He jerked instantly back to consciousness when he heard the pounding at the front door. Had Dad forgotten his key?
"Fuck, I'm dad," he muttered, getting off the sofa but stubbing his toe on the coffee table in the process. "Oh, damn, that hurts," Ben said, dancing around the room on one leg as he waited to the pain to subside in the toe.
"Brad, I mean Mr. Monahan, open the door," said a somewhat familiar voice. "It's me! Jeremy!"
The kid with the Navajo grandfather! Ben pulled open the door. "Get in here," he growled and swayed on his feet as the room suddenly spun.
"You all right?" Jeremy asked.
"Just tell me you found a way to get me back in my body!"
"Well, I did call my grandfather," Jeremy said.
"Yes! Good going! What did the old guy say?"
Jeremy frowned at Ben's rudeness about his grandfather, but shrugged it off. "He told me to give you this," he said and extended a bracelet of rawhide and silver beads.
"What's that?" Ben eyed the item suspiciously.
"I told him what happened, and he said that this will, for the time being, help you cope with the change."
Ben took the bracelet, which looked sized specifically for his skinny wrist. He snapped the bracelet around his thin wrist and looked over toward Jeremy, who went all blurry. He rubbed his eyes and his best buddy and the room came back into focus.
He felt a dull throbbing behind his temples and, in the distance, he thought he heard his father shouting.
"You OK?"
"Sure," he told Jeremy. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Jeremy watched as his friend admired the bracelet. "This is cool," he said. "Thanks."
"Sure thing, Mr. Monahan."
Brad laughed. "Mr. Monahan's my dad," he said.
"Yes, and didn't you and he swap bodies?"
Brad started laughing. "You're nuts!"
The lack of testosterone in his immature body no longer bothered him. His thoughts calmed, and his raging and storming ceased in an instant as his son's mind and personality assumed control and walled off a still-screaming Ben in a remote mental compartment to prevent him from being too disruptive.
"I'll bet it was the bracelet," Jeremy said. "That's what my grandpa meant..."
"You wanna play some videogames?" Brad asked, not really listening to Jeremy jabber about his grandfather.
"Uh, sure," Jeremy said. "Do YOU want to play?"
"Of course," Brad said. "And I'm kicking your butt today!"
As they played, Jeremy kept giving sidewise glances toward his friend, who seemed to have completely forgotten his outlandish tale about swapping bodies with his father. Brad noticed once. "Why you keep looking at me like that?"
"Sorry, Brad," Jeremy said.
Brad grunted and pushed aside the game controls. "Your turn."