitlyn was going to owe him big time for this!
Just then, the bedroom door creaked open without warning.
Jacob felt his throat tighten as his entire body clenched tight with panicked fear.
In walked Mrs. Johnson, her strawberry blond hair pulled back in a stern burn and a pair of reading glasses sloped low on her nose.
“Well, Kaitlyn – what do you have to show me?” Mrs. Johnson asked Jacob.
He immediately sighed, relaxing in a backwards slump in the chair.
“Sit up straight and answer me, young lady!” snapped Mrs. Johnson.
Jacob reacted immediately to the maternal command, bolting upright and shuffling the papers into a neat and trim pile.
“I … I've got everything but the last assignment caught up,” he muttered.
Inwardly, he was thinking with amazement that this woman truly believed Jacob, a chubby teenage boy, was her youngest daughter – it was all just so terrifying surreal!
Mrs. Johnson picked up the papers and begin slowly flipping through them, scanning each page and offering the occasional cluck of the tongue or “mmm-hmm,” presumably in approval of Jacob's efforts.
“I'm pleasantly surprised,” she finally said, setting down the stack of homework. “You're still on thin ice, missy. But for the moment, I'm pleased. Now get yourself washed up: those hands are filthy from whatever you were up to in the yard. Then come down for dinner.”
“Uh … 'mom,'?” Jacob said, wincing as he called her by that term of familiarity. “There's something I need to discuss with … uh … with Jacob from next door. Can I do that before dinner?”
Jacob was desperately hoping the real Kaitlyn was now trapped in his old life, but would have some inkling of a clue about how this absurd nightmare could be reversed.
“What?” asked Mrs. Johnson, clearly thrown for a loop. “You mean Jacob Smith from next door?”
“Yeah,” nodded Jacob. “I need his help for … it's a science project thing.”
“No,” answered Mrs. Johnson, still a bit perplexed. “For the moment, you're still grounded. So you're not going anywhere but school. And … why would you want to talk to that Smith boy? He's nice enough, I suppose. But he's … I don't know … a really odd duck, don't you think? Always starring at his feet when he talks to you, mumbling so you can't understand him, and … well … he just strikes me as a very different. A bit of a weirdo loner, don't you think?”
Jacob blinked back tears at the sudden revelation of what Mrs. Johnson really thought of him.
“If there's really something you need help with from the Smith boy, ask Emily to go speak with him,” continued Mrs. Johnson. “She doesn't seem to have trouble talking with him.”
“Is Emily back yet?” Jacob asked eagerly. She was there when all this happened. Maybe she knew something about how to reverse this crazy curse.
“No, of course not,” frowned Mrs. Johnson. “She's on a date, she won't be back until later this evening. She's got permission to stay out. It's none of your concern, young lady. Now wash those filthy hands of yours, and come down to dinner.”
“Yes, ma'am,” answered Jacob.
Crestfallen at the candid criticism just leveled at him, Jacob numbly went through the motions of finding the Johnson family bathroom and washing his hands. While drying his hands on a fluffy, pink hand towel, he happened to lift his gaze just enough to once again catch his reflection, this time in the big, bathroom mirror. The image was the same as before: freckle-faced, messy haired Kaitlyn Johnson in an anime shirt and a pair of cutoff overalls.
And without being able to speak with the real Kaitlyn (who hopefully still had in her possession the crazy lump of magic metal responsible for this life swap), Jacob was likely doomed to spend the immediate future trapped in the life of Emily's sister. That would mean not just eating dinner with her family, but sleeping in her bedroom tonight, and going to school tomorrow as her!
“I wish I'd never touched that stupid doughnut of doom or whatever it was,” he muttered to himself.
Unsurprisingly, this wish went unfulfilled.
Dinner was a quiet affair. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson must have assumed their “daughter” sulking and pouting, giving them the silent treatment. They indulged in a bit of banal small talk at dinner, ignoring Jacob. Eager to avoid worsening his predicament, Jacob made sure to politely ask permission to be excused when the meal was done.
“You may as well get on your pajamas and go to bed,” his new 'mother' commanded.
“What?!” he said, surprised such an order was coming at an early hour.
“You're not going anywhere tonight,” replied Mrs. Johnson. “I suppose you can stay up a bit, frittering about in your room. But I want you to take off those dirty clothes and change into something clean. It's late enough, that may as well be pajamas. And honestly: no more digging holes in the yard, Kaitlyn. You've got smudges of dirt everywhere.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Jacob answered dutifully. Once again a lack of any apparently superior options compelled him to follow the path of least resistance, and so Jacob soon found himself upstairs in Kaitlyn's room wearing her pajamas – a long, pink cotton nightgown with the image of Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro emblazoned across the front.
“How I even know what that is baffles me,” Jacob mumbled, disconcerted with this sudden burst of obscure knowledge about Kaitlyn's interests. “Let's just hope I'm not visited in the night by one of her oddball dreams about technowizards from another dimensions.”
With that, Jacob crawled into bed, pulled up the covers tight around himself, and assumed a fetal position.
He had little to fear from the night. No fevered hallucinations intruded upon him throughout the evening. Rather, Jacob simply tossed and turned fitfully, unaware he had even fallen asleep until the next morning he was roused awake by the impatient shaking of Mrs. Johnson's arm on his shoulder.
“Kaitlyn, what is wrong with you?” she scolded. “We are running so late this morning, it isn't funny. Now get up and get dressed. Honestly, this is not like you, missy. You've no time for a shower, and no time for breakfast. You can eat a pop tart in the car. Now get dressed, ASAP … and don't forget to bring all that homework with you. I do not want to get another phone call at work from one of your teachers. Move it, young lady!”
With that, she stomped out of the room leaving Jacob alone and dazed. For a moment, he sat upright in bed blinking with confusion – where was he, why was he wearing a pink nightgown, and who was this angry woman? … and then a flood of memories returned.
“I'm Kaitlyn Johnson,” he grumbled, leaping from bed. “Okay, calm down. I'll somehow find the time today to talk with Emily or 'Jacob.' They've got to know what's going on. And then, we'll find that dumb copper ring, and change this all back.”
Stripping off the stupid nightgown, Jacob swallowed his pride and starting dressing in Kaitlyn's clothes. Magically, everything he put on seemed to fit his chubby, male body as though it was the finest in bespoke tailoring, made just for him: a pair of plain, white cotton underpants and (though he hardly needed it) a matching bra, out of fear Mrs. Johnson would scold him for going about sans brassiere. As for the rest, it proved to be Hobson's choice. Kaitlyn's dresser and closet were shockingly devoid of much in the way of clean clothes. In a rush, Jacob settled for what was there – a plain, white, long-sleeved crop top … a knee-length, blue denim pinafore … a pair of striped, rainbow tights … and Kaitlyn's signature black-and-white high tops.
He felt like an absolute idiot – but the mirror on the bedroom door reflected the ordinary, everyday image of quirky, neighborhood weirdo, Kaitlyn Johnson.
Stashing the homework from last night in a faded pink backpack, Jacob hurried down the stairs to his waiting “mom.”
“Honestly, young lady!” she huffed again. “Someday, I will teach you to make yourself presentable.”
“What's wrong with what I'm wearing?” Jacob asked, honestly not having the slightest clue how he ought to have been dressed given the new role he was acting out.
“There isn't enough time in the day to go into all that,” growled Mrs. Johnson. “For the moment, do something about your hair.”
From within the depths of her purse, Kaitlyn's mom retrieved a hairbrush and brusquely pressed it into Jacob's hands. As he began running clumsily running it through his hair, Mrs. Johnson stomped off elsewhere.
“Emily? Where's Emily? Did she already leave for school, Jason?”
From elsewhere in the house, Mr. Johnson shouted back: “Yeah! She left early. Said her new boyfriend was picking her up and driving her to school.”
Emily was already at school? Jacob began to panic anew. He'd been hoping to surreptitiously discuss the situation with her during the ride to school? Now it seemed he'd have to wait until the end of the day.
“Okay, then. If your sister complains, tell her I'm the one who went through her room and took this,” Mrs. Johnson said, returning with a white, stiff plastic Alice band in her hand. “Tell Emily you have my permission to wear this.”
Before Jacob could protest, Mrs. Johnson reached over and slid the band into his hair, meticulously smoothing back the awkward, stray strands Jacob had left there.
“Much better,” she smiled, looking the chubby teenage boy in the eyes and mysteriously seeing nothing but her own rumpled, fashion-challenged daughter. “Now get in the car, or you'll be late for school. Move it, young lady – move!”